Take Your Kid to Work Day...

I am lucky Dotty can come with me to work just about any day. My staff is always so good to her, the customers enjoy talking to her, and for the most part she is fairly well behaved.

I grew up going to work with my mom a lot too. I guess you could say it is a family tradition. Of course my mom used to make sure there was a tv with about three or four channels for us kids to watch and now Dotty just brings her iPod or Kindle and watches whatever she wants, wherever she wants. So times have changed a little thanks to technology.

I remember growing up having a love/hate relationship for going to work with my mom and Dotty has the same feelings. For a kid work can be boring, especially in the summer when there are pools to swim in and friends to play with. However I know that occasionally bringing Dotty to work with me is good for her.

While I don't stay as long as I normally would or do all the things I really need to do, Dotty does see me and my team working hard. She gets to listen to some of the challenges we face and occasionally she and I will talk about them on the way back home. I am giving Dotty some of the best gifts my mom also gave me...I am giving her my time and my example.

I learned more about how to run a business by watching my parents and especially my mom than I ever learned in any business class in college. I learned by watching Mom interact with her team and her customers. I learned by her talking to me about our real world problems and issues not by reading about some other Fortune 500 company's issues. I learned from her how to work hard but how to be a good person and treat people well at the same time she was trying to make a successful business grow every year. I learned how to become the next generation by watching her live it out day after day.

Other than a few government reports that had to be done, my mom rarely sat down and told me HOW to do things at the Pecan Shed. She simply showed me them when I was little and as I got older she would start to ask for my thoughts and opinions. She led by example and I followed the old "monkey see; monkey do" method of learning.

My mom wasn't perfect just like I will never be. I do a few things differently than she did, but for the most part I still stay true to the core values she taught me. We still offer what we think are some of the best pecans in Texas, we still try to maintain the highest level of customer service, we still treat our team like family, we still expect high standards, we still love what we do, and we still put family first.

I never feel guilty about taking Dotty to work with me. The way I look at it some "on the job training" can never start soon enough. Plus, I pay her well. She can have all the fudge and candied pecans she can eat!