Your Brother Made You Pretend to Work for Him… Not Knowing You Own His Biggest Client

What would you have done? Every Tuesday and Friday, one money drama where you make the call → https://toughcall.beehiiv.com/this-week In this fictional POV story, your older brother hands back your Coast Guard license and tells you to stand in his boatyard as his chief engineer, and to say "cousin," not "brother," when the ferry line's investigators arrive. What he doesn't know is that the ferry line, and both boats on blocks in his yard, belong to you. A fuel hose his crew fitted split on the Ida Rose and sprayed diesel onto a hot exhaust, and the contract says a licensed chief signs off every engine job. Troy hasn't had one since July, so he put your name in the safety review. In the engine room, the investigator hands you a pen and asks you to initial the sign-off as yours. Chapters: 0:00 The license 1:45 Monday 3:21 Seven boats 4:50 The truck 6:12 The walk-through 8:12 The engine room 10:06 The speaker 11:47 No cure 14:19 Gravel 15:37 The review 16:18 Six in the morning 17:10 April 18:04 The list ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 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. The Skerry Island Ferry Line runs seven boats and takes in about $26 million a year. You bought it four years ago for $31 million: $9 million of your own and a $22 million bank loan. Last year the line paid your brother's yard $2.6 million of its $4.7 million, and he borrowed $1.9 million for a new boat lift and piers on the strength of that work. The line's claim for the nine days the Ida Rose sat out is $310,000. A licensed chief engineer costs about $120,000 a year. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Background: Tisdale Marine, Bracken Harbor, Skerry Island, the Skerry Island Ferry Line, Tern Rock Holdings and Port Ellery Shipyard are invented. Lake Michigan and Lansing are used only as settings. General background, not legal advice: Hose in the fuel system of a small Coast Guard-inspected passenger vessel has to meet a fire-resistant marine standard (46 CFR 182.720, Cornell LII): https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/... In Michigan, a limited liability company's articles of organization name a resident agent and registered office and do not have to list the members (Michigan Department of Licensing and Regulatory Affairs, Corporations Division): https://www.michigan.gov/lara/bureau-... Yard contracts like the one in this story are commonly a master agreement with a work order per job, which the buyer can end for cause after a material breach or settle with a written cure plan. This contract's terms are fictional. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ BOOKS TO EXPLORE Two reads for the questions this story turns on: telling family the truth you've been holding back, and a business that runs on one person's say-so. 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. Difficult Conversations by Douglas Stone, Bruce Patton, and Sheila Heen For the talk with a brother after he borrowed your name and you let him walk into it. https://www.amazon.com/dp/014313759X/... The E-Myth Revisited by Michael E. Gerber For thinking about a small shop that depends on one skilled person, and what it takes to build the second check into the work. https://www.amazon.com/dp/0887307280/... ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 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