brandise's Blog

I am really not sure. I just found out my uncle who I wrote about in previous blogs committed suicide. It seems that I am the "head" of the family and so I was notified by the police. I am trying to figure out what to do next and it starts wih telling my dad.

I am taking a moment to write this so that my friends here will understand why I am absent for the next bit. I am not sure what happens next but I doubt it will be good. Thanks for all of your friendship here and I will be back when I can.

My mood: extremely shocked
 

Update - I managed to get the finding on his cause of death changed to accidental since there was no insurance involved. I am now dealing with the family issues and I will get an update soon

 So, I have about an hour to kill before my next meeting starts and I think that writing this blog entry will help me get my head straight for the meeting. It is a pretty big meeting, even though the outcome is already decided. But I will come back to that.
 

After my grandma had her heart attack and was incapacitated with no clear time when she would come through it her advance directive and legal wishes kicked into gear. That's when I found out she had designated me her sole heir. I blogged about that whole thing earlier. So I found myself at the center of a lot of people needing decisions. There were documents to process, checks to sign, etc. etc. I was in shock but still tried to do right by my grandma. I sort of dove in and tried to learn fast and always kept the idea to “do what my grandma would have done” top of mind. I prayed it would be temporary and that she would get better, fix her will to spread it around and all would be fine.

That didn't happen. So now my days are pretty much filled with was my grandma's business which now seems to be mine. I say seems to be but the legal stuff is basically done, the estate is just going through the final stages and in reality it is mine. But it still seems impossible for this to be happening to me. I have had many questions from friend s here about what the business is so I am going to answer that with this blog.

This company started out way back in the day when my grandpa decided to quit his job and start his own business. My dad was still a baby then so it was way before me. He and my grandma had been working lots of different jobs to save money to do this. My grandpa worked full time as a construction foreman and worked in a liquor store at night. He also did side work for other construction companies. My grandma took in laundry, watched neighbor kids, and even cleaned houses. She had been educated as a bookkeeper and she also worked for a couple of small companies to keep their books.

When they started, they began by buying some land, and my grandpa built a warehouse on it. When it didn't sell they began to lease space in it and soon figured out they could make more money by doing that than they would have by selling it. My grandma came up with the formula and I won't bore you with details, but basically it was all about keeping debt down to almost nothing and then renting, leasing and using tax law to build up more money for the next project. Grandpa did the actual construction, grandma found the deals and managed the office.

By the time I came along the business was very successful and employed my dad and my uncle and a few other cousins and lots of people who became like family to my grandparents. Then my grandpa was killed in an accident. Grandma stepped up and kept things going with the help of her sons and the people in the company. And yes she decided to leverage my grandpa's insurance to help the business grow instead of retiring and living off of the insurance. She changed the nature of the business and started to acquire other businesses. It started with sub-contractors and other companies that her company needed as suppliers etc. But then she discovered just had a knack for locating businesses that could be successful but were being poorly managed. And she liked it.

So she would buy a company, get it straightened out and get the income etc to do the next deal. This company has become a company that does that kind of thing as its major activity. Absorb, correct and the manage the new acquisitions.

Then there was the family blow up. My mom had been pressing my dad to get out on his own anyway so my parents decided to move to southern Washington State and have a new start. My grandma gave my dad his “inheritance” to get started and wrote him out of the will. My uncle was a different story, but let's just say that he ended up out of the will too. Since I was first adopted by my parents, my grandma and I were very close. And for her own reasons she decided to make me her heir.

So what I inherited was this jumble of companies she had purchased and ran for years. She also had two very large deals pending that significantly added to the business. One of those has already closed, and the other is finalizing today which is the meeting I am waiting for. The deal I already processed was pretty big, but more along the lines of what my grandma's business did. Basically we bought out two partners who had about half the companies and real estate that my company has. The partners just made some bad financial decisions and bought into that whole leverage debt to expand faster thing, which works great until the economy takes a dip and the income won't keep up with the debt load. My grandma had negotiated the price of the company down to the point where the partners exited stage right and got paid for a year while at the same time negotiating with their creditors for a payoff on their debt. We ended up with a small dept burden and a recapitalized group of businesses.
 

The deal today is more scary to me. It is about the same type of thing, just bigger and involving different types of companies. This whole thing is only possible because of the previous deal and my grandma's genius. In a little less than an hour I am going to end up more doubling the size of my current business from the standpoint of number of employees. It is weird because the business I am buying is at a point where if this deal doesn't happen they are in bankruptcy. In reality it is way more than I want, but I also know if I don't do this deal a lot of people will be hurt and a huge opportunity will pass by. So onward and upward LOL.

So yesterday after dealing with all of the things that were going on at my grandma's office (I still think of it that way even though she is gone now and it is all me) I decided to get a flight home and see everyone I was missing. If you have missed what happened I have been in Seattle dealing with first my grandma having a heart attack and being in the hospital, to her passing and then finding out she left the family business to me.

So I have been dealing with my grandma's final wishes, learning about her complex business and making some pretty major decisions. All of the people that worked for her now look to me to lead and I know I am not doing an awesome job but at least I am holding it together. It's not like I am super rich or a business genius, but I have been treated as the head of a pretty good sized business. OK I admit that the people that work for me now have been awesome and they spoil me. And it is me that has changed not anyone else. But still.

Everyone here assumes that everything is the same as when I left. My mom said "Good you are home - clean your room and you need to do the dishes tonight." My brother asked me to drive him to his friend's house two minutes after I came through the door. My friends are like "Cool you are back there is a party tonight at ..." and "Let's go to the mall tomorrow." Only Troy and Alex have figured out that something has changed at least in me.

I feel like I exited reality when I came home. And the weird part is I used to fit into this "life" just fine. I know I changed and I should be patient and help my friends understand, but right now I feel like they should at least get it that my life has changed. Oh well. Ranting over.

I am sure this doesn’t make much sense to most of you, but I am writing this more for me than anything else. Trying to find my balance again. It seemed so much easier to write here than anywhere else. My EP friends have been awesome helping me cope and keeping a lifeline open for me. I will write more about the business and my changing life later.

...my Grandmother passed from this life to what comes next. I know I am still in shock over the whole thing, but I also know that she has led the way to a better place just as she has led our family to better places in her time with us. I will miss her but I also know she is always with me.

Thanks to everyone who has been so supportive over the last little bit since this whole ordeal started. 

I will have all day photo shoots. While it is cool to have this much demand for my pictures, it is taking up a lot of time. Still it is fun and I will be doing some new things tomorrow.

...I sort of broke it off with my current boyfriend. Lately we have had a few problems, mostly around him wanting me to change for him. The problem is I am pretty happy with me. I like what I am doing, I love my friends, I am looking forward to starting college for real (not just a summer course) and I still want to have fun.

Hopefully he will decide to still date me and have fun from time to time, but most likely he will start looking for a girl to mold into his future wife. But for sure that will not be me.

...and I am really looking forward to it. It will be most of the day so I won't really be around much until later in the day.