I finally got around to discussing new ownership shares with all of the current LLC business partners, and George poo-pooed the idea for everyone but one person. He didn't think one employee could afford it at all, so he said "Why bother offering it to him?" It's my impression that he doesn't like the second person on the list, and as I mentioned with an earlier employee, he won't work with this person unless I force him to. He also seemed very upset that I'm offering my ownership to Cooper, but not offering any more ownership to him. He didn't say anything during the meeting, but clearly made one of those faces people make, and said something about this later in the day to me.
LLC business partner issues
If I haven't mentioned it before, I think Jack and George are the two most money-driven people I've ever met. I'm not saying there's necessarily anything wrong with their approach to money, it's just different than mine, and I've just never known two people who seem as "money-oriented" as they are. I don't care what they do in their personal lives, but when it comes to making business decisions and they want to take the short-term view of money -- like suggesting we lay some people off when business was slower after the dot-com bubble and again in 2002 -- I can't allow that.
Not getting an opportunity to buy a larger ownership interest in the company seems to have really upset George, but as I tried to explain to him, way back when he was first made a business partner, I told him I was hoping to have a group of other business partners with 5-10% ownership shares, and I didn't want to go higher than 10%, unless the partners made some purchases between each other. He still wasn't happy, but this was the truth, and still is.
The business partners also noted as a group that if I was interested in selling any more interest to them, they would appreciate it if I lowered the price to $9,000 or $10,000 per share, but they thought $12,000 was also reasonable.