Holly Lien’s earliest memories are of coming to work with her dad on the weekends, driving around the empty quarry, and hearing firsthand all the cool things happening at Pete Lien & Sons. The stories continued at the nightly dinner table, where Holly and her sisters, Courtney and Bailey, would intently listen to their father recap his workday.
“I would say I don’t remember not talking about the family business. My dad was so proud of the business and having us involved,” Holly said. “I don’t think it was his intention to develop us into the family business, but he was so proud of what he did that it made us naturally gravitate towards it.”
Not only did Holly and her sisters learn about the family business from their father, Pete, but they were raised as little entrepreneurs by their grandparents. When Holly was eight years old, her grandparents brought the grandkids together to form Greatkids Incorporated, a name created by the kids. “They wanted to help their grandchildren learn about the blessings of free enterprise and the joy of living in the United States.”
It was a business that flourished for years.
The group of young entrepreneurs would meet quarterly to learn about business, specifically Pete Lien & Sons, taking tours, riding equipment, and eventually creating their own business development plan for Greatkids Pumpkin Patch. “We sold out in the first week we were operational,” Holly said, pointing to a framing of their first dollar made in 2002. “We did everything that goes into developing a business. At the time, we were thinking it was just a fun thing to do with our cousins, but they were teaching us about how cool it was to live in the United States, operate a business, and grow it.”
Holly, along with two of her cousins, have recently taken over leadership of Pete Lien & Sons, the fourth generation of a Black Hills-based company that was started in 1944 by Holly’s great-grandfather Pete Lien.
In the early 1940s, Pete Lien moved his family to the Black Hills from Waubay, South Dakota to work as a contractor. In 1944, he purchased the old Black Hills Marble Quarry, the area west of the company’s current corporate offices. He started his mining business, Pete Lien & Sons, with his two sons, Chuck, Holly’s grandfather, and Bruce, with an initial goal of supplying rock needed for the construction of the Rapid City Army Air Base, now Ellsworth Air Force Base.
However, the company quickly turned into much more. Pete Lien & Sons, almost in its 80th year, supplies products for materials all over the world, from sports fields and food preservatives to water purification, kitty litter, and beer bottles.
“We started the quarry for construction-grade material and have been known for that locally for many years,” Holly said. The company expanded to the industrial mineral side in 1949 with the purchase of an iron ore facility in Nemo, South Dakota, as well as purchasing a number of sand and gravel locations in the 1950s. In the 1960s, Pete Lien & Sons expanded to the lime business, building a plant at the quarry. Then, in the early 1970s, acquired a plant and quarry in Colorado allowing them to begin pulverizing the limestone. “We take the limestone and cook it into quick lime and make it into a product that is primarily used for pollution control – neutralizing acid to make water drinkable, putting it in coal-fired power plants, so there is no acid rain that comes from them.”
The calcium oxide is supplied to cities all over the country, including Spokane and San Francisco, for water treatment.
And while many people see Pete Lien & Sons as a mining company, Holly sees it as much more.
Pete Lien & Sons considers mining as a temporary benefit of land optimization, Holly said. The company’s focus, she said, is on concurrent reclamation, ensuring the land is restored to a better state than when they found it.
“That was important to our owners long before the EPA started regulating mines,” Holly said.
The company has received many national recognitions in its nearly 80-year history. In 1961, 15 years before reclaiming was required by law, Pete Lien & Sons received the Letter of Recommendation from the U.S. Department of Agriculture for achievement in conservation and reclamation. “This was something in the Black Hills that had never been done before since mining began in 1876 with Custer’s Expedition.”
In 1980, Pete Lien & Sons was awarded the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Earth Care Award. To date, Pete Lien & Sons is the only quarrying company to receive the prestigious designation. The award was presented by Academy-Award winning actor Robert Redford.
In 2004, the company received the Environmental Steward Award from the National Stone Sand & Gravel Association, the first time in history the award went to a company’s president.
Now 40 and the chief marketing officer, Holly said much of her success is from her mentorship provided by her father, grandparents, and other family members. Chuck Lien, who passed away in 2018 at 93, continued to go to work six days a week, passing along his wisdom until the last few days of his life. Her aunts Sam Brannan, chairwoman of the board; Suzy Gabrielson, chief corporate treasurer; Larece Shattuck, treasury manager; and uncles, Joel Brannan, former COO; and Bert Jocks, land rider, always took great pride and effort in ensuring next-generation development was one of their most important job functions.
While she works in sales, Holly understands each department of Pete Lien & Sons. She is in her 17th year working for the company, not counting each summer she worked growing up. “My dad’s generation did a good job exposing people who wanted to be in the business long-term to many different job functions. It is invaluable to know the different parts. It builds a more cohesive team to know what each person is going through, which makes you a better leader.”
While the next generation brings with them the knowledge gained from past leaders, they also bring with them new ideas and perspectives.
Holly, her cousins Hayden Fuchs, chief financial officer, and Joe Brannan, area director for the company’s Colorado Ready Mix Division recently, and longtime employee Brian Tideman, Chief Operation Officer, created a new vision statement to fit the company’s future.
The new statement, “Enthusiastically Developing Essential Resources for our Aspiring Communities” encompasses the company’s focus.
Holly credits Pete Lien & Sons’ success and longevity to the principles it was originally founded upon and carried throughout the generations. “I think that oftentimes family businesses fall apart because of not having a unified foundation, morals, and vision for what they want for the future – not having something bigger than yourself. It was indoctrinated to us since we were kids that this family business is here to pass on to future generations. And although we don’t always share the same opinions, we all have that one single goal in mind.”
The fourth generation of family leaders is already planning for the next generation.
“Although I am an owner and shareholder in the company, I feel like I am just a placeholder to hold shares and pass them on to my daughter and hopefully her children one day. Hopefully, Pete Lien & Sons will continue for many more generations.”