Scott Levene of Levco On 5 Things You Need To Run A Highly Successful Family Business

An Interview With Jason Hartman

Establish professional boundaries. It’s easy to get so consumed with the business that every family event revolves around it. One of the best things about working with your family is that you get to work with the people you love. However, if you don’t put in the effort to maintain those relationships outside of work, it won’t feel like you’re working with family anymore.

As a part of our series about 5 Things You Need To Run A Highly Successful Family Business, I had the pleasure of interviewing Scott Levene.

Scott Levene is one of the Vice Presidents of a generational family business, Levco. Levco was founded in 1980 originally as a coal company. Over the years, the business has evolved into what it is today to best serve its customers. Although Scott grew up in and around the business, he originally had no intention of joining the family business as a young adult. His passion was playing soccer and so he played professionally for several years. After he retired from professional soccer, he took a job at the family business intending to search for his next career adventure. But, as it turned out, Scott quite enjoyed working at the family business and he was good at it! Today he is one of the Vice Presidents of the company and enjoys being an integral part of the community in which he works and lives.

Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! Before we dive in, our readers would love to learn a bit more about you. Can you tell us a story about what brought you to this specific career path?

My father and grandfather were huge advocates of working hard and saving as much money as possible. They were also very strict in that all family members needed to interact with the family business when we were growing up. As such, I worked at Levco during my vacations from school. Although this gave me many skills and allowed me to learn more about the industry, my passion since I was 5 years old was soccer. I dreamed about becoming a professional soccer player since the first moment I kicked a ball. Thankfully, I got to live out that dream! Once my soccer career was over, I turned back to the business world. I had little intention of coming back to the family business. However, after working part-time at the business until I landed on my feet, I quickly fell in love with the concept of being able to have a real impact at a company; especially one with my last name on it.

Can you tell us a bit about your family business and your role in it?

Levco was started by my late grandfather as a coal company. As time went by, the company was handed down to my grandfather’s 5 children. While they all had different roles and responsibilities at the company, it was refreshing to see how family members could balance work and family life all at once. I joined the company full-time in 2020 and started in the sales department. I quickly worked my way up and now manage the sales, marketing, customer service, and bookkeeping departments.

Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began this career?

I think perhaps the most interesting this is that I ended up in the family business at all. I wanted so badly to branch off and do my own thing, but I unexpectedly found what I was looking for in the family business. I practiced teamwork as a professional soccer player and those skills have easily transferred to working the business as well. Working with family can be difficult because sometimes the line between work and family life gets blurred, but it also means we know each other on a deeper level and know each other’s strengths and weaknesses.

Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?

I’m not sure about funny, but I can say for sure that working in the family business has taught me the value of intentional family time. Working hard is important for the business, but intentionally spending time together outside of work is important for our relationships.

What do you think makes your company stand out? Can you share a story?

Levco stands out from the competition due to our constant desire for improvement. Our desire to constantly upgrade our customer experience through software and customer service is unmatched. On top of the desire to improve is also a strong concentration on the small details. Most of the things we do go unseen by our customers, but our attention to detail is what keeps their heat on and tanks full! From monitoring their deliveries to identifying service issues often before they even call in are just two of the ways we try to service our customers to the best of our abilities.

Are you working on any exciting new projects now? How do you think that will help people?

Levco is constantly looking for ways to improve. We develop our own software and are currently in the works of developing a better online experience for our customers. With the way the world is changing, it’s important that customers have the ability to schedule appointments and manage their account online while also maintaining the ability to call us whenever they wish. Additionally, Levco is committed to growing our skills in the oil and propane field, as well as keeping up with state news in an effort to pass along savings to our customers.

None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about that?

I’ve been fortunate enough to come across a lot of people who have taken me under their wing and helped me grow as a person, an athlete, and a business professional. However, none were more influential than my parents. They exhibited a strong work ethic and passed down their beliefs of putting your head down and working hard. My dad always preached to me that I should never brag about what we have or what we’ve achieved and that there is always room for improvement.

How have you used your success to bring goodness to the world?

I believe that with great power comes great responsibility (Spider-Man reference — I’m a huge fan of Marvel). All joking aside, Levco has made it a point to donate to local charities every year. Additionally, most of the reason we do what we do is to make homeowners feel more confident in running their daily household maintenance. We believe that if we can pass on some of our knowledge and friendliness, then we’re doing a good job.

Ok thank you for that. Let’s now pivot to the main parts of our interview. How do you define a family business? How is a family business different from a regular business?

A family business is much like any other business out there. It’s full of motivated individuals who want to do better for their community by providing a superior service or product. However, a family business has an extra caveat in that the family members need to learn how to balance family life and work life. I often relate it back to when my soccer coaches would preach about learning how to turn your competitive spirit on and off. It was so important to be able to switch your competitive spirit on when you stepped on the field or in the weight room and also have the ability to turn it off when outside of the game. If someone is constantly thinking about the game, they will likely burn out. Relating this back to work, a family member but learn how to interact with another family member inside and outside of the workplace, or else you risk the business and family relationship suffering.

In your opinion or experience, what are the unique advantages that family owned businesses have?

Some of the unique advantages are as follows:

1. Increased trust in your fellow co-workers.
2. Increased compassion for the community.
3. Increased awareness of what your fellow co workers will likely think or do.

