Family IN Business Podcast
How do family-owned businesses negotiate all of the changes that face them over the generations? The Family IN Business podcast, hosted by Esther Choy in partnership with The John L. Ward Center for Family Enterprises at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management, highlights how family business leaders have reflected on this question. Leaders of well-known family-owned businesses like Radio Flyer, Pella Corporation, Kwik Lok, Highlights for Children and Harry Rosen, Inc. share how they navigate succession, market challenges, and launch new ventures, not just as “family businesses” but as families who are in business—determined to stick together.
Listen to how family business leaders navigate Transition in Season 1, find Purpose in Season 2, and nurture Entrepreneurship in Season 3.
Season 3 explores the Family IN Entrepreneurship model with three driving forces: Timing, Leveraging Assets and Discovering Niche. From stories of launching new ventures and finding your calling to stories of fumbles, failures and rebirth, each episode contains remarkable leadership stories, practical takeaways and encouragement for entrepreneurs and family business leaders at any stage in their career.
Season 2 focuses on the theme of purpose: purpose that is inherited, purpose that is improvised, and purpose that is integral to managing changes well. Our guests and experts help us learn to find our purpose and then live it out.
In our first season, Season 1, we hear from family business leaders how understanding their own story has carried them through many twists and turns as they face different kinds of transitions in their family businesses.
Whether your business is navigating change or growing rapidly, we’d love to help you remain rooted in your story. Let us know how we can help.
Season 3 Guest Experts
Matt Allen
Visiting Associate Professor,
Kellogg's Ward Center for Family Enterprises
Carter Cast
Michael S. and Mary Sue Shannon Clinical Professor of Entrepreneurship,
Kellogg School of Management
Jeremy Gilbert
Knight Chair in Digital Media Strategy,
Medill School of Journalism, Media, Integrated Marketing Communications
Jennifer Pendergast
Executive Director,
Kellogg’s Ward Center for Family Enterprises
Season 3: Entrepreneurship
Who starts a new family business with a mortgage and kids in college? Entrepreneur Kalpana Waikar of Inspired Indian Cooking, with the support of her husband Sachin Waikar. Listen to the Waikar’s story of familial support systems, pursuing passions, and making strategic goals that fit their expectations of life outside of work.
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As the third-generation family business leader, Ariel Bacal faced overwhelming obstacles in his footwear manufacturing and retail business in Colombia and Venezuela: an onslaught of cheaper products, a plunge in currency exchange, and ever mounting pressures from the fashion footwear industry. After countless pivots and desperate measures, it became clear that the only option left was to close the family business.
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Zack Richner is ambitious, daring, and thoughtful, just like his grandparents who founded Richner Communications and his father who currently leads the family business. Within the story of family entrepreneurship, Zack Richner leverages his family’s assets to create Arrandale Ventures, an innovative startup that creates a new business model for traditional local media.
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When Ian Rosen decided to return to the family business in 2018, Harry Rosen Inc., Canada’s leading luxury men’s clothing retailer, was only doing 2-4 percent of their business online. In the months before COVID-19 hit, Rosen and his team were creating a thoughtful plan on how to stay relevant in the e-commerce space. When stay-at-home orders shuttered all of Harry Rosen’s retail stores, the launch of their digital platform became trial-by-fire.
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Though Kartik Wahi’s father started a successful OEM business, Wahi wasn’t ready to work for the family business. In this episode, Wahi takes us on his entrepreneurial journey from his days at Kellogg School of Management to discovering the opportunities in solar and the founding and growth of the social enterprise Claro Energy.
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Season 2 Guest Experts
Dave Evans
Co-Founder,
Stanford Life Design Lab
Rob Lachanauer
Managing Partner,
BanyanGlobal Family Business Advisors
Jennifer Pendergast
Executive Director,
Kellogg’s Ward Center for Family Enterprises
Brooke Vuckovic
Clinical Professor of Leadership,
Kellogg School of Management
Dave Whorton
CEO and Founder,
The Tugboat Group
Season 2: Purpose
Anderson Tanoto saw the potential for his family business, Royal Golden Eagle (RGE), to become a leader in sustainability. Through his journey in transitioning the company into more sustainable practices, Tanoto learned that failure, perseverance, and equity are key ingredients to creating meaningful change.
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It was a routine activity that led to a life-threatening accident, a coma, and multiple cranial surgeries. Adam Farver, Chairman of the Board and fourth generation of his family enterprise, Pella Corporation, found himself eavesdropping on doctors who doubted his full recovery. Faced with frightening questions about his future, Adam took stock of his life before the accident, consulting his late great-grandfather and grandmother’s wisdom: what would he do now?
