Mixing work and family
Benefits far outweigh the pitfalls, families say

Interconnect Systems has gained strength with the addition of Curtis Dye’s wife, Felicity, to the team.

By Rachel Robertson

Twenty-nine years ago Curtis Dye started Interconnect Systems, a business telephone systems company in Bellingham, with no thought of making it a family business.

“It wasn’t part of the plan on the front-end at all,” he said. Indeed, at the time he hadn’t yet met Felicity, whom he married 21 years ago and who joined the business as general manager about a year and a half ago.
The Dyes said the business was encountering growing pains and really needed someone to come in and update the business processes. Curtis felt he could especially use someone with skills in marketing and personnel management.
“Our mentor, Bill Palmer ... regularly looked at me and said, ‘What you’re looking for is sitting next to you,’ and he said that multiple times to me as much as her,” Curtis said, explaining that their business consultant, Palmer, of Palmer & Associates in Bellingham, had worked with Felicity in the past when they were both in the grocery business, and knew where her skills lay.
“And at first I said no,” Felicity said. “Curtis and I have a great relationship and I didn’t want to put that at risk.”
But they continued to consider the option with Palmer over the course of a year. “He really made us define what we were looking for and why we were resistant to taking that leap,” Felicity said.
Palmer said that successful family businesses often have family members with complementary skills, which is the case for the Dyes. “They both bring different strengths to the business; the combination of the two is very strong,” he said.
“And that’s true with other clients,” he continued, “where you have a husband and wife, for example, that are able to take different parts of the business and manage them with great communication and trust and all the things that you would like to have between two people.”
It is, of course, not always the case.
“We all know the disaster stories where you’ve got two individuals who are family, working in a business, whether it’s siblings or spouses, where they aren’t compatible, they don’t have a clear separation of roles, they don’t bring complementary gifts to the enterprise, and you can have some very dysfunctional situations,” he said.
The principles that apply to any business are the same for a family owned and operated business; however the element of family can offer some unique advantages as well as some common pitfalls.

Heading off Trouble
“Planning – whether it’s for the day-to-day operations of the business and how that will be done, or it’s more long-term succession planning – is key to running a successful business and being well equipped to handle issues that may come up,” Traci Harstad Stark said.
Stark has counseled family businesses at the Small Business Development Center, a program of the Economic Development Association of Skagit County, and said there are a few issues that come up in particular with family businesses.
Although many people starting a new business would prefer to look at the positives, she said that working through possible events such as a death in the family or divorce, is a useful exercise.
“There’s no way to think through every possible little thing that can come up, but going through that process of working together and identifying some of the main issues and getting them down on paper ... working on that process together is going to help in the long run when issues like that come up,” she said.
Succession planning is one major issue for family businesses to work through, but Stark said that making a comprehensive businesses plan including identifying the specifics of the partner’s roles and outlining a marketing plan are also important.
Palmer said that in family businesses in particular the chain of command can be a bit fuzzy, so it is especially important to clearly define everyone’s roles.
“And it doesn’t have to be a formal job description ... but people have to be clear on what’s my responsibility, what’s yours, so we’re not tripping over each other and creating confusion that ends up being conflict,” Palmer said.

Business – The Family Hobby
Bob Pritchett said that he and his father, Dale, did not set out to create a family business, although an entrepreneurial spirit is clearly part of their shared family legacy.
Logos Bible Software started as a hobby project that Bob worked on in collaboration with non-family partner, Kiernon Reiniger, both Microsoft employees at the time who met through church.
“Early on we started involving Dale in advice on sales and marketing, and he started doing the things we couldn’t,” Bob said, explaining that his father had more flexibility in his schedule during the day to do things like arrange for office space while he and Reiniger were still full-time at Microsoft. When they launched their business in 1991 it was as three partners; Reiniger stayed with them until 1998.
Dale cites their complimentary skills – his sales and marketing, and Bob’s technical – as one of the reasons for their success. He says their family history with startup businesses is also a factor.
“We come from a line of entrepreneurs. Bob grew up hearing from his grandfather, and I grew up hearing from my father, who started three or four businesses,” Dale explained. “We had no mystery to how you put a startup together and how you grow a company. We had been in everything from literally a two-man company to a $40 million a year company, so we knew all the developmental stages along the way.”
Krista Cameron and her mother, Ona Hamilton, were also no strangers to mixing family and business when they started Delamae Salon and Spa in Burlington just over a year ago. Father and husband, Mike Hamilton, owns a trucking company that the whole family pitches in to help with. Ona has always done the accounting and she trained both her daughters to handle the books, too.
“They grew up with it. They knew trucks came first,” Ona laughed.
So, when the opportunity arose to purchase their own salon they had no fears of making it a family business. In fact, it was just the opposite. Krista, who is a stylist, said she was not interested in opening her own salon unless her mother did it with her. And Ona, who takes care of the accounting for the business, said she would have found something else to do if Krista decided against opening a salon.
The building itself is rooted in family. Ona grew up in the Burlington home that they converted to a salon. When her parents had to sell the house it was Ona’s father who suggested they turn it into a salon. In fact, the name honors Ona’s mother Della Mae, who loves to come by and visit with everyone. Pictures of Della Mae as a child, along with other old family photos, add authentic character to the walls.

