Second and Third Generations Must Now Take the Field in Family Businesses

I had no serious work experience in Türkiye before, except that every summer I would go and work as a laborer in one of our factories. Apart from that, I also had a fairly comfortable student life. In 2006, I went to England to pursue an MBA.

To cover my living expenses, I started working at a branch of KFC located in Kent, close to my university. I was at university from 08:00 to 17:00, and then worked as a cashier at KFC between 18:00 and 24:00. There was also an English high school student around 17–18 years old working with me, who washed dishes on weekends until 22:00–24:00 at night. I felt sorry for him. From time to time, I would give him a break and wash the dishes in his place.

The country had a high level of welfare, and one day I asked the boy why he was working; he replied, “For my living expenses, I need to pay my rent.” When I asked, “Who are you living with? Doesn’t your family pay the rent?” he said, “I live with my family, and I pay them.”

(I thought to myself, “How harsh they are.”) On the one hand, I felt sorry for the boy, and on the other hand, I tried to help him as much as I could, thinking, “Let’s make sure this child isn’t overwhelmed or worn down.”

Weeks passed. One day, I was reading a newspaper when the list of the country’s top taxpayers was published. While I was going through the paper, the boy came over, looked at it and said, “My father,” pointing to one of the names. “He is second this year. He was third last year,” he added. At first, I couldn’t believe it. I even joked and said, “My father is number one,” laughing. But the boy was serious. It turned out that his father was the second-highest taxpayer in the country and one of its wealthiest businessmen.

I felt my anger toward the boy’s family grow even more. I kept thinking, “Look at this—this is the child of one of the richest men in the country, working until the early hours of the morning on weekends, washing dishes just to cover his rent and living expenses, while his family doesn’t help him at all.” The boy really liked me. One day, he invited me to his birthday party. I went. He lived in a beautiful seaside villa. His family and all his friends were there. At the party, I had the opportunity to meet and speak with his father. He seemed like a good man—warm, approachable, and someone who paid attention to everyone individually. I had expected to see a much harsher, more authoritarian father. I was torn inside about whether I should speak to him or not.

But I couldn’t hold myself back. I said to the man, “Why aren’t you taking care of this child? Why aren’t you protecting him?” He looked at me in surprise and said, “Why do you think that?”.

I replied, “This boy washes dishes with us on weekends.”

The man looked surprised and said, “I am taking care of him—he is working and not dependent on anyone. He is already covering his own living expenses.” Angrily, I replied, “This child should be studying. Is this how you take care of him, by charging him rent? Just look at him… We also have families, and they do everything for us. And you are one of the top taxpayers in the country. It’s a shame what you are doing.”
The man was first surprised, and then he smiled. With a warmer expression, he said, “Look, your understanding of helping and our understanding of helping are very different. We prefer to teach someone how to fish rather than simply giving them a fish. If we were to cover this child’s expenses as a family in the way you suggest, he might go through a comfortable education period; however, he would become a parasitic, selfish, and arrogant child. He would constantly have problems in his relationships with society and people, and he would always talk pedantically. Yes, I charge him rent and he covers his own living expenses. He doesn’t owe me any gratitude. He knows what life is. Isn’t life always about making you pay the cost of something? Is it a bad thing for him to learn this early and, accordingly, see reality for what it is and build his life on a more rational foundation based on that?”

“Education can open a great door for the child and enable him to earn a lot of money. However, learning a profession and experiencing life at a young age makes him different and more mature. He realizes that he is not the only person in society and that other people exist as well. Education prepares a person in one direction, while a profession prepares them in another. If I didn’t take rent and all the money he earned was his, he would spend it on drugs, entertainment, alcohol, or gambling. Because he has rent responsibilities, he manages his budget accordingly. At this age, he is already able to manage his finances.

In time, all of this wealth you see will belong to my son. If he becomes wealthy without working for it, he will turn into a monster. He will look down on everyone. He will not understand how a worker does their job or how someone survives on a worker’s wage. He won’t be able to empathize. He will constantly look for faults in others and keep bothering them. I want to raise a child, not a monster. You only value education; you do not value a profession. Education teaches you what to do, while professional experience teaches you how to do it with others. Through a profession, the ego is reduced. With the ability to work, his self-confidence develops. His skills multiply, and he learns to understand people,” he said.

