Ask Elena Katnik’s advice on opening a family-run business, and she’ll caution against it. But not because it hasn’t worked at TEAMride, a popular Sacramento-based spin studio.

Back in 1998, two family businesses —Holt Bros. and Tenco Tractors — merged into one, for a total of three families now under one business roof at Holt of California. Twenty years later, they rely on a long history of leadership transitions to select the next in line for succession.

It would have been impossible to predict that from the card table in my grandmother’s living room, I would start a business in 1987, now called Byers Enterprises, and 30 years later would have grown it from a single contractor to an 87-employee full-service roofing, gutter and solar business.

At the beginning of the fall semester, about 450 seniors at Whitney High School in Rocklin participated in mock interviews to learn the valuable skills needed to enter the workforce. They learned how to prepare a resume and cover letter, participated in an interview class and completed a 20-minute mock interview.

Outside the Whitney High School library, a group of seniors sit in chairs, each clutching a resume and cover letter. The girls wear dresses or skirts. The boys are in slacks, a dress shirt and tie.

Do your eyes roll when you hear the words “mission statement?” You are not alone.

Many of you work at organizations with a mission statement that is now gathering dust on a shelf, framed on a wall or, even worse, carved in stone above your portal. If the following sounds familiar, you’re in trouble:

As a photographer and owner of the Morrison Hotel Gallery with locations in New York, West Hollywood and Maui, Peter Blachley understands how powerful the arts can be. So when he heard about Image Nation, a local photography program to help veterans, he wanted to get involved.

1. Discuss your values and motivations. Explore your family’s motivations behind your giving to better understand what you want to accomplish. By identifying core values, you’ll be able to direct your support to mirror the causes important to you.

A number of the Capital Region’s most prominent family-owned businesses — like the River Cats — have made social responsibility a core tenet of their companies, employing staff and consultants to help make their programs central to who they are and how they operate.

As Sacramento undergoes a culinary renaissance, family-owned restaurants like South have become foundational to the city’s rejuvenated character. For the restaurant’s owners, however, running a business with family can be both a great blessing and a major headache.