Handing over or inheriting control of a family business requires planning

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The owners of small to midsize businesses (SMBs) are stressed because

Most owners understand that working harder doing the same old things in the same old way, will not secure the viability of their corporate asset. Many are looking for a solution—including selling their business.  Having coached SMB owners through a major recession, I believe that the majority of them have not given end-game options a second thought...

 Few CEOs have an answer to this important question.  Unfortunately,

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grow profits and owner equity by creating transferable wealth and wisdom

The National Federation of Independent Business — which always seems to have the gloomiest or, depending on how you look at it, realistic data — found small-business owners’ confidence in December had risen for the fourth month in a row. Their headline: “While Economic Winter Continues, It Appears to be Getting Warmer.”...

“To start a business, the CEO must be everything.  To grow a business

Radically shifting markets, a plethora of price challenging products, ever changing technology, and the unrelenting hand of time are making the aging owners of small to mid size businesses (SMBs) vulnerable. For many of them, this is a new and uncomfortable mindset. Fiercely independent, hard working, and resilient, the majority of SMB owners  have...

The “shift-age” is ushering in fierce competition for market

While beta testing a management system designed to help SMB owners create transferable wealth and wisdom,  I worked with several smaller companies who were offering customers a boutique experience. Many of these owners were reluctant to fully embrace process-discipline. They preferred operating with the flexibility of a jazz band (playing by ear)...

The marketplace is shifting because of global competition and the impact

of digital technology. And, like a wheel within a wheel, so are internal business dynamics. The age-old challenge of managing growth continues—it’s a challenge that eventually confronts every CEO. If the management of corporate growth is not dealt with effectively, the entrepreneur...

WHAT”S YOUR ENDGAME?  Unfortunately, few business owners have an

 When transfer time arrives, what will their business be worth?   By ignoring end-game options they are acting like they own a job—not the company.  Potential investors or successors will have little interest in acquiring their job.  SMBs shouldn’t wait until it’s too late—they should start preparing for a transfer of the business...

The 20 point drop in the Vistage CEO Confidence Index this year is shocking

My generation grew up with a relative level of stability. We are simply not accustomed to the notion of “economic uncertainty” and we are not very happy about it. As a result, we have the tendency to overreact to stimuli in the form of collective euphoria or collective despair. This emotional response explains the nature of bubbles, as we all race...

A headline in today’s Wall Street Journal reads, “Fed up: Texas

Executives at Main Street Bank are thinking outside of the box.  They’ve decided to die and come back to life in a new form.  They are reinventing themselves—outside of the state banking system.  Slipping the regulatory noose, they believe, will help them serve a cash starved business community. Paul Merskki of the Independent Community Bankers...