In Our American Stories, our Final Thoughts series often shares poignant reflections on loved ones who have passed. But today, we’re diving into a different kind of remembrance: a captivating family business story about courage, trust, and unexpected leadership. John Bryan had successfully steered his family’s third-generation sausage company, Bryan Foods, before stepping onto the national stage to lead the well-known Sara Lee. This left a critical question: who would take the reins of their beloved family enterprise? The answer came in his younger brother, George Bryan, a man just 29, suddenly facing a challenge that would define his life.
George initially doubted himself, overwhelmed by the responsibility of succession and the legacy he was asked to carry. Yet, with the unwavering support of his team and a profoundly insightful letter from his brother, John, George embarked on a transformative journey. This isn’t just a tale of a company changing hands; it’s an inspiring look at how one man found his voice, learned the principles of effective management and motivation, and honored his family’s name. Join us as George Bryan shares his remarkable story of stepping up, learning to lead, and forging his own path in Our American Stories.
📖 Read the Episode Transcript
Speaker 1: And we returned to our American Stories. And when you hear that music, it’s time for our Final Thoughts series, where we hear final thoughts about loved ones who’ve passed away. And today’s Final Thoughts is a bit different than usual. It’s a business story. John Bryan was running his family’s third-generation sausage company, Bryan Foods, until he moved to Chicago to become the CEO of the well-known parent company, Sara Lee. But who would run their family business? George Bryan picks up the story and honors his brother John.
00:00:45
Speaker 2: When my brother went to Chicago and I became president of the company here, and I was twenty-nine years old, I guess. And when he told me that he wanted me to run the business, of course, I didn’t want to run the business. I told him to give it to somebody else, and I would back him up and give me two or three years. But he wouldn’t let me do that. He wanted me to take over. And of course, I doubted myself, and I think he doubted too, but I think he had enough confidence. He thought I could learn it pretty quick. I’d been there, you know, ten years, working all in the plant—manufacturing, sales, marketing. I just hadn’t run the business, but I knew a lot about the business, and we had a lot of good people there, you know, at the time, a lot of seasoned veterans there that he thought would better support me, maybe, than somebody else. My name was Bryan, for one, and I didn’t understand that. I didn’t realize that. But he thought that if I didn’t fumble the ball, that they would support me. And he was right. They did. You know, our people enjoy working there, and they took a lot of pride in it, which makes a big difference now. And because after a while, I liked it. But I didn’t like it the first year or two because I was trying to learn so much. And then when he left. When he left, he told me he was going to—he was going to write a letter and send it to me, and I didn’t think a lot about it. I thought, ‘Well, good,’ you know, ‘I’m sure it’ll tell me a lot of what I need to do.’ I mean, I just didn’t think about it that much because I was so busy thinking about the business and what I was going to do to run the business and work with people. And, you know, I wasn’t waiting on the letter. Believe me, I had a knot in my head for about a year that I didn’t know what it was, but it was just stress and trying to determine the right course, you know. And I can remember being in an executive meeting, and I was making a decision. And this was after maybe six months, and I had a lot of doubt, and this one person said, ‘I don’t know whether your brother would do it that a way.’ And I said, ‘Well, you know where the train is.’ I said, ‘It’s right out here. You can take it to Chicago if you want to work for him anymore.’ And from then on, I didn’t have any trouble making decisions because I’ll never forget it. And the whole committee just kind of looked at him, and when I said that, he turned about three shades of red. And he never questioned me again. Not that I made every decision right, but he knew I wasn’t—I wasn’t going to let him throw my brother up to me. And I never felt anything, you know, bad about my brother. I mean, I respected him so much. It didn’t, you know. I wasn’t jealous of him or anything like that. I didn’t have those kind of feelings. I just—I just told him, I said, ‘You can go to Chicago if you want to work for him anymore.’ And he didn’t leave. I really wasn’t thinking about the letter, and then I’m—I don’t. Maybe a couple of months later, I received the letter from him that really explained how he thought, you know, the business should be run. And, uh, it was a classic letter of, to your brother, what to do and what not to do. And I—I still read it today, you know. And so I based my business philosophy off of that letter. I read it many, many times. And I don’t know whether anybody asked him to do it. I think he was probably afraid because, you know, he was running an overall business, so he didn’t want Bryan Foods to fail. So he did it, you know, for that. He—and if you kind of followed his letter, it’s kind of hard to fail, you know, if you really stayed on what he said. Se did George. ‘Leadership of any management involves properly selecting, training, organizing, and motivating the people. You cannot spend too much time improving your skills for doing this.’ And sometimes I think that’s a natural. Some people have it naturally, some people have to learn it. ‘I won’t discuss all kinds of motivation techniques. It is perhaps worthwhile to read up on this, but the ability to motivate people is in a large part common sense and instinct.’ To me, everybody has a different button to push. You can’t motivate everybody the same way. Some people you have to praise. Some people like to be kicked in the rear end, you know. But it’s just different ways to motivate people. And I tried to learn with each person, each director—what to me, how to motivate them, how to get them fired up about their part of the business and how important it was to the overall success of the business. And that was—that was interesting, too. And obviously, you like some people better than others. You got along better with others. Some people you didn’t want to meet with as frequently, you know, because you just didn’t get along with them as well. But you have to make yourself appreciate everybody that you’re working with and that everybody has a contribution. And so, how do you pull that out? How do you understand that?
00:06:36
Speaker 3: And, and we thought about that a lot. I thought about that a lot. And on planning, we talked about… He talked about: ‘Management does no planning will go nowhere.’
00:06:51
Speaker 2: There are a lot of companies that really didn’t plan well in those days. ‘Planning is by no means restricted to formal budgets and long-range plans. More importantly, my judgment affecting planning is a continuous exercise expressed in an attitude which causes everyone to be thinking creatively about what can be done to constantly improve performance.’ And this was a big factor for me—is constant improvement, I’d say, every day. You know, everybody comes to work every day wanting to make improvements, wanting to improve the business. And I think you have to have that attitude. ‘Prices can be raised, yields can be improved, costs can be lowered, expenses can be reduced, and volume can be increased. Something can always be done.’ We never had a defeatist attitude. If we had a problem, we found a way to correct the problem, then move on. ‘Generally, even though we presently have a strong momentum going for us, you should always run scared.’ And that was emboldened in me. You know, to never be satisfied, to feel like, you know, we can make—you know, not that you don’t praise people when you have a good week or, you know, but you’ve got to realize it all starts over the next—the next day, you know. And it’s not about what you did for me last week; it’s what you’re going to do for me this week. So, we had that kind of attitude. We praised our success, but we didn’t linger on it; we didn’t dwell on it. We were always thinking about how to improve. And that came back from my father and my uncle, you know, years ago. They had the same drive when they started the business in nineteen thirty-six. They wanted to build a nice business and grow it and improve it. And that’s—that was instilled in us and my brother, and in me, and my brother instilled it in me. And he says, ‘Success breeds success unless complacency sets in. Therefore, never let anyone be completely satisfied, for the job is never finished. Good luck, sincerely, Johnny.’ So, that’s kind of where he ended. He said, ‘Good luck.’ I’m going to need a lot of luck. But, you know, I read the letter over and over and probably read it later—later on in my career than I did early on. I mean, I read it and kind of memorized it, and you don’t really realize until five, ten years later that you’re operating under that philosophy. You know, that’s been embedded in you and embedded in generations. You know, from my grandfather to my father, to my uncle, to us. You know, it stays with you forever.
00:09:44
Speaker 1: Final Thoughts: The late John Bryan’s letter to his brother George, here on Our American Stories.
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