Sisters use connection to help clients

The two partners communicate better 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. “I was in Chicago and she was in Kansas City and we bought the same card, and we didn’t know about it until we gave it to them three weeks later.”

The sisters have been working as partners at Commerce for almost seven years, in part because Beal-Thater said she always knew the two of them would end up working together.

“I needed someone to help me, and she was the only one that I knew would take care of my customers the way I wanted them to be taken care of,” Beal-Thater said of her sister. “She was the one to fit the bill.”

Being identical twins offers unique advantages for the partners: they say they share an unspoken communication, and their similar ways of thinking offer reassurance and confirmation for their clients.

The sisters don’t compete with each other – all of their clients are a joint responsibility. In the work environment, they are partners in every sense of the word.

Could they ever work separately?

Probably not.

“The best part of it 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’d better be on the same plane.”

See SBJ’s Aug. 14 issue for more about families in business.