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Great employees are a wonderful gift, but individual heroics aren’t healthy for your business. Someday, you will start thinking about leaving the business. When you begin planning for your transition, what will your company systems sound like when you describe them to a critical buyer? Read More

Every owner wants to maximize resources. The whole concept of profitability is based on doing the most with the least, but we often are trapped in the prevailing thought pattern about how things “should” be done. Read More

When can good customers be bad? What could be wrong with a customer who buys a lot, pays promptly, and never has a service problem? They might be buying too much. No matter how strong or comfortable a sales relationship is, it could end. Read More

In an owner-managed company, a CEO job description can be a bit vague. The simple (and usual) answer is that the CEO of a small business has two responsibilities. He or she does whatever he wants to do, as long as it includes everything that no one else wants to do. Read More

Do you run an immortal business? If you answered “no,” or hesitated to be sure of your response, then you don’t think of your business as immortal. So when do you plan to shut it down? Most owners react viscerally to that question. They’ve invested too much to watch their companies become a memory. Read More

There are various approaches to employee peer review. Comprehensive multi-level feedback, top-down and bottom-up comparisons, and even the lightening fast Stoplight 360. In many instances, however, the most powerful rating system is the internal market. Read More

Checklist for vetting a financial buyer: Do you trust them? Can you see working side by side with them as your partners? Do they understand your business and your customers, or are they just looking at your financial statements? How important to you is the future of your employees and your reputati Read More

Employees who make bad choices in their personal lives usually create problems in the workplace. Should you take their issues outside of the business into consideration when hiring or assigning responsibility? The legal answer of course, is “no.” Employers are expected to erect a Chinese wall aroun Read More

When I interview a prospective client for exit planning assistance, we usually explore selling to employees. The first reaction is always “That won’t work. They don’t have any money.” If you have a company with reasonable cash flow, a talented management team and sufficient time, selling to employe Read More

Business owners can’t teach everything necessary to run a growing company. We turn to the outside for experienced employees who can bring what they learned elsewhere to our team.In many cases, we are looking for someone who has performed at the next level and can help the company grow into what the Read More