This article is reprinted by permission from NextAvenue.org. Almost nine years ago, Rebecca Miller left her career as a lawyer to open a pie bakery in Columbia, Missouri, with her 69-year-old mother, Jeanne Plumley. “We literally had no clue what we were doing,” says Miller, “but despite generally getting in our own way, we’re now a company with over $1 million in sales and two locations.”
She and her mother have now added in Miller’s husband Jason as chief operating officer; their children, ages 17 and 20, also work for Peggy Jean’s Pies, which is named after Jeanne and her former pie-baking partner Peggy Day, who died in 2005 but whose business and baking skills are still revered. “When I say we are a family business, I really mean our entire family is in one or both stores every day,” Miller says. “And when we go home, my mom lives across the road from us, so we just never really leave the business part of our lives behind.” If anyone has the recipe for making a family business successful, it could be Miller. Related: Starting a business with your dad? Retirees and adult children are teaming up.Key ingredients: respect and patience “Look, we battled in some of our earliest days …