Life After Leading a Family Business ft. Mike Wells, Craig Snyder, and Joe Kirby

Success in both work and retirement comes from having a strong sense of purpose. In front of a live audience, Mike Wells of Wells Blue Bunny, Craig Snyder of VIKOR Teleconstruction, and Joe Kirby of Western Surety Company share their success stories and unique perspectives after retiring from a family business.

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Transcript

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- But the biggest thing for our entire life is just being true to who we are. Putting our faith out there, letting our life speak for itself. I always shared this story: being high profile in a small community, we had two choices, because you live in a glass house whether you like it or not. You can pull the shades, or you can wash the windows. And we've always chosen to wash the windows. And it served us well because in retirement, we didn't have to become somebody we weren't. We just got an opportunity to continue to be who we were.- [Adam] Welcome to "Common Cents on the Prairie," a podcast dedicated to helping you demystify the sometimes complex topic of money. I'm Adam Cox, head of Wealth Management for The First National Bank in Sioux Falls. We're a community bank based out of South Dakota. In this podcast, we share expert insights from around the country and stories from our local community to arm you with the tools you need to make better financial decisions. Because the truth is, the more we talk about this stuff, the better off we're all going to be. Welcome to a very special episode of "Common Cents on the Prairie." This episode was filmed during our third annual live podcast event, where I was joined by three incredible

family business leaders: 1:10

Mike Wells, former CEO of Wells Blue Bunny; Joe Kirby, former CEO of Western Surety Company; and Craig Snyder, former CEO of VIKOR and founder of Pomegranate Market. Each of these guests has navigated the unique journey of stepping away from a family business and into the next chapter of their lives. We talk about the challenges of that transition, lessons learned, how they found a new purpose, and what advice they have for others going through similar changes. Whether you're part of a family business or not, there's a lot to take away from their stories. I hope you enjoy this episode.- Hello, everyone. Welcome. Good evening. I'm Maggie Groteluschen. I'm the Fiduciary Services Manager in Wealth Management at the First National Bank. We have a little bit of a family business theme going on. I'm the fifth generation of the Baker family, and I find a lot of purpose and pride in just being able to work at our family business. And I'm excited to hear from more family business leaders tonight. So, on behalf of my family and our team, I want to welcome you all here to our live podcast event.[audience applauding] We have an incredible evening ahead of us. We're going to hear from three prior leaders of a family business, who've all navigated some successions. We hear often from our clients, especially owners, that when they start to contemplate retirement or a sale or stepping back from their business, it gets really difficult. And so we have a panel tonight. We're going to listen to three journeys and hear how all of them found purpose and meaning after navigating that transition. So with that, it's my pleasure to welcome Adam Cox and our guests to the stage.[audience applauding][upbeat music]- I was mentioning off-stage, I always have this moment right before we start these events, like,"Is it too late to back out?" They said it was. So we're going to do this. Welcome. Thank you guys so much for doing this. I appreciate it.- Thanks, Adam. Great to be here.- Awesome. I'm looking forward to this conversation. So by way of introductions, for those who don't know everyone, let's start, if you wouldn't mind with just give us your name, talk a little bit about your career journey and then talk about the family businesses that you ran. Mike, you want to start?- No.- [Adam] No.[audience laughing]- So I'm Mike Wells. My family has been in the ice cream business since 1913. And funny story on how we got started, I was telling Adam earlier today, so 1907, my great-grandfather F.H. Wells leaves Chicago, packs his family up, comes to South Dakota to homestead. Free land. Life's going to be great. 