Taken from Irvin Goodon’s recent autobiography
“Climbing — One Pole at a Time.”
The Biggest Mistake of My Life
From the early 1980’s to 2001, the company (Goodon Industries) was growing each year and I was in my office on a daily basis, except when we wintered in Arizona. My business partner did the same, other than he went to Hawaii. We continued to have a good partnership and made decisions together. We had good employees and we served, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta and part of British Columbia and Ontario. We had Canadian and American crews. We were building close to one thousand buildings a year and we were making good profits.
I look back at the beginning when we only built three buildings the first year and how we grew from there. We dug holes by hand and later got a motorized hand held auger. When we hit a stone as we were digging, it would throw us to the ground because the auger didn’t stop. We used home sawn lumber and poles, which sometimes I would cut and skid in the morning, saw in the afternoon and deliver it to the job site at night, only to return in the morning to help with the building. It was sort of a one-man show. When I heard of someone who wanted to build, I would drive out to met with them and try to convince them to go with us. That was sometimes hard to do because we were not very well known and the fact that we were Métis didn’t help. By that time I had developed a bit of business savvy and personality. I was able to sell myself to most people. But it wasn’t easy. Nothing was easy those days. I had to work hard to make things happen. There weren’t any eight-hour days or four and a half day weeks. We quit early at six p.m. on Saturday.
I could go on and on about the start up years of Goodons, but I think I made my point. I am not complaining about those tough years. I just wanted to give you a little history lesson on how Goodons got started. If I had to do it all over again, I would do the same thing, only the ending would be different.
In 2001, my business partner suggested we sell some shares to two men who worked for us. I agreed. It was probably the biggest mistake I ever made. I am a trusting person and I thought there would be appreciation and respect shown, but I was wrong. That was the beginning of the end of the family participation in the business I had founded and had worked my whole life on.
About a year into the partnership Will (my son) decided he wanted to go to Harvard University. He was accepted and I decided then that perhaps it was time to turn my shares over to Will. I talked it over with him and he saw the potential and accepted the offer. When I told the partners, they initially disagreed. That upset me very much. I was the founder of this company and worked my butt off to get it off the ground. With my business partner’s help, we got it to where it was. But the two new partners thought that they were going to tell me what to do with my shares. I don’t think so. Not to get into the details, but let’s just say that with my initial partner’s help we persuaded them to change their minds. Will came in as an equal partner, but “in my opinion” was never accepted as an equal partner. He was young and inexperienced in his new surroundings. He couldn’t do his job effectively under the circumstances. I stayed on as a good-will ambassador and helped to make important decisions. In one of our meetings the decision was made that if there was any problem concerning Will in any way, we would call a meeting immediately and deal with it.
In December 2005, Marge and I were in Arizona, supposedly for the winter when we received a phone call from Will. He told me that the other three partners had gotten together and had informed him that they wanted to buy him out. The proper time to do this should have been before I left for Arizona. Out of respect and gratitude for the position I put them in, they should have called me to set up a meeting with Will and myself. I am sure we could have worked things out. But no. They waited until I was gone and dropped the bomb on Will.
So Marge and I came home on January 5th. We had intended to stay until April. We couldn’t leave Will to face this crisis on his own. It was a very hard time in our lives. We had a lot of stress to deal with. I felt betrayed by one of the people who I trusted most in my life and by the people who never worked for their shares like I had done.
I can’t imagine doing what was done to me and to my family. There wouldn’t be any Goodon Industries if it weren’t for me. They wouldn’t be in the position they are in if I hadn’t been generous with them. Every parent dreams of passing on to their children what they work for all their lives, but never do they expect to have it all taken away…
The negotiations went badly to say the least and the shotgun clause was put into action. A shotgun clause is when a partner can refuse to sell but he has to buy out the remaining partners for the same price he was offered. This sounds fair enough, until in our situation all three partners got together and made the offer. Now Will would have to buy out all three partners, which meant paying three times as much as he was offered. We considered buying them out but when we sat back and took a good look at the deal, we decided against it and took their offer.
I can’t say that we will forget it, but there are too many other good things going on in our lives.
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