Blind Loyalty

Is it power or money? Is it money or power?

What I started as a labor of love — for myself, for my family, to give them a better life — is murky now. Murky with the seduction of legacy. With the preservation of power.

I get older. I have more money than I know what to do with. And I can’t let go. I’m the founder. So far, no one in the organization has what it takes to do what I do.

At the same time, I don’t want my children to go through what I went through to build this from nothing. From a dream. From sheer perseverance and... luck?

No fucking way it was luck. It was grit. All of it. There’s no such thing as the right place at the right time. Instinct goes a long way in business, and most people don’t have it. Instinct and grit.

My children are not as competent as I am. Some of them are not competent at all. But let them go struggle out there, working for someone else? No. So I bring them in. Soon they have children of their own, and those children have activities, school runs, a hundred small things that need a parent. That’s the privilege of owning the thing. My kids draw a full salary for twenty percent of mediocre work. I’ll never tell them so. I’ll never let anyone else say it either.

In the office, I make a point of it. I remind the executives, the staff, and everyone how hard my children work for this family. They’re hardly ever there. Doesn’t matter. I say it anyway.

Here’s the trick.

You put competent people around the incompetent ones. I need them to run the company, yes. But mostly I need them to do the work my children and their spouses won’t do, can’t do, or simply fuck up. I need a staff that carries their water and smiles while doing it.

Loyalty trumps everything. Even when it costs the company. Especially then. Loyalty is how I keep power — and power was never about competence. Competence doesn’t breed power. Loyalty does. My favorite kind? Blind.

You know who doesn’t have blind loyalty? My son-in-law. The one I keep in an office down the hall and watch like a hawk. The mule, I call him. Because he solves every kind of problem I put in front of him, and the whole organization loves him for it. He’s the bridge between the ivory tower and the floor.

People think that because he married in, he’s family. As good as the rest of them. They don’t know the real secret.

True nepotism doesn’t run between family and outsiders. It runs deeper. The family members who are too competent, too rebellious — they’re not really part of the family. Not where it counts. But they’re useful. Problem solvers. So I keep them close. For the good of the company. For the good of the family.

Best part? He’s not going anywhere. He’s married to my daughter. He won’t blow that up. He knows what it would cost — her, and all of them. So he stays. And he carries the water.

Life is good.

As long as I hold the power and the rest of them dance — marionettes, every one of them. And I’m the one with the strings.

Note: I am not this man. I’ve sat across from many like him.