What he said had a profound impact on me.

Now let’s turn to our own parents…

I think this is a very important issue…

Our mothers and fathers are very good people, but often “bad” parents. They raise their children based on dreams rather than reality. In the West, children are not raised according to dreams but according to reality. When a child sees reality earlier, their dreams also become more realistic. And when they are realistic, the likelihood of achieving them naturally becomes higher. Our families have a certain mistake. For whatever reason, our parents try to bring us to places in life that they themselves could not reach. They try to turn their children into heroes or saviors. For example, a father who does not even speak a foreign language insists that his child learn at least three languages, and so on.

No mother or father has the right to expect their child to reach places in life that they themselves could not reach. Even if this desire appears to be for the child’s benefit and seems innocent, it is not. Expressions such as “I suffered so much for you,” “no other child had the opportunities you were given,” or “I worked myself to exhaustion for you” are extremely harmful.

I am telling mothers and fathers this: do not make sacrifices for your children in a way that removes them from real life. Let them enter life at a young age so they can take responsibility and see everything for themselves. In our country, children finish university at 23–25, and only after graduation do they begin to learn what life is really like. In the West, because students also work while studying, they experience life and learn it in parallel with their education. In Eastern societies like ours, children are constantly protected and raised as heirs to extraordinary dreams, and as a result, they become more “egoistic”.

In the West, children are first taught simple responsibilities like making their bed and tying their shoes. A child who makes their bed every day learns order and discipline. In our culture, order, discipline, systems, and organization are not sufficiently taught—and in fact, this is one of our biggest lifelong shortcomings. Everything is done by the parents. The child is seen as a future genius, a great figure, a hero, or a savior, as long as they are not pressured.

Self-confidence comes from the work a person does, the efforts they make, the skills they develop, and what they create and produce. For a long time, we neither work nor create nor produce. In the West, children build their SELF-CONFIDENCE first by working in age-appropriate jobs from an early age.

In our society, children are often overly protected and excessively praised, which leads to an inflated ego. Because we are raised to see ourselves as great individuals, we tend to become more selfish, egoistic, and arrogant. However, since we lack practical skills and real competence, our self-confidence is actually much lower. The antidote to egoism and arrogance is to develop skills at an early age, improve the ability to get things done, gain experience in working with others, and in other words, to encounter life and reality early on. I know that almost all the senior managers and executives I have met have, at some point in their lives, done jobs that we tend to look down on—such as dishwashing, café work, or working at gas stations. Both the wealthy and the less wealthy have worked. Because of this, they have developed the ability to empathize with every layer of society. Now, whenever I buy food from outside and the place is crowded, I always tell the staff serving me, “I’m not in a hurry, take your time; attend to the other customers first.” Because I know deeply what that person is going through at that moment. In my first years, I was doing that job too. I had experienced that feeling in every aspect. I believe EMPATHY can only be learned in this way. We lack SELF-CONFIDENCE because our skills, abilities, practical competence, self-sufficiency, and, along with that, our sense of living and working together with others have not been sufficiently developed.

Encountering life as early as possible teaches a child about human relationships, the value of what they earn, the concept of paying a price, and enables them to become highly realistic when making important decisions about the future. We have a mistaken understanding: either saying “a child who works won’t study” and not letting them work at all, or handing them over to a workplace with the expression “it’s all yours,” and then secretly allowing them to be mistreated by a familiar employer.

Both of these are very wrong approaches…

Even if it is just 3–5 hours, 1–2 days a week, let your child work somewhere.

If you do not want to raise a “monster” who says to society, “Do you know who I am?” and who looks down on those weaker than himself—showing off with money, power, and luxury—then you should ensure that your child works alongside a tailor, a carpenter, a butcher, a greengrocer, or a mechanic, and raise a child who has experienced life firsthand. That is how EMPATHY is gained; there is no other formula.

Raise your children first not to be managers, but to be producers and participants before anything else.

Let your child choose the path they will follow in life according to their own abilities, skills, and experience. A child who works whenever they can—on weekends and during summer holidays while in high school—will learn about people, how a living is earned, and what their own capabilities are.

In this way, they will get to know both society and themselves. In family businesses, it is highly appropriate for second and third generations to enter the field at an early age, work in different areas of the business, and prepare themselves for their future positions.