We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Drs. Phillip & Janice Porter. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Drs. Phillip & Janice below.

Alright, Drs. Phillip & Janice thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. What do you think matters most in terms of achieving success?

To be a successful generational family business, it takes the following 6 key components:

1. Vision: Implement a clear business vision that is strongly linked to the written inspiring family vision and successfully communicated on an ongoing basis to a minimum of two generations. The vision of both the business and the family must be based on core values and the family members involved in the business must truly believe in the vision.
2. Training/Education: A successful professional and soft skills training, and leadership development program is a must-have. We believe that family businesses must learn together intergenerationally giving them the sustainability they need to work together long-term.
3. Board of Directors/Advisors: A board of directors and advisors that is comprised of professional and experienced non-family members and a minimum of two generations of qualified, experienced, and trusted family members.
4. Product/Service: Provide a unique product or service that is needed.
5. Partnerships: Established win-win partnerships and collaborations with matching visions and missions.
6. Professional Memberships: Join professional memberships and networking organizations such as the Chamber of Commerce.

Drs. Phillip & Janice, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

Drs. Phillip S. & Janice M. Porter are visionaries, passionate family business educators, and eLearning Curriculum Providers. They are co-founders of Generations Empowerment Enterprises, LLC a privately held African American family-owned business, which recently expanded by adding the Global Family Success Institute Division. Collectively, they have over 50 years of leadership, education, business, and training experience. This dynamite team has educated, mentored, inspired, and provided proven tools and resources to individuals, families, and family-owned businesses to help families achieve their goals and dreams. This is accomplished via their commitment and passion for empowering and transforming families by using a proven interactive family-focused wealth-building curriculum and soft skills online training, webinars, workshops/conferences, and one-on-one coaching.

Vision Statement: To be a leading global educational institution that educates, trains, and coaches family enterprises, students, and community leaders in practical principles to balance family traditions, relationships, business, and ownership needs in a safe learning environment.

Mission Statement: To partner with educational institutions, nonprofit organizations, businesses, and experienced professionals with an EdTech platform by providing our trusted online adult education courses to families and students worldwide.

We started our business because for many years people kept asking us how our family started a business and got over 30 family members from 3 generations who passionately invested financially and time in our family business.

In 2016, we decided to answer this question by writing a book titled “The Power In A Vision Driven Family: The Journey To A Generational Vision”. We gave a copy of the book to our pastor. After reading the book, our pastor asked us to conduct a “Vision Driven Family Workshop” at our church. The workshop pushed us to create and publish a workbook with the same title “The Power In A Vision Driven Family Workbook: Journey To A Generational Vision”. The workshop was extremely successful and surpassed our expectations. This one workshop propelled us to conduct more workshops throughout the United States. As a result of conducting successful workshops and selling books, we started The Global Family Success Institute which is a division of our family business Generations Empowerment Enterprises, LLC.

According to the Harvard Business Review, “70% of family-owned businesses fail or are sold before the second generation gets a chance to take over. Just 10% remain active, privately held companies for the third generation to lead”. The Global Family Success Institute was created to help family businesses navigate the complex dynamics of extended family members working together and reduce the number of failed family-owned businesses.

The Global Family Success Institute (GFSI) is an eLearning education company that provides family success, business, and wealth business courses to help family businesses achieve their goals and dreams. In addition, we partner with online education platform companies to offer our trusted online family enterprises and wealth courses plus interactive workshops and webinars on their platform.
What makes us unique is the foundation of our educational program it is based on three models that we created. Our Models can be customized to the family’s business, culture, and heritage.
• The 10 Best Practices of Successful Families
• The 10 Best Practices of Wealthy Families
• Strategies For Marriage and Relationship Success

We are most proud of achieving the following:
• Created nearly 50 family and business success courses which are now available online and on-demand 24/7/365 at https://globalfamilysuccess.thinkific.com. Participants can take some classes for FREE or join our VIP Family Club.
• Wrote and published our second book “The Power In A Vision Driven Family” along with a workbook “The Power In A Vision Driven Family Workbook”. These books were so successful, we began teaching family leadership, success, and wealth workshops throughout the United States.
• Presented at the National Association of African American Studies & Affiliates Virtual National Conference. Topic: 10 Best Practices of Successful Families in 2021.

How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?

Making successful major pivots in your personal career and business in order to not only survive but thrive is a must if your goal is to be in business for generations. When the Covid Pandemic struck we had to pivot from conducting in-person workshops to conducting online webinars. We had never done live webinars before so we had to learn the various technologies required to conduct engaging and interactive webinars. Thus, we had to be willing to take training to become experts. After we mastered webinars, we level up our business by creating online courses. Learning how to create engaging online classes was a major challenge but we mastered this as well.

Classes are now available on our website at https://globalfamilysuccess.thinkific.com. In addition, our courses are also available at West Coast Bible College & Seminary.

What’s been the most effective strategy for growing your clientele?

The most effective strategy for growing our clientele has been two-fold: 1. Through the development of partnerships with businesses and organizations which have a vision that aligned with our vision.
2. Presenting at conferences and networking through our professional organizations.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://globalfamilysuccess.thinkific.com
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/globalfamilysuccess
• Linkedin: linkedin.com/in/phillipporter
• Other: LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/porterjanice Company Website: https://www.globalfamilysuccess.com/

Image Credits
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