Managing Mom

In some family businesses, the owners lead by subtle understatement and keep their feelings to themselves. And then there’s Allied Kitchen and Bath, a $4 million home-remodeling company in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. Allied’s confrontational family members—four Feinberg brothers and their father—unabashedly admit to letting it all hang out with each other and the company’s 18 employees.

“I’m not shy,” says co-owner Bill Feinberg, 44, regarded as the most hot-headed brother. “I’ll tell them how I feel. That’s how I am. I have to say what’s on my mind.”

“We actually yell at each other from time to time,” says Bill’s quieter brother and co-owner, Joe Feinberg, 49.

“I’m not afraid of my brothers,” notes brother Rob, the baby of the family at 39 and Allied’s star salesman. “If I need to say something, I say it, because I think it’s for the best.”

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“If we didn’t have such a tight-knit family, it would be hard for us to work together,” adds brother David, 47, also an Allied salesman, who has actually left Allied twice for other jobs, only to return both times.

The Feinbergs claim their strong—albeit sometimes combative—connections to each other and to the company helped Allied bounce back from a series of catastrophes in the early 1990s, when a recession and Hurricane Andrew combined to cut Allied’s revenues by 50%, to $1.5 million. Since then, Bill and Joe have turned Allied around. They were helping customers rebuild their homes while their Miami-based competitors were still digging out from the hurricane. In later years, they’ve aggressively expanded Allied’s product lines.

But for all their vaunted candor, the Feinberg brothers moved much more cautiously when it came to confronting a source of internal disharmony at Allied through the ’90s: an unhappy relative. Why did it take the Feinberg brothers so long to remove her? Because the relative was their mother.

When the Feinberg brothers were growing up in Philadelphia, their father, Nathan Feinberg, was a hairdresser. Their mother, Harriett, worked for the IRS as a tax examiner on a seasonal basis for several years in the 1970s. As teenagers, Bill and Joe Feinberg earned extra cash by starting a window-cleaning business called J&B Contracting, which they subsequently sold to a friend for $2,000. (It still exists today.) When Bill and Joe launched Allied Kitchen and Bath in South Florida in 1984, their parents and brothers had already drifted down to Florida as well, and it seemed logical to enlist their help. Nathan, now 70, a cheerful, friendly man, became Allied’s “professional go-fer,” charged with traveling to South Florida’s town halls to obtain building permits as well as handling banking and other errands. Harriett, also now 70, was enlisted as Allied’s bookkeeper. Rob, now a certified kitchen designer, and David signed on as salesmen.

Then and now, the secret of the temperamental Feinberg brothers’ balancing act seemed to lie in their complementary operating styles.

“I’m much more high-strung,” Bill says of his partner and brother Joe. “Joe’s much more laid-back. I’m a very multi-task kind of person; Joe focuses on one thing [at a time]. Joe gets to the office early; I get to the office late—but I also stay late.”

When Bill is too harsh with a non-family employee, he notes, Joe will admonish him: “‘You shouldn’t talk to her like that; you should say it like this …’ and I’ll go in and apologize.”

Joe, for his part, once exploded and fired an errant employee. The worker complained to Bill, who promptly re-hired him—which was fine with Joe. “I kind of knew that [Bill] was going to do that,” Joe says. Keeping the employee—but scaring him into straightening out—was exactly what Joe had planned. “I didn’t want to lose him, either,” Joe says.

Although brother Rob isn’t an owner, employees sometimes ask him to help plead their cases to his brothers. If a staff member is leery of bringing a problem directly to Bill, Rob says, “they’ll approach me, and I’ll talk to him [on the employee’s behalf].” Rob’s standing stems not only from his blood relationship but also from his sales and design expertise (he once sold a $500,000 remodeling project). “Rob probably does better than we do, monetarily,” says Joe. “He really is a partner, just not on paper.”

Rob says he enjoys the entrepreneurial opportunities his position affords. “I’m almost self-employed here,” he says. “I don’t look at them as my bosses.”

David, who’s currently separated from his wife, is now rooming with Bill, who’s divorced. “I leave before he gets up, and I get home after he goes to bed,” David says. “I come and go as I please.”

The brothers keep their distance in Allied’s three-building complex. Bill and Joe’s offices abut each other in one building; Rob and David work in a separate facility, with a decorative hardware and plumbing showroom in between. And their father largely avoids the managerial firing line.

“They’re smart boys,” Nathan Feinberg says of his sons. “I don’t tell them what to do.” Of course, he adds with a laugh, “I don’t think they would listen.”

Amid this apparently effective modus operandi, the odd woman out was the brothers’ bookkeeper mother, Harriett, who was every bit as stiff-necked as her sons but whose cautious instincts clashed with her sons’ entrepreneurial style.

Out of concern for the company’s balance sheet, Harriett often frustrated Allied’s vendors by delaying the processing of their invoices, even though her sons had authorized prompt payment, according to Bill. “She wouldn’t always see what was coming in,” he says. “Mothers worry very much. She acted like it was her money; she was our watchdog.” Harriett was capable, Bill concedes, but she and her sons often clashed over this and other issues. “It became very trying,” Bill recalls. “Trying to reprimand your mother isn’t easy.”

