Would Your Family Charge You For Helping In Your Business?

This could pose an interesting question in many cases and almost every case is probably different so there is not necessarily a right or wrong answer but it could be a thought-provoking subject for many people.

Of course, before we start by family we could be talking about very close relatives like parents and their sons or daughters or it could be more distant relatives like uncles aunt’s niece’s nephews son in law, mother in law daughter in law father in law ETC.

I am not going to name and shame anyone here but to get to the main points we need to have some fictitious characters here.

So we meet Theo and Alexandra they are a couple who met abroad while on a traveling excursion, Alexandra is invited back to visit Theo in his native country and after a short visit ends up deciding to live with Theo more permanently, Even if Theo had a gut feeling that Alexandra could be let’s just say not too ambitious, it turned out that she was a real comfort creature who enjoyed lazing around drinking coffee, shying away from anything that looked too ambitious or too much like hard work.

Alexandra loved socialising drinking coffee and although she wouldn’t admit it wasn’t complaining when having some of the finer things in life. Due to Alexandra’s Eastern European upbringing she had a very negative side to her which she could not recognise and immediately rebelled when any word of this was mentioned. Alexandra loved being the centre of attention causing a scene when visited by her mother or father-in-law. Or Theo’s Half brother.

No matter how good or bad things were she always had a problem or was looking for something to complain about, Theo was a solution-type orientated person and liked to improve things or solve problems rather than drown in them like Alexandra. But Alexandra was having none of it she didn’t want the problem solved she just wanted to vent about a non-existent problem that she had created.

After a few years together Theo and Alexandra went through some difficult financial times they grew apart in fact Alexandra went around with friends and criticized Theo, Theo decided he was going to start his own online business and refused to spend another day of his life as an employee.

For a short while in the beginning Alexandra helped Theo a bit in the business, after all, any money that Theo made in the business would be used for them and improve their family life and finances too, but unfortunately, Alexandra had a 100% employee mentality she wanted the money now and without being paid an immediate fee for every task stopped helping Theo in the business.

Luckily Theo was in good health at the time and even without Alexandra’s help could work 12 – 18 hours a day to build the business. Theo paid a few outsourcers who wrote him articles, built backlinks to his websites, and so on but he found it like being a full-time babysitter sometimes as Theo was not a keen people manager Theo was a creator and ideas person.

After a few years, Theo realised that he could offer Alexandra money to do some tasks as she was good at writing articles. She had also built a nice blog that got quite a bit of traffic when she put a bit of effort into it.

One day Theo went to visit his mother he told her that he paid Alexandra to write articles for him. His mother exclaimed what!!!

You are her family and you are paying her to write articles for you, Theo was thinking it is better than not having any articles or chasing after writers on Fiverr hoping to get his articles on time.

Do you charge Alexandra for driving her around or doing repairs around the house? Well, why is she charging you to help make money in your business so your family can have more money?

I have to say for a long time these were exactly my thoughts and still are sometimes but since I know she likes money and will do the things when offered money, I pay her for them rather than not get them done.

Of course, there are all different cases for why a family member could charge you for helping out, feel free to post your experiences on this subject or opinions in the comments below.

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