Episode notes
Imagine what it must be like to watch your family dynasty crumble before your eyes.
My guest is Frances Stroh, fifth-generation member of the Stroh brewery dynasty and award-winning author of: Beer Money: A Memoir of Privilege and Loss.
By the mid-1980s, Frances’s family, having founded Detroit’s Stroh Brewing Company in the 1850s, held the largest private beer fortune in America. But a little over a decade later, that $9 billion dynasty had collapsed.
In this episode, Frances reflects on the problems that led to the value destruction and tells a cautionary tale for enterprising families everywhere about entitlement and the vagaries of fortune.
Frances and I also discuss the conflicting messages she received growing up from parents who had extremely different money habits – a frugal mother and a spendy father – and wh ...