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Developing close bonds with your employees is all but inevitable. Indeed, being friendly with your team members can make the job more rewarding and enjoyable for everyone. But there’s a huge difference between being friendly with your employees and developing a genuine friendship.

When you do things like spend lots of time together outside of work, introduce them to your family, and share intimate details about your life with one another, you open up the potential for some major complications. Given the power imbalance and potential conflicts of interest, having a true friendship with an employee can test your personal/professional boundaries like practically nothing else.

Last week, we offered our first three strategies to help you successfully navigate employer-employee friendships, and here we round things out with the remaining four:

You should be very direct with the employee that because you’re responsible for the overall well-being of everyone on the team and all clients and customers, your role as a business owner must come first. He or she should understand that you can’t demonstrate even the slightest bit of favoritism or preferential treatment towards him or her. The mere rumor of such bias can be disastrous for team morale and respect for your leadership.

This means that even if you have critical inside knowledge, such as knowing the company is about to be sold and everyone laid off, your lips must remain sealed. You need to be totally transparent with your employee-friend, letting them know upfront that the company’s objectives must always remain your top priority.

When it comes to being friends with an employee, how you navigate conflict is where the rubber really meets the road. It’s your job to keep your operation firing on all cylinders, which requires you to offer regular feedback to your team—and sometimes even take disciplinary actions.

Offering constructive criticism and leading your team is challenging enough, but add a friendship to the equation, and the potential for bruised egos and resentment skyrockets. And this is true for both sides. An employee who’s your friend could have his or her feelings more hurt by a critical remark about lagging performance. And if you ever need to take disciplinary action, he or she might even feel betrayed.

By the same token, if you’re friends with a team member, it can be easy for you to see the friend’s misbehavior or poor performance as a personal slight against yourself. Indeed, being friends with staff can cause you to second-guess what would normally be simple decisions and/or needlessly overanalyze your feedback to prevent offending your buddy.

This can all be mitigated with strong communication skills, willingness to hear and be with impact, and learning how to not get defensive. If you’re in the senior position, you’ll need to lead here.

When you’re true friends with someone, you can inject much more emotion into a relationship. This can be great if it inspires the two of you to up-level your performance and work more effectively. But it can also lead to needless tension and confusion when you have a conflict.

You have to be extraordinarily mindful of your thoughts and feelings when dealing with the other person. If you’re experiencing anger, hurt, or resentment, you’ll need to become aware of that before acting. Then, you should step back from the situation to evaluate whether or not the friendship is in any way causing or exaggerating your emotional state.

If you’re being overly emotional, you might want to cool off for a while and reconsider the situation later.

The kind of mindful behavior we’re talking about here can require a Buddha-like level of self-awareness, and it may be difficult to maintain an even keel in all situations. If you’re having issues making truly objective decisions, you may want to turn to an outside source—a friend, spiritual mentor, life coach, or us—who can take an unbiased look at the situation and give you honest advice.

In the end, it all comes down to whether or not the friendship is negatively impacting work performance, injecting needless tension into the workplace, or impairing your ability to make decisions. If you notice any of these things happening, you should seriously reconsider whether employing your friend is worth risking your business over.

In addition to the potential emotional and performance pitfalls involved with employer-employee friendships, such relationships can also have potential legal ramifications. Consult with us to discuss the possible legal issues involved and how you can prevent them.

When it comes to befriending team members, we can provide you with objective advice about what is—and isn’t—in the best interest of your business’ success.

We offer a complete spectrum of legal services for business owners and can help you make the wisest choices on how to deal with your business throughout life and in the event of your death. We also offer you a LIFT Your Life And Business Planning Session, which includes a review of all the legal, insurance, financial, and tax systems you need for your business. Schedule online today.

Undoubtedly, many budding entrepreneurs have developed winning business concepts over the years, but have ultimately given up due to a perceived lack of funding.

This may have even happened to you.