1911, the drought's driven him off the land. His youngest, packs his family up and heads back to Chicago, gets as far as Le Mars, Iowa, and runs out of money. Goes to work for a hog farmer, cholera kills off the hogs, moves into town, starts pedaling milk for a local farmer. And on October 24, 1913, he bought a horse, a wagon, ten tin cans, the supply, source, and quote-unquote the goodwill of the company for 250 bucks. And that's how our family business got started. In 1919, he gets ahold of his older brother, or his, yeah, his older brother, my grandfather, Harry C. and says,"You know, Harry, I think maybe we got a future in the ice cream business. Would you want to do a partnership with me and we'll start an ice cream business in Sioux City, and you can run it?" And that's how our family branch got involved in the business. So our brands were Bomb Pop, Blue Bunny, Halo Top. Blue Bunny is obviously the most popular around here and known. That brand came as a result of in 1928, our ice cream business was so good that a local competitor came along and offered to buy the ice cream business from the two brothers, and they sold it. And as the story goes, those proceeds got our family through the Great Depression. It's how the milk business, it's why we're sitting here today. And about 1935, they decided to get back into business, but they had sold the rights to the names and had to have a Name the Ice Cream contest. So a guy by the name of George Vanderbrink, he's the local graphic artist at the Sioux City Journal, comes up with a name, Blue Bunny, and comes up with a logo. I've got a picture hanging in my house today of my grandfather handing him a check for 25 bucks. Ironically, the same guy developed the logo and the name for Jolly Time Popcorn and for Sue Bee Honey. And so, you know, what we do know about George Vanderbrink is he made 75 bucks along the way somewhere. But the story there is, his young son, who I actually got to meet in 2002 at the age of 92, saw blue rabbits in the window of the Martin Department store. And that's where Blue Bunny Ice Cream came from. And my history in the family business, I started in 1977. In 1977, I graduated high school, married my 17-year-old high school sweetheart. Started full-time at Wells and started full-time at college. So anything in our life that's just, the answer is always, it happened in 1977. In my case, my 17-year-old girlfriend, who has been my wife now for 48 years, we were about to start a family together. I had a baby on the way. I needed a job, and I needed an education. And so my dad gave me the best advice I've ever had in my career. And early on, he said,"Don't ever ask somebody to do something you're not willing to do yourself." And so I took that to heart. And so through college, I carried 15 hours a semester and I worked 70 hours a week. I ran routes, I ran vacations, I worked in factories, I did everything I could to support our young family and to learn as much as I could about the business. And then ultimately graduated in '81, got my first sales job in'83, got a little taste of mid-level management, and started on the transportation side and the sales side of the business through my career. You know, got a few promotions. 2000, early '90s, it was interesting. We had been featured as the processor of the year, and our fathers decided that we all needed to become vice presidents so we'd looked good in the article. So I became a vice president in the '90s. And we did our official succession plan in 2001, where the third generation officially took over the running of the company. My dad was in his early 70s at that point, and his cousin in his late 70s. Acquired a senior vice president title and then eventually COO. And I was named CEO in 2007, but by far the favorite year and the best title I ever carried in a company was on the backside of COVID. We were a mess. People weren't showing up for work. We were a mandatory business. And so our people were working 70 hour weeks all through COVID when people were staying home. And so I decided it was time to reconnect. And so I asked my board for the opportunity to promote my COO to president, gave him all my direct reports, and I spent 12 months hanging out with my people. Interviewed 74 supervisors, met with every new hire, which at that point was almost 60 people a week. Walked the plants in the days and the nights, did, you know, muffins for moms on Mother's Day and donuts for dads on Father's Day and asked three simple questions: what's working, what's not, and what do I need to know. And I will someday write a book about that last question. And it was a game changer and really got us back to our roots of the culture of our business, which is all about caring about people.- Love it. Thank you. Joe.[audience applauding]- I was born into a four-generation business, a big insurance company here in Sioux Falls. Western Surety Company, founded by my great-grandfather, a lawyer here in 1900. And I had little intent of being pulled into the family business. And I think the gravity of a business like that eventually sucks people back in. And that's what happened to me. I was headed to a different career path, but when the opportunity came up, I inevitably ended up in the family business. No regrets. It was great. I ended up serving as CEO for 17 years and retired young and, again, have no regrets. It was a good run. And the business got big enough, we ultimately first acquired it. We were an Irish Catholic family, fourth generation, 128 owners, I think at the time. Some convents, Irish Catholic family, like I said, we had some priest convents, who knows, maybe even the new pope. But my brother Dan, who's here in the audience, undertook the project for a few years to go out and buy the company back so four of us could run it. So we didn't have tangential relatives, wandering back in, wanting a job someday. We ran it for a while and then we sold it, and no regrets. It was a good decision.