My grandma passed away earlier this year. She was 94 — the last living blood relative from the second generation of the Schmid family. The phrase “one of one” gets thrown around a lot, but I am 100% certain there will never be anyone quite like Grandma Janet. She managed to raise seven kids, actively participate in the community, maintain a strong faith – and always hit you with a dry joke you never saw coming.
There were plenty of tears at her funeral, but they were far outweighed by the laughs — especially from the retellings of Grandma’s legendary sense of humor (she had a towel in the guest bathroom that read “Dear Lord, if you can’t make me skinny, please make my friends fat”).
The whole weekend felt more celebratory than somber. As we said over and over, we’d all be lucky to live a life as full as she lived hers.
Still, losing her marked the end of an era. She was the matriarch of our branch — the reason we made the pilgrimage back to Dubuque, Iowa, from all corners of the country. And now, with her gone, you could sense the gravitational pull she created was starting to fade. It got me thinking: when was the last Christmas at Grandma’s? I couldn’t remember. “Lasts” are funny that way — it’s only years later that you realize they’ve come and gone. At the time, what we now know was our last Christmas together felt like any other.
Grandma loved these gatherings more than anything else. So much so that she’d constantly ask each of us — half-joking, half-hoping — when we were moving back to Dubuque, knowing full well the chances were slim at best. What she really meant was: don’t drift too far.
As we swapped stories and flipped through old photos that weekend, the same realization kept coming up: the best way to honor Grandma is to keep showing up for each other. Making your way to the family reunion, even when it would be easier not to. Staying a few days after the shareholder meeting to hang out with cousins. That’s what she would’ve wanted most.
Doing so is only going to get harder and harder. More of us 4Gs are getting married, having kids, climbing the corporate ladder. The days when we could count on full family gatherings once or twice a year are behind us. From here on out, they’re going to take a lot more advanced planning and commitment.
There will always be competing demands and perfectly valid excuses. Skipping it will almost always be the easier option. But that’s not what Grandma would’ve wanted.
The more I sit with it, the more I think this might be our generation’s greatest responsibility. Prior generations stood up our family business and put structures in place to keep it going for more than 100 years.
Now, it’s our turn to keep the family part of the family business alive.
Where to Start?
That responsibility — keeping the family together — doesn’t come with a handbook. Governance, for all its moving parts, is a lot more straightforward. There are books, conferences and Family Business Magazine articles that can walk you through board structures, voting rights, shareholder education – you name it. All of that matters, but none of it works without the glue of family cohesion holding it together.
And that’s the trickiest part, isn’t it? Figuring out how to keep everyone connected as life, distance and schedules all do their best to pull us in different directions.
Relying on the business doesn’t feel like enough. Obviously, it’s a shared interest we all have, but shareholders of Google or Walmart don’t stay at each other’s houses or go out to dinner together after their annual meetings. If ownership is the only thing keeping us tethered, the relationships will slowly disintegrate — and the business is likely to follow.
So in the absence of a how-to manual for staying connected, where do you begin?
In our case, we started by looking at the gatherings we were already showing up for and building from there.
4G Summit
The fourth generation is the largest one in the Schmid family. There’s around 100 of us, ranging from college age to 40 and older. Until last year, many of us had never met before — and even those who had maybe only crossed paths once or twice at reunions over the years. The future was somewhat concerning: as the 3Gs got older, we were inching closer and closer to being the shareholders that set the tone for the company. Yet we barely knew anything about each other.
The 3Gs didn’t have this problem. Most of them lived in and around Dubuque, Iowa, and got to know each other through regular family gatherings. They built trust through decades of shared holidays, backyard barbecues and the kind of casual time together that doesn’t require much planning. That bond gave them a huge advantage — not just relationally, but when it came time to make decisions for the company. Management didn’t have to worry about catering to different factions. They knew the shareholder group was a united front.
If we want to keep that kind of alignment intact, we’ll have to work for it. This was the realization that kicked off planning for a Schmid 4G Summit.
Of course, having the idea was the easy part — actually pulling it off was a whole other story. Finding a weekend that worked for this many people — plus company leadership — felt like a long shot. But we figured the only way to find out was to try.
We floated some dates more than a year in advance, just to see if anyone would bite. To our surprise, most of the 4Gs were in. From there, it was hours of behind-the-scenes coordination — researching venues, sketching out a weekend plan, finalizing headcount. It wasn’t easy, but we made it happen.
Now, most of the 4Gs have shared at least one weekend together. The next time we see each other at a shareholder meeting or wedding, the ice is already broken. There’s history there that we can build on.
In a lot of ways, I think the summit serves as a good model for how to keep family bonds alive going forward. There’s no secret formula or shortcut. It just requires a few cousins to work together to plan these things well in advance, and get it on peoples’ calendars before competing priorities have a chance to pop up.
Family Reunions
While the 4G Summit was a one-off event, our triannual family reunion — SchmidFest — has been a fixture for years. I’ve never been directly involved in planning one, but I’ve seen firsthand just how much work goes into pulling it off: hotel blocks, restaurant reservations, activity lists, group photos, dietary restrictions – it’s a heavy lift. And yet, somehow, it always comes together.
The cadence — every three years — feels about right. We’re not trying to force it into the calendar annually, which makes it easier for people to prioritize and show up. And because we announce the date and location at the end of the current reunion, everyone has a long runway to block off the time.
We also pair these reunions with our annual shareholder meeting. It makes for a packed weekend, but it’s been the most reliable way to get people in the same place at the same time. Not everyone stays for both. That’s okay. But stacking them back-to-back gives us the best shot at getting people in the same place — and making space for both sides of what we’re building: the business part and the family part.
That’s the kind of compromise we’ll likely need more of in the years ahead — ways to make showing up just a little easier, and ways to make it count when we do.
What Grandma Would’ve Wanted
Looking back, Grandma’s funeral felt like the passing of the torch. Look around you, I could almost hear her saying. This is special. Lots of people would kill for a big family this connected. Don’t let it slip away.
There’s no perfect playbook for how to do it. But there are places to start: protecting the reunion on the calendar, and gathering some cousins that live in the same city once in a while. Calling up an aunt you haven’t talked to in a year.
That’s what Grandma would’ve wanted.
And honestly, it’s what we want, too.