Indeed, banks are primarily interested in lending to established companies. Dipping into personal savings or using home equity credit is much too high-risk for most. Some ambitious entrepreneurs are turning to venture capital financing, but this only works for businesses with extremely high-growth potential.

But there are other options. One little-known option is to use multiple business credit cards with zero-percent interest rates over an extended period as a source of investment capital. Known as credit card stacking, such financing can be a highly effective—yet underutilized—way to get the money needed to bring your business idea to market.

You might be skeptical about using credit cards for business funding. Not only do they typically come with high interest rates, but even applying for credit can negatively affect your personal credit score.

However, credit card stacking uses business credit cards, not personal ones. By obtaining business cards that offer extended zero-percent interest rates, you’re basically getting an interest-free line of credit without putting up any collateral. And since these are business credit cards, they have no effect on your personal credit score. Unlike with personal credit cards, you can also use all of the available credit without being penalized by a decrease in your credit score, so long as you make at least minimum payments.

It’s not unusual for small business owners to qualify for $30,000 to $150,000 worth of business credit within 30 days (or less). And after a year or more, it’s even possible to access up to $250,000 in unsecured capital.

Credit card stacking is not for everyone. Most lenders only offer such credit to those with excellent personal credit scores (usually 720 or higher). The stronger your credit, the higher the credit limits and the longer the access to zero-percent financing. And to ensure your personal credit score isn’t affected, you should deal only with lenders that don’t report business credit activity on your personal credit reports. Some creditors do report your business activity to personal agencies, so you have to do your homework to find the ones that don’t.

​With so many credit cards out there, finding those that offer these favorable terms can be tedious. Moreover, if you were to apply for several different business credit cards in a short amount of time, this would likely affect your personal credit.

While it’s possible to obtain startup financing on your own using credit card stacking, you’ll likely find more options and higher credit limits by working with a commercial provider that specializes in this type of financing. Sometimes these providers won’t use the term credit card stacking, and instead will advertise for unsecured business credit lines, but it’s the same thing.

Not only can these providers quickly find the business cards that you’re most likely to qualify for with the best interest rates, but they know how to strategically apply for multiple cards simultaneously, without affecting your personal credit. Because these companies specialize in business credit card applications, their credit analysts already have relationships with many of the leading financial institutions and can get you higher credit limits, even if the first offer back from a particular credit card company is low.

Such insider knowledge means they can directly negotiate with the banks’ underwriting departments to prove that your business concept is worth funding. When you go at it alone, business credit applications are often systematically denied, before someone can even review them.

Because qualifying your business for such financing may require other steps, you should consult with us as your Family Business Lawyer® to get the process started. We can ensure all of your legal bases are covered and advise you on the best ways to manage this source of funding.
If you’re looking to make your startup dreams a reality, but can’t find the funding, you should seriously consider credit card stacking. To learn more about this unique financing method, sign up to view our video, or simply contact us as your Family Business Lawyer® today and we’ll walk you through the process.

We offer a complete spectrum of legal services for businesses and can help you make the wisest choices on how to deal with your business throughout life and in the event of your death. We also offer a LIFT Start-Up Session™ or a LIFT Audit for an ongoing business, which includes a review of all the legal, financial, and tax systems you need for your business. Call us today to schedule. Or, schedule online.

Recent advances in digital technology have made many aspects of our lives exponentially easier and more convenient. But at the same time, digital technology has also created some serious complications when it comes to estate planning. In fact, if you haven’t properly addressed your digital assets in your estate plan, there’s a good chance that most of those assets will be lost forever when you die.

Without the proper estate planning, just locating and accessing your digital assets can be a major headache—or even impossible—for your loved ones following your incapacity or death. And even if your loved ones can access your digital assets, in some cases, doing so may violate privacy laws or the terms of service governing your accounts. Plus, you may also have certain digital assets that you don’t want your loved ones to inherit, so you’ll need to take steps to restrict or limit access to those assets.

