As a business owner what are your thoughts on nepotism?

[n4rd14]

@ivymeow It's not really that the relative isn't going to be successful in the position, but it's more so the handout they're receiving which is what people have issue with.

Most people aren't fortunate enough to be born into a job, they have to start at the bottom and make their way up. These nepo kids started on third base and act like they hit a home run.

 

[ivymeow]

@n4rd14

These nepo kids started on third base and act like they hit a home run.

That's what I can't stand. My wife has a friend whose husband likes to fancy himself as a big shot entrepreneur. Lives a flashy lifestyle. He has local write ups on being a top 40 under 40 entrepreneur and submits himself for local chamber awards. But if you Google him and dig far enough, the company was all built by his dad.

One of my good friends is a nepo baby and is aware of it but he's super low key. You can't find anything on him if you Google him. But everywhere he goes he runs into someone he knows. The business website looks like it was built in 2004. But he works hard and he's SUPER successful. He's also the most generous guy I know, always going out of his way to help me out.

 

[victory4me]

@ivymeow I own a business and would give it to my son if he wanted, but yeah, the lack of recognition of privilege is the part that gets me.

I’m incredibly fortunate that my parents had money, sent me to a good school, paid for a good college, etc etc etc. My success is built on that and luck. Different people with the same privilege could do well too. And me without it? Definitely worse, lol.

I hope I teach my kid this. That almost all success in life is built over time and with the help of others, and that commercial success isn’t a marker of one’s value as a human but more one of where one landed in life, by and large.

People ask me sometimes how I am how I am, and I would be lying if I didn’t say that having wealthy parents wasn’t part of that. I know it kinda sucks to say, because it puts some things “out of reach” for the outside, but it’s also just the truth.

 

[ryan5o]

@n4rd14 Sure if the person sucks and doesn't deserve the position they are in it's a bad example of nepotism.

but the flip side is that this person has been trained their entire life by the best, so while you think you think you were grinding, they started their training from diapers lol.

would you rather hire

1) average college grad

or

2) college graduate who has been training and mentored for 20 years by Bill Gates

 

[juliachicken]

@ivymeow I’m a nepotism hire. I’m 4th generation in my family’s food brokerage. If I didn’t join my father would have had to sell to outside forces. I was in F500 job and made the switch.

It is amazing to be doing what my father’s father father did. And I mean exactly the same(sales doesn’t change, scale does) minus the three martini lunches.

There are a lot of business advantages to nepotism in this case. I called on a lot of people who knew or worked with my family. This opened a lot of doors that would have been closed to be but for the last name/reputation. That said once I’m in the room, it was on me to perform.

Downside is there are also a ton of people who don’t/didn’t respect me or my skills as I was just a “nepo baby”. This made me work harder to prove I belonged on my own merit.

Long story not short, nepotism isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Like most things it’s in the individual and application that matters. Want to skate and do nothing, expect hatred. Want to build and improve, be prepared to have to prove yourself for who you are, not what your name is.

I will be hoping my kids will want to continue the business after me.

 

[xdanny18]

@juliachicken

prove I belonged on my own merit.

I think that's generally the issue with nepotism. Like, someone who barely has any accomplishments being brought in and/or advanced at an unreasonable clip because "do you know who my father is?" and/or that parent/relation selling that person being a high performer/self-made/a rising star/or any sort of platitudunal bullshit that's trying to make the nepo-hire seem more special than they are.

TL;DR don't lie or embellish to people that your spawn is the next coming of business-Christ and it'll all be fine.

 

[juliachicken]

@xdanny18 I think you’re right. Funnily enough my dad liked to razz me and have his good sales contacts really turn the screws on me early in my career with him. It taught me a lot of lessons one of the most important being humility and humbleness. I have always felt that working somewhere else before working for family was a major key as well.