How the family tree grows: life with father, mother isn't always obvious choice.

Daniel Kravitz joined the business his father built figuring he'd be there for about a year before the two would drive each other crazy. That was twelve years ago, Daniel Kravitz is now president of Louis Kravitz & Associates, a retirement plan consulting business, and his Father Lou has moved into semiretirement.

Tension between family members, who often have a hard time learning how to separate their business and personal lives when working together, is a reasonable fear for children thinking about going to work at a company owned by a parent.

The Business Journal talked to several people who got involved with their parents' firms to learn about family businesses from the childrens' side, which often can be very different from the parents' perspective.

These are their stories.

While in high school, Daniel Kravitz worked at his father's company doing filing. When he graduated from the University of California at Davis, he got a job teaching math and science for the Bakersfield School District.

The work was enjoyable, but found it difficult to support a young family on a salary of $33,000 per year. Kravitz began taking tests with the American Society of Pension Actuaries, at one point winning an award after posting the highest score in the country, before rejoining the family business.

"I was thinking that I would at least learn my craft and maybe end up somewhere else, I thought that maybe my father and I wouldn't work well together," said Kravitz. "But over the last 12 years, we've had disagreements, but we've never once had an argument, we've never once gotten angry with each other."

Kravitz and his father were unique in that they both shared a passion for the work the company does, but not every family's members are on equal ground when it comes to interests and skill levels.

Garry Bernard joined his father's business. Bernard's Office Furniture, 19 years ago but the two had very different backgrounds. His father was a licensed architect and Garry had taken one largely forgettable drafting class in college before taking jobs in entertainment and event promotions. He took a position at the store in order to pull a regular salary and support his new marriage, but still have the freedom to work on his own projects.

"That freedom, allowing a little bit of an artistic license to a kid will often, rather than forcing them to choose one route over another, will make the transition easier into something they may-have thought they never wanted to do," Bernard said. "There's a transition period when you go to work for a family business. A lot of people start as aspiring actors or musicians. I was working in entertainment and promotions and given, very nicely by my parents, the opportunity to do both."

Bernard said he had the time to find a way to incorporate his marketing background into the business. He said he's learned as much about space planning for offices on the jobs as most architects, and used his marketing background to develop customer relationships which have seen the business grow from $150,000 in annual revenues to about $5.5 million.

Second generation family members are often more likely to modernize the business while staying faithful to the company's roots.

Jennifer Bertolet never planned to work for her father's property management company, David N. Schultz Inc., but after college she developed a new appreciation for the work the company did in managing investments for owners and providing homes for tenants. Along the way, she has injected some new ideas into the company as she learned that it's good to keep some things the same.

"I went to business school from 1993 to 1995 and came back with all these brand new ideas, but I think what's worked well with us is that we've blended his procedures with what I have learned. You have to be flexible," Bertolet said. "You come out of business school wanting to measure everything, you want to measure performance, change pay structures or something, but in small to medium sized businesses you can do some of that, but it takes time and you won't sell a building or make a commission."

Through the business, Bertolet has learned skills from her father that enable the company to keep owners and tenants happy, effectively train property managers and other things that are hard to learn at business school.

Kravitz said that he's also made some management changes when he took over as president of the company. Too much of the business, he said, was being run by the head office. He joined The Executive Committee, an association of CEOs that works to help its members create stronger companies.

"It's kind of like a little board of directors meeting that I have with CEOs from different companies," said Kravitz. "I really did want to develop a stronger management team. We now have a team of six people who run different divisions of the company, and it's been very successful."

The company has also recently hired an employee handling sales and marketing efforts exclusively, and Kravitz is now working on deciding how to expand to other markets. The company regularly holds local seminars that attract between 550 and 600 people, and Kravtiz's team is currently deciding what new marketplace would respond well to the seminars.

For Kravitz, his success in the business and in working well with his father was dependent, as it was for Bertolet, on a love for the work he was doing.

"I love the profession, and I enjoy the company and the 60 people who work here," said Kravitz. "The private retirement system is important and with what we do for the public, I thinking we have a great team and we've done a great job."

JONATHAN D. COLBURN

Staff Reporter