I originally made this post in November 2015, as I read it now, I realize more than ever how appropriate and timeless this is.

This morning an article in the Wall Street Journal caught my eye.  I tend to think long term about my personal and business objectives.  As a child of immigrants, and indeed in the case of my mother, a refugee, I was taught to value the opportunities afforded to us in the United States.  I was taught to understand Spanish, my mother’s native language, but to use English, because that is the language of the opportunity she fought so hard to lay at our feet..  I was taught that education is a privilege; something that is earned, and valued.

I realize that the heights to which I have climbed were made possible by my mother’s  hand-stitching in Miami, and she did this in a time when the words “occupational safety” was about as ubiquitous as “cloud-based solutions” [ as evidenced by the chemical scourging her hands suffered in those early, hard days working with textiles in Miami].   Similarly, I also remember the stories of harvesting dandelion greens from the rich-folks lawns and sold by the bag for a nickel near Haymarket in Boston by my great-Grandfather.  And by my grandmother getting a certificate in bookkeeping to balance the thin budgets that she and my grandfather in West Roxbury used to keep them in the tidy middle-class home that they ultimately retired in, never losing sight of the hosing projects from which they worked themselves free, and their four children.

I believe  that you only need to lift a family once.  That lift is a generational struggle.  Whether originating from a cramped skiff braving the Caribbean from Havana to Miami, or in a hulking steamer crossing from Napoli through Gibraltar to Boston.  

Once the family is lifted, the work to keep it there is also a generational struggle, but of a different kind.  This article, IMO, provides a keen insight into five best practices to keep what you’ve lifted lofty.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/how-to-keep-a-family-business-alive-for-generations-1448045760