Page 445 - Peterson 85 Years and Going Strong

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PETERSON 4.0 RAISING THE NEXT GENERATION
It takes a lot more than product knowledge and a college degree to build a successful business and take it through to its fourth generation. Research shows that only 30 percent of family-owned businesses transition successfully into their second generation; 12 percent make it to their third. And surviving to
the fourth generation is a 3 percent long-shot. But that’s exactly where Peterson is today. Part of an owner’s responsibility is to raise the next generation to love the business, and to be good leaders and stewards of the company. Little did Duane and Sue Doyle know they were actually raising two leaders.
Back in the 1980s, long before Duane Doyle Jr. and Erin (Doyle) Sorgel stepped into their current roles as President of Earthmoving and CFO, respectively, they were learning about tractors. It wasn’t just in their genes. It was in their daily life, like identifying dozers and scrapers along the freeway from their car seats. Or making tractor birthday cakes with Grandma. Or sitting on Poppa Bill’s lap driving a tractor for the very first time. Or talking business around the dinner table—even to naming their dogs Dozer, Skidder, Ripper, Diesel, and Grader. It was all just part of growing up a Doyle. They were learning to fall in love with the business.
To understand the kids, however, you have to understand their father, who was raised in much the same manner. Duane Sr.’s first business trip, in fact, was spent sound asleep in a motel drawer. His dad, Bill Doyle, explained back in 2017. “We had sold a used D8 to a logger in the Eureka area and the winch broke. So Peterson bought a new one from Brizard-Matthews and I delivered it and helped the customer do the instal- lation.” That summer of 1955, Bill and his wife Jeannie—Howard Peterson’s oldest daughter—were living at Howard’s Triple J Ranch in Dublin with their six-month old son Duane. And Jeannie didn’t want to be left out there all alone while her husband went on a business trip. Instead, she packed up her son with all the baby paraphernalia and went along. While her husband was out in the woods working on tractors, she spent most of
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