Your Brother Betrayed You for a Quick Payday.. You Own the Brand, and You’re About to Stop Him

What would you have done? Tue and Fri: one money drama where you make the call → https://toughcall.beehiiv.com/this-week In this fictional POV story, your older brother fires you in front of the whole shop floor of the boot company you rebuilt together, takes the maker's stamp off your bench, and offers you $25,000 to sign a paper that calls you an employee. What he doesn't know is that the company never owned the Tollefson name, and since August, you do. Twelve years ago the two of you brought a dead 1931 Wisconsin work-boot brand back to life on a handshake: you make the boots, he sells them. Now Darren is about to sign a deal that would put the name on factory boots in three hundred stores and cut twenty-eight jobs in Eau Claire. The deal needs the trademark owner's written consent, and he thinks that's someone else. Chapters: 0:00 The stamp 3:18 The box 4:19 The name 8:04 The letter 9:31 The porch 11:21 The front office 15:11 The offer 18:53 The parking lot 20:37 The first pair ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Disclaimer: This is a fictional story. Characters, events and financial figures are invented or illustrative. It is for entertainment and is not financial, investment, tax or legal advice. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Story figures: All figures are fictional. You bought the trademark for $400,000, $250,000 less than the retail chain offered for it. The severance offer is $25,000. The chain's deal is at least $6 million a year in orders, and the company's $2.1 million bank loan, personally guaranteed by your brother, renews only if that deal signs. A letter of intent carries a $300,000 break fee. At the table, the chain offers you $1.2 million a year to license the name to them directly. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Background: Tollefson Boot Company, Ridgeway Supply and Fourth Street Marks LLC are invented, and Eau Claire is used only as a setting. As general background, not legal advice: a trademark can be sold together with its goodwill, and the assignment can be recorded with the US Patent and Trademark Office, where the record is public. A trademark license can require the owner's written consent before the name is used on goods made elsewhere, and a trademark can be pledged as security for a loan. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ BOOKS TO EXPLORE Two reads for the questions this story turns on: who builds a business, and what partners owe each other out loud. The links below are affiliate links. I may earn a commission on qualifying purchases you make through them, at no extra cost to you. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. The E-Myth Revisited by Michael E. Gerber For thinking about the split between the person who makes the product and the person who runs the business. https://www.amazon.com/dp/0887307280/... Difficult Conversations by Douglas Stone, Bruce Patton, and Sheila Heen For saying the hard thing to family when a handshake deal and twelve years of silence have both run out. https://www.amazon.com/dp/014313759X/... ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Watch next:    • Your Brother Called Your Business a Hobby…...      • Your Father Gave the Family Business to Yo...      • Your Sister Called You the Family Failure…...   #POVFinance #YourMoneyPOV #FamilyBusiness #HiddenOwner #MoneyStory