In my last post, which you can read here, I gave the background of the Yost family, with whom I worked as a consultant.  The Yosts own a group of successful car dealerships.  Brothers Alan and Charlie make up the third generation of this family business, and both worked in the business.  Alan is determined to find the easy way through everything, and he never excelled in the business.  Charlie, on the other hand, transformed the dealership into an award-winning business with great profitability through 20 years of hard work.

When Charlie reached the breaking point and decided that Alan had to leave the business, it created a contentious situation that threatened to tear the family apart.  The brothers had a buy/sell agreement that stated that Charlie would have paid Alan just under $10 million for his share of the business.  Alan wanted more than the buy/sell would give him.  He hired an adversarial lawyer who worked on a contingency and promised Alan he could “get a lot more.“

I worked as an advisor with the Yosts to help them make their way through this buy/sell agreement.  In my meetings with the Yosts, I discovered that one of the most important core values of the family was their commitment to function from a place of integrity.  This principle was demonstrated by the actions of the brothers’ grandfather, business founder Fred Yost.

Integrity: Firm adherence to a code of especially moral values, incorruptibility.

Alan had a wonderful, loving relationship with his grandfather.  During Fred’s latter years, he and Alan had lunch once a week.  In those lunch meetings, Fred told Alan the stories that only a founder of a business can tell.  Those stories all contained a […]