Relatively Speaking: Advantages of working with the family

The business partners communicate at a different level than most. After all, they’re identical twins.

“There have been times when we bought the same birthday cards for a friend that we hadn’t even talked about,” said Boyce, a financial consultant and senior vice president for Commerce Brokerage Services.

Communication is just one reason family members enjoy working together – either at the same company or within the same industry.

Whether it’s twins working as partners or parents blazing a trail for their children, working with family members creates advantages and challenges.

Though they aren’t twins, sisters Sheri Hubbell and Lynda Chastain have been working as partners and Realtors with Carol Jones Realtors’ Ozark office for four years.

Chastain said working together leads to continuity.

“If I had to go away, I know Sheri would handle the business exactly the way I want it handled, and I think she feels the same way toward me,” she said.

Building on family

Trent Cowherd began working with his dad, Jim, at Cowherd Construction more than 20 years ago. Now the family makes up a good portion of the company’s 30 employees: Trent’s wife, Sharon, is an employee, along with sister Kelly Morris, aunt Vella Newton and cousin Kent Newton.

Morris, who joined the company in December 2004, said her 10 years of corporate experience led her back to the family business.

“I felt like I had something to offer for the first time,” Morris said, “and I was able to offer my accounting and financial background to the business that they had grown over the years.”

Morris and Cowherd also cited communication as a strength that can come from having family in the office.

“You can cut through a lot of the nonsense and get straight to the heart of the matter,” Cowherd said.

While family members who work for Cowherd Construction still have to meet the criteria for the job, Morris said they do bring an added level of trust.

“Because we know we’re all here for the same goal, we all want the best for each other and the overall picture,” Morris said.

Following the trail

For Dana Logsdon, public relations is a family calling.

Her parents, Paul and Kay Logsdon, have both served in the PR arena. Paul Logsdon is spokesman for Evangel University and Kay Logsdon previously spent more than a decade as the as public information officer for the city of Springfield. Kay Logsdon left her post July 10 as executive director of the Springfield Regional Arts Council to serve as director of the Food Channel at Noble Communications Co.

Dana Logsdon is public information coordinator for Ozarks Technical Community College – a position she’s held since July.

She decided to get into the PR field in her own way, having served on the conference and banquet team at a U.S. military conference center in Germany before returning to Springfield.

Logsdon said she was never pressured to go into the public relations field, but the family name did help.

“There are public figures who have known me since I was a little girl,” she said. “Anyone I don’t know, my parents can introduce me to. It seems like everyone I meet knows or has worked with one or both of my parents at some point.”

The struggle came not in what others expected of her, but in the pull between her independence and her parents’ influence on her life.

“I have always wanted to forge my own path and show that I can do it without them,” she said. “But at the same time, I recognize that so much of what I know and how I do things is straight from my parents.

“I don’t have to fill their shoes,” she said. “I’m just lining my shoes up next to theirs.”

Intertwined

Almost all related co-workers agree: Keeping work separate from the personal relationship, and vice versa, is impossible.

For the Cowherds, it’s also not really necessary – the business, for them, is a family.

“We take the business outside the office, too. We’ve grown up with it, and so the business is in the forefront,” Trent Cowherd said.

For the twins at Commerce, the link between business and family is even stronger; both say they knew they’d eventually work together, because their connection is so strong.

“The best part of (working together) is that we have each other, and the worst part of it is that we have each other,” Boyce said. “If something would happen, it would really be bad for the other. I always say, ‘If we’re going to go down, we better both be on the same plane.’”