What does a family business coach do?

Helps the family run the business on clear roles, agreed decisions and good habits, and helps plan for what comes next. The coach works on the business and leadership, not the family relationships themselves.

Who should be in the coaching sessions?

It depends on the goal. Often it starts with the owner or leadership pair, then widens to include other family members or key staff for specific conversations.

Can you help with succession?

We help with the business side: readiness, roles, leadership development and the conversations. Legal structures, tax and valuations belong with qualified professionals.

Is everything confidential?

Yes. What is said in coaching stays in coaching, unless we agree otherwise with everyone involved.

Business Coach for Family Business Owners

Family businesses have a superpower and a weak spot, and they are the same thing. The trust, loyalty and shared history that make them strong can also make the hard conversations very hard indeed.

Mr Purple offers business coaching for family business owners who want clear roles, better decisions and a business that still works when the next generation, or nobody, takes over.

Book 15 with Tom

Sound familiar?

Job titles that mean nothing because everyone does everything
Decisions made at the dinner table and forgotten by Monday
A family member in a role that is not working, and nobody wants to say it
No agreed plan for who runs it next
Work talk that never switches off

Why family businesses need a neutral voice

Inside a family business every conversation carries decades of history. A coach is someone outside that history, who can ask the obvious question nobody else is allowed to ask and keep the conversation on the business rather than on who left the dishwasher open in 1998.

What we work on

Roles and accountability. Who owns which decisions and results, written down, so family members are managed as fairly as everyone else.

A proper meeting rhythm. Business decisions made in business meetings, recorded and followed up. Our guide to running a team meeting effectively helps here.

Non family staff. Making sure good people outside the family can see a future and are not stuck behind a surname.

The next chapter. Starting the succession conversation early and calmly. See succession planning for small business owners.

Boundaries. Time when the business is not the topic.

A note on what coaching is not

Coaching is not family therapy, mediation or legal advice. Where a situation needs a mediator, a lawyer, an accountant or a counsellor, we will say so plainly. What coaching does well is help the business run on clear agreements rather than unspoken assumptions.

Where to start

List every family member in the business and the decisions each one actually owns
Agree one weekly business meeting with a written list of actions
Ask each person privately where they want to be in five years
Take the Wobble Check separately, then compare answers

Bring one business wobble

Fifteen honest minutes with Dr Tom Hitchcock. Bring the problem you cannot quite name. No surprise proposal ambush and no hard sell. If coaching is not the right move, Tom will tell you, and usually point you somewhere useful.