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Lessons - How Generational Wealth Survives Dynasty Transitions | Billy Busch - Anheuser-Busch Heir · Success Story with Scott Clary

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  In this lessons episode, discover how poor succession planning can tear family businesses apart.
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  Learn why leaving clear instructions and legal structures is essential for preserving both the
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  business and relationships. Learn how miscommunication and power struggles damage the legacy built
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  over generations, and learn why purpose and tradition can keep you going even after setbacks and loss.
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  Because there's a lot of, so I'm just looking over some of the things that,
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  obviously, it was the transition of power away from your father that was very stressful.
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  There was a battle over Grant's farm as well, and that was stressful for the family.
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  If you think about all these events, and you can, you can touch on
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  even like give like a little bit of context as to what these stories mean and what happened, but
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  what did these events teach you about family business, or how did these events sort of shape
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  your perception of family business? Well, I did learn a lot from it. I will say
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  I think in any family business, I think when you go to pass the baton to the next generation,
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  the leader of that company, they really need to do everything black and white. I think my father,
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  I think it was time. He had lost his oldest daughter, or excuse me, his youngest daughter,
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  and that was very traumatizing to him. He wasn't making the greatest decisions any longer,
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  not that it was right for my half-brother to form a coup in the board and have him removed from
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  his position, because I don't think that was right. But I think there was a bit of much better
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  way to go to my father, our father, and say, hey, this is getting too hard on you, and you need
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  to step back and allow me to run things now, or something along those lines. I think every
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  business owner should realize that one of their times up, and they should pass it on, and they
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  write up the documents, make it very black and white, say, this is how it is. When you do that
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  kind of stuff, you keep the lawyers out of it. You don't have as much argument going on. Everybody's
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  not going to be as happy, but at least there won't be any infighting. When it comes to those kinds
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  of things, definitely, it's like he left us a grants farm. He left myself and my five siblings
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  a grants farm, and there came a time where it was in a trust, and we knew we had to take it out
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  of the trust, because each of our families were getting bigger, and there were more and more
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  successors, because we're all having kids, and we're all married, and we needed to make sure
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  that, okay, what are we going to do with a grants farm? It can't stay in a trust all the time.
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  It eventually needs to be bought out. So my father, and his will, he put in there that he would
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  his biggest wish was to see one or more of his kids buy grants farm out of the trust from whoever
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  didn't want to stay in. So I offered to buy grants farm, because I was the only one in the
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  beer business at the time. I had a beer company. I felt like it would be similar to what dad
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  did. My father did with the breweries that he built. He built breweries, and he put theme parks
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  around those breweries to attract people, kind of like an overgrown craft brewery is today.
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  You know, you get to go there and have food, but here you got to not only have food and try
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  the products, but also visit all the incredible animals and do the rides and all those sorts of
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  things. So I thought it would be a great way to promote our company, a great way to promote our
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  beer. So I offered to buy grants farm, and then jealousy comes in, and one of the quotes from
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  a sister was, there should not be one lord of the manner, something like that. And we didn't
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  follow dad's wish at that time. So my family wanted to sell it to another entity and not one of us,
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  and we got into a big argument over that. I talked about it in the book. I almost had the
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  play spot, but then at the last minute, well actually after the last minute happened because
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  our trustee at the time, which was Wells Fargo, gave a deadline that whoever makes the final
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  offer by five o'clock PM on a certain day, if we don't get a counter offer, that person would
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  own grants farm. So I made the final offer. The counter offer came about two or three hours later
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  from my other siblings, four of my siblings, and another relative, and they ended up bidding higher,
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  going to a place I couldn't go to. So they ended up buying my brother and I out. So I'm no longer a
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  part of grants farm. You know, I miss it. It was where I grew up, but again, my dad should have
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  made it more specific and made it more black and white on how to leave grants farm
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  to a family member or what he exactly wanted to do with it. Because if you don't, it creates a
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  lot of infighting. And now my brother and sisters, unfortunately, and myself don't talk to each other
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  anymore. Even still, even still. Yep. That's so silly. It's so stupid. It's so stupid. Like
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  I guess, I think what's in a lot of people that listen to this are probably first generation
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  entrepreneurs. They built the business. Now they're trying to figure out what to do with that
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  business. And I hear a lot of this. This is going to be this huge transition of wealth because
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  people are all retiring and they don't know what to do about succession planning. And this is
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  the perfect example. Obviously, at a much larger scale in a first generation entrepreneur,
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  but there are people that build businesses that they don't sell and they want to pass them over
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  to their kids. And I don't know how much energy or thought they put into it before it's time.
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  And I think that's going to come around and bite them in the ass. And I also don't think they think
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  about what are the implications of the relationships between siblings. They're thinking about what
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  happens to me when I want to retire. But kind of like your example that you just mentioned,
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  you've actually broken up family bond now because of this. Not only just, not only just
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  the fact that your dad didn't make it clear or whatnot. But now between you and your brothers
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  and sisters, you don't have the bond that you should have. You're 100% right, Scott. And that's why
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  I urge any business owner, family business to make sure that when they do go pass it down,
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  my family always pass it down to the most competent child. It might not have been the oldest,
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  although for the most part, it did work out to be the oldest of the children, oldest male.
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  And it worked out great for three generations. And then when I went to the fourth generation,
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  it all changed. And the irony of it is the fourth generation took it, basically took it from
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  the third generation. And then the fourth generation basically lost the whole company
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  because that I really do think that that line of succession was broken.