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Along with their younger sister Melissa Steiner, Stephanie Jackson and Kimberly Paxton-Hagner are co-owners of their multigenerational family enterprise, Kwik Lok. If you’ve ever bought bread, tortillas, or apples in a bag, you’ve already used their product! Their grandfather, Floyd Paxton, invented the plastic closure tab that keeps food fresh and tracks the supply of many of our favorite foods.
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As the brainchild of Kent Johnson’s great-grandparents, Highlights for Children has been an explicitly purpose-driven company from its inception. A passion for serving, honoring, developing, and educating children informs every decision made in this family business. Purpose is so ingrained at Highlights for Children that the in-house newsletter is called “The Purpose,” and the company even has a Chief Purpose Officer!
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Enrico Leta expected to continue to lead and work in his family enterprise, a highly successful regional chain of high end supermarkets started by his Italian immigrant grandfather. But he did not expect that the second generation—Enrico’s father, aunts, and uncles—would decide the best future for their family business rested on leaving the third generation to find their own ventures.
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Meghan Juday is among the fourth generation of leaders in her family enterprise, IDEAL INDUSTRIES, an electrical and electronic manufacturing company. Currently the Chairman of the Board, she has faced challenges on a wide spectrum from the isolation of being a lone female Chairman to mitigating the shortage of trades professionals.
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Herschend Family Entertainment has a trademark: “Creating Memories Worth Repeating.” As the largest family-owned themed-entertainment company in the United States, you might think running the business is all fun and games. But as Chris Herschend explains, working cooperatively and productively with family can be difficult.
Read MoreSeason 1: Transition
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Leaders from five different industries share how Professor Emeritus John Ward influenced them and their family enterprises during their time at Kellogg and beyond. These five different impacts provide lessons that all family business leaders can leverage.
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Which is better, securing financial stability or building something in the world? For those with the entrepreneurial gene, the answer is always ‘building something.’ Good thing Andreas Kuster inherited this gene when he needed to revitalize Europe’s oldest cookie manufacturing company, Jakob’s Basler Leckerly.
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Anne Eiting Klamar had not been groomed to succeed her father in the family business. In fact, she embarked on an entirely different career. But when it turned out she needed to run the family business, she stepped into her father’s shoes. And she quickly found out they didn’t fit her.
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Through SEED Beauty, the Nelson family has disrupted both the traditional cosmetics company model and the notion of what it means to be a family in business.
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It’s extremely rare for a fifth-generation family business to still be in the same industry they started out in. So, how 88-year-old family business Schurz Communications left the traditional communications industry without leaving any of their family members behind.They have to pivot, but as they pivot, how do they make sure none of the family members get left behind? Todd Schurz of Schurz Communications describes his family’s successful transition to a new industry.
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No matter how often we hear the phrase “unprecedented times” in reference to the coronavirus, fourth-generation family business Pella Corporation knows that they have seen times like these before. Chairman Adam Farver has dozens of examples of difficult situations and market downturns. Family businesses will lead the way through this not-unprecedented crisis.
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Reviewers described Radio Flyer as “Americana on four wheels,” but just because it was beloved didn’t mean it would last forever.
Soon after joining his multi-generational family owned business, Robert Pasin learned the company was in trouble. Though the company hadn’t changed, consumer preferences had. How could they gain a competitive advantage without losing everything that made Radio Flyer an iconic part of Americans’ childhood memories?
Coming June 14 2020 from Kellogg’s Center for Family Enterprises and Esther Choy at Leadership Story Lab, Family IN Business features stories of leaders, their families, and the family enterprises they transformed.
Storytelling is a great way to learn and be inspired. The stories you will hear from Family IN Business are the ones you can relate to, they might be battles you’re already fighting. These stories contain practical wisdom so that you don’t have to learn everything alone or the hard way.
Better Every Story
Leadership Transformation through Storytelling
"This is an amazing and insightful post! I hadn’t thought of that so you broadened my perspective. I always appreciate your insight!" - Dan B.
Get Esther Choy’s insights, best practices and examples of great storytelling to your inbox each month.
People forget facts, but they never forget a good story. In this leadership book, Let The Story Do The Work shares transformational business storytelling strategies, practical tools and easy-to-use templates. It’s your essential leadership storytelling toolkit.
People forget facts, but they never forget a good story. In this leadership book, Let The Story Do The Work shares transformational business storytelling strategies, practical tools and easy-to-use templates. It’s your essential leadership storytelling toolkit.
