Baba's Little Deeres, LLC

My dad just announced a new position on LinkedIn: Grandfather (Retired) at Baba's Little Deeres, LLC.

Congratulations, Dad. I'm sure it will be your favorite job.

Listen to this post on Substack.

The seven Little Deeres are in the photo. My three cuties are farthest to the left. The other four cuties are my nieces.

No grandsons. Even my dad's dog is a girl. Baba is thoroughly outnumbered.

Lovely photo by my sister, Meghan Goering. She does this for a living, and it shows. Seven kids, every one of them looking at the camera at the same time, nobody crying. That is not luck.

I could write a book about business wisdom my dad passed down to me, but instead I'll write a blog series.

Business lessons from my own family.

The lineup:

→ My dad, Michael McCandless. When I was in high school, I started calling my dad the 'Leonidas of IT.' This was shortly after a job change during the financial crisis. The older I get, the more accurate I realize the description was. Look at his LinkedIn recommendations and you'll see titles like 'CIO, Dollar Tree.'

→ Pop Pop, my mom's dad. 30+ years in sales, retired from Georgia-Pacific.

→ Gan Gan, my wife's grandfather. Also Georgia-Pacific (yes, really) — a world-renowned paper mill manager who flew as far as Australia to fix production issues.

→ Grandad, my dad's dad. A Marine and a serial entrepreneur.

Here's why now.

As more of your feed turns into AI slop, the stuff a model can't invent only gets more valuable. A real person. A real number. An adage your grandfather actually said on a factory floor at 6am.

I'm excited to share it.

Get your popcorn ready.