PODCAST · business
Business Concern
by Rick Riebesell
Owners of a private business interest have concerns about maximizing the value received from that interest, preventing and resolving owner disputes, and implementing an owner agreement with buy-sell provisions. This podcast deals with these issues.
Episodes
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Who Reviews the CEO?
With middle-market or main street businesses, the common business entity selected has been the limited liability company instead of the corporate entity. Even though S corporations provide pass-through taxation similar to the partnership taxation of limited liability companies, a majority of...
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"Leave Well Enough Alone"
In the arena of closely held businesses, owners are often the founders and the most productive elements of the business. When a business succeeds and consistently earns a profit, the owner, serving as both producer and policy-maker, can make the decision to "leave well enough alone." Doing this,...
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Slow Is Smooth, Smooth Is Fast
Something bad and unexpected happens. It is upsetting. Anxiety takes over. The adrenaline response is to do something, anything, right now to stop the bleeding. Soldiers and emergency medicine physicians train for exactly this moment, and they train against the adrenaline reflex response.…
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The Legacy Trap
Why Owner-Centered Businesses Sell for Less Successful businesses are not successful solely because of the owners. In my experience, successful businesses have established a culture of performance standards and effective decision-making that enables success. So, is it appropriate for an owner to...
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Threats to Business Value are Foreseeable and Preventable
The three ways business owners lose the value of their businesses are conflict with co-owners, the loss of a critical owner, and failure to prepare for sale. Owners reading this might be surprised to learn that the threats are preventable.
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Accomplish Continuous Improvement of Performance
To ask that every performance be better than the last is to place tremendous pressure on the performer. The aspect of performance is at the heart of most endeavors. Intuitively, we know that performance is not a constant, but in a competitive situation, the goal is for it to improve over a set...
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The Time Thief
We have all been there. Rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. There was always an unspoken vision – never written but certainly desired. But things got in the way. The problem was that so many issues came up. There was never a quiet period when things could be thought out. There was never...
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Delegate – Unlock the Maximum Value of Your Business
Owners of small to medium sized businesses often find it hard to delegate management tasks. This is especially true of founders of the business. Here is a critical truth: to the extent you are engaged in management of the business, you are decreasing the value a buyer will pay for the business. A...
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The Risks of Not Implementing an Owner Agreement
Owners of small to medium sized businesses want to realize the maximum value for their business interests. There are many risks preventing realizing maximum value for a business interest – most can be avoided by the implementation of an owner agreement. Where an owner does not hold a controlling...
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Lightning
I like to walk my dog, but the other day when the time came, I decided not to. The disappointing reason was that when I looked outside, I could see lightning and hear thunder. At the same time, I saw my neighbor outside walking his dog and looking very unconcerned. I later learned that during the...
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Business Failure
One in four private sector U.S. businesses fail within their first year of operation. After five years, almost half (48%) have failed. After ten years, the failure rate is 65.3%. (According to data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.) Generally, businesses fail when they run out of cash.…
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Discovering the Owner Agreement for Your Business
Where there is a small or medium sized business with more than one owner, there is an owner agreement. It may not be obvious – in most cases it is not written. But for any multi-owner business the owner agreement must be there for the business to function. To start a business there must be...
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Where to Find Help
As the owner of a small to medium size business, you may have felt the need to ask for help but not felt comfortable doing so. Owners of businesses are often skilled in the business they own and enjoy the respect of their family and friends. If their businesses are successful (profitable), it is...
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Creation of Wealth for Business Owners
Among the common goals of members of a capitalistic economy is the creation of wealth. This is often a reason why people own businesses. For an individual, the concept of wealth creation is the escape from dependence on earning funds for current expenses to live a certain lifestyle to building up...
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When Planning Becomes Dynamic
Traditional planning is static. If there is a written plan, we see the plan formulated, documented in writing, presented at a meeting, and then put on the shelf to be consulted for next year's retreat. This is the opposite of a forceful and changing dynamic plan. A dynamic plan can accomplish...
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The Concept of Time – How Its Progression Affects Important Tasks
The Concept of Time – How Its Progression Affects Important Tasks Time is the progression of events from the past to the present into the future. Time marches forward relentlessly. From birth to death, we age, and every moment that passes is unique and unrepeatable. The more important tasks we...
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Pay Attention to What is Important
In the new year make sure you pay attention to what is important but not urgent. This is the time to make resolutions – that process involving review of the past year and resolving to do something different in the new year. It is a given that urgent but not important matters often replace…
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Important Accomplishments
As a business owner imagine how it would feel at the end of the year to look back and realize you have reached one or more important accomplishments. You used your values to create a strategy. You set a goal at the beginning of the year. You created a plan to act to accomplish the goal. You...
