Last month I traveled to Ireland to catch-up with cousins I hadn’t seen in four years thanks to pandemic restrictions. We had great reunions, filled with epic evenings of talk and drink. Though I stayed up most nights past 1am chatting away, I didn’t feel worse for wear, I felt enlivened and happy. How could one not, being with people who you care for so deeply, and who return the feeling. Only one thing bothered me. Family kept heaping praise on my father for building something from nothing, rising from the tenements to success, the hero of the first generation born in America. I allow it’s an amazing story. My father started our manufacturing company, diversified into industrial properties and constantly helped those in need of a lift.
What ate at me then? I succeeded my father as CEO of Emerald Packaging in 2002 when myself and my siblings took over, and have run the real estate side since his death. I’ve had to deal with what he didn’t do, including build an estate plan and property development. The estate plan itself is for the ages, designed to build on what he bought as opposed to dissipate it. It was much the same over at the company. He built our family packaging business, used what it generated to invest in real estate, but by the time I took over we were in trouble. Declining sales and profits, poor machinery and alienated bank. I sweated with our team to get it turned around and had it roaring by 2006, growing 5x over the next few years. That took it’s own form of guts.
So I felt diminished as folks extolled my father and didn’t note the next generation as well. It’s a rare story for the second generation to grow what it inherited. Only about 30% of family businesses survive into the second generation according to The Family Firm Institute. And I know he could only take his creations so far, and required others to take them forward. But as the trip rolled along I came to realize he does hold a special place. He’s the immigrant’s child success story, which always holds a place in family lore. He really did create from scratch. And he rightly has a special place, setting an example now lived across the family-tree in succeeding generations, both here and in Ireland.
He also taught good lessons to help take things forward. Dad pulled back from the business when younger blood was willing to take the risks needed. He handed over opportunity, too. In failing to craft an estate plan, he gave me a chance to learn how to do so, and in the process, put a solid foundation under his legacy. It’s an honor in its own way, building upon what he built for the next generations. I’m also faced with many of the same challenges that he confronted at a later age, and his example helps. I passed along more authority in the business by appointing a president, recognizing that my energies are now divided, and my drive a bit diminished. New blood was needed. I left Ireland with a renewed appreciation for my father. And a better understanding of my role in the family story. I couldn’t have built what he did. I’m not wired that way. But I’ve built on it as opposed to destroying it, which many successors fail to do.
By coincidence I saw a wonderful play in London called “The Lehman Trilogy” which told the story of how the family built the investment firm over three generations, which non-family later tanked. It’s a great story of building and renewing, how pace in business increases exponentially with growth, and familial successions done right. I knew the hard work of the second and third generations to grow the company. But you had to bow to the guts of the first, who created something they couldn’t have imagined on the boat across. A reminder that each generation plays a role, building on those who came before.