- Yeah. You're being modest. How young were you when you retired?- I wanted to retire young, because I think life is, there's a lot about life that's important and making money is an early thing to get done, and then as soon as you can, get out. So I wanted to retire by the time I was 40. We sold the business when I was in my late 30s, retired when I was 43. Your age, Adam.- Yeah. I feel like retiring right now, if I'm being honest. But not going to happen. Craig, how about you?- Well, I'm a little bit different than these two. I'm a first-generation business owner. I'm Craig Snyder, and I'm the owner of VIKOR Teleconstruction. If you don't know VIKOR, if you have a cell phone in your purse or pocket, we make sure you have five bars of coverage. We build the towers and that kind of thing that keep those working. We also own Pomegranate Market, a organic and natural food store here in Sioux Falls. So I grew up fairly humble, and I thought my way up and out was entrepreneurship. And so from early 20s, I was thinking,"What can I get into?" I almost got into a video rental business. So thankfully, that didn't work out. It didn't last that long. But I took a job as a tower climber, and a lot of times, not so much different than these gentlemen, life has a way of presenting itself. And there's a divine hand of providence working. And so I'm just trying to make my way through college with a good paying job and adventure some, climbing up high on these TV towers. And the fellow that I was working for died in a car crash. And I thought, "Well, there's my opportunity." So I started VIKOR Teleconstruction all those years ago. It, it was called Sioux Falls Tower for the first 30 years, but we started branching out and we have offices in nine different locations in eight different states now. And so we had to rebrand in 2020 and changed our name to VIKOR for various reasons. Vikings, Vik, core, hardcore, VIKOR.- The guy at Sioux City Journal would be proud, I think.- Yeah, exactly. And Pomegranate, I think you said you paid 20, 25 bucks for the name Wells Blue Bunny, and my sister came up with the name Pomegranate, gave her a hundred bucks, so.- Last of the big spenders.- Yeah. Pretty cheap. So yeah. And I just retired as CEO in February, and now the second generation is taking over. I have two of my sons here tonight that are helping, second generation and management of both those companies.- Hmm, that's awesome. Well, let's stay with you, Craig. So unlike Mike and Joe, you decided to keep the business in your family. So I'm curious, did you ever consider selling it? And if so, what made you decide to keep it?- Yeah, sure. Well, first of all, my wife is also here. And even though she never worked in the business, I think behind every good man is a better woman. And my wife, Kristen, was always behind me. And so she deserves quite a bit of the family business credit, although she didn't work in the business. She took care of the home and the kids, which allowed me to go all in. And so your question again was,- Why'd you decide to keep the business instead of selling it at some point?- Oh yeah. So in the early days, I didn't think my family was going to get into the business. I was building it to sell. Let's build up the the worth and at some point, I'll get that magic number and I'll sell it. Well, then my kids turned into their 20s, and one came into the business and then another, and, you know, over that decade from their early 20s 'til 30s, it started to start to make sense that they would just take over.- [Adam] Yeah- And so Gabe, my son-in-law, he is our CFO and takes care of finance, and my son who isn't here tonight, he runs assets and equipment and all the yellow equipment, lots of trucks, things like that. And Jonah, who worked for a number of years in VIKOR now, is heading up my business, our business, Pomegranate Market. It's actually, he and Gabe bought out half of Pomegranate, a little bit more. I'm a minority owner in that now. So it just, it happened. It wasn't a plan. But it turned out to be a beautiful thing, but it did mean no liquidation event. And so Kristen and I had to be okay with that. And we have been, and it's working out pretty well so far.- Sure. So Joe and then Mike, you both sold multi-generational businesses. I'm curious, what led you to the decision to sell, and how did you navigate the family dynamics, the impact on the community, the employees, all those sorts of things? Joe, you can start.