Go to college, no matter what, even if your grades stink. Take a year at a community college if you need to prove to someone you can handle the bookwork.
Then major in whatever you like. If it's connected to your father's business or not, it'll be useful.
This was my first thought too.
My second thought was that the "smart, but bad grades" bit strikes me as having some (to be polite)
"Developmental Needs" in learning personal discipline. FWIW, I was the same way.
When you graduate, take over the business. Once you're in charge, you can do whatever you want, including whatever in option B you find appealing.
The company's a good starting point, but I'd recommend NOT starting at the top, unless you want to try to screw things up.
I'd make it a point to come in at the bottom and actually learn the business. This will do a couple of things, some of which are good for you, and some of which are good for the company.
Specifically, what's good for you is that you get to decide if you like the company business without committing yourself to eventually running it. This way if it sucks eggs, you can bail out to try something else.
What's good for the business is that they don't get screwed up / ruined by you. That's in the short term. In the long term, if you love the business and stay, you'll have a much deeper & better understanding of the company's core business and how it works than if you started at the top and tried to look down.
BTW, do keep in mind that these two work together nicely: early on, you can tell everyone that you don't know what you want (truth!) and that there's no reason for they to ass-kiss you, etc...and by doing so, you'll learn from the inside up who the really good people are (if you decide to stay).
This reads like a page from my wife's life book. She was/is brilliant...She's smart as a whip and can do anything put in front of her, but without any sort of college degree, it's hard to prove to most employers that you are what you say you are unless you have some experience in the particular field you are looking in. Now, at 28, she is considering going back and getting an actual degree so that she can move on.
Quite understandable. For better or worse, one really needs to "punch the ticket" on a college degree. Where I'm working, I was held back for years because I resisted going on to get my Master's Degree. I finally caved in and it didn't really make a lick of difference in what I knew or did on the job, but having that piece of paper allowed me to advance up the job promotion chain, and now I have more interesting stuff to work on.
This. Go to college then run the business. You'll be better prepared to run it, and if god forbid, the company ever goes under, you'll be far more qualified to find another job.
Another way to look at it is that when you "own" the company, you can decide how many weeks of vacation you want to take...and you're more likely to have the resources to do it.
BUT ... there's a HUGE danger in me even making this suggestion, because it is almost a cliche that it is the 3rd generation that kills off the family business.
I've never studied the reasons why...it seems to be a lack of appreciation for the hard hard work and sacrifices that their father made in order to define his father as a success. This seems to create strain between the 2nd & 3rd generation ... and the 2nd generation wants to twist the arm of the 3rd into taking over the company even if they don't want to.
I'm not a psychiatrist, but I'm inclined to think of a familiy business as another child in the household, which means that there's the potential for the equivalent of sibling rivalry to occur and so forth: the 3rd generation reluctantly agrees to take over, but then (perhaps subconciously) proceeds kills his rival sibling, which is the business.
So I really don't know what to recommend here. Maybe print out these posts and show them to your father...and have a long, honest discussion with him.
Ideally, you two can hopefully figure out a mutually agreeable business plan where (a) he can be happy, (b) you can be happy, and (c) the company continues to prosper ... with or without anyone in your family being involved.
Now here's the kicker: you mentioned that he's already been working in the business for 30 years,
which means you're already on a deadline, particularly if you think that you might enjoy working the family business.
To work in round numbers, if college takes 5 years, and evein you work summers in the business, by the time that you wrap that up and then get 5 solid years of post-college experience (that's barely enough time, IMO), Dad will have 30+5+5 = 40 years in the company...if he started at age 20-25, that puts him at age 60-65 and while he could go another 10 years, he really needs to start to work hard on his succession plan, as well as how he wants to define his retirement. Perhaps he wants to have a retirement that doesn't involve all of the daily high stress that he's had for the past 30+ years...or perhaps he wants to stay on until he dies...you don't know until you ask.
What this also means is that part of your (a,b,c) business plan should include (d): Dad's health. To be blunt, demand & extract concessions where he's going to take take specific steps to care of his health (MD checkups on a specfic schedule, etc). If there's been other family issues (feuds or other things that would benefit from reconciliation, taking vacations/time off, etc), have these listed as objectives too (e,f).
What's in it for him is that it will do his company no good if he drops dead from a heart attack at age 52 before you're ready.
FYI, when I went through college, one of the things that they told us at Admissions was that the #1 non-academic reason for kids dropping out was the health of the guy paying the tuition.
So in summary, what I'd recommend is for you to do is:
A) Go to College
B) Set aside at least a day every Semester, for a "Business Project Review" with your father to see how (a,b,c,d,e,f) are working out ...or not working.
C) Make sure Dad keeps up his end of the bargain by taking care of himself, vacations, etc...whatever else you two agreed on.
This all might sound like a tall order, but if you read through it a few times, you'll realize that it breaks down into a couple of simple topics: take care of yourself, take care of family, take care of the family business.
One of the absolute hardest things can be for a family management group to admit that they don't have the within-family expertise/skills/interest to keep the business going, so the only right thing to do for the business is to sell it to someone who can keep it going - - the key thing to keep in mind here is that an ongoing successful enterprise is financially worth a lot more than one that has crashed & burned, so if you do have to let go of it, you want to do so while it is still a success.
-hh
you can do what you want with it. treat your family that took care of you to a life they havent experienced - maybe they might like it?
