Ben Goldberg talks about running a family business.
(New installments of the Business Review are on hold due to Covid-19. This is a repeat of a previously aired segment.)
“When you run a family business there’s a lot that goes into that, you deal with both the business side, the employee side, the family side, and then the individual relationship side. I had to make that migration of knowing when to call my dad “Dad” and when to call him by his first name, “Joel.””
Ben Goldberg, CEO of Aurico, says the family business started in an upstairs bedroom of their home. His father saw an opportunity to combine his naval intelligence experience during the Vietnam era with his
entrepreneurial skills… and started an employee background screening company in the early 90s.
Goldberg recalls the impact it made watching his father work hard going door-to-door, and finding leads for their first client through the better business bureau to build the company.
“I had to learn the business, so my dad mentored me in the company so I learned about the industry what the clients were looking for and what the market demanded.
Saw how he was doing things, but really had to prove to not only to my father but to the management team that I really had the tools and the capabilities to take the company to the next level.”
Goldberg says continuing to build on the solid foundation of his father’s legacy of business values and ethics is important. Adding his own mark on the company by adapting for sustainable growth and staying relevant in the marketplace, he is preparing for the possibility of passing the baton on to his children.
“There's certainly a bunch of values and experiences that I can instill in them. I think they'd have to go out and go cut their teeth in the business world before they joined our team just because that's what I did and I think that that's what gave me the opportunity to succeed and I'd want to see them have that same chance as well.”
The Business Review is a Production of KWBU, Livingston & McKay, and the Hankamer School of Business at Baylor University.
