I took over my family's collapsing business at 27, made it profitable, and managed to sell it to a private equity group. Here are the 5 principles I followed.

• After graduating, Lauri Union took over her family's failing corrugated roofing business in 1992.
• As a 27-year-old president and CEO, she managed to turn the company around and sell it years later.
• Union shared five principles she said helped her save the sinking business tied to her name.

Lauri Union is the director of the Bertarelli Institute at Babson College. She helped run her family business Union Corrugating Company for more than 24 years, until 2016.

I never set out to take over the family business. My grandfather started a corrugated roofing company in North Carolina in 1946, and in the 1990s it was run by my parents while I finished business school. My plan after graduation was to live in Boston with my husband.