Never Sacrifice Your Priorities When Making Decisions

I have recently been looking for new site locations for my co-warehousing business, Blue Co.  What an eye-opening experience that has been over the last couple of months, rife with ups and downs and business lessons for all. The short story is: as a startup, you only have a few opportunities to open a new location, and you have to get it right to impress your investors. No opportunity is perfect, and you may need to make some sacrifices. But knowing what elements are non-negotiable could be the difference between keeping your business growing and potentially “sinking the ship.” Allow me to explain.

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Think 10 Steps Ahead When Raising Capital

 

All entrepreneurs have lived through a cash squeeze at some point in their history.  There is nothing worse than worrying about whether you will be able to fund your next payroll or stay liquid enough to survive another day. That fear of running out of money can cause you to become desperate, willing to take cash from whoever happens to show up to save the day.  But sometimes taking that cash can have unintended consequences, that had you thought about its longer-term impact, you may never have taken that cash in hindsight. This case study will help teach you how not to make this same mistake in your business.

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Business Lessons from The Coach Who Built a Dynasty in Two Years

I have been a lifelong University of Michigan basketball fan.  When I was a student there, they had won the national championship in 1989, where I had a front row seat as a member of the basketball band to see Rumeal Robinson hit his game winning free throws to beat Seton Hall. But since then, it had been 37 years without a national title, and the passionate UM fan base was aching for another championship.  UM had gotten close a couple times, in 1992 and 1993 with the Fab Five, and again in 2013 and 2018 with John Beilein’s gutsy teams, but we just couldn’t summit the mountain.  That was until Dusty May was hired in 2024, after UM’s worst season in their history, finishing with a dismal 8-24 record.  His two-year turnaround to a 37-3 national champion will go down as one of coaching’s greatest accomplishments. Here are a few of his leadership lessons that you can apply to your businesses.

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Stick to Your Business Plan--Making Sacrifices Can Lead to Negative Consequences

When you are an entrepreneur, you want nothing more than to see ‘your baby’ grow up into a successful business, especially with all the headwinds that are sure to come your way. That often means that those same entrepreneurs are willing to make sacrifices, veering off on tangents away from their stated business plan. I am not talking about business pivots in a new direction, which would ultimately require an update to the business plan. I am talking about keeping the same business plan, but making exceptions to the stated goals, just to make some progress with the business. That is when you can get into a lot of trouble. This article will help you learn how to avoid getting trapped in those rabbit holes.

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What Will Happen to Your Business if You Die

I was recently engaged by the estate of a founder to assist in finding a new owner for their business after the founder died. There were a lot of valuable business lessons that came out of this process that I wanted to share with you. Not for your estate survivors after you die, but instead for you before you die, so you don’t repeat the same mistakes of this other entrepreneur who failed to properly lay out a clear legacy plan in the event of his death, leaving the survivors scrambling looking for answers in the wake of his death.

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AI Can Do Everything Now and It Will Replace You--Protect Yourself Now!

 

Artificial intelligence (AI) has been more than a buzzword for the last couple of years; it is literally taking over every single aspect of how businesses are run. Big corporations have even started hiring Chief Artificial Intelligence Officers to ensure their organizations are getting the most out of AI tools, largely to replace slow and expensive human-driven tasks with fast and inexpensive technology-driven tasks.  The applications are literally endless, but this article should help inspire you to rethink everything you are doing in your business, as there is probably a technology out there that can do it faster and cheaper.

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You Sold Your Business--What Happens Next?

Congratulations, you just sold your business! But don’t expect things to remain the same under the new ownership. Oftentimes, new owners have a different vision of what to do with your business to help achieve their needs, and they may have different ideas on how best to do certain things inside the organization, resulting in a ripple effect of chaos for the transitioning staff in its wake. This article will help you figure out what to expect after a change in control, so the expectations of you and your team are properly managed ahead of time.

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When to Sell Your Business--Before It's Too Late

As a founding entrepreneur, it is hard not to always be "in love" with "your baby". You created something from nothing, you nurtured it along the way, and you built something really great. Until the point "your baby" stops growing, your profitability falls with increased competition, and the roller coaster starts picking up speed in the wrong direction, with revenues going down, not up as before.  It is very easy to want to "stay the course" and hope for things to get better in the future. Depending on the root cause of the fall, like a temporary decline in the economy, it very well could rebound. But, there are times when the root cause cannot be fixed, or worse yet, will continue to "snowball" in the wrong direction.  In those scenarios, you need to know when to pull the "ripcord" to save whatever value you have left before your business is worth zero. This post will help you identify what to look for and how to get you and your shareholders a "soft landing" when things start to turn south.

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Why Sharing the CEO Title Usually Doesn't Work

 

Oftentimes, two co-founders think it is a good idea to share CEO responsibilities as co-CEOs. The logic is that they can separate their roles and responsibilities, with one person leading certain departments (e.g., sales and marketing) and the other person leading other departments (e.g., technology and operations). The reality is, this is a pretty bad idea.  The business should only have one leader at a time who can "lead the ship" and make sure everything is perfectly coordinated across the entire company. This article will teach you the potential pitfalls of a co-CEO strategy.

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5 Good Reasons Why People Buy a Business

Many entrepreneurs go down the path of buying a business to help jump-start their business-building efforts. But oftentimes, they don't give enough thought to "why" they are buying the business, and the long-term goals they are hoping to accomplish from this investment. Unless they are 100% clear on the "end game", they could get themselves into a situation that is not what they intended, and it could be too late to fix it once they close on the purchase. These five reasons will help you assess your acquisition goals before you get started hunting for targets, so you don't repeat the mistakes that many other entrepreneurs have made by not doing sufficient homework upfront.

