Want to make sure the family business is successful, when the owner (daddy) brings his kid to work. Teach him everything you know, earn his respect and in turn he will earn yours.
Case Study, when I was 10 my dad helped me install a camera in my R/C car so I could drive it around the house, we used a small cube camera with a battery pack and hooked it up to a wireless transmitter that had its own battery pack and installed a receiver on a tv we had laying around the office. I thought it was the coolest thing in the world. I grew to love security systems and video surveillance.
I started working in the family business at age 12 in the office with customer service, programing Radionics and Vista security and fire panels, when I turned 15 I joined the apprenticeship program and started installing with our technicians part time, after high school (graduated early) I spent the next 6 months working full time installing, during those 6 months I pulled tens of thousands of feet of cable. Our employees taught me everything I know about the security business. They are the ones who raised me to be a good leader, they understood from the beginning that I would buy my father out someday and they made sure they weren’t out of a job.
After graduating college and working in midlevel management for a much larger company, my wife got pregnant and I decided it was time to move back home and work for the family business.
25 years ago my father told his employees that I would never make more money than them as long as he owned the company. I agreed with that and subsequently took a 50% pay cut when I came to work here. Our employees know I don’t get paid for being on-call or working in the field or going to a customer’s job on a Saturday that didn’t get finished on a Friday. They know I don’t get paid when I work Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Years, 4th of July, Memorial Day…etc. So they can stay home with their families.
Just trying to show that there are young people out there willing to earn for themselves.