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  The way to properly succeed. And it went then to the fifth generation. And the person that
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  took it over, which would be my nephew, was not unfortunately competent because he had
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  substance abuse problems. And he was still given the control of anizer bush. And an
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  outside competitor in Bev saw that it wasn't being run correctly, saw the problems that anizer
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  bush was going through. And they realized it was a perfect time to take it over, which they did
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  in 2008. So where does that leave you in your life? I mean, you've done a lot. So we can talk a
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  little bit about your journey. But all this is leading up to, okay, so how is Billy going to
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  architect his life now? Because right now, your nephew is running the company.
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  I always know he's not. No, no, sorry, I meant sorry. Historically, when your nephew is running
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  the company, you weren't thinking, I'm going to step in line for succession. He's the one
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  running it. And you probably saw the decline. And you probably saw where it was going. And then
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  the in-bed acquisition, yeah, it was unfortunate, but it probably wasn't a surprise to you, at
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  least, because you saw what was happening. I saw what was happening. I was getting feedback. I
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  really didn't have a lot to do with anizer bush at that point. I was still, we still had the polo
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  team. We were playing professional polo from the Bud Light polo team. But I was hearing from people
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  at the brewery, some of the higher up executives at the brewery, that there were problems going on
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  that he was having difficulties talking to people, making speeches, wholesale or conferences,
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  things like that, that he was, he was not competent any longer to even make a speech.
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  And then, and then I, then when I heard that he opened up the distribution system here in
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  America to an outside company, somebody came to me and said, that's exactly what this company
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  was looking for. It was in bed. And so now they were selling Stella Artois and Bex and some of
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  the other beers that Inbevo was making in the United States through the anizer bush wholesaler
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  system. And it gave them Inbevo the opportunity to look at the books, look at anizer bushes books
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  and figure out a way to buy it. So, yeah, so I did see, I could see it was coming. I was hearing from
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  the executives about what was going on. And, you know, I still thought it would be an incredibly
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  tremendous feat to be able to take over the biggest company, biggest beer company in the world.
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  But no longer it was anizer bush, the biggest beer company because Inbevo had formed with other
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  breweries and they actually became internationally the biggest brewery in the world.
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  And so they were able to swallow the smaller fish at that point. And that's exactly what they did.
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  And as soon as that happened, I started thinking, okay, you know what, how do I keep this tradition
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  alive? After reading everything that I read and this is during the time I was really getting
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  involved into understanding the history of our family, my life where I've been leaving some
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  of that to my kids. So they knew it was running through their blood and to understand where they
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  came from. And actually it was good for me too. It was very therapeutic for me to be able to
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  understand where I came from. And I just felt this desire to keep that beer tradition going because
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  I thought about my great-grandfather and the love he had for his family and for his wife and
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  for all the people that worked at thatizer bush. And how he revolutionized the beer industry with
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  pasteurization and refrigeration and how he grew his product and how he how he even came up with
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  the recipe for Budweiser. And I know you read that in the book, Scott. And that's one of the great
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  stories that I love is how he went to Germany and came up with the recipe. And then I think about
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  my grandfather, about how he takes it over kind of unwillingly at first, but then willingly when he
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  realized that he wanted to be in the brewing industry and not so much a rancher any longer. And how
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  he worked his tail off and through love and through determination and grit, he kept the company
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  going through that 13 years of prohibition and how it affected him after prohibition negatively.
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  And he took his life because of that. And then how my dad and his brother kept it going and how it
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  became a household name. And the Patriots that my father and my who was a colonel in the army
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  during World War II. And the Patriot that my uncle Adolphus, his older brother was and how he
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  designated 90% of his marketing to support the war efforts during World War II and really put
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  the products on the back burner because he loved this country and knew what it had done for him
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  and his family. And you know, some of those things and then to see how my dad worked and how he
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  loved the industry. I just felt it was in my blood. And like you said earlier, I felt like I believe
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  blood beer. And so I wanted to keep it going. And so I started the William K. Bush brewing company.
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  I couldn't call it the only way I could use a bush name was by using my full name. I started
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  the William K. Bush brewing company. And it was a difficult time because at that point, it was a
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  2011. At that point, the craft beer industry was taking off. And I came out with a
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  with with more of a everyday beer like a Budweiser or Miller or of course. So you're standard,
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  you're standard beer. And people were turning towards a heavier, more tasteful beers full
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  body beers. And I came out, it was kind of bad timing to come out with that. But I did. And you
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  know, to get any traction in the mainstream part of the beer industry, where you're going against
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  the behemoths like Budweiser Miller in course is very, very difficult. And they're all you always
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  got to target on your back. So for 10 years, I worked hard to try to grow that business. And we got
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  into five or six different different states as far as distribution goes. But we never could get
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  any traction. So we had to end up, we ended up closing that down. And we got in, we now are
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  doing our own, we built our own brewery right outside of St. Louis, Missouri in an area called St.
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  Charles. And we invite people to come out to our place to our farm and enjoy the beautiful farm
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  atmosphere out there in nature. We've got animals around there. We've got great food for people.
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  We make 12 different beers out there. We have our own brewery. And we're actually starting to
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  distribute locally in the area. So you know what? I love the beer, beer business. My family, my
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  immediate family once in a while looks at me and says, Dad, you know, why do you keep doing this?
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  You work really hard. You're not making any money doing it. And it's just that, you know, I just,
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  I just feel that it's my destiny, basically. I feel like it's something that I need to do to
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  honor my ancestors. Thanks for tuning in. If you found this valuable, don't forget to hit that
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  subscribe button so you never miss an episode. And if you want to dive deeper into this conversation,
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  check out the links in the description to watch the full episode. See you in the next one.