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Is It Time to Fire Yourself? 5 Signs You're Holding Your Company Back

 

Most CEOs don't usually think about putting themselves up on the firing block, but there are many instances where you, as the CEO of the business, may be holding your business back. You need to be honest in your assessment of yourself as CEO, to make sure you are, in fact, the right person for the job.  This article will help you identify certain scenarios where a CEO change may be necessary, even if it means you firing yourself from the job.

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Tariffs Are Bad for Business. This Post Will Help You Survive.

All the chaos in the economic and financial markets these days, largely around the impact of new tariffs, is causing unexpected and unfortunate turmoil for many businesses today. Businesses that used to be growing are seeing declines, and businesses that used to be generating healthy profits may now be experiencing losses. That can be a scary time for the most seasoned executives and even more so for startup executives living it for the first time. Here's how to best navigate these choppy waters.

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Perfection Requires Time--And Time Kills All Deals! Stop Trying to Be Perfect!

 Winston Churchill is famously known for saying, "Perfection is the enemy of progress." And that quote most relevantly applies in business, perhaps more than any other sector. You may say, why is perfection a problem? Isn't perfection a noble goal when doing your work?  The answer is that perfection takes time, and time in the business world can often be a deal killer. If you can produce A- work in one week and A+ work in one month, that incremental benefit of the "perfect" work product, is most certainly lost in the form of the three weeks of lost time. When an A- is good enough to get the job done, take the win and move on. Here is how to better keep your business running at "light speed."

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Not All Buyers of Your Business Are Created Equal

 

When your shareholders have decided that it is the right time to put your business up for sale, it is very easy to say, "Great, let's sell it to the buyer with the highest valuation."  But that would be a mistake. There are several other factors that go into finding the "right" buyer for your business and your specific situation. This article will help you think through those various consideration points and provide some warnings for things you need to look out for to avoid known potential pitfalls when it comes to picking the right buyer for your business.

Read the rest of this post in Entrepreneur, which I guest authored this week.

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Why Pending Tariff Uncertainty is Creating 'Wait and See' Approach

When businesses are unclear about the future, they often take a "wait and see" approach before making any material investments. This is especially true in most presidential elections, as different presidential winners could have different impacts on the economy based on their promoted policies.  The winner of the most recent election is touting his plan to levy up to 25% tariffs on China and potentially other countries where he sees an imbalance in trade levels. The result has most business executives very worried about the future impact of any tariffs on their businesses and, hence, has "paralyzed" many companies, resulting in them pushing off any material investments until the situation becomes clearer. This post will better educate you on why business executives are worried and what this may mean for your businesses.

Read the rest of this post in Entrepreneur, which I guest authored this week.

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An AI Avalanche is Coming for Google--Get Ready for a Bumpy Ride

I have been a serial entrepreneur for over 25 years now. Each of the businesses I built included a healthy dose of search engine marketing, anchored by Google, the "big dog on the block." Google controls over 90% of all searches completed on the internet worldwide, a market share it has held for the last decade. It was never imaginable that anyone could ever take Google down off its perch. But with all the progress artificial intelligence companies are making in the search world (e.g., ChatGPT recently launched SearchGPT), it may not be long before there is a "new sheriff in town." That could be really bad news for most of us digital marketers who have grown to be dependent on Google over the years. This post will help you get in front of this pending avalanche on the cusp of happening.

Read the rest of this post in Entrepreneur, which I guest authored this week.

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What to Know About Selling Your Business

I am in the middle of a sale process for one of our portfolio companies, and I wanted to share some useful tips to ensure your sale process goes as smoothly as possible. This article will focus on the actual "process" of selling so you can better understand what levers you can use to get the quickest sale at the highest price.

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Why You Need to Pick Your Co-Founders Very Carefully

 

Picking your co-founders and other key partners could be one of the most important decisions an entrepreneur makes. Many founders simply look for a complementary skillset to round out the management team's needs, but getting this decision right is so much more than that.  Startups are hard enough to build as they are, yet having to add the burden of making the wrong personnel decisions can really set your business and peace of mind into a tailspin. This article will help you get it right to give your business the highest odds of success.

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The First 100 Days of Onboarding New Employees

 

You probably have heard the importance of the action plans of the "first 100 days" after a new President takes office or after you begin integrating two companies after a big merger, but I am guessing you haven't heard it applied to your recruiting and onboarding efforts with each of your new staff members. In many marriages, couples date for years before getting married. In contrast, in recruitment, someone can join your organization after only a few hours of interviews, which means you are essentially living and working together from the start of their employment. These "first 100 days" will dictate whether this union will work or not, and how you handle these first few months is critical.

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Do Major Holiday Discounts Help or Hurt Your Business

 

What is it about Memorial Day, July 4^th, Labor Day and the Christmas season?  They bring out all the big discounts, which gets shoppers flooding to the malls to save money, especially on big ticket items like cars and mattresses, as examples.  And the sellers of those products bring out their best prices during these holiday seasons, trying to capture has much market share against their competitors as they can.  But the question I ask is: why?  Yes, you are driving more revenues, with the holidays often representing 30% of their total annual volume.  But, if you are sacrificing material bottom-line profits by slashing prices in the process, why play that game?  This post will dive deeper into whether you should or should deeply discount your products, during the holiday season or in general.

Read the rest of this post in Entrepreneur, which I guest authored this week.

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