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Establish a Profitable Business – Do Not Stop There!
No one said it would be easy. If you are the owner of an interest in a business which has become profitable, you and your team have done something right and it probably was not easy. Moreover, it will not be easy to keep your business profitable. What follows is a chart for the failure rate year…
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Shoulda, Coulda, Woulda
The idiomatic phrase – shoulda, coulda, woulda – conveys the feeling you as the owner of a business might have in three years. Ok, "Could've, Would've, Should've" is a Taylor Swift (and Aaron Dessner) song. But it derives from the phrase often written as "shoulda, coulda, woulda." The combination...
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"No One Wants to Buy a Job"
The quote is from Mordecai Evans who is the Lead Advisor for Business Acquisition Advisors, LLC located in Augusta, Georgia. Mordecai went to work for a pharmaceutical company after graduating from Clemson. His passion for entrepreneurship and sales led him to becoming a broker with a business...
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Thinking About Who Will Buy My Business
If you are thinking about who is going to buy your business, you have already dealt with the significant core perception necessary for business strategic planning: that inevitably, voluntarily or involuntarily, with good results or bad, you will transfer your business interest. The reality check...
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If It Feels Good, Don't Do It
It is human nature to seek comfort and complacency, we tend to do that which makes us feel good. As most understand, this is not a recipe for success. In the arena of small to medium sized businesses, the owners of these businesses are often the founders of the businesses and the most productive...
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Create a Strategy About What is Important and a Schedule to Accomplish Important Tasks
How do you accomplish what is important? It takes discipline and scheduling to accomplish tasks that are important but not urgent. These tasks are recognized as important, yet many people cannot accomplish important tasks such as becoming fluent in a language, learning to play a musical…
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The Wealth Building Event
Business risk is the risk that the business will falter and the entire investment of time and money the owner placed in the business will be lost. For most business owners the motivation for starting a business is that at some point there will be a wealth building event from business ownership.…
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Give God a Chuckle
There is a well-known Yiddish proverb (der mentsh trakht un got lakht) that man plans and God laughs. It makes you smile because even though you try to prepare for the future, there is always something unexpected happening. As we confront unforeseen obstacles, we are constantly reminded of how...
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Strategic Planning – an Oxymoron?
Is "strategic planning" an oxymoron? Asking that question and considering an answer gives us a clearer way to look at strategic thinking that will make our planning more effective and make our businesses more profitable. Strategic thinking involves considering the probability of future events,...
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Why You Should be Able to Articulate Your Values
Most of us do not wear our values on our sleeves. There are many reasons for this – most of them social. Regardless of social norms, in the arena of business ownership, each of the owners of a business should be able to articulate to the other owners their personal values with respect to the...
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The Smell of Fear
What feeling do you have when you see something different in the workplace? What about encountering a new experience? What if someone suggests something that is "off the wall?" Is someone laughing when you do not know what is funny making you feel left out? Do you have an impulse to make fun of...
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Dynamic Planning – Like a Guided Missile
A traditional business plan determines action to be taken to accomplish the plan goals and monitors the effect of those actions in reaching the plan goals. If the goals are not reached, the plan is revised and the process repeated. The launch of the business plan is much like the launch of a...
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Wait for the Fork
I advocate group decision-making, but am often asked: "what exactly is the role of the leader where there is a group involved?" Not understanding that leadership role can lead to humiliation and lack of credibility – not to mention bad results. By understanding the leadership role in group...
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Do Your Co-owner's Plans for the Business Include You?
Most businesses are founded on assumptions. Founders with a common purpose initiate the business, and, upon its profitability, assume that all owners share the same goals and interests. What do you know about your co-owner's plans for the business? Have you simply assumed that all of the other...
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Increase Personal Wealth by Prior Diligence
Often the primary long-term goal of business ownership is to increase personal wealth to achieve financial independence. Wealth can consist of non-financial assets valued to show a high net worth. But financial independence requires liquidity. Liquidity is achieved when readily available liquid...
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Flat or Pyramid Governance Structure for Effective Business Decisions?
Governance of businesses generally consists of two structures: hierarchical (pyramid) or nonhierachical (flat). Can it be determined that one structure is more conducive to effective decision-making than the other? The hierarchical structure is the traditional legal governance structure of the...
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Building a Business on a Volcano
Most would immediately doubt the wisdom of a plan to place a building on the top of an active volcano. Yet, a majority of businesses consisting of more than one owner are built on a base that will erupt like a volcano. As with the volcano, the exact time of eruption or how much lava will flow...
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The Owner Agreement - Sustaining Business Profitability
The owner agreement – that understanding between multiple owners of a business – is the fabric of the business and is the basis of how the business may be sustained. This owner agreement fabric has many threads consisting of the communications between the owners. These communications, including...