Indeed, there are several special considerations you should be aware of when including digital assets in your estate plan. Here we’ll discuss the most common types of digital assets, along with the current laws governing them, and then we’ll offer some practical tips to ensure your digital property is properly accounted for, managed, and passed on in the event of your incapacity or death.

Digital assets include a wide array of digital files and records that you have stored in the cloud, on smartphones and mobile devices, or on your computer. When it comes to estate planning, your digital assets will generally fall into two categories: those with financial value and those with sentimental value, which could mean far more to the people you love (and your future generations) than the assets with financial value.

Digital assets with financial value include cryptocurrency like Bitcoin or Ethereum, online payment accounts like PayPal or Venmo, loyalty program benefits like frequent flyer miles or credit card reward points, domain names, websites and blogs generating revenue, as well as other intellectual property like photos, videos, music, and writing that generate royalties. Such assets have real financial worth for your loved ones, not only in the immediate aftermath of your death or incapacity, but potentially for years to come.

Digital assets with sentimental value include email accounts, photos, video, music, publications, social media accounts, apps, and websites or blogs with no revenue potential. This type of property typically won’t be of any monetary value, but it can offer real sentimental value and comfort for your family following your death and inform future generations in ways you may not have considered.

As an example, I cherish an image of one of my ancestors from the 1920s, and I only wish I knew more about him to inform my own understanding of life. Imagine if your future generations can use your digital assets to learn from your experiences as a direct result of how you handle those assets in your estate plan.

Although you might not know it, you don’t own many of your digital assets at all. For example, you do own assets like cryptocurrency and PayPal accounts, so you can transfer ownership of these items in a will or trust. But when you purchase some digital property, such as Kindle e-books and iTunes music files, all you really own is a license to use it. And in many cases, that license is only for your personal use and is non-transferable.

Whether or not you can transfer this licensed property depends almost entirely on the account’s Terms of Service Agreements (TOSA) to which you agreed (or more likely, simply clicked a box without reading) upon opening the account. While many TOSA restricts access to accounts only to the original user, some allow access by heirs or executors in certain situations, while others say nothing at all about transferability.

Review the TOSA of your online accounts to see whether you own the asset itself or just a license to use it. If the TOSA states the asset is licensed, not owned, and offers no method for transferring your license, you’ll likely have no way to pass the asset to anyone else, even if it’s included in your estate plan.

To make matters even more complicated, though your loved ones may be able to access your digital assets if you’ve provided them with your account login and passwords, doing so may violate the TOSA and/or privacy laws. To legally access such accounts, your heirs will have to prove they have the legal authority to access them, a process which up until recently was a huge legal grey area.

The good news is most states have adopted laws that help clarify how your digital assets can be accessed and disposed of in the event of your death or incapacity.

Until very recently, there were no laws governing who could access your digital assets in the event of your incapacity or death. As a result, if you died without leaving your loved ones your usernames or passwords, the tech companies who controlled the platforms housing the assets would often delete the accounts or leave them sitting in a state of online limbo, inaccessible to your family and friends.

This gaping hole in the legal landscape caused considerable heartbreak for families looking to collect their loved one’s digital history, and it caused major frustration for the executors and trustees charged with cleaning up the estate—it also led to the loss of an untold amount of both tangible and intangible wealth. The federal government finally stepped in to find a solution for this problem starting in 2012, and by 2014, the Uniform Law Commission passed the Uniform Fiduciary Access to Digital Access Act (UFADAA).

A revised version of this law, the Revised Uniform Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act (RUFADAA) was passed in 2015, and as of March 2021, it has been adopted in all but four states. The law lays out specific guidelines under which fiduciaries, such as executors and trustees, can access your digital assets. The Act allows you to grant a fiduciary access to your digital accounts upon your death or incapacity, either by opting them in with an online tool furnished by the service provider or through your estate plan.

