We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Benjamin Haberman. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Benjamin below.

Benjamin, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. So, what do you think about family businesses? Would you want your children or other family members to one day join your business?

I grew up in one. I love family businesses My dad owned a landscaping business for 30 + years. Family businesses are great but I just wish more of them understood that need to prepare the company for exit regardless of being a “family business” or not. Every company should be building a business that runs its self and offers an excellent service ALL around, without the owner. If you turn 55 and realize you want to pass the business onto your kids because you want to retire…How does that look? You wont be able to just give it to them. What will you live on after that? What multiples are companies in your industry trading for? I feel like too many owners in the small business community aren’t educated enough to understand this, and hopefully that changes. A lot of them spend their whole lives building a job for them selves, and not a business that runs its self. A stat from hbr.org, states that 1/3 of family businesses get passed onto the second generation. I feel regardless of the size of your company, you should be thinking like a big company. This took me years to learn, and I wish i learned this in my 20’s.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

With a bachelors in business management from University of Tampa, Ben is a passionate entrepreneur whose primary focus is anything having to do with real estate and small business investing. After reading Rich Dad Poor Dad back in 2015, he realized there was a better way to live, financially. Since then, Ben has aggressively made moves to become financially free. In real estate investing, Ben has flipped over 20 homes and owns over 20+ rental units. In small business, from start ups to acquisitions, Ben enjoys creating efficiencies/systems for companies via technology to speed them into being the market leader in their industry. Ben has a beautiful wife (Jessica) and three beautiful children (Paxton, Quinn, and Julianne). Ben couldn’t have accomplished any of this without his wife and close team members around him.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

Always put things on paper prior to a partnership and understand everything you can about structure of companies prior to going into partnerships. If you dont know, consult with someone in your network.. You will hear a lot of small minded people say to never partner with anyone, and it never works. But if you think big and understand what it means to go big, you will understand that you will always have partners in the “Big” world of business. I spent 3 years building a company I founded as the operating member, making zero dollars for my time spent. Every time I would go to my partners for some sort of salary or at least request to replace my self with someone that would need a salary, they would look at me like I was crazy. After managing $3M + in repairs and acquisitions, I was approached by one of my partners to walk away from the business with him because he felt it was right being the capital partner had so much money into the deal and wasnt seeing enough of a return. In this equation, the capital partners $ return was valued more than my time. I agreed to it and walked. The partner that requested it from me, that was supposed to go too, never left. I was scammed out of a company I founded. This cost me approx 1/4 million dollars. Lesson learned.

Has your business ever had a near-death moment? Would you mind sharing the story?

I’ve recently had a start up completely fail. As part of my entrepreneuiral bucket list, I wanted to get into the fast casual food business. Don’t do it. It is way harder to create a passive investment because of all the moving parts. RUN FROM FOOD.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.nebpak.com
• Instagram: www.instagram.com/l3en007

Image Credits
the photos will come over afte rthis. dont use the photosin prior