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Time – Change Continuum
The time-change continuum at once motivates a business to plan and prevents the planning from being effective. In a competitive marketplace, where change may be exploited for economic advantage, to sustain profitable performance over time a business must change. For the purposes of this…
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Do You Care about Making Your Business More Valuable?
It is not what you say, but what you do. Many founders of businesses who are now owner-managers of the business they founded, will tell you they want to make their businesses more valuable. But is that reflected in the actions they take? There are established actions business owners can take to...
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Employee Arrogance
Many who analyze and comment upon management leadership (myself included) praise the humility of a leader as a desirable trait. But in viewing and discussing employee behavior, the trait is less covered. We see frequently the arrogant business owner who looks in a mirror to plan and ignores the...
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Peering Through Business Fog
In the early morning hours, right after dawn, the motorist looks through the windshield to see nothing in clear focus with a gauzy, puffy whiteness allowing forms and shapes but little else until the car comes closer. The trip must be made, so the motorist sets a speed that allows room to brake…
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"I Can Do Anything Better Than You . . ."
Let's say you can do anything better than anyone else, how does it help? Because you cannot do everything needed to operate a business, many of those things at which you excel will still have to be done by someone else. In fact, if you want to maximize the value you can get for your business, all...
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When the Team Picks You Up
Sometimes things go the wrong way. It seems like everything you try is wrong. There is a malaise, even a downturn. You are too slow. You are looking at a dimming screen. The pressure is on, and you are feeling it. All of a sudden someone on the team does something – a thing you have never thought...
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How I Learned to Love Confrontation
I suppose there are some who naturally enjoy and seek out confrontation with other people. But this is not true for most of us, where confrontation presents very uncomfortable defensive emotions even to the point of invoking concern about physical danger. When confronted, my reaction would be one...
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The Exhausting Burden of Always Being Right
"As the founder and owner of this business, it was my courage and persistence that got the business started. I was the one that made the right decisions and made things work. When something needed to be done, I did it. There were some tough decisions to make, but making them and being right got…
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"I Will Talk to You About That for Five Minutes Tomorrow"
How often have you wanted to have a conversation – a difficult conversation on a tough topic – and the answer you get from the person you need to have the conversation with is: "I will talk to you about that for five minutes tomorrow" or something equivalent. From this response you know the...
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The Misunderstood Role of Leadership in Decision-making
Small to medium-sized businesses (SMBs) often have hierarchical structures which emphasize decision-making as a product of a small group consisting of the owners of the business who make the decisions without documentation. Much of what I do as a consultant is facilitating group decision-making…
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Trust Your Gut
How do you make consistently good decisions? There are many who say: "trust your gut." Maybe this saying is another way of advising you to pay attention to your feelings and emotions or experience when making a decision. But what about those who trust their gut and avoid part or all of the...
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Hearing the Unsaid
As with other human endeavors, managing a business consists of having critical conversations. The essence of effective group decision-making is having these conversations with those who have knowledge, expertise, and experience. A critical conversation is one where a meaningful exchange of...
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Conflate Power and Wisdom?
Does the fact that one has power also indicate that one is wise? Usually, it takes wisdom and perhaps luck to accomplish business success. Correct decisions are made to enable business success. A founder of a successful business acquires power. If that power indicates wisdom, what will limit...
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When the Goal is Wrong
The correct setting of a goal is of utmost importance and often overlooked in the planning process. Usually, a goal is set by the policy-making group, often dominated by owners in a small to medium-sized business (SMB). There is nothing more demoralizing to all business groups than a bad goal.…
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ABOUT THIS SHOW
Owners of a private business interest have concerns about maximizing the value received from that interest, preventing and resolving owner disputes, and implementing an owner agreement with buy-sell provisions. This podcast deals with these issues.
HOSTED BY
Rick Riebesell
CATEGORIES
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Frequently Asked Questions
How many episodes does Business Concern have?
Business Concern currently has 100 episodes available on PodParley. New episodes are automatically indexed when they're published to the podcast feed.
What is Business Concern about?
Owners of a private business interest have concerns about maximizing the value received from that interest, preventing and resolving owner disputes, and implementing an owner agreement with buy-sell provisions. This podcast deals with these issues.
How often does Business Concern release new episodes?
Business Concern has 100 episodes. Check the episode list to see recent publication dates and frequency.
Where can I listen to Business Concern?
You can listen to Business Concern on PodParley by clicking any episode. We provide an embedded audio player for direct listening, and you can also subscribe via your preferred podcast app using the RSS feed.
Who hosts Business Concern?
Business Concern is created and hosted by Rick Riebesell.
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