Family biz is really much like other biz

From Abilene Reporter-News: By his own admission, Bill Core grew up doing “knothead stuff” at his dad’s business, not realizing that someday he would be the owner himself, watching his own children following in his footsteps.

Luke Harwell, too, did a variety of chores around his family’s business without a thought to someday being the owner.

It’s a common story that can have a happy ending if some basic guidelines and common sense are followed, experts say.

“Communication, communication, communication” should be the mantra for anyone involved in a family-owned business, said Dawn Maitz, with the Institute for Family Business located at Baylor University.

“You want everybody to know what’s what and what the plans are,” Maitz said.

The Core and Harwell families would agree. Bill Core’s parents, Bill and Phyllis Core, started Instrument Maintenance Co. in 1962. With the help of some good communications among family members, the company is going strong 50 years later, with Core’s two sons, Daniel, 29, and Isaiah, 27, in the process of running the business.

A daughter, Erin, works for the Abilene Public Library and chose not to work in the family business, which is a wholesaler for instruments used in oilfields and manufacturing. She would be on the succession plan, Core said, if she had chosen.

“She’s a right brain,” he explained, “whereas, we sadly tend to be left-brained.”

Luke Harwell is now president of Baack’s Florist and Greenhouse, where he spent a lot of time in his younger years helping his dad, Dan Harwell. Luke came back to Abilene to join the family business in 2002 after graduating from Texas Tech University in 2001 and working at a cancer center in Lubbock.

Luke, 34, and a brother, Nathan, 41, own a related business together, as well. Another brother, Tim, is a youth pastor in Wisconsin, and the youngest, Adam, 32, lives in Abilene.

Just like the Core brothers, Luke Harwell said he and his brothers never were pushed by their parents to enter the family business.

“They were always supportive of whatever we wanted to be,” Harwell said.

Once a decision has been made for younger generations to carry on the family business, a variety of professional help is available. Baylor’s Institute for Family Business offers $20 “what-next checklists.”

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