- Yeah, so like I said, first of all, we bought it and that was a big project. And then the business was successful, and at some point, we realized, we've got a lot of eggs in one basket here. And diversification became a big motivator. There were four of us that bought the business, and two wanted out at some point. The other two of us thought,"Are we going to leverage up and buy them out, or are we all just going to take the opportunity to get out?" And we decided it's probably time to get out, turning over a bigger business to family members of the next generation. We survived four generations, which is incredible. You beat the odds to go that long. We didn't think it was smart to take it a fifth generation and try and do that. So we did the right thing in our view, sold it. And I don't think there were too many family issues to be resolved there. We're all happy with the decision.- Good. Mike, how about you?- Well, my story's nothing like that. So the rest of the story. So in '07, when I was given the title as CEO, we were a mess. So in '07. 35 shareholders, represented by seven family branches, five of us working in a business as third generation. And the five of us held all the voting stock. We were the board of directors, and we're the only five out of those 35 that were pulling down big salaries, had the benefits of ownership. The succession plan that we had put in place in 2001 didn't go well. There was a certain amount of infighting in our dynamics. It was myself, a younger brother, and then three second cousins. And so there wasn't a real tight family bond between the five of us. And we had different attitudes and beliefs about what the long-term success of the business was. There was a faction that believed that we were just building it up to sell. And there was a faction that believed that, you know, our legacy was going to live on into the future. As a result of all of that, early in 2007, we found ourselves in a really bad position that it was, in fact, the statement from our then-CEO was, to our employees,"We are in grave danger. The future of Wells is in grave danger and we don't know what we're going to do." And so as a result of all of that, we were a mess. As the COO at that time, because there wasn't, for a variety of reasons, I was the one that ended up sitting in front of the workout bankers, who presented three really bad options. One was to go bankrupt. And our integrity was not going to let us do that to our long-term vendors that were really important to us. The second option was to sell in 2007. And you all remember what that was going to look like. And the third was to find some financing and find a way forward. They didn't care what we did because either way, they were going to get their money. So we had a lot of discussion as a family. So there's five of us running a business. And in the end, the decision was, the best model was a family member at the helm in order to create family continuity, in a community. Understand we're operating at that point in a community of 9,000 people, where one out of every three homes is employed by Wells. We are the community, the future of the community is at risk. And so on November 13, 2007, the five of us walked to the podium. I was announced as CEO; the other four walked out the door and, other than a quarterly board meeting, never came back. The decision was a single family member and a professional management team. So we did a lot of changing. We reconstituted stock, the shareholders all had their fair share of votes. We brought in some outside board members to augment family members. We really structured our business, much like a publicly traded company, but with the independence of private. And my commission from day one was to fix the business and to give the family options into the future. And we had a good run. By 2010, we had really right-sided the business, stabilized it. I put a 10-year plan, kind of cheesy, but 20/20 vision, right? Perfect vision, double the size of the company in revenue and double the financial performance as a percentage. We just, we needed to be a better business. We sold off on productive assets and businesses and focused on doing one thing and doing it well, which was ice cream. By the time 2020 rolled around, in '19 I made three acquisitions. Two manufacturing facilities, one on the east and the west coast so that we could plan, you know, separate our production capacity out and get closer to our customers. And third was a good brand acquisition. And as a result, we hit our numbers by 2020. Early on as CEO, about that 2010 time, I realized that staying too long, well, at that point, the average tenure of a CEO was four years. So I was already four years in, going,"Well, I hope this is going to work," right? Secondly, I realized that staying too long is detrimental to either the person or the company. I felt like staying too long as CEO, you either get burned out or you get complacent and as a result, you know, it's not good. So I declared in all my wisdom that I was going to stay until 11/11, 2022, which was 15 years to the date of when I had been asked to serve as a CEO. So we're rolling into 2019, 2020, and I'm saying to my