A Family Atmosphere
Both Logos and Delamae encourage a family atmosphere in their hiring. At Delamae, Krista’s sister Kellie “Buddy” Hamilton works as a receptionist, two of their stylists are twin sisters, and many others are good friends that grew up together.
In addition to having family members on staff at Logos, they also have two other families in employment with five or more members.
“We go out of our way to hire people from the same family. We find alignment of interests within one family – you often find the same work ethic and attitude toward work. And if it’s not there, the family members warn you off, ‘Don’t hire my brother,’” Bob joked.
Curtis and Felicity have found that making Interconnect Systems a family business has also created a bonding experience for the family. Daughter, Anna, 15, and son, Johnny, 10, have chores such as filing and hole punching to help contribute to the business.
“It is part of who we are as a family, which is one thing I really like about the transition. ... I feel like we’re all identifying more with owning a family business, running it, being a part of the community. I think that it really makes it more of a holistic kind of an atmosphere,” Felicity said, explaining the staff is now used to seeing the kids around the office in the afternoons.

Trust and Companionship
Curtis can hardly see a downside to having his wife join his business, “I certainly do love having her here. My job is significantly easier having a great partner that I know and can trust,” he said.
For Paul Miller, having someone he could trust and count on to get things done was also something he was seeking for his year-old Burlington business, Advanced Electric of Skagit County LCC, when he asked his wife, Erika, to join him in 2006. Having had no QuickBooks training, his files were also suffering and so Erika was already helping him out on evenings and weekends in addition to her full-time job.
Although Erika had to be convinced at the beginning, now two years into it, she wouldn’t change it. “It’s fun, I love working with my husband. It definitely has its moments, but we enjoy each other,” she said.
Owning their own business together has also given them greater flexibility, “If you’re caught up and you want to go catch a movie or something, or get some dinner – we can do that.”
Flexibility became even more important in May when their son, Maxx was born. Erika says that now that she is feeding him every two hours it is challenging to get work done during the day. When Paul comes home though, he will watch the baby while she catches up on the paperwork.

The Next Generation
Although Paul and Erika joke that Maxx will one day be Paul’s little apprentice, they are also realistic about the possibility.
“I’d definitely like him to take over, but he’s going to be his own person,” Paul said.
Indeed, generational issues are one of the most-cited problems with family businesses. For example, as a new generation takes over, conflicts can emerge if the daughter or son wants to make changes in the business.
Stark said that balancing respect of the previous generation with one’s own personal goals can be tricky. And the trick, she said, is “having the ability to make a decision and be okay with it, and not beat yourself up about something that might go against the wishes of the first owner.”
Passing on the family business has its upside as well. “There can be a sense of legacy when you look at multi-generational family businesses,” Palmer said, citing Smith Gardens in Bellingham as an example. “There is a profound sense of multigenerational carrying-the-torch, with lots of implication in terms of integrity and those kinds of things that mean a lot to them and the employees.”

“Off”-hours Communication
For good or bad there are certainly opportunities for a lot of business communication during “off” hours.
Dale Pritchett counts it as a positive. “We have a level of communication that doesn’t exist in most companies, because it is almost 24/7. In a sense you’re more efficient, because you have a longer business day,” he said.
Son, Bob, though admits there is a negative side: “My wife doesn’t work in the business, and I think at times … she wishes there was another topic at a family dinner than the business.”
Erika and Paul Miller said that they have learned in the last two years of working as a family business that they need to have time when they don’t answer the phone and they don’t talk about business.
“I think it’s really important to have that balance ... I think that’s probably the most important thing in having a family business is the separation,” Erika said.
Curtis and Felicity Dye concur, and when business talk creeps into the dinner conversation, they remarked that daughter Anna is not shy about reminding them to stop.

Family Fun
Doing what you enjoy can be even better when shared with family.
“What other mom gets to be with their kids every day?” Ona Hamilton asked.
“It’s really just more fun,” daughter Krista agreed.
The Pritchett’s also agree that they are just doing what they enjoy. “We’re very entrepreneurial, if we had time for hobbies our hobbies would probably be businesses. This is what we’re really interested in,” Bob said.


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Krista Cameron and Ona Hamilton are a mother-daughter team that can’t imagine having their Burlington salon, Delamae, be anything but a family business.


Erika and Paul Miller have found that flexibility is one of the greatest advantages of owning their small family business Advanced Electric of Skagit County LCC.


Bob (left) and Dale (right) Pritchett started Logos Bible Software together but it was not with the intention of creating a family business, yet it has grown to include other family members such as Bob’s brother Dan (center).