I wrote an article for Minnesota Business Magazine under my own byline, a rare thing for a PR person who is most often behind-the-scenes!
Here’s a link to the digital edition of the magazine (scroll through to page 12):
My father’s business was like the fifth sibling around the dinner table each evening while I was growing up. Its successes and failures were discussed and made evident by my father’s moods: a good day and Dad was cheerful, complimenting my mother on “the best meal he’d ever had” or a bad day, he was impatient if we hadn’t done our very best in school.
While I was in elementary school Dad bought a manufacturing company that had lost $46,000 on sales of $25,000 the year before. He turned that company around, and one summer while I was away at camp, he purchased two more failing companies. He turned those around, too, starting another small company and acquiring others along the way.
All of us worked summer stints in the business, either in the shop, stamping out expanded metal or assembling cash drawers, or in the office, typing invoices and paychecks and handling basic filing. Though I thought it boring at the time, I used the same basic filing and bookkeeping system to set up my own small business when the entrepreneurial bug bit me at age 32.
I know my father was proud of me, even though he never exactly understood what I did: he manufactured products; I consulted using my public relations expertise, often to family owned businesses. I was fiercely independent and he kept a respectful distance. I did ask him for advice a couple of times, and he gave it: little gems of wisdom that I followed to solve what seemed to be at the time insurmountable problems.
He died before I could absorb more of his accumulated wisdom, and I regret that I didn’t spend more time with him on business than I did. I asked him several years ago to write up the secrets of his success. His advice seems quaint in today’s terms, but with business ethics at an all-time low, Dad’s old-fashioned advice is still germane.
Run your business with honesty and integrity. I remember all of the times Dad would praise a businessperson he knew, saying, “His word is as good as gold!” I thought: so what? Now I know better: if you really want to know someone’s true character, do business with him or her.
Plan your work and work your plan. Dad was a master at this, including staying in close touch with his banker, which he considered his most important business relationship.
Apply “financial common sense.” This innate quality means you can see the story your numbers are telling you today, and you have the ability to project forward what an investment in machinery or people will yield. It also means managing your business conservatively and meeting your obligations.
Do your own thing and you will be successful. Dad didn’t think it was productive to pay attention to his competitors. Instead, he chose to focus on his own product and do his best, and he encouraged his people to do the same.
Good business is nothing more than good people. He told me more than once to hire good people and let them do their best. At age 19, I was opposed to a proposed change in his office one summer, and Dad listened as I made my case. “But you are missing the point,” he said. “I gave this assignment to ‘Joe’ and he is making the decision; I’m not going to undermine him.” Lesson learned.
Balance business, family and community commitments. My father had strong feelings that business was one part of life; family and community were important, too. There was no honor in building a business if a marriage suffered, or the entrepreneur became selfish and didn’t give back to the community. Dad was admirably present throughout our childhoods – not only to us, but also to our mother, and to the community at large.
He was an unabashed booster of small business, telling me on more than one occasion, “Running your own business is the way that people were intended to live. …Sure, you will have lots of problems such as sales, personnel and finance; but the results of building a successful business greatly outweigh any of the negatives.”
Thanks, Dad, for the lessons you’ve shared. Maybe they will inspire another young entrepreneur in our family. Or it may motivate others who not only want to do their own thing, but recognize how old-fashioned business values still matter -- now more than ever.
-Mary Lilja
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