Sep 23, 2025
On this episode of The Founder's Sandbox, Brenda speaks with Anbern R. Guarrine: a partner of The Guarrine Group (tGG), a global training company based in Illinois. tGG has facilitated team building, leadership, and organizational development workshops around the world for over 30 years. tGG partners with excellent facilitators who help groups have FUN, which is a hallmark of tGG
Anbern R. Guarrine calls herself a "Facilitator of Family Play." By facilitating games, she helps participants gain insights about their strengths, their relationships with peers, and how they can use their skills to move forward in their professional and professional lives.
As a partner in tGG, Anbern enjoys challenging herself by taking on uninteresting topics and developing them into fun, game-based learning modules. She is Gallup trained in Strengths Coaching and has received the Family Firm Institute (FFI) Certificate in Family Business Advising. She enjoys sharing best practices with professionals of various disciplines and continually grows her understanding of the consulting space.
You can find out more at: https://www.theguarrinegroup.com/
Transcript:
00:04
Welcome back to the Founder's Sandbox. I am Brenda McCabe, your
host, now in this fourth season of the Founder's Sandbox
podcast. This monthly podcast reaches entrepreneurs, business
owners who learn about
00:33
building resilient, purpose-driven, and scalable businesses with
great corporate governance. My guests also share this mission and
actually working with entrepreneurs and um business owners to
also work on those aspects, each in their own manner. My guests are
founders, professional service providers, who like me
want to use the power of the enterprise, be it small, medium, or
large.
01:02
to make change for a better world. Through storytelling with a
guest on topics that's gonna touch on their, you know, why they do
what they do today. And we are recreating a fun sandbox environment
where we can equip one business owner at a time to build a better
world. Today, I'm absolutely delighted to have as my guest, Anberne
Guarrine. Guarrine?
01:31
Anberne Guarrine. Yes, Anberne Guarrine. um And she is, thank you,
Anberne, for joining the podcast today as CEO and founder, the
co-founder of the Guarine Group out of Illinois. As the founder
sandbox host, Brenda McCabe and blogger, I often have guests who
speak about playfulness and innovation.
01:59
And I write about the hidden value that playfulness brings to
innovation and creativity in teams. When Anber was introduced to me
by a fellow guest, um she truly brings uh the playfulness that is
used in the business environment to a next level. As
facilitator of family play, think listeners. We're team
building.
02:27
rubber ducks and beach balls meet second and third generation
family business owners. So I am absolutely delighted to have you
here today. Thank you, Ann-Bern. Oh, thanks for having me.
I'm so excited. Fantastic. So I would love you to share
with uh my listeners the origin story. I mean, how did you
use playfulness in the business environment in a very
structured
02:56
manner now you're going on I believe 10 years with the
Guarine group working with family owned businesses. What was the
origin? What was that seed that you had in your mind? Thank you.
Yeah, so when I was in college undergrad is psychology and
I learned that I like working with groups. Okay. And so while
I was
03:21
you know, doing my day job of whatever it was that I was
doing, I knew that I always gravitated towards doing team buildings
and leadership programs. And so at some point I said, you
know what, I should start making this a business. And so the
entrepreneurial spirit came in and I created a training company
with a friend of mine. And so we were doing team buildings and
leadership and communication programs.
03:51
We had corporate groups. We also had government contracts.
And at some point, it was really all fun. I was doing what I
wanted to do, but at some point there was just a tug in the heart,
know, in my spirit. I was looking for something more. I was looking
for sustainable impact because I was thinking as fun and as
wonderful as our experience is with the groups that I was
doing.
04:20
I just felt like there's gotta be something more. There's
gotta be more sustainable impact. And around that time, my
business partner's brother said, you know, I'm going into
inheritance planning. I'm thinking maybe my clients need some team
building. And you know, I know a whole lot about team
building and groups.
04:46
I did not know a whole lot about families and especially families
who own businesses together. That's a whole different
dynamics. And so my, my business partner and I, you know,
went through what resources can we get? And we found that
there is a group that actually does this for a living. Yes.
They do family business consulting. And so we both got our
certificate for family business advising.
