How to Grow a Family Business Across Three Generations in Canada
Peter Pleša didn't build GN Corporation. His grandfather did, starting from a machine shop in Alberta after fleeing communist Croatia with nothing. Sixty years later, Peter is the third generation running it alongside his father and three siblings, and on the podcast he talked about what actually keeps a family business, and a family, working that long.
From Communist Croatia to a Machine Shop in Alberta
Peter's grandfather grew up in Croatia during a period of war and Communist rule. His own father worked in the government's forestry ministry while quietly opposing the regime. When the government found out, they came looking to kill him and killed his brother instead. Peter's grandfather and his surviving brothers fled the country to survive.
He arrived in Canada with no English and, in his own words, "didn't even have two coins to make noise together." He first landed in Quebec, near family, but there was no work for him there, so he was told to try his luck out west. His trade was journeyman machinist, which is why GN is still in manufacturing today. He worked for other machine shops at first, where immigrants were paid noticeably less than everyone else doing the same job. So he and his brother George decided to start their own shop instead. They called it George and Nick's Machine Works. The two initials became GN, the name the company still carries as GN Corporation.
Turning an Alberta Machine Shop Into a Global Manufacturer
Peter and his two brothers now run growth and strategy for GN, while their sister leads the customer-facing side of the business. A lot of what the three of them have been doing is pushing the company into new countries and new industries, from aerospace and defense to agriculture and forestry, with more announcements coming later this year.
People's first reaction, Peter said, is usually something like: what is a manufacturer doing out of Airdrie, Alberta? Isn't that oil and gas country? Then he shows them the facility, and the reaction changes. He sees a direct line between that surprise and his family's immigrant history. Moving into an unfamiliar industry, he said, takes the same skill his grandfather needed moving into an unfamiliar country: you don't know how the game is played yet, so you have to learn the norms before you can compete. He pointed to something as small as hand gestures, or getting his own last name pronounced correctly (there's an accent over the S in "Pleša" that gives it a "sh" sound, so it's Plesha, not Pleesa), as the kind of detail that trains you to notice what's different before you walk into a new market. On a trip to Brazil, his team learned that lesson directly: their hosts told them they'd never book a working lunch, they'd take an hour to relax instead. "Here," Peter said, "we're lunatics. We'll work until we're literally dead."
The Business Runs Like a Team, Not a Family
One phrase bothers Peter when he hears other companies use it: "We're a big family." To him, it isn't accurate. A company isn't your family, no matter how the leadership frames it. The comparison he prefers is a sports team: everyone has a position, everyone depends on everyone else, and if one person isn't carrying their weight, it shows up somewhere down the line.
He runs his own part of the business on that same principle: give people the vision, give them clear parameters, then trust them to do the job without hovering. He said that's largely how his father operates too, and how retired machinists who worked under his grandfather still describe him, unprompted, decades later: someone who showed them how to do things better and took the time to do it. Peter never got to see that firsthand, but he sees it passed down in how his father runs GN today, and he's trying to build the same habit himself.
What Ronaldo and the Florida Panthers Taught Him About Leadership
Asked who inspires him as a leader, Peter named his father first. Beyond that, he said he borrows pieces from wherever he finds them, mostly from sports. He mentioned Ronaldo handing a penalty kick to a struggling teammate instead of taking the shot himself, and the Florida Panthers' coach deliberately sending out his fourth line for the final shift of the game because that line had carried the team through an earlier series. He also brought up the Panthers letting a player who had never held the Stanley Cup be the first to lift it.
To Peter, the pattern across all of it is the same: a good leader isn't too selfish to let the team shine, because a leader only rises as far as the people around them do. "Leadership is a journey, not a destination," he said, quoting a professor from a course he once took. Before anything else, he said, it's about being someone worth following.
Two Identities, and Staying Steady Through the Hard Days
Peter was born and raised in Canada, and so was his father, but he grew up immersed in Croatian culture too: church, school, community. He said the two identities never really clashed for him. The closest thing to a conflict was choosing who to cheer for when Canada played Croatia in soccer. His grandfather felt the same pull in reverse: he never let go of where he came from, but late in life he'd say plainly, "I'm a Canadian now." When Peter's father built his grandfather's tombstone, he set a Croatian coat of arms as the base, with a Canadian flag on top.
Peter closed the conversation with the same steadiness he described in his grandfather. He talked about pacing himself the way you'd pace a workout: better to put in thirty focused minutes several days a week than two hours once and burn out for the rest of it. He said he still has rough stretches, a couple of days at a time, where he doesn't feel like himself, and his practice is to let himself feel it rather than fight it, then get back to it. "The world's not on fire," he said. "There's a lot of good happening. We'll find a way through."
Key takeaways
- Splitting roles among family members, customer relationships versus growth and strategy, is what let Peter, his two brothers, and his sister run the business together without stepping on each other.
- Moving into a new industry takes the same adaptability as moving to a new country: learn how the game is played before you assume you already know the rules.
- Give people a clear vision and real autonomy, then get out of their way. Peter's model for leadership is a sports team, not a family.
- Sustainable effort beats bursts of intensity. Pace yourself, expect off days, and get back to it instead of trying to be "on" all the time.