Harriett acknowledges that she and Bill often saw things differently. “Billy’s pretty stubborn,” she says. “When he wants something done, he wants it done his way. Billy and I have very strong personalities. Sometimes I disagreed with him—and I told him.”

The brothers say discussions of their mother’s work focused on business issues rather than filial connections—with the family’s characteristic outspokenness. “I didn’t look at her as a mother,” Joe notes. “When she screwed up, she got yelled at, just like the other employees.”

With families like the Feinbergs, “It really is critical to address difficult issues” before unhappiness escalates, says family business adviser Quentin J. Fleming of Santa Monica, Calif., author of Keep the Family Baggage Out of the Family Business. When relatives work together, Fleming notes, often there’s reluctance to initiate discussions of performance for fear of causing a family rift. In such cases, a business owner runs the risk of allowing a problem to fester until it begins to have an adverse effect on the company.

Fleming urges family company managers to hold their relatives to the same standards they would expect from outsiders—but to criticize in a way that doesn’t alienate family members or non-family employees who get wind of the confrontation. He compares the situation to the Cold War between the U.S. and the former Soviet Union. “The superpowers may have atomic weapons, but you don’t want them to keep lobbing them at each other,” Fleming says. “It’s a balancing act.”

Fleming says the conversation must be handled “in a dispassionate business manner.” He suggests focusing on the task at hand: saying something like, “This company needs someone in this role who can do X, Y and Z—and they need to be able to do it at a certain level.”

“Be explicit about it,” Fleming recommends. “Don’t just say, ‘You’re doing something wrong.’ Bring it up in a way that is constructive and leads to resolution.”

The Feinberg brothers, on the other hand, at first tried to finesse their Harriett problem indirectly. When Allied opened a new showroom in Dania, Fla. (between Fort Lauderdale and Miami), in 1993, Bill perceived the new location as an opportunity to separate himself from his mother. He moved her to the Dania office, where she continued as a bookkeeper while also assisting Rob, who had been named as the Dania showroom manager. But the Dania satellite never generated enough business to justify two salaries, Rob says. “I really didn’t need her,” he says. “It wound up just not working out.” When the Dania lease expired in 1998, Allied permanently closed that location, and Harriett came back to work alongside Bill and Joe.

“I don’t think she was totally into it 100%,” Joe says. “She always talked about retirement.” By November 2000, when she was 68, Bill decided it was time for the retirement discussions to turn serious. As far as family members can remember, no single incident triggered the decision. “It sort of just came to be,” Joe remembers.

Bill recalls telling Harriett, “You’ve got to take time off and just go and relax. You’re not happy here, and we’re not happy here.” To compensate for his parents’ loss of income, Bill says he offered to raise his father’s salary when his mother left the payroll.

Harriett says she ultimately agreed it was time to step aside. “I was getting tired; I was past retirement age,” she says. “It was a lot of work, and it was a little stressful. I wasn’t up to running over there every day. I said, ‘That’s it, kids; I’m done. It’s time to sit back and rest on my laurels.’”

Today, the Feinberg brothers still see a lot of Harriett, but without the old tension. A good thing, too: Harriett was diagnosed with cancer soon after she left the company. She is now doing well and enjoying her retirement. “She stops by about once a week to say hello,” Bill says. “It’s great.” On a recent Sunday, 17 Feinbergs went out to dinner en masse. On Father’s Day, they all gathered for brunch at Rob’s home; next year, the family is planning a cruise to celebrate Joe’s 50th birthday.

Adds Joe: “She’s now more of a mother than she is an employee.”

‘If people think I’m a jerk, they should tell me.’

With sales on the rise, the Feinbergs now plan to hire non-family managers. But can an outsider make a difference in a firm like Allied Kitchen and Bath, where the owners’ strong bonds are matched by strong voices?

Consultant Quentin Fleming notes some candidates might hesitate to join such a company for fear of being fired if they respond in kind to outspoken owners. “Your brother is always going to be your brother,” Fleming notes, “but an employee who isn’t a family member can be terminated and never seen again.”

But the Feinberg brothers disagree. Most of Allied’s non-family employees have been working there for five to ten years, Joe Feinberg points out. One salesman, Lewis Reif, is a friend of Rob Feinberg’s since their college days and has worked for Allied since the company opened in 1984.

“We’re like a big family—even the [non-family] people who work for me,” Bill Feinberg says. “I want people to say what’s on their mind,” he insists. “If they think I’m a jerk, they should tell me.”

The Feinbergs aren’t the only ones who bicker in Allied’s office, Bill notes. In fact, “I think there’s more problems with the other employees getting along than with our family getting along,” he says. “We might have small disagreements, but they’re quick, and they’re over easily. My parents did a good job raising us.”

Allied Kitchen and BathHeadquarters: Fort Lauderdale, Fla.

Founders: Bill and Joe Feinberg

Year founded: 1984

Estimated annual revenues: $4 million

Website: www.alliedkitchenandbath.com

Family personnel:
Bill Feinberg, 44, co-owner and president
Joe Feinberg, 49, co-owner and vice president; certified general contractor and certified remodeler
David Feinberg, 47, salesman
Rob Feinberg, 39, certified kitchen designer and salesman
Nathan Feinberg, 70 (father of the four brothers), “professional go-fer”

About the Author(s)

Barbara Spector

Barbara Spector is Family Business Magazine's editor-at-large.


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