What are the unique drawbacks or blindspots that family owned businesses have?

Some of the unique drawbacks are as follows:

1. Hard to “get away” from work. It can sometimes make family gatherings all about work and cause burn out.
2. More difficult to “go against” another family member’s line of thinking.
3. Scaling the business. Most family businesses start small and don’t want to scale too quickly. Scaling too quickly can lead to decreased efficiency and lack of attention on what really matters: the customers.

What are some of the common mistakes you have seen family businesses make? What would you recommend to avoid those errors?

1. Wanting to scale too quickly. I recommend focusing on making your product or service as perfect as can be before trying to expand. Prove that you can make money and serve customers well before expanding on your service or idea.
2. Not separating work life from personal life. I recommend making a big investment in quality time with your family members who are co-workers outside of work.

What advice would you give to other CEOs or founders of family businesses to help their employees to thrive?

1. Focus on employee retention and employee growth. While other family members might make the business strong, it will inevitably fall on the other employees to be the face of the company and do the bulk of the interaction with the customers.
2. Don’t try to scale too quickly. Analyze every investment opportunity heavily before deciding on a direction.

How do you define “Leadership”? Can you explain what you mean with a story or example?

I define leadership as the quality of an individual who is willing to perform any and all tasks his/her team needs to do, who is constantly trying new things to improve the performance of the team, and who is willing to put the team’s needs before their own.

What are the “5 Things You Need To Run A Highly Successful Family Business”?

1. Clear communication and role definition. It’s important to establish who is responsible for what, and empower those individuals to take ownership of the results of their departments.
2. Overlapping roles. When you work at a small to midsize family business, you often don’t have enough employees to cover every role imaginable. Also, due to seasonality, it’s impossible to have one person do the same thing year-round. That’s why it’s important to preach to employees that learning is a must and that having a desire to learn multiple roles will make the company better off in the long run and the employees more skilled.
3. Succession planning. It’s so important to constantly be grooming the next leaders of the company. Succession planning needs to be happening every day in order to make the company’s future safe.
4. Investment in the future. It’s important to set aside a percentage of your profits every year to invest in things and tools that will be good for the future of the company. For example, an office building, supplies, new trucks, new vans, technology, etc.
5. Establish professional boundaries. It’s easy to get so consumed with the business that every family event revolves around it. One of the best things about working with your family is that you get to work with the people you love. However, if you don’t put in the effort to maintain those relationships outside of work, it won’t feel like you’re working with family anymore.

We are very blessed that some of the biggest names in Business, VC funding, Sports, and Entertainment read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the US with whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch with, and why? He or she might just see this if we tag them :-)

Growing up a huge soccer fan, the two people that come to mind are Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi. However, I would love to also meet Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos as I admire what they’ve achieved as entrepreneurs and businessmen greatly.

You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. :-)

I think it’s important for people to be involved in their community somehow. For me, my family business helps keep our community safe and warm. But it doesn’t need to be that big — neighbors helping each other out with home projects, going grocery shopping for an elderly or sick neighbor, helping out a working parent by doing school drop off/pick up. All of these are small but meaningful gestures that create a ripple effect of good and kindness.

How can our readers further follow your work online?

Our website is https://www.levco.io/

We also have Facebook and LinkedIn pages where we often post company updates.

Additionally, we have a page on our website called Levco Cares that highlights our community involvement.

Thank you so much for joining us. This was very inspirational.

About The Interviewer: Jason Hartman is the Founder and CEO of Empowered Investor. Jason has been involved in several thousand real estate transactions and has owned income properties in 11 states and 17 cities. Empowered Investor helps people achieve The American Dream of financial freedom by purchasing income property in prudent markets nationwide. Jason’s Complete Solution for Real Estate Investors™ is a comprehensive system providing real estate investors with education, research, resources and technology to deal with all areas of their income property investment needs. Through Jason’s podcasts, educational events, referrals, mentoring and software to track your investments, investors can easily locate, finance and purchase properties in these exceptional markets with confidence and peace of mind.

Starting with very little, Jason, while still in college at the age of 19, embarked on a career in real estate. While brokering properties for clients, he was investing in his own portfolio along the way. Through creativity, persistence and hard work, he earned a number of prestigious industry awards and became a young multi-millionaire. Jason purchased a California real estate brokerage firm that was later acquired by Coldwell Banker. He combined his dedication and business talents to become a successful entrepreneur, public speaker, author, and media personality. Over the years he developed his Complete Solution for Real Estate Investors™ where his innovative firm educates and assists investors in acquiring prudent investments nationwide for their portfolio. Jason’s sought after educational events, speaking engagements, and his popular “Creating Wealth Podcast” inspire and empower hundreds of thousands of people in 189 countries worldwide.

While running his successful real estate and media businesses, Jason also believes that giving back to the community plays an important role in building strong personal relationships. He established The Jason Hartman Foundation in 2005 to provide financial literacy education to young adults providing the all-important real world skills not taught in school which are the key to the financial stability and success of future generations. We’re in a global monetary crisis caused by decades of misguided policies and the cycle of financial dependence has to be broken, literacy and self-reliance are a good start. Visit JasonHartman.com for free materials and resources.