The Act offers three-tiers for prioritizing access. The first tier gives priority to the online provider’s access-authorization tool for handling accounts of a decedent. For example, Google’s “inactive account manager” tool lets you choose who can access and manage your account after you pass away. Facebook has a similar tool that allows you to designate someone as a “Legacy Contact” to manage your personal profile.

If an online tool is not available or if the decedent did not use it, the law’s second tier gives priority to directions given by the decedent in a will, trust, power of attorney, or other means. If no such instructions are provided, then the third tier stipulates the provider’s TOSA will govern access.

The bottom line: If you use the provider’s online tool—if one is available—and/or include instructions in your estate plan, your digital assets should be accessible per your wishes in most every state under this law. However, it’s important that you leave your fiduciary detailed instructions about how to access your accounts, including usernames and passwords, because without such information, your executor or trustee won’t be able to even access, much less manage, your digital assets if something happens to you.

Given that leaving detailed instructions is the best way to ensure your digital assets are managed in exactly the way you want when you die or if you become incapacitated, in the second part of this series, we’ll offer practical steps for properly including your digital assets in your estate plan. Meanwhile, contact us, as your Personal Family Lawyer®, if you have any questions about your digital property or how to include it in your estate plan.

Next week, we’ll continue with part two in this series, discussing the best ways to protect and preserve your digital assets using your estate plan.

Proper estate planning can keep your family out of conflict, out of court, and out of the public eye. If you’re ready to create a comprehensive estate plan, contact us to schedule your Family Wealth Planning Session. Even if you already have a plan in place, we will review it and help you bring it up to date to avoid heartache for your family. Schedule online today.

In today’s society, the once-unbreakable bond between parent and child is being increasingly eroded. This disconnect is wreaking havoc on children’s psychological development, while making parents feel powerless to get through to their kids.

In more than 20 years of work and research, world-renowned family physician and child-development expert Gabor Maté discovered that a mix of social, economic, and cultural changes following WWII are a leading factor in this detachment. These changes have made it difficult for parents to provide the level of attention and intimacy needed for their relationship with their kids to remain strong.

And to fill this void, children are increasingly turning to their peer group for role models and mentors—often with disastrous results.

“They [children] are not manageable, teachable, or maturing because they no longer take their cues from us,” says Maté. “Instead, children are being brought up by other immature children who cannot possibly guide them to maturity.”

Last week, we discussed how a lack of intimacy in the parent-child relationship has led kids to bond more intensely with their peers. Here, we’ll look at the devastating effects these peer-centered relationships can have, and how parents can reclaim their role as the chief-orienting influence in their children’s lives.

For evidence of just how unhealthy it can be when a child’s relationship with his or her peers matters more than the one they have with their parents, Maté points to the dramatic rise in violence, suicide, and mass shootings among today’s youth.

“The crisis of the young has manifested ominously in the growing problem of bullying in the schools and, at its very extreme, in the murder of children by children,” says Maté. “Such tragedies are only the most visible eruptions of a widespread malaise, an aggressive streak rife in today’s youth culture.”

Maté found that in the vast majority of childhood suicides, the key trigger was how the children were treated by their peers, not their parents. When kids consider acceptance from their peers as their primary source of fulfillment, rejection and bullying can be utterly Earth-shattering.

“The more peers matter,” says Maté, “the more children are devastated by the insensitive relating of their peers, by failing to fit in, by perceived rejection or ostracization.”

While youth bullying and violence are certainly nothing new, Maté believes the expanding influence of the Internet and social media makes today’s kids far more vulnerable.

“Technology and social media, which are very much geared and marketed toward strengthening the peer culture, give kids an additional power to do each other significant emotional harm,” says Maté.

Outside of the obvious reasons why peers make terrible parenting substitutes, the crucial element missing from peer relationships is unconditional love.

“Absolutely missing in peer relationship is unconditional love and acceptance, the desire to nurture, the ability to extend oneself for the sake of the other, the willingness to sacrifice for the growth and development of the other,” says Maté.