05:15
And then we hit the ground running. um But we cannot shake off our
fun activities and our games. We can't shake it off. And so we took
it with us in the family boardroom. And that's how I got started.
And I still use rubber ducks and beach balls and whatnot. Right.
And later on in the interview, you'll talk about what a typical
engagement looks like, right, with the Guarani group.
05:45
in which uh you not only touch on the family use family play,
right playfulness, but you also get into kind of the um
Constitution of the family. So let's carry on. Let's carry on. You
know, what have you found is unique about the family business
experience? Unlike working for the corporates, right? What is
that? I don't know secret sauce.
06:12
that are the uniqueness that you've had to kind of curate your
business around? Yeah, so what I found out is that uh family
businesses actually live in three ecosystems, okay, whether they're
aware or not, there's the ecosystem of the family. There's the
ecosystem of the business. And then there's the ecosystem of
ownership.
06:41
And those three systems have different values. They protect those
values differently and they have different goals. So let me explain
this. If you think about your family, you think about your
objective is to support the growth and development of everyone in
the family. Your values are love, unconditional regard, you know,
you want everybody to thrive. There's all of that
social.
07:10
Connections. Yes. When you think about the business experience, you
think about people, what are their contributions? How can they help
this business grow? We're thinking of keeping the business for the
long term. You know, you're making decisions for the long term. And
so you're thinking of profit. You're thinking of growing the
company. So those are the values and those are your mindsets,
right? As an owner, oh
07:38
If you are investing in the business, you're thinking of
what's my ROI? How can I get as much profit in a short
period of time? And so those are the values and the objectives.
Now, if you think of all these three circles as not just
individual circles, but connected kind of like a Venn diagram. Yes,
like a Venn diagram. A family business is right in the middle
of it.
08:04
So you're making decisions, thinking about the family, thinking
about ownership, thinking about the business. And whether
you're aware of it or not, you're making the, you have different
hats that you're wearing, right? And so what we do as family
consultant or consultants to family businesses is we help you kind
of untangle that and kind of understand this is my situation and
these are my goals for the family, my goals for the business.
08:34
there could be some friction there, but there's also a unity there.
And so just the awareness and the appreciation of your unique
experience. So uh how do you, is it typically the CEO, the
chairman? um Is it the general counsel? Again, because you're
working on uh family wealth um creation, who is the
typical
09:03
uh decision maker that would get engaged with a querying group? So
sometimes the people, yeah, no, that's a great question.
Sometimes the people that make the decision are
actually not sometimes not always not the people that have the
title.
09:26
So sometimes it is the people that are in the family ecosystem that
are not necessarily part of the business or not necessarily owners,
but they have a big say in terms of the family dynamics.
Interesting. So a confidential mentor is it maybe general counsel,
so an outside they're already an outside advisor to the family.
It could be because sometimes when you're very close to the
situation, you
09:54
don't know what you don't know, right? Right, right. Yes. um
Sometimes on the rare occasion, there are family leaders who are
very in tune to what their family needs and they're constantly
looking out, right? But sometimes there have to be somebody
else that is not currently involved in the day-to-day that
says, hey, you might want to have a conversation with this person.
Right.
10:24
That makes sense. Yeah. Particularly as some family
companies evolved to bring in professional management, right? So
there are probably many, many aspects or many entry points. All
right, you're 10 years into uh the great chlorine group. uh I would
love to ask, you know, what are some best practices, right, that
you've identified without revealing the names of the businesses?
But what have you found to be
10:55
best practices in, I guess, G2, G3, right? Yes. um
Before I say anything, I want to preface it to say that you see one
family business, you just see one family business, so they're not
all the same. But there is a thread that is common. And I'd
like to say three things. So first is, there is a
clear
11:22
and conscious separation of the family ecosystem and the
business ecosystem. And they have two separate government
structures. Okay. So for the business, you have your board, have,
you know, typically the board would have an independent non-family
member that sits on the board. They have regular meetings
that are prepared and scheduled.
