Mother-Daughter Teams : Communication, Planning Key to Their Success

Picture Mom baking muffins with the berries you picked, typing your term paper, forbidding you to wear that too-short skirt, losing sleep when you stayed out too late.

Now picture your boss. Chances are the two don’t look much alike. But for an increasing number of women, the pictures are the same.

Mother-daughter businesses, like any family-owned companies, can be really great or really awful, experts say.

“I don’t think there’s a middle ground,” said Edward Poll, who has instructed entrepreneurs at UCLA Extension for 21 years.

Generally, the rules for success in family business, Poll said, are communication and clear succession planning.

The Pepys family seems to be following that formula. Shirley Pepys, president and founder of NoJo Inc. in Rancho Santa Margarita, started her business with a neighbor 21 years ago. The company, which makes baby clothes and accessories, has grown to 60 employees. Two years ago, Pepys invited her 27-year-old daughter, Renee, to join her in business.

Shirley and Renee, who is sales and marketing manager, and other top executives who are not family members hold weekly staff meetings. The formal setting for business discussions is important. Too often, experts say, family members make assumptions about what the others are thinking.

Shirley Pepys recently hired a general manager to take on some of her responsibilities. She intends for him to run the company for seven or eight years--until Renee or another of her three siblings, who may join the business in the future, is ready to take over.

“Renee was very much involved in this decision, and she’s all for it,” Shirley Pepys said of the succession plan.

The Pepyses agree that mother and daughter are both strong-willed. That, they say, keeps them from stepping on each other’s toes.

“We still have that mother-daughter thing,” said Renee, who worked as a sales manager for Robinson’s department stores for three years before joining her mother in the family business. “I’m getting married in September, and we were arguing about bridesmaids’ dresses. I finally said: ‘You pick them out.’

“I’m a pretty assertive, aggressive person. I know what I like and what I don’t like. But there’s always room for suggestion.”

Shirley Pepys said she tries to stay out of her daughter’s way at work and is grateful that Renee and she have similar, strong personalities: “It would be frustrating for me to work with someone who was not as assertive, because that’s what it takes to stay ahead in business.”

Many families that work together are not as fortunate, said Ross Nager, executive director of Arthur Andersen’s Center for Family Business in Houston. One indication of how difficult the arrangement can be is that only a third of family businesses survive into the second generation.

He said more mother-daughter pairs are coming in for advice these days, though their numbers are still very small. But he noted that he deals with long-established firms; businesses owned by women are generally newer.

Women today are starting their own companies at twice the rate of men, according to the U.S. Small Business Administration, and they now own 28% of the country’s businesses. So it’s a good bet that, in the future, mom as entrepreneur will become a more frequent American paradigm.

Nager says he does not think that will substantially change the advice he dispenses. “The only benefit I can see to women being involved in business is they are naturally more compassionate, and so the potential for having a better relationship is higher” with a mother-daughter team, he said. “But generalizations are difficult. There are obviously women who are horrible at dealing with people.”

UCLA’s Poll said women-owned businesses can face added tension because women historically have had less access to capital.

“Women have a harder time getting into business, so when their children come in, they can be more demanding,” he said. “They can be less willing to let go of some of the control.”

One family drew on savings and refinanced their home after being turned down for both commercial and Small Business Administration loans. Audrey and Vivian Heredia, mother and daughter, teamed up to open the McCharles House restaurant in Tustin seven years ago.

From the start, the two have been co-owners. They say that minimizes the likelihood that the parental and business relationships will get tangled.

“I respect her opinion,” said Audrey, 52. “As a parent, I’ve always listened to what my children had to say. I may not always agree with them. But I’ve listened, and that is part of our ability to work together.”

Their ability to compromise was tested four years ago, when they questioned their decision to close the restaurant to the public to accommodate wedding receptions. Regular customers were walking away disappointed, even though the wedding parties were very lucrative.

Vivian had argued that the restaurant was losing the regular customers who would enable it to stay in business over the long term.

The issue was a turning point in the business, she said, and one that the family handled in a characteristic way. Everyone--father, brother-in-law, sister--was consulted, even though they are not officially involved in the business. Then Vivian and Audrey sat down and made the final decision: not to accept wedding parties.

“Our partnership has worked well because we have the same standards,” said Vivian, 30. “We think along the same lines. It would be dishonest to say we always get along.”

Audrey Heredia said she and Vivian do not have a formal plan to work out disagreements, but they always take the time to sit and talk. “Neither one of us is fiery-tempered, and that helps,” she said.

At Seal Beach Liquor, one door up from the pier, fiery tempers are more likely and are welcome, owner Mary Scheid said. She inherited the business from her parents and is running it with her two daughters, Heidi and Kristen Stangland, and a son, Peter Stangland.

“We pretty much air our feelings immediately if anyone has her nose out of joint,” said Scheid, 47. “If they weren’t my kids, if it was an employee, they might be more afraid to say what’s on their minds.”

The arrangement at Seal Beach Liquor is temporary. A manager quit suddenly four months ago, and Scheid’s children pitched in to help her.

Though they generally get along, Scheid said, she sometimes has to tell the younger generation to leave their personal arguments at home.

On the other hand, sometimes they bring work issues home with them. Heidi, 22, and Kristen, 24, share an apartment, and Tuesday morning they had a fight about who was going in to work that day. Kristen lost.

In south Orange County, Dale Zuercher runs the Plaza Art Center. She said that if her mother were alive today, she would not recognize the San Juan Capistrano business the two ran together. Zuercher has replaced the earth-tone oranges, greens and browns her mother favored with airy ceilings, blond wood and an occasional nude etching.

“While I’ve done it differently, I think if she saw how successful it was, she would be pleased,” Zuercher said.

Zuercher’s mother, who died of cancer in 1990, had opened the art center by herself in 1980 and ran it while Zuercher pursued a career in Los Angeles. Zuercher, a former public school teacher, was training managers and earning $60,000 a year plus bonuses.

But when her mother became ill in September, 1989, Zuercher left her job to work at the art center.

“This shop was what kept her going,” Zuercher said of her mother.

The two were not a natural business team. “She didn’t approve of my personal life,” Zuercher said. “She didn’t understand what I did for a living. She was very pro-small business, and I worked for a big company.

“We couldn’t have worked together at any other time in our lives. We had different ways of doing things. But during the time she was ill, and we had disagreements, I would bite my tongue.”

Unexpectedly, and happily, the experience brought Zuercher into a line of work she now loves. She has given away her business suits and now wears shorts and a T-shirt.

And the business experience left her with some special memories: “My mother and I both understood design and texture, and we took an interest in people. When we worked together, boy, we were a really powerful team.”