family,"Well, the date's coming, what do you want to do?" And they're like, "We don't know. What do you want to do?" And I'm like, "Well, here's the truth. I'm going to leave in '22, and I'm probably going to want to take some of my money with me. But we got a decision to make. We've grown from a billion to two. The next growth is two to four. It means that in the next 10 years, we're going to ask more investment from the family. We're going to ask you to go deeper. And oh, by the way, we are a single family that owns a single business that's highly concentrated." At that point, we controlled over 25% of all the North American ice cream production. And they said, "Well, we think we're done." And I said, "No, I know you're done." We've just now all finally made a decision. And I was given the opportunity to make good on that promise that I made on November 13, which was to find a path forward and create options. Looked at a lot of different options. Ironically, in 2019, I had made a second trip to Europe. I believed that there was a consolidation strategy in our industry. But on that trip, I got introduced to Ferrero with the concept that I believe that their confectionary candy, their global brands, would be really great ingredients for ice cream. It would be a differentiator for us. So in 2020, before the world shut down, they came over and saw what we did in ice cream and fell in love with our company, our technology, our ice cream experts, our productivity, all the things that made us who we were. We started in a conversation and a relationship.'20 was a really tough year. It was a great year to be in candy and ice cream because they were both comfort foods. The two biggest category growths in 2020 were ice cream and alcohol. Great comfort food.'21 is a little different story because we continued in that big growth, but 30% of our people wouldn't show up for work. And so it was hard on the business, hard on our employees. But during that time, the relationship with Ferrero grew from just their people to an introduction to Giovanni Ferrero. And if you want some entertainment, Google this guy. He's the richest guy in Italy and one of the top 25 in the world. But really created this relationship as a kindred spirit because he was the oldest third generation in his family, running a family business, had accomplished the things that I wasn't going to be able to, which was to create diversity in our portfolio and get into other companies. So in June of '22, I invited him to Ice Cream Days. So if you've never been to Le Mars, Iowa, the ice cream capital of the world, we celebrate Ice Cream Days like you'd celebrate the Fourth of July. So strategically, I invited him to come see our community. Much like the Lloyd family, we didn't have to pay people. They were just in the street, right, to come see our community at its best. And he saw everything he needed to see. And he made two statements that I knew right away were exactly what was going to be important to our family and the future of the community. One was, we came back to the corporate office and in the boardroom, he said to me, he said,"These people aren't your employees. These people are your friends." And I said, "Yeah, Giovanni." Because as we walked down the street, it was the mayor and it was my daughter and it was my grandkids. And it was just, you know, we know each other in our small community. But the second was, he made a reference that I didn't understand until later, which was, I've never been in a community that felt more like home than Le Mars. Well, it turns out, Alba, Italy, is the other version of Le Mars. Ferrero is the big employer, and they've been the catalyst for the success of that community. And so then he asked me if I'd be willing to sell him the business, and I said, yeah, and here's some stipulations. My family has decided to run a process, and if you want to preempt that, we can do that. And we ran that whole thing in under nine months. The irony of this story is, my daughter was getting married on 11/11/22, and I'm sitting on the beach in Jamaica as she gets married with that cell phone in my hand, negotiating the final deal point. They say, every deal dies three times. This one died five. And I wasn't going to let it die. And Cheryl's going, "What are you doing?" And I'm like, "I'm selling the company." She's going, "She's getting married." I'm like, "I'm selling the company." Right? But, you know, the motivator was always an entire community and its future. It was making good on the promise that I had made to my family about finding a solution for them. It was, at that time, 4,500 employees that woke up every day, expecting us to make good decisions around their futures. And this acquirer, they run businesses independently, not autonomously, but independently. And so there was not a single consolidation play in it. Everybody kept their jobs, everybody kept their salaries, their positions. They've invested more capital in the first 18 months than my family would've in 18 years. And that was a big win.