From the category archives:
During in the recession of 2001, I let 5 people go in a single day. Our sales were down, but we held on, for too long, hoping things would turn up in time to save the jobs. They didn’t.
Letting people go is the hardest thing a small business owner does.
But from that hard time I discovered [...]
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1. The early hires have huge impact.
Just do the math. Think about how much more a single person affects company culture in a company of one, two, three, or four people, compared to a company of several hundred.
2. Building by shedding jobs
We’ve used the shedding jobs strategy as we built from a one-person-do-everything business to [...]
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I’ve posted here before on BizEquity, the “Zillow of small business valuation” site offering quick estimates of business valuation.
BizEquity founder Tom Taulli — a true expert in the field — has added some interesting new tools for the site. Most notably, a valuation wizard that can take your inputs and give you a quick and [...]
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I was the planning consultant to Apple Computer’s Latin America group from 1982 until 1991 or 1992, the end of the relationship being a bit hard to define as I was called on steadily more by Apple Japan and less by Apple Latin America.
The challenge came in the spring of 1985. The annual business plan [...]
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Something new in this year’s flock of business plans is the CSO: Chief Strategy Officer.
Hah! The silly things we do with business titles. When I started in business way back when — actually the 1970s — we had the president of a company and vice presidents. Or so I thought. The more sophisticated companies had [...]
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(This is the fifth and final part of a five-part series on accountability posted first on Small Business Trends. The search box on this blog should get you the first four. )
In 1998 I was walking to lunch with the accountant — outside accountant, CPA, partner in a regional firm — who handled our Palo [...]
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Funny coincidence: “mission” the way we use it in business, and “mission” the way the Spanish priests used it to build colonial California. In both cases, it’s foundations. As the Spanish settled California, the conquistadores who explored were followed by…
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Stress much? Running a business? Starting a business? Dow below 7,000, Washington as partisan as ever, banks teetering, and so on. Zebras don’t get ulcers because their stress reaction was designed to help them run fast when lions are trying…
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