11:50
And in the same manner, the family also has that type of
family governance structure. So not as formal as the family board,
but you do have what they call a family council. Yes. So it could
be a council of cousins, a council of siblings, all
branches are represented. And this is a way for the family to keep
the business of being a family. Right. And so they talk about
um
12:19
They talk about uh family gatherings. They talk about traditions.
They talk about, you know, family fun, you know, what do we
do, birthdays and all of that thing. um And so, yeah, so this
is, so they're very conscious about keeping the two separate. Yes.
So that's the first one. I think the next um best practice
would be that they have a shared purpose.
12:50
They know why are we in business together? Or why are we
hanging out together? What is our what is the legacy that we are
leaving in the world? So they have they're very connected to that.
And they're, they acknowledge it and they articulate it. And I
think that's a great best practice that I've Yeah, I guess I
would call that purpose, right? Purpose. Yes, driven. And it's
shared purpose, or purpose.
13:18
And I think the third one would be that they have a sense of
what their values are. Okay. guides them. And so where their
purpose kind of helps them soar and go into the future, their
values kind of keep them grounded. Oh, so that they don't just fly
away where the wind blows. Does that make sense? It's it does. um I
had never it doesn't the at the
13:48
I don't work with family businesses, right? So it's, I've
seen this in very well run growth companies. They, right? um
The shared practice or the leaving a legacy is typically the
founding team, right? Whereas it's a family here. So I do see
a lot of similarities. And I love your sharing that
values, it keeps them grounded while the
14:17
shared purpose, right? Is kind of their long term vision
soaring. Yes. Well, we'll get to meanings of purpose driven
later. And I'm certain you'll come back to this. All right. Thank
you for sharing that best practices. Now, what does a typical
engagement look like? Are you playing all day long? Or how
does play come into how right or more? um
14:47
Seriously, how would we've already talked about how you may be
retained for an engagement, but what would be a typical engagement
or typical engagements, right? Depending on the stage of uh
evolution of that, family business. Thank you. Yeah. Yeah. So
we start with finding out what the goals of the family is.
So we talk to individual members. What is it that you want?
What are you?
15:14
engaging us for? Are you engaging us for just one day of family
fun, which is great? Are you trying to clarify your values or
are you trying to go deeper dive and create a family
constitution? Okay. And in all of those, I always lean
on my experiential learning background where I take, you know, the
the fun tools, the rubber ducks and the beach balls and the
plastic balls.
15:43
sticks and we play and I get everybody to kind of
break that ice and forget their hats, know, the CEO hat or
the accounting hat or whatever hats you have to kind of shed
that a little bit and be more human. And once we get to
that level, then we can talk about, what are your goals? If
your goal is trying to clarify your values,
16:13
what is it when you were playing earlier, how did your value show
up? You know, or when we're talking about a family
constitution, we talk about, you know, how do we pass on things
from one generation to the next? So when you were passing on the
beach ball, how what made it successful? Let's look at that. And
are there ways that we can make sure that we do those similar
things as we pass on the baton from one generation to
the next? And, yeah, and so m
16:43
A typical engagement could be one day, we'll do fun and
then we'll talk about why does that matter? Okay. Or it could be
more deeper dive. And at the end of the day, we have a family
constitution that everybody can sign and commit that we can then
turn over to their legal counsel to make it more legally binding.
Right, right. So it could be anywhere from three months to
six.
17:11
to 12 months, right, depending on the level of engagement and the
actual oh whether it's to G2 G3, right, the complexity. Yes. Oh,
and these engagements by design are probably in person.
Okay. Is that correct? They have to be right? Particularly?
17:38
Yeah, so we in the beginning, there's when we're trying to kind of
get everybody on board, we could do it online, we could do zoom.
But the actual engagement, it will have to be we all have to be
breathing the same air. Right? Yes. Yeah, there's something
to be said about sharing the space. There's something to be said
about being in the same place.
18:06
being able to touch somebody, being able to hear their laughter
real time in the same room. There's just something about that. Yes,
that comes from a practitioner's experience and been
worrying from the worrying group. And facilitating, I
would say good governance and family businesses.
18:32
I just that just occurred to me while we're talking, right? I was
so set on playfulness, but also it's really about achieving good
corporate governance because you alluded to something here. Well,
you know, what does a typical family constitution comprise? What is
the comprised of family constitution? Yeah, that's a really good
question. So, yeah, so we first off, we define what does family
mean to everybody?