- That's great. Thank you for sharing that. So, large part of the reason why we're together today is, talk about purpose. And the longer I've been in this business, the more I am convinced that success during and after our careers can be tied back to having a strong sense of purpose. So I'm going to ask you to think back to the times when you were running your family businesses and think about how you processed your purpose. How did you think about your purpose at that time? And we'll talk about how you think about it now, but let's exercise a little recency bias. Craig, if you can remember all those days ago when you were running the business, how did you think about your purpose?- Yeah, it definitely has evolved over the years. I think in the early days, I was very much driven, you know, by success, by growth of the company, by building net worth, for a hope for exit someday. And so I was always just chugging along, trying to make the very best of everything that came in front of me. But at the background was also, I'm a man of faith. So I'm thinking kind of like Joe, like if I can get out of here sooner, I can probably do some things that are maybe more meaningful from a faith standpoint. So I was talking with God and like, trying to make a deal with him, you know, like,"Hey, if you get me rich fast enough, I'll do everything you ask me to do." And I sort of imagine in my mind, kind of a smiling back, like, "Just do what you're doing." And now here, I'm 36 years later and I can realize now that some of both of those goals happened throughout. So the purpose might've been more financial, more success driven, but throughout, I kept trying to also serve God, serve my family, serve my church, things like that. And so I was able to really accomplish both. And you know, now I'm officially retired, which means I went from 45 hours a week to 40. But there's some projects I'm working on right now that hopefully will have an end to them. So now my purpose is, it's a little bit up in the air. We've done a great job of creating a board, independent board members, family governance documents, a family plan, brought on some great management teams, and I don't really know exactly, I'm still 61 years old, I still have a lot of years left ahead of me, but I don't have the full purpose figured out yet.- Yeah.- I'm still figuring that out, from here to a hundred.- Yeah, fair.- If that's okay.- That's fine. You don't have to ask me. It's your life. [laughs] Joe, how about you? How'd you think about purpose when you were running the business versus now?- Well, I was very young when I got into running the business. And back then, it was just a treat to take over a well-run business and make it run even better. And to look for ways to bring in, I was a bit of a computer nerd to automate the business, to look for ways to do things more efficiently and effectively and make money. And so that was the purpose early on that evolved over time. My generation of the family got into community service early on. We all served on boards, got to know what was going on in the community. I was actually involved in writing the city charter in Sioux Falls, when we still had the business. So when the business went away, my drive for purpose never went away. And my wife and I, in recent years, we talk about our mission, and it's basically to find things that would not happen but for us. And we look throughout our community, looking for things, ideas that we have that would make the community better or community ideas that need leadership. We provide both leadership and, as necessary, wealth to make good things happen in the community. And it's the most fun time in my life to be doing that kind of stuff and not have to worry about, how do I pay for things.- Yep. That's great. Mike, how about you?- Well, there's going to be a lot of continuity in these three stories. So it's interesting. When I started in '77, we were a $100 million business, just. And when I left, it was two billion. And along the way, I never really thought about the business never being there. I love to work, I love to work hard, I love a challenge. About 10 years ago, I wrote a personal purpose statement, and that was to get up every day and do something that really needed done, bias for action, a commitment to excellence, but making sure that it benefited somebody else besides myself. And that served me so well through my entire career. For Cheryl and I, that purpose didn't change at the sale of the business. Similar story, you know, one of the things that made this success so sweet for us in our community was, when everybody else stepped out of the business, they kind of stepped out of their community roles. And so for the first time, we had continuity of just the two of us, representing for the family. We took it seriously, but we put down deep roots. We opened a ministry center in 2002 to serve the needs of our community. Just a conduit for resources as a way to give back