Hi, I’m Paul Darley. Thanks for tuning into our July issue of Inside Darley. As you’re probably aware, there is a fourth generation, hundred and thirteen year old family business. And the chances of us continuing to perpetuate our business and go through succession planning for future fifth and sixth generations is about one percent or less. So as a family, we do just about everything that we can do to learn from other family businesses and adopt best family business practices to improve those odds. Roughly 55 percent of all the private sector jobs here in America are held, are created by family businesses and they contribute about eight trillion dollars to the US economy. As we look at those best family business practices, one of them is having family assembly meetings every year. And so our company is having our family assembly or our family reunion meeting up in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, July 9th of the 11th, where they’ll be seventy five Darleys converging on that area where we’ll be doing team building exercises, all sorts of activities. We bring in outside speakers who help us to address different issues. And this year, our speaker is Anne Smart, the director of the Family Business Center at Loyola University here in Chicago. We’ve actually been associated with that group for over 30 years. They’ve just been amazing to work with. And Ann’s got some incredible insights that she’s going to share with us at the end of this video. So hopefully you’ll stick around.
I’ve also attached four different articles here for you today. One is called Planning a Smooth Succession. And that was written about our last succession plan that took place in the late 1990s. The article was written in 2009 Family Business Magazine. Our second attachment is the 10th annual family business survey that just came out in the last 30 days. Very interesting bench marking information here. The third attachment is a presentation that I recently gave to a group of family business leaders in February of this year that was focused on family business dynamics and pitfalls. And the last attachment is what’s called a family constitution where we lay out the rules for our family core values and vision. Our employment policy for next generations coming into the business that required them to work outside the business for three to five years and to interview with our board of directors. They are paid market rate held to a higher expectation, those type of things.
Here in Illinois, we had our 16th annual Illinois Fire Service Home Day on June 3rd. We had about one hundred and fifty people in attendance, including fire chiefs and 12 legislative staffers. And it was just awesome. In fact, the AFG Grants just began being released last week, so the first three point six million of three hundred and nineteen million dollars were just recently released. So you might be want to be checking that out in next year. We’re going to have our 17th annual Illinois Fire Service Home Day on Thursday, June 3rd.
Pierce just released their new electric vehicle, the Volterra, and one was placed into service in Madison, Wisconsin.
We hope you’ll visit us at both of those at FRI in Charlotte, July 28th to the 31st. We’re expecting strong attendance and planning a large booth there. You’ll be able to see our new TSM 2000 Pump. We also hope that you’ll visit us at the FDIC August 5th through the 7th down in Indianapolis.
Hopefully you and your family have a great, enjoyable Fourth of July weekend. Stick around for Ann Smart. I think you’ll be really impressed. And thanks for tuning in. If there’s anything that we can be doing to assist you, we hope you’ll reach out to us.
