Planning & Advisors

Entrepreneurs and the Hazards of Independence

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Happy Independence Day! Entrepreneurs are blessed with a wonderfully independent, can-do spirit, which deserves to be celebrated. But sometimes, that independent streak can cross over into just plan stubbornness, or controlling behavior. So my interest was piqued by Jeremy Fain’€™s post, 2 Entrepreneurial Worst Practices. He points out two “€œworst practices” that get in the way of business [...]

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Peeking Under the Hood of Your Strategic Alliance

A strategic alliance offers a lot of promise to companies both local and global.  The promise of new markets.  The promise of ways to better serve existing markets.  The promise of, frankly, more money rolling in.  That’s all good.  But there are aspects to investigating your strategic alliance partner that many companies fail to do [...]

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Asset Protection: Why forming a company may not be enough

So you thought you had your bases covered when you formed your corporation (or LLC) for your new business.  But forming a company alone may not be enough.  (Surprise!  Ugh.) Yes, you wanted to protect your personal assets from business creditors … but are your business assets protected from personal creditors?  Personal creditors can include: [...]

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Should I Give My Business Partner an Equity Stake?

It’s such a good question.  (Although it’s usually asked this way:  How much equity should I give someone who wants to buy into my business? — which I think is the wrong question, for it assumes that you would want to do so). For a perspective on why you wouldn’t, check out this recent post [...]

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What The Zombies Can Tell Us about Strategic Alliances

Zombies?  No, not in the George-Romero-Night-of-the-Living-Dead kind of zombies.  Zombies as in the British-rock-band-from-the-1960s kind of zombies. As Lewis Green points out in his blogpost, What The Zombies Can Tell Us about Marketing, television stations are using strategic alliances with (what I will call) “content providers” in order to reach a particular target market.  It’s [...]

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When Your Business Partner Goes to Jail

I’m seeing many pixels devoted to the downfall of Charles Patton, a partner and music producer for rapper Lupe Fiasco’s “1st and 15th” record label.  I have to confess to not being a devotee of rap music, or even having heard of Lupe Fiasco (or Charles Patton) before the reports started coming in . . . [...]

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Survey Says: Entrepreneurs Nix Consultants

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Here’s eye-opening information from a recent press release: <<A recent survey conducted by BizBuySell, the largest online business-for-sale marketplace, found that nearly 75% of business owners doubted the effectiveness of hiring consultants to improve business reputation, preferring instead to do their own marketing without external assistance.Of the survey sample, 68% of respondents said they had [...]

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Food for Thought on Strategic Partnerships

Consultant Mark Howell has a tidbit on the power and benefits of strategic partnerships that’s really worth pondering carefully over a nice cup of tea (or a beer, whatever’s your pleasure).  Many companies are so eager to grow that they try to be all things to all people, without first having found a way to [...]

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Less Risk = More Sleep: How to Reduce Internal Security Threats

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Threats to our business can take many forms:natural disasters, like tropical storms, earthquakes, tornadoes, fire, or flood.There are outside threats, like terrorism . . . or a sagging economy.They are difficult enough to weather.More insidious are the threats that we invite into our business with open, and unsuspecting, arms. Employees, visitors, vendors, clients – we [...]

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How to Create a “Succession Plan” When You’re a Sole Owner Small Business

As Seen In Enterprising Women Magazine You’re a busy entrepreneur. Every day, you whirl around like the Looney Tunes® Tasmanian devil, putting out fires, calming clients, and encouraging employees. There’s barely enough time to handle strategic planning, much less the kind of planning that involves answering that hard-to-face question: “what will happen to my business when [...]

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