and to share our faith more openly. On March 29th of 2010, I gave Cheryl a birthday gift that she'll never forgive me for. She opened a unique, one-of-a-kind coffeehouse, a bakery on her 50th birthday, and she'd never run a business in her entire life. And I said, "Well, how hard can this be?" We're running this big family business." It turns out, it's a lot of work. And so, you know, we already had some other businesses we were doing. We did pivot at the sale, you know. With that commitment and that drive, I've always known what my purpose is. My purpose is to serve. My love language is serving. I loved serving my family for those 15 years in a business. I loved serving the employees and the community, just being able to find a way forward for people to help them enjoy the benefits of that. But my gifting, my natural gifting is to build stuff. I build companies and I build buildings and I build cars. And I love the art of doing that. And the way I do that is I have this ability to see the end from the beginning and reverse engineer things and just find a way to get things done. And so we pivoted, in 2012, I had started a little LLC where I kept my toys and my toy sheds in there, and we've created a community development business. And so we own 35 properties. Over half of them look a lot like what Lloyd did downtown. They're 150 years old, and they are labors of love. And we're turning those buildings into art, and we are incubating first-time businesses that are creating jobs and driving the economic development of our community. And we're having a blast doing it. And so, you know, for us, everything and nothing changed. The nothing changed was, our purpose hasn't changed a bit. We just now get to decide what we want to do and when we want to do it. And, you know, we're loving doing it. The everything that changed for us was, I ran the family business and she ran her businesses. And most days, we had no idea. We didn't communicate, we didn't connect. You know, making commitments that separately, today we do absolutely everything together. And I owe you a big thanks in that day one, the day that we met, Adam, you said,"Your job now is your money." And we had never looked at it that way. We both had careers, and there was always more money coming in and we always spent it. And we never really, we didn't do that together. We had somebody that did it for us. Today, we are doing everything together. I never would've imagined that selling the business was going to change the DNA of our relationship. We're closer than we've ever been. We connect more than we ever have. We're together on the purpose and the things that we do. We get to see each other every day. You know, and it's just, it's changed everything for us. And I didn't see that coming.- Well you've put in a lot of work.- We have put in a lot of work.- [Adam] Yeah.- I blame you a lot for things.[audience laughing]- Yeah, I know you do. So last question, let's leave the group with this. A little advice time. There's people here in this room that have retired; there's people who have not. So if you could give any advice to someone who has not yet retired about what to expect or what to think through, what would that be? Joe, why don't you start us off?- Yeah, because I retired young, I watched a lot of my peers struggle as they got older and then approached retirement. And honestly, most people fail miserably because they have a fantasy. They're going to take up golf and get really good. They're going to work on their tennis game more. You know, injury six months later takes them away from that. They need to think it through a little bit more and really have a deeper purpose, I think, beyond just having fun. Fun lasts for about six months before you start feeling empty, if you don't have other things that you really are passionate about. So find those before you retire.- Yeah, that's great. Mike, how about you?- I was totally unprepared. The circumstances for me were, you know, we negotiated this sale, we negotiated it quickly. I was given the opportunity to stay and realized very quickly that the only thing I could do by staying was screw things up. And I say that because this team that I had put together were so loyal to me, and we had so many shared experiences that there was no way that the next CEO was going to be able to function independently and make the business decisions that he needed to while I was roaming the halls. People were going to ask me what I thought, my opinions, and so I dropped the mic and left. And I never imagined, even though I had declared the date, I'm like,"Oh my god, I'm leaving." And had a little bit of an identity crisis early on. Jumped into buying buildings and doing stuff. And then you reminded me you can't do everything, but you can do a few things, so you just better figure out what you want to do. And by then, it was too late. I thought I was doing everything. And so I just jumped headlong into being so busy that I was really kind of out of control. And it