Lee Michaels Fine Jewelry
The many lessons Lee Michael Berg dispensed to his sons over the last 30 years have all had one uniting principle: Focus not on yourself but on the people around you.
As Scott Berg ticks off the lessons learned from his father, the theme resonates in each of them.
• Surround yourself with people better than you.
• The people of the company are the greatest asset.
• It’s not about you, it’s about how you can help people grow and build a successful team.
• Give back to the community.
• View things from other people’s point of view.
• Jewelry is all about relationships.
“In our family you always value people,” Scott Berg postulates. “It doesn’t matter who that person was or what they did, whether they were CEO of a company or had a job that no one else wanted. I remember Dad always valued people.”
Scott Berg, Lee Michaels Fine Jewelry market president, says he didn’t always understand how to apply the principle to maximize success. Eventually, he learned to evaluate his team in a way that would help its members grow. And through his father’s guidance, he learned how to trust and rely on people with skills and talents that were greater than his own.
Sherwood Dental Care
For dentist Steven Collins Jr., the most memorable lesson he learned from his father, also a dentist, wasn’t about dentistry at all. The younger Collins learned by example “that it was important to spend time with your family and not spend all your time worried about business and dentistry.” Collins remembers his father coming home to play basketball or help with homework, even in the early days of trying to establish his fledgling practice. And the son is paying it forward. “When I get home I try to spend quality time with my kids, as much as I can,” Collins Jr. says. Steven Collins Sr. remembers dispensing a more practical piece of advice that may be more appreciated by patients: “Be gentle.”
Lipsey’s
Laurie Aronson was just a child when she first heard this business lesson proffered by her father, Richard Lipsey, chairman of Lipsey’s, a wholesale firearms distributor.
“Give a firm handshake and look somebody in the eye,” he told her. Now president of the company, she has been applying his words, and associates have taken notice. “It’s really funny, through the years, people have commented on my doing that.”
Since then, the elder Lipsey has bestowed on his daughter a multitude of advice, which she has taken to heart.
• “It’s always about being honest when you’re negotiating a deal.”
• “Treating people like family has been a good lesson.”
• “Learning that sense of balance between your home life, your work life and your community life and making all of it work is what’s important.”
• “In every business dealing, it’s got to be fair to everyone, again treating people with respect and always being honest with them.”
• “Just be yourself, whether you’re at work or at home.”
For Lipsey, one of the most enduring lessons learned is about avoiding family riffs. It came from his own father shortly after he took over the family business. “Dad never, ever questioned a call that I made. He let me make some mistakes and learn from them,” Lipsey says. He worked to cultivate the same respect and autonomy in Aronson, allowing her to make her own decisions and, sometimes, her own mistakes.
“It’s more rare than you would believe, passing on a business from generation to generation,” Lipsey says. “The percentages are not in your favor to keep it going like that.”
Shoenfelt Law Firm
Growing up, Katie Shoenfelt was taught to work hard.
“You always have to be a hard worker,” she says, mimicking the words of her father, Baton Rouge attorney Oscar Shoenfelt. At 29, she’s still getting those lectures from Dad.
“If you work really hard, you’ll be better than half the lawyers starting out because a lot of them don’t want to put in that necessary time,” he admonishes. “Being prepared is the key to practicing law. … A lot of times you’ve got to put those extra hours in … you have to put enough hours in to win the case.”
Now that his daughter is practicing at Shoenfelt Law Firm, Oscar has discovered that the key to her success has not been in a lesson he taught her.
“She has the will to win,” he boasts, comparing Katie’s legal acumen today to her soccer game as a high school student.
“If she was going to a ball, she was going to get to that ball no matter what,” he says.
That talent and desire, he says, is a winning trait that can’t be taught. “I’m fortunate that she’s a good lawyer and she has the will to win. I can depend on her that she’s going to do her best to win,” he says, with a smile.
The will to win may not have come in a lesson from Oscar, but, Katie says, the elder Shoenfelt is definitely responsible.
“It was inherited, genetic,” she says, smiling back at him.
Ask Elliott Temple what lesson most stands out from his childhood and the response is swift. “Get up in the morning,” he says, remembering the words of his father. “Get up in the morning and go to work. As long as you’re getting up in the morning and going to work, you’re going to be all right.”
For Elliott Temple, the question conjures up memories of summer days spent learning to mow the lawn before the sun came up, and of helping at his father’s real estate development business and at his group homes for foster children and developmentally disabled adults.
At 31, Elliott Temple still works with his father and still lives by the words from long ago, even causing a bit of Saturday-morning consternation from his new bride.
At 60, Collis Temple Jr., a former LSU basketball standout, still hammers the lesson home. “Can’t get ahead staying in bed,” he says. The elder Temple has been in remission from colon cancer for about a year. Even while undergoing chemotherapy, however, the father of four rose daily at 6 a.m, always practicing what he preaches.