Unconditional love is the most potent force in the parent-child bond, laying the foundation for the relationship’s strength, intimacy, and influence. Without unconditional love, the parenting relationship becomes no different than any other.

Just about anyone is capable of caring for another person as long as they fulfill their expectations. But outside of marriage, the family—chiefly, the parents—is typically the only source for this critically important factor.

Maté notes that some of today’s common disciplinary techniques can unintentionally signal to the child that parental love is only available if certain conditions are met. As an example, Maté explains how putting a child who’s throwing a tantrum into timeout can make it feel like the parent’s attention and love are merely conditional.

“Timeout withdraws your relationship from the child,” says Maté. “They learn they’re only acceptable to you if they please you. The relationship is seen as unstable and unreliable because it’s showing them you’re not available for them when they’re most upset.”

While this example is quite literal, Maté says that any behavior or action by the parent that threatens to undermine the unconditional nature of the parent-child relationship can be harmful. Without the underlying trust that their parents will be there for them no matter what, a children’s primary source of safety and trust becomes a source of insecurity.

When kids are in a state of insecurity, it’s easy for them to become defensive and enter into fight or flight mode. This makes them extremely difficult to communicate with, much less develop the level of intimacy needed for a close parental bond to form.

To prevent children from seeking attachment from outside sources, Maté says parents must make their kids an offer that’s too good to refuse.

“Our challenge as parents is to provide an invitation that’s too desirable to turn down, a loving acceptance that no peer can provide,” says Maté.

Rather than resorting to special parenting techniques, Maté stresses that the best thing parents can do to become closer with their kids is to simply take pleasure in being with them.

“A real relationship with kids doesn’t depend on words; it depends on the capacity to be with them,” says Maté. “Welcome their presence with your body language and energy. Express delight in the child’s very being.” And your most challenging job as a parent is to do this even when they are pushing your every button, as all kids inevitably do.

No matter how your children are behaving, consider a way to show them that they’re  loved and accepted unconditionally. This may go against everything you learned from your parents, but consider doing it anyway. And if you find this particularly difficult, take Mate’s advice and think back about what you would’ve really wanted from your own parents in such a situation.

“The ultimate gift is to make a child feel invited to exist in your presence exactly as he or she is at the moment,” says Maté. “Children must know they’re wanted, special, valued, appreciated, and enjoyed. For children to fully receive this invitation, it needs to be genuine and unconditional.”

When children get this level of acceptance, they naturally desire to become closer with whomever is offering it. Rather than fearing or being threatened by their parents, children want to be with them. They want to follow them.

Once this unconditional relationship is established and/or restored, Maté says that parents will be able to parent intuitively.

“If we know how to be with our children and who to be for them, we need much less advice on what to do,” says Maté. “Practical parenting approaches emerge spontaneously from our own experience. We don’t have to resort to techniques or manuals—we act from understanding and empathy.”

Estate planning is one of your chief responsibilities as a parent, but it’s also one of the greatest expressions of your unconditional love. You can use estate planning to show your children that you love them unconditionally, that you’re here for them no matter what, and you can even begin to involve them in the process right now to varying degrees depending on their age.

Indeed, the planning process itself can be an opportunity to enhance your connection with your kids. Communicating clearly about what you want to happen in the event of your incapacity or death (and talking with your children about what they want) can foster a deeper bond and sense of intimacy than just about anything else you can do.

We can help guide and support you in having these intimate discussions in an age-and-stage appropriate way with your children. Indeed, our clients consistently share that after undergoing our estate planning process, they feel a deeper sense of connection with their children.

While estate planning isn’t likely to completely fix your relationship with your kids, it can be an important first step in regaining that all-important sense of intimacy and trust Maté describes.

Proper estate planning can keep your family out of conflict, out of court, and out of the public eye. If you’re ready to create a comprehensive estate plan, contact us to schedule your Family Wealth Planning Session. Even if you already have a plan in place, we will review it and help you bring it up to date to avoid heartache for your family. Schedule online today.