Tom Hubler, one-time family therapist, joins Platinum Group to work on family-business issues

Tom Hubler, a one-time family therapist who years ago started a business that works with family businesses on all the sticky issues, has merged his practice into the Platinum Group, the management consultant that also works disproportionately to help family businesses raise capital and cash in their chips through sales or mergers.

"There's a 'conflicting overlap' between the family and the business 'circles,' " said Hubler, who taught family business management at the University of St. Thomas for more than a decade. "The plus side is the family businesses that use best family-business practices outperform the S&P 500. Family business is 60 percent of GDP. To me they are underappreciated.

"They also fail at a rate of 70 percent. And only 23 percent make it to third generation. Why? It's an organizational problem. People experience interpersonal issues and then there is blame. Differences over business and family. The differences between husbands and wives. The owner-entrepreneur who can't let go. I've been asked to fix the 'daughter-in-law problem.' You solve it through structure and formality. Training programs. Compensation standards. Decisionmaking.

"Family businesses are not well-equipped to talk about succession planning. That's money and death, and many owners don't want to talk about it. They don't have a plan."

Hubler and Steve Coleman, a veteran Platinum professional, are both in their 70s. They have seen it all.

This business is part financial decisionmaking and part psychology and family therapy.

"Families often don't want to talk about business things and we can help them," Coleman said. "And they learn who wants to be in business in the next generation. Sometimes, the best pathway is the sale. That's the default. They do so when they can't find another solution."

A favorite Platinum client was Murphy Warehouse, the 100-year-old freight terminal-and-storage business.

It was jointly run by two families. In recent years, Chief Executive Richard Murphy, a landscape architect and professor by background, took control of the company after buying out some cousins.

PricewaterhouseCoopers forecasts that there will be an ownership change at 9 million of the 12 million privately owned businesses in the United States over the next 20 years.

Many owners will think hard about whether an heir should take over.

Neal St. Anthony

This in advance of rules expected by 2018 from federal regulators on website compliance under the 26-year-old Americans with Disabilities Act, or ADA, which regulates barriers to physical access. Lacek said multiple courts as well as the U.S. Department of Justice have held that the ADA also applies to websites, requiring them to be accessible to all.

Although the Justice Department has not issued definitive rules, multiple DOJ publications and settlement documents suggest that the proper standard by which to measure website compliance with the ADA are the so-called Web Content Accessibility Guidelines.

Accessible360, which isn't the first of these types of businesses, audits websites for compliance, makes repairs to restore usability and monitors sites for ongoing issues. Accessible360 also provides training and guidance to "bake accessibility" into the technology design process, so it just isn't a one-time event, Lacek said.

"Many of us will face different disabilities — vision loss, hearing loss, changes in mobility — as we age," said co-founder Michele Landis. "We are all what the disability community refers to as TABs — temporarily able-bodied. Our consultancy can step in as a third-party partner for any business."

Clients include AM Retail Group, which represents Wilsons Leather and G.H. Bass & Co.