With just three episodes of the final season of Succession to go, is there anyone who isn’t hooked on the scheming and antics of Kendall, Roman, and Shiv?
While I can’t condone the trio’s at-all-costs attitude to taking over the family empire (although it makes for edge-of-seat viewing), one thing I do share with the Roy children is the notion that a business, an industry, can be in your blood.
For the Roys it’s media, for me it’s diamonds and precious gemstones, and I wanted to share what it means for a business to be in your blood…
First of all, legacy. Most people who have a certain business in their blood are not the first generation to be involved in it. I’m a third-generation jeweller, following in the footsteps of my father and his father before him. Family involvement is synonymous with having a business in your blood.
Secondly, you love what you do, pure and simple. Not just love, but respect, enjoy, admire, and want to constantly learn. Like blood, which never stops pumping, so to do you never want to stop evolving and growing the business, and not only because you want to, but because to not do it would go against the very fabric of your DNA.
Thirdly, there’s the inside knowledge. When a business is in your blood, so too are years, decades, of the kind of knowledge that cannot be taught at university or picked up in a YouTube tutorial. It’s the pure lived experience that gets passed down; lessons that are niche, subtle, and personal, but which carry insights that cannot be measured.
That’s what it means to have a business in your blood.
(And for what it’s worth when it comes to Succession, I don’t think we can ever count out Cousin Greg.)