A few weeks ago I had the pleasure of sitting down and talking with a truly remarkable individual, Ron Dohr. He has a company called Dohr Family Business Consulting that you can check out to learn more about what he does. But as you all know, I don’t pretend to be a “reporter” and give you all the facts, I just want to give you the “back story”.
I had met Ron a while back when I was doing some consulting work with Moss Adams, LLC here in town. Over the years I have run across thousands of CEOs and Business Owners and every now and then Ron’s name would come up. Enough so you would notice it. Then about a month ago when I was giving a speech to a group at The Harbor Club in Seattle, sponsored by vcfo and Mark Walters of the Purple Lawyer, and Ron was in the audience. What a treat and I was anxious to see what he thought.
So we got together for coffee and this is where I really got to see the “man behind the name”. What a treat! He was not only courteous, but extremely genuine and transparent – two skills I personally love. But then he started giving me all these little key words and phrases to illustrate who he was and his work. One or two is normal, but he had a whole litany of these. But when you strung them all together, it helped paint a truly wonderful picture of this leader.
It started with “snippets of ideas” (love that one), and then he said he just lived by two words, “Candid and Kind”. Can’t go wrong with those if you live them in everything you do. Then because he deals with family owned businesses, he said two areas he has to deal with all the time are, “Hard Assets and Heart Assets”. And then he closed by giving a more detailed description about how he approaches a family business. He said, “With succession, the questions are, ‘Can the family sustain the business and can the business sustain the family’. There are three key ingredients to find out, Enhance the value, Achieve harmony, and create Peace of Mind.” In the end, Character always wins – both in knowing Ron and the work he does for the families.
