03-04 Personal vs. Business Goals

Family Businesses are almost always small businesses, but in a family business where family members are employed, personal goals usually trump business goals.
The first salesperson employed by my father was his brother James. One had followed the other to Canada to get away from the stifling influence of their father in Belfast. Both headed to The T. Eaton Company for employment, as did all Northern Irish emigrating to Canada. Timothy Eaton, the founder, was from Ballymena. In a photo taken in the 1950s father is seen with his brother James on the far left and his other brother George. The occasion was a visit by a former secretary.
After James, came brothers George, Leslie and Herbert. Providing them with employment enabled them to get entry into Canada and eventual citizenship. At one time when I was working on Saturdays as a university student, all five Bulloch brothers were at John Bulloch Ltd.
Dad tried to carve out a niche for them and set up a women's custom clothing branch for Uncle Leslie, but he kept touching their legs when he wanted them to turn around; something that is tolerated in the men's business, but not the women's. After two complaints, Dad shut it down. I thought it was all pretty funny at the time.
Father set up a separate arm of the business for Uncle Herbert for selling shirts, ties and other accessories, but that bored Herbert to death, so he went off to sell insurance and became very successful.
Regarding family and personal goals, the next move was providing jobs for his children during the summer and college. Brother Ian worked full time for Father for about four years, seen here in front of the Bay Street store.
None of us was really comfortable working in the family business because we were all colour-blind (thanks Mom, for passing on those genes). I remember mother and father talking together in the evening and mother saying that two of the boys wanted to work in the store for the summer and Dad responding, "Well, I will have to order in more blues and greys because that is all the boys will sell."
While I was teaching at Ryerson, merely blocks away from the family business on Bay Street, I convinced father that from a business perspective he should open branch offices in North and West Toronto in order to capitalize on his large advertising budget and to provide growth opportunities for his staff. For four years he did that, and jumped his business sales by 50%. I ran his two branch operations.
However, when I left Ryerson to lead the charge against the Benson White Paper and later create the Canadian Federation of Independent Business, he closed both branch offices. It was a case of personal goals trumping business goals.