18:58
And then we talk about, you know, what are the family practices
that we want to keep? So, um, so that's the, so again, when,
when I was talking about the three ecosystems, the family
constitution is meant to kind of set the stage for governance
structures for each of the three ecosystems. Okay. So for the
family, what are our values? What are the, what's our legacy? What
is our history?
19:27
know, m what is our hopes and dreams for the family members?
Do we have an educational program for, you know, understanding what
our history is about? um If there are people that are coming in as
married-ins or in-laws, how do we kind of educate them into
our culture? And so that's the family piece. For the business
piece, we talk about
19:54
What is our hiring process for family members? Do we hire straight
out of college? Do they have to have so many years of experience?
And then we talk about the tricky things like, okay, do they have
job evaluation? Do they have an annual
performance reviews? What happens if they don't quite meet the
standard? um Can they work directly under their parents?
20:23
know, or their siblings, you know. So, one of these questions that
are potential sticky spots, we talk about them ahead of time before
you're actually in that situation and then all the
emotions are wrapped up in both the brainstorming, trying to
figure out the solution, and then you're also in the thick of
it.
20:47
So I mentioned the family system, the business system, and then in
the ownership system, we talk about things like, do you even have a
shareholder's agreement? What happens if somebody wants to sell
their shares? And how do we figure out what the value
of the shares are? What's the process going to be like? How
long will it take? we pay them immediately, or do we want to think
about long term?
21:14
Do the other siblings or the other family members have the right of
first refusal? Can they just share, you know, all these
things. Right. So we talk about those things again, hopefully
before you meet the situation, you already have systems in place
that allows the family to say, Oh, you know what? We've talked
about this. This is our process. This is what we're going to do. Or
if we don't have a process.
21:39
then we say, this is our decision-making matrix. This is how we're
going to come up with decisions. Because you can't potentially talk
about everything. No. There are emotions involved. Yes.
Possibly on a greater scale than in a private company, right?
Yes. so we recognize that. And so we create systems.
How do we make decisions together if we come up with or if we
find ourselves in a situation that we haven't anticipated?
22:10
you know, preparing for your node. Yes, I wonder, you know, why do
you continue to have the role of play in your toolkit? Right? Gosh,
that's a wonderful question. I see it at the beginning, but do you
use it throughout? Just? Yeah. Why is that part of your toolkit?
Yes, because it's fun. And, and I, I now say fun, as in both
22:39
F-U-N and also F-U-N-N. So a friend and colleague of ours,
the late Carl Runke, he is known, very well known and a
key individual in creating adventure programming. He
coined the term F-U-N-N, meaning functional understanding,
not necessary. Sometimes we do fun things because we have to have
fun.
23:09
know, we don't need that said, my husband in his career as an
outdoor education um specialist and director, he took Carl's
idea of FUNM and said, Okay, what if fun has an acronym? And he
came up with fundamental universal need. Okay, and he said, it's
very basic, as basic as food and water and shelter, the sense of I
need to have fun. Like if you look at
23:39
children all over the world, you give them a stick and mud and
they're clean, right? And so it's fundamental, it's universal and
it's a need. And with neuro-psychology um and all
these studies, we now know that FUN is actually a very good tool,
not only for brain development for children, but also for
neuroplasticity for grownups, right? So if we want to keep our
brains fresh, m
24:09
we need to play and it's a need, right? Right, almost like
biological. And we learn so much better and so much easier
when we're in a state of play. So when we're talking about creating
a family governance structure, if the family doesn't know
what that is, if the family is not used to having a formal meeting
talking about family matters, it's really hard to learn
that unless you're in a state of
24:38
play. And so that's the reason why I use play because it
brings down the boundaries. Take the hats off, you know, so
you're not formal. You're engaged. You're engaged with your whole
body, your whole mind and your soul. Okay, it's easier to learn
about the other person and it's easier to learn new skills and new
mindsets when you're in a state of play. So yeah, and uh
25:07
I like sharing this story. Einstein had said when he was,
when he gets stuck in a problem, he steps away from it
and he does something that's not related at all to the problem that
he's doing. So sometimes he plays the violin or he tickers
around and he says something about activating that different
part of your brain. Helps him so that when he goes back,
25:36
and looks at the same problem that he was stuck in, it kind of
changes his mindset and he finds different ways to solve that
situation. And so if I'm thinking, you know what, if it works for
Einstein, it should probably work for us, for ordinary people,
right? You heard it here on the founder's sandbox. I love that. You
know, I know that quite a few, like mathematicians, scientists,
26:05
even composers, Beethoven like walking, right? Being in nature is
an area that foments their creativity. I hadn't thought of that or
hadn't heard about the Einstein like stepping away, maybe playing
violin, maybe just right doing another activity. Why not play? Why
not plenty? Right? Yes. No shame adults. We can increase and
improve our neuroplasticity.
