the right people has always been very difficult, especially right now. But we have had some extraordinary employees. We’re very lucky now to have the team together that we do because we all work and mesh together very well.” Learning Curves As colleagues, family members gain unique insights and learn valuable lessons from each other. Chris Downey has learned “literally everything” from his father, including how to do business morally and ethically and how to run a successful enterprise. And even while marketing and sales have grown more sophisticated, his dad’s fundamentals of maintaining and establishing relationships still apply. Still, says George Downey, “I’m yesterday. He’s tomorrow. There’s no question about it. Doing things the right way is the foundation for good business.” Parker Turk remembers how his grandfather—his mother’s father, a major builder in the Southwest—made everyone feel appreciated and respected. He says he is inspired by the same traits in his father. “When he walks into our company every morning, he’s owner, president and majority shareholder of a company with 100 employees, yet every single one of them knows his door is open,” Parker Turk says. “When he goes to talk to them, he knows their families. He knows their kids, what they like and what pressures are on them. When people see that, they gravitate toward you, they want to be around you and they respect your opinions more. That’s what I hope to offer my clients, my team members and my family going forward.” Parker Turk “shows what hard work will do,” says his dad. “He’s very analytical in his perspective on things. He can tear an issue apart where he can see the little pieces of it better than almost anybody I know, but he’s not critical of the people around it. That’s a rare ability. His hard work, his dedication, his loyalty, his desire to do what’s right—all these things make me love him more, and I’m so grateful for it.” Sean Skaggs admires his mother’s depth of experience and generosity in sharing it. He also has a front-row seat to the different but equally effective communication styles of his parents—the detailed orientation of his father and the accessibility of his mother—and tries to incorporate a bit of each into his own approach. Watching his mother’s example, Mitchell Cooper says he saw how years of hard work and dedication keep the phone ringing. His doggedness in learning everything possible about a new concept, especially in retirement income planning, pairs well with his mother’s in-depth knowledge and orientation to detail. “I call her a walking underwriting guideline,” Mitchell Cooper says. Launi Cooper says her son has given her the power to peer into the future and see the business growing. “He’s taught me the passion of every single day and every single client,” she says. Her son also brings a sense of humor that relaxes every encounter, while she might hear questions differently and share a different take on the answers. “We do really work well together playing off each other,” she says. “The best day is when we get to meet a client together.” Work/Family Balance Preventing work from making family affairs toxic and vice versa demands the discipline of segregating different conversations from different tables, say the parents and children of family enterprises. The Turks credit the strength of their dual relationship to shared roots in faith and love, and they instill those values in the company. “We make sure that our employees know their families have to come first in their lives,” Terry Turk says. “I have the privilege every morning of picking up six of my grandchildren. That is precious, precious time for me, but it also gives Parker an extra hour to get into the office.” All in the Family continued from page 25 “It’s really helpful to have a partner in this business, someone you know you can trust just to talk things through. It’s not an easy business by any means. We have different strengths and weaknesses to pass off tasks to each other.” —Mitchell Cooper, CRMP, reverse mortgage adviser with Mutual of Omaha Mortgage 26 REVERSE MORTGAGE / JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2024
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