was a tough 12, 18 months, kind of finding my cadence and identity in that. So be planful about it. Think about what you want that to look like. And I agree, it's not learning a better golf game, and it's not traveling, it's not laying on beaches. We've got this group of guys that come to Cheryl's coffee shop every morning, and I've literally watched four of those guys, you know, pass prematurely because their whole day starts by sitting in a coffee shop and complaining about what everybody else doesn't do. And they've not kept any kind of significant purpose in their life. I never really thought about the money. When I was growing up, our family didn't have any money. Everything they had just went back into business. We were a partnership. The guys just drew a little bit of money out. We were probably the first generation that drew a decent salary, but it was never about the money. The money was just a tool by which we grew our businesses or invested into things that are important to us. And in retirement, it's really kind of the same way. Money now becomes a tool. You think about it a little more because for the first time in my life, there's not the next bonus and there's not the next valuation. You know, it's just there again, as you reminded me, what you got is what you got. And I'm like, no, what I've got, you need to double, right? Oh, that's right. That's Kyle's job.- Yeah, that's Kyle's job. That's not mine. Yeah.- Yeah, so to me, it's just being planful. And it's talking about it ahead of time, because it took Cheryl and I a while to a while to figure that out. But the biggest thing for our entire life is just being true to who we are, putting our faith out there, letting our life speak for itself.

I always shared this story: 40:57

you know, being high profile in a small community, we had two choices, because you live in a glass house whether you like it or not. You can pull the shades, or you can wash the windows. And we've always chosen to wash the windows, and it's served us well because in retirement, we didn't have to become somebody we weren't. We just got an opportunity to continue to be who we were.- That's great. Thank you. Craig, how about you?- Well, as a first gen, my planning for the future is like, well, how do we get it to the second generation, and maybe then to the third? So my advice might be, if you are thinking about, you're an owner of a family business, is be very intentional. There's an organization here in Sioux Falls called Prairie Family Business Association. And you can get a lot of resources. So, you know, what was a board of directors before, it was me. Well, now let's have a real board of directors. So bringing that on. I'm the chairman of the board, so I'll be busy with some of those kinds of things. If it's going to the family, start holding family meetings. When I think about my family, I think, you know, you get together for holidays, birthdays, things like that, maybe vacations, even Sunday dinners. But in our case, we wanted to be even more immersed in the family. And, you know, one third of your life is working. So we've planned and come up with a way to make our business a family business where we get to work together, not just come together on the weekends or in the evenings. And that's been a big part of my planning for the future. So advice-wise, I agree totally with these guys. Have a plan. It doesn't mean that the plan has to be perfect, but if you're a worker, you'll never stop working. And you'll find, I think, find the next thing. But also, it's very nice to call a date. This is when. And for me, the time was now. And it feels good to actually plan for that and create the next thing in your life. You don't need to, especially as a business owner, you think, it's hard to let go. You got to be able to let go. And so for me, it's been, let go a little earlier. So the next generation, which will probably double it, like you did Mike, in the next 10 years, in ways that I couldn't have. So being able to know when to say that's enough and I'm happy with where I've brought the business, and being willing and able to transfer it to the next generation, both of managers and of family. That's maybe my best advice.- Love it. Can't think of a better place to end it. Guys, thank you so much for doing this. Please join me in thanking our wonderful panel.[audience applauding] I hope you found this helpful. If you did, please subscribe and share with your family or friends. If you have a topic you want us to cover in future episodes, send us a note through our website. And if you're at the point where you want an expert opinion on your finances, reach out, and we'd be happy to start a conversation. And remember, any comments, insights, or strategies discussed on this podcast are intended to be general in nature and, therefore, may not be suitable for you and your situation, whatever that may be. Before acting on anything we discuss, please consult with your attorney, CPA, and or your financial advisor.