There’s a lot to be learned by working alongside your parent
When you work for your dad in the family business, two things should become quite evident to you. First, you get to know the boss really well. Second, you get to know your father really well. It’s an opportunity and privilege that not many children will come to know. I’m one of the lucky ones.
For the first 15 or so years of my life, my dad was just like most other dads. He’d go off to work in the morning and come home tired at night. Weekends, of course, were always reserved for the family—with 11 children, they had to be.
We all knew that dad worked hard. But we didn’t know a lot about his job at the Vomela Specialty Company. He’d started there 40 years ago as a letterpress operator and by the early 1960’s he’d advanced to lead pressman.
Dad wanted more for his family. He gathered up his savings to buy 20% of the company and in the early 1970’s and purchased the rest of it in 1980. Suddenly, we were all an integral part of his lifelong dream—a family-owned business.
His work became our work. His responsibilities were our responsibilities. His successes were our successes. And even though I’d see him less (112-hour workweeks were common), I felt as if I were getting to know him more. It seemed only natural that I should work there beside him.
Yes, my dad gave me a hand (as he did with all his employees) but he never gave me a handout.
I worked and watched as Dad ran the business. He was not just capable, he was sometimes bold—like when he decided to give up printing and die-cutting Christmas seals and tags to break new ground in kiss-cut pressure-sensitive decals for a neighboring company named 3M. The business grew to 350 employees working around the clock. Then in 1983, the bottom dropped out. Due to automation and an unexpected change in our captive plant status, the family business faced its first real threat.
As a relative newcomer to the management team, I can tell you it scared the daylights out of me. But not my dad. He had faith in God, himself, his family, and the business team.
He placed that faith in us “new generation managers” and gave us the opportunity to implement our own ideas. We helped make the company technologically state-of-the-art, with laser die-cutters, sophisticated computer-aided-design systems, and computerized film-cutting.
We made changes in the company that worked. Vomela came back with every bit as much grit and determination as ever.
Through it all, I discovered things that just can’t be learned in a big corporation. For example, I saw that my boss was both a dedicated, caring person and that my father was a very smart businessman.
The point that I’d like to make in my roundabout way is this: If you are second-in-command in your family business, do yourself a favor:
Think for a moment about the person who spent the time, put forth the effort, and endured the pain to prepare the family business for your future leadership. Click To Tweet
Then, maybe you should march into your boss’s office and tell him that you love him.
If you have questions about succession planning or business exit strategies I’m ready to chat. Give me a call. (561) 543-2323