A Family Business, Our Legacy and Our Kids
By: Michael Roth***
Michigan’s iconic brands were born of families solving society’s most difficult problems. Serving those families and protecting their legacies is a top priority.
Many of Detroit’s most successful businesses were founded by immigrants. Toughened by the journey and all they left behind, no barriers the states could bring would dissuade them from building a better life. Necessity drove long hours of backbreaking labor, and eventually led to enough stability to provide college and career education for their kids. That soon followed with great generosity for communities and those less fortunate. Immeasurable success a generation before never dreamt of.
Growing up the beneficiary of those before us, most of us in the prime of life today only know stories from the old country. Some beautiful, others unthinkable. And thanks to their sacrifices we received the gifts of safety and education, food on our table and clothes on our backs. All which were an uncertain privilege for those just one or two generations ago. Their hard work and tough love motivated us. They made us fearless, at least when it came to taking risks to solve problems and build businesses. The combination of the grit they showed and opportunities they provided others created jobs for our neighbors, taxes and donations for our communities, and a generous life for our own children.
And now we’re faced with two problems. The first of which is how hard, and in what direction, to push our own children. We saw empty seats at the dinner table while our parents were at work and overheard late night conversations about what bills to pay and what had to wait. Our kids see new cars, working from our phone, and endlessly full refrigerators. Our parents wanted nothing more than for us to be well educated and secure in a career at a blue chip company. We see working for a big firm as a first stepping stone in the right direction, not as a destination. We want this generation to build like we did, but only after taking their own lumps.
If we’re not careful, however, our kids might think they earned what we built by their birthright alone. Whatever tragedy that belief would be for us, it’d be worse for them and those thereafter. We know that success without failure first isn’t a teacher – it’s celebrating the end before fighting for the beginning. After all, weren’t our best mentors the lessons that humbled and redirected us along our way? The bankers that declined our loans, the clients that left us when we took our eye off the ball, and the sure-things that never truly materialized?
On to that second problem of what to do with all we’ve created. We built our businesses to provide for our own families first. They evolved into employers our local families and communities rely on to survive today. Our businesses keep their cars on the road, their bodies and minds healthy, their assets protected, their children educated, and the elderly comfortable. They create more than profit, providing pathways for employees to grow in their careers and opportunities for others to build their own businesses in service to ours. Our success is the community’s success.
It’s for all of these reasons and a hundred more that I changed careers in my late 30’s. I watched my grandparents build a life after unthinkable tragedies that brought them to the states, and my parents struggle to make a better life for my brother and me. I’d first been youthfully jealous of the wealth of my neighbors and our family’s lack of it, until I understood how my parents’ grit made hard work an expectation not a burden. I look back thankful to countless small failures that redirected me while building my own businesses, all to find that better ways were never the easier ways. My partner Jeff and I saw the gap, where those that gave everything didn’t have the market access and fierce protections that they deserved. So we set aside everything else and built a founders only solution that didn’t exist elsewhere.
Today my team and I serve these multigenerational businesses. For some we build the team from scratch, and for others we join one that’s well established. We bring insight from the public and private financial markets to family businesses, taking them from dependence on the founders and indispensable staff to a new place of endurance for decades ahead. We then seek to unlock cash and peace of mind for these families to enjoy and share. We earn our place among the strongest of founders and advisors through merit, often coordinating the orchestra of skilled CPAs, lovingly ruthless attorneys, and financial advisors that promise to protect the cash and freedom our combined team makes accessible.
Ultimately, just like those that came before us, we fulfill our own opportunities through service to families. We recognize that the families that risked it all deserve recognition, protection, and satisfaction for all they sacrificed.
***Michael Roth is a Founder and Managing Partner of V&R Advisory & Capital, where he brings nearly three decades of experience advising founder- and family-led businesses through complex transactions. Over the course of his career, he has led more than 50 deals, including acquisitions, divestitures, recapitalizations, and growth capital raises across industries such as technology, healthcare, manufacturing, and life sciences. Distinctively, Roth has operated on all sides of the table, as a buyer, seller, operator, and integrator,giving him a comprehensive and practical perspective on the transaction process. Prior to co-founding V&R, he spent 20 years in the technology sector, where he founded and led multiple companies serving manufacturers, healthcare systems, and private equity-backed platforms. In addition to advising clients, Roth co-invests alongside them and maintains a diverse portfolio of businesses. His approach is rooted in building trust with business owners and delivering outcomes that align with both financial goals and long-term vision.
