Imagine you're the 64-year old retired CEO of a manufacturing company. Would you carry a pink business card with a tiny photo of a pug named Wheezie on it? What if your boss said you had to? What if, moreover, your boss was your 28-year-old daughter?
Robert Shipman carries that card. The pug in question is the mascot of a cosmetics company called the Balm that his daughter Marissa, now 33, started in 2003.
At first Shipman - who had sold his clothing manufacturing company that had $130 million in annual sales and retired in 1980 - balked at both the pink and the pug, but then he relented.
"We disagree on a lot of things, but I usually give in, because I'm amazed at her talent," he says of his elder child. (Her younger sister, Jordana, now works for the Balm too.) "She's created a product line with a national market. That isn't easy to do. I bow down to that."
Is it possible for someone who doesn't run a hedge fund or win the lottery to retire at 50 (or so)? Yes. (more) 