26:35
Yes. Being playful. Yes. Thank you. Can I share with you a
story? Yes. So one time I was doing, you know, the typical
activities that I was doing. And one time a family
member in the midst of all the laughter and the like really
big shouts and all of that. And he just said, you know what? I
don't remember the last time I played with my siblings.
Oh.
27:03
And this was the time that they got to do that with their
parents. Their parents were all in on the fun. it's like, that is
such a gift. It is such a gift for them to have that
experience, but it's a gift, a privilege that I got to see that.
And so, yes, it is fun. Wow. Wow. I almost, okay. I got
emotional.
27:33
Thank you. I would like you to have uh this opportunity to
provide information on how to contact you, your group.
This information will be in the show notes. So take it on
that, please. Yeah. Yeah. So our website is the Guarrien
group. That's G like George, U-A-R-R-I-N like Nancy.
28:02
Theguarriengroup.com and my email is Anbern, N like Nancy,
B-E-R-N like Nancy at Theguarrienroup.com. That's the best
way to get a hold of me.
28:19
But I like to bring my guests back to my sandbox so we can be
playful. No, seriously, um I am passionate in my own work um
with growth stage companies to provide uh good corporate
governance practices while scaling, while finding or increasing the
purpose, and um really
28:48
building that resiliency. And I like to ask each of my guests, you
know, what does the term resilience mean to you and your own
practice? Yeah. So to me, resilience is like, think of a river
that's flowing. Okay. Even if you put a boulder in front of
it, it's going to find its way. It's going to keep going to where
it wants to go. Yeah. And to me, that's resilience. Wow.
Beautiful.
29:19
and very visual, I can imagine a boulder and a river. How
about purpose driven enterprise? What's purpose driven? ah Purpose
driven, I feel like it's our ability to know that our time on this
earth is limited. Okay, we have a role to play. And so
what is my role? And that kind of gives me
29:48
a sense of direction. What am I in this world for? Wow.
29:59
And that goes for individuals, businesses, families, organizations.
Yeah, I guess you could interchange role with legacy. Yes.
Right. Oh, I like that. I like that. Well, you just said it here.
And I'm just taking notes. uh And I listen. That's my gift is to my
guests. Final. Well, second to last question, scalable
growth. What's scalable? So how can you
30:28
scale those. I imagine you in your daily work, generation two,
generation three, that's you think about this a lot. Yes. I think
scalable is creating the right foundation. Okay. So that when
as you grow, your if your foundation is strong, then
you can build on top of it anyway, in any way, however big you want
to build. So I feel like scalable growth has to be
30:58
on a good foundation. You know what you're about.
You're rooted in your values. And so you can grow
exponentially. Nice. Last question. Yes. Did you have fun in the
sandbox today? Gosh, did talking with you savor or satisfy my
fundamental universal need? Yes, it did. And we didn't have to
revert to rubber ducks.
31:27
Right? No rubber ducks. No. Thank you. So to my
listeners, if you like this episode with Anne-Bern Guarine, sign up
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providers, and business owners share their experience on how
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purpose-driven companies to make profits for good.
31:55
Signing off for this month. Thank you again, Anne-Bern. It was a
true pleasure to have you here. My gosh, I had so much fun. Thank
you.