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Can You Keep A Secret? Maybe You Shouldn't
It was unusual for my old friend Walter Waitingame to phone at 8:30 on a Sunday night — unusual and inconvenient, just when the kids are getting their second wind and it's my night to give them...
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What the Levys Learned from Disaster
The business started out as a junk shop on New York City's Lower East Side, founded by two brothers-in- law, John Ginsburg and Isaac M. Levy. It grew into one of the nation's most distinguished antiq...
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Customer Service, Family Style
Stew Lenard, watch out. The Kowalskis of St. Paul, Minnesota, may steal your crown as the champion of customer service among the nation's grocery markets. Jim Kowalski and his wife, Mary Anne, boug...
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Why We Failed at Succession: A Son's View
My father has not wanted to see me or speak with me since August 1988, and my last board meeting. Although I left Farah Inc. first in 1977, so I would not to have to directly oppose my father, he h...
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Why It's Better to Buy Out Than to Receive
Gifting the business to "the kids" may well create more problems than it solves. Steve Bradshaw owned three successful funeral homes. As he approached 65, he wanted to spend less time in the business...
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Daughters-In-Law: Navigating in Troubled Waters
Pity the daughter-in-law. Her life is bound up with the family business, but she is not part of it. She feels all of the upheavals and tensions, and is often called on to bandage the psychic wounds o...
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Stock Wars: What's Behind the Feud at Campbell
The public seems to have an insatiable appetite for drama in the family lives of the rich and powerful. Perhaps as we read about the latest family feud among the privileged few, it gives us a feeling...
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Hammond Maps A New Course
Five years ago, Caleb Dean Hammond III and Kathleen D. Hammond learned just how important their family business was to them. The lesson came as they realized how valuable their map and atlas company ...
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A Thinking Man's Outfit
As CEO of Levi Strauss & Co., Robert Haas presides over a multinational family-controlled company that is almost as well-known for caring about people as for its blue jeans. The company went publ...
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The Hidden Side-Effects of Perk Addiction
Here's a pop quiz: Closely held companies are run for profit: ( )Yes ( )No ( )It depends. If you guessed "It depends," you guessed right—it depends on what you mean by "profit." Is that n...
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Quality Time
"Look at the way this is made, John." Eulan McSwain is standing in the prefabricated shed where he and his son, Mike, and their staff of four make furniture. Eulan, a short, ruddy man with bright, de...
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Getting Off the Daughter Track
When Irving Perlman, owner of Louis Perlman & Sons, died in October 1988, a local newspaper in western Massachusetts ran a story entitled, "The demise of the Perlman firm: All the Perlman men are...
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Keeping The Auditor From The Door
Only a fraction of all businessesare audited each year. Some day, the tax man may come calling. But why call attention to yourself? There are ways to lower the odds that your business will be on the ...
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Chip Off the Old Bloch
Thomas M. Bloch is an accountant with a sense of humor. The south wall of his otherwise spare office in Kansas City, Missouri, is—dare we say it—chock-a-block with cartoons. They are the ...
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Hail to The Chiefs
My father, Sam Stone, and his two brothers, Mark and Arthur, worked together in business for more than three decades and were still good friends when they retired. Sam and his older brother, Mark, lau...
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Smart Campaigns: A Hard Sell in Family Firms
My company creates and places advertising for a number of small to medium-sized industrial firms. Since IBM and AT&T already have ad agencies, I look for clients in a tier that happens to be fill...
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The Secret Weapon of Family Business
Once upon a time, Margaret and Jack made an unspoken agreement. Jack would be in charge of family thinking, and Margaret would be in charge of family feelings. Of course they never negotiated. They r...
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When to Get Involved in a Family Conflict
To most viewers, the family feuds depicted on TV shows, such as those among the Ewings of Dallas and the Carringtons of Dynasty, probably appear to be the stuff of pure fiction. But these dramatized...
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Artful Legacy
When your family's been selling paintings for five generations, longer than anyone else in the country, you're bound to have heard some pretty good stories. There's the time in 1938 when Robert C. ...
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The Toughest Deal I Ever Made
It is not easy to give up a long-term love affair with a business. The pain of separation is intense. I know, for I have experienced it. However, the effort is justified by the rewards of watching a...
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