A Clarion call to family business owners:

By SOCH Business Mentors LLP Posted March 23, 2022 in Family business

A Clarion call to family business owners:

When you pause your personal and business leadership development, you invite an illusion of success instead of achieving abundance that you believe and deserve 

Family-owned businesses ask us in awe and even rivalry – How does the income of western companies grow in billions of dollars every quarter? What is the secret? 

The vague yet straightforward answer is: They never stop learning. But, learning what? 

Is it learning the technical knowledge of IT or domain you are operating in, philosophical clarity or psychological edge or what, many asked? 

Well, it is about — Learning our emotions

Learning who we are.  

Learning to self-talk and communicate effectively to world around – in silence and with words. 

Learning how we make decisions and why we don’t make decisions. 

Learning our creative problem-solving edge.  

Learning the perspectives that shape our thinking and guide our judgments and decisions. 

Learning about the disservice we do when we are not honest in the moment. 

Learning how not to seek denial when the feelings are complicated but to exercise emotional courage to see things others miss. 

Learning emotional and cognitive tools, proven methods, daily practices, and micro-habits for growing consciousness to help you not lose the view of reality (What is and not what you see). Tens of thousands of such core things about how we operate and define our happiness.   

We call learning within the 6 inches of every leader’s head that creates or destroys tune-into abundance opportunity for himself / herself and their respective family business. 


For over 25 years, we have called this leading self or self-leadership in our practice. 

I have worked with people who have committed to intentionally growing their self-leadership for a lifetime – unendingly as if it is their part of daily being. This helps them continuously evolve, becoming an effective business leader, an influential family business steward, a compelling family leader, and even an effective, loving & happy husband, brother, and son. 

The pursuit for developing self-leadership is to weave in your head the timelessly bold perspectives helping you create better world views, a more robust world view, sharpen your questions, enrich your point of views, balance intelligence and wisdom in you, increases calmness while taking more challenging decisions, raise appetite to focus on essential and not alone on urgent need-of-hour decisions, and help you grow your self-worth & self-esteem. This is the foundation for a growth mindset. 

If you lose this pursuit at sufficient speed, and all results expected in business, family, social, and life will be compromised much sooner than you imagine. 

Many have said and demonstrated vividly that they could clear fog within their head. This fog had sabotaged them from tuning-into-abundance for ages and even held them from being fully loved and loving others. All because the fog never got cleared within themselves. 

But who is accountable for this? Like dust in a closed closet, this fog will continuously come. The more challenging and unchartered territory you enter with road never travelled, the more your fog will be first required to be identified, removed, and replaced with much more than clarity. 

You should see this way – The constant pursuit for developing self-leadership help you “Build The Heart For Change”. It helps Build Emotional Fortitude for bringing Change effectively – whatever change is for tuning into abundance.   

And simultaneously, Developing Business Leadership helps you Build Skills to Create a Roadmap for this Change.


Pausing either of them – Self leadership or business leadership, will put your transformation dreams at coasting.    

*Coasting means when you are driving the car with full clutch down, disconnecting the engine from making any progress to the car. 

What is the chief reason they both are decidedly critical for the success of the change you are after?   

Self and Business Leadership both elevate & indoctrinate alternate ways of viewing ideas, thinking, events, situations, business world, personal world, relationships, money, strategies, and approaches to identify the correct problems, solve the problems, and take corrective & confident actions —or anything. In other words, both enable power to drive change with thinking, actions and leading. This is how the change architects become successful by constantly shaping the change journey they set out to. 

Here’s why they both together are so important: If you believe they know everything about your current situation and how to move forward, you will be steering the ship and simply look for solutions to get to the destination. This is out of your comfort zones. 

The challenge we observed in closed possible deliveries and design of deliveries is that clients’ minds, if not closed, is not sufficiently open. They are processing what exists in their knowledge base and ignoring what ought to be there in their knowledge base to succeed with the change process!!   

They’re on autopilot, heading to their destination, with hopes, egos, fears and inner fragility. This sure will harm their pursuits for happiness and success, unfortunately. 

On Business Leadership, our clients who already are accomplished UHNI families have asked why we keep investing in developing business leadership skills? 

Sometimes we answer them why do they think there be any need for growing business leadership skill (not knowledge alone) for Warren Buffet, whose one share is half a million USD? Why really? Can you think of why a super successful, wealthy individual at age 91 curiously focused on honing business skills in leading, directing, guiding his business? Does he need on top of his unprecedented, unparalleled, and scintillating business career of over 70 years working experience from his age 11? Why really? 

Have you ever walked into the top performers gathering in the world and observed that the most involved and hungry to learn the recent science and management issues of business are people aged 62 and above? Have you ever been in a global stage of the classroom where executives worldwide are ranging age 32 to 75 years and above sometimes are the teaching faculty themselves? 


Have you witnessed and pondered to your belly why people in some parts of the world have made a personal commitment to not do a disservice to their purpose and dreams by not constantly keeping the continuity of learning in structured environments custom-built, designed, and delivered for them? 

If you be honest in answering the above, I am sure you have better answers than I can. 

I would say to the family-owned businesses to not miss a breath and commit to growing their leadership and business leadership skill (not knowledge alone). Invest or accept less fun with mediocre success or even complete failure to accomplish your deservedly noble dream of tune into abundance. 

Once you have continuity of self-leadership building at speed the heart for Change, your business leadership pursuits would enable you to architect the roadmap for Change. You would require the ability to execute the above to manifest reality within your time on this good earth.  

Don’t delay – it is not going to help! The opportunity window is once in a century, and it is now! 

Remember, the successful outcomes of your efforts on change journey will depend on continuity of your self leadership maturity and continuity of business leadership skill enhancements, simultaneously. It simply influences the outcomes as a successful accomplishment or a failed attempt. And, you know it.