It’s already happening. Older business owners are retiring and closing businesses because they can’t find buyers. Universities and business support agencies are scrambling to set up succession planning courses and workshops. Chambers of commerce are making desperate efforts to find buyers. But there’s an unusual option most people overlook: employee ownership. If the business…
A young man approached me at a conference last month, trying to figure out how to get started on his big idea. He’d like to start a maker factory in Alberta, Canada. He can picture it filling thousands of square feet downtown with maker equipment, tools, specialized workspaces, and room to grow. But he…
“There never is enough time.” You probably would agree with me that we hear this phrase repeated over and over by people everywhere. Because time is a limited resource and we feel we never have enough, we’ve been bombarded with hundreds, if not thousands, of suggestions on how to make the most of the time…
In a recent conference call by the Orton Family Foundation, one of the listeners asked a great practical question: What are 3 actions most effective at starting a local company? —Jay B., KS My answer was: Try 3 small scale tests. That’s how you’ll build knowledge of what works, build an initial following…
Guest post by H. E. James, MBA Has your small business ever been dinged because of credit card fraud? The smaller the business, the harder it is to shoulder the chargeback costs when a fraudulent transaction occurs. Before October 2015, most of those charges were borne by credit card companies themselves rather than merchants…
This appeared in my newsletter for ministry leaders, “The Guy Down The Hall“. But Becky pointed out that the planes circle for small businesses, too, and I decided to share it here. I grew up near O’Hare Airport. We could always see planes lined up across the sky, waiting to land. At busy times, we could…
One of the limits we deal with as small town businesses is our suppliers. Rural retail businesses depend on wholesale suppliers for inventory, manufacturers need raw materials and restaurants need food to cook. Then we all have basics, like cash register tape, circuit breakers, and those 8′ long light bulbs you can’t seem to…
Building and running a business means handling a variety of tasks and duties. Some of those duties you may enjoy and some you may not. Some of those duties you may be good at and some may frustrate you. One task that many small-business owners continually tell me they neither enjoy nor feel competent at or…
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