Distilling Shared Values and Heritage into a Family Brand with Dimitar Tsotsorkov

This week, I’m especially honored to welcome Dimitar Tsotsorkov, Chairman of the Supervisory Board of Asarel-Medet, the largest and most advanced copper mining and processing company in Bulgaria. Dimitar is the G2 family leader of the Tsotsorkov family, former Chairman of the Management Board of the family’s operating business, and active philanthropist through the “Lachezar Tsotsorkov” Foundation, which he established in honor of his father, who was the G1 wealth creator of the family. Dimitar was recognized as a Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) Pioneer for Digital Transformation of the United Nations Global Compact Sustainable (UNGC) development initiative and became the first manager of a mining company to win the prestigious award in 2022.

As a G2 family leader of a highly enterprising family, Dimitar is carrying forward his father’s great legacy and laying the foundations on which his family can continue to flourish in the future. He recounts the rich history of his family and shares his personal journey as a business owner and family leader, tapping into the captivating stories of his family’s entrepreneurial achievements over the past 100+ years.

Dimitar and his family are firm believers in the importance of a strong culture, and they even undertook a thoughtful and systematic process to craft and formalize their “family brand”. Dimitar talks about this exercise and sheds light on the reasons why a family brand is important in his view and how he and his fellow family members arrived at their family brand.

The Tsotsorkov family also made a concerted effort to distill and formulate the shared values of their family – or as they call them, their “values in action”. Dimitar reflects on the importance of values and describes how they went about defining theirs, and what they mean to everyone in his family.

Throughout these important and systematic undertakings, Dimitar and his family identified a number of helpful practical tools, such as rituals and life milestones, which they deployed with the entire family to build their brand and establish the family culture. Dimitar describes the importance of these tools and how he uses them with his family members. Another pillar of his family culture is continuous learning and development, and to achieve that goal, Dimitar has instituted individual development plans (IDPs) for all family members. He describes this practice and how it is working for his family, not only with the younger G3 rising-gen members but also with the older “now” generations.

Don’t miss this exceptional conversation with one of the most enterprising, forward-thinking, and generous multigenerational enterprise families within the FOX community.