I own a pet toy company, and my 3 kids work for me. I told them they needed to work somewhere else before joining.

"My grandparents started a company from scraps - quite literally. In the 1950s, they were immigrants from Germany, living in the basement of a man who made belts. They repurposed the scraps from those leather belts to make dog toys. They called it Vo Toys, after their last name, Vogel. They only spoke broken English and thought the name was very catchy."

"I attended New York University to study finance and then began working for a real estate company. I joined the family business, then created my own company. Sometimes I think working for the family business was a self-fulfilling prophecy. By the time I had a wife and child, I returned to Vo Toys. It felt like my birthright, to a degree. It also gave me the opportunity for more financial security."

"I worked at the family company for about nine years. At the time, most major pet toy manufacturers were buying from the same trade companies in China. To stand out in the US market, you had to offer the lowest price. I wanted to try another approach: creating uniquely designed toys that were unlike anything else. That way, we could avoid the price war. In 1993, I left Vo Toys to found Multipet."

Mark Hirschberg’s grandparents emigrated from Germany in the 1950s and repurposed leather-belt scraps into dog toys, founding Vo Toys. After his grandfather’s death, his father ran the company and blurred work-home boundaries. Mark initially rebelled, studied finance at NYU and worked in real estate, then returned to the family business for financial stability and opportunity. After about nine years, Mark observed industry price competition driven by common Chinese suppliers and pursued distinctive product design to avoid price wars. He left Vo Toys in 1993 to found Multipet. Mark’s three grown children now work for a related pet-toy company he started.

Read at Business Insider