Avsnitt
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This week, in Episode 246, we meet Ben Knepler, who, along with his True Places co-founder Nelson Warley, came up with an idea for an outdoor chair that they believe could be a game-changer. They liked the idea so much that they quit their corporate jobs, they raised money, they borrowed money—putting their own homes at risk—they fought through the pandemic, they found a manufacturer in China, they launched on Kickstarter, they found another manufacturer in Cambodia, and then they ran smack into the brick wall of President Trump’s second-term tariffs. Or, as George Harrison almost put it, “If you try to sit, I’ll tax your … sturdy, portable, folding chair that could create a whole new category of high-end outdoor products except you’ll probably have to try to sell them in some other country … ‘cause I’m the tariff man.”
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This week, Gene Marks -- normally a fan of automating anything that can be automated — says it’s too soon to think about turning important tasks over to artificial intelligence bots, mostly because they’re still making too many mistakes. In fact, Gene cites a survey of business leaders who said they came to regret offloading employees in favor of AI. In many cases, those leaders wound up trying to re-hire their employees. Plus: Gene also talks about how businesses using AI can get into regulatory trouble if they’re not careful.
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This week, in Episode 245, a new regular, David Barnett, joins the podcast along with Jaci Russo and William Vanderbloemen. David, who has been a guest on the podcast before, helps people buy and sell businesses—but, as he explains, he’s not a business broker. He’s found a different business model. David, Jaci, and William discuss why it’s so hard to sell a business, what owners can do to make their businesses more attractive to buyers, and why it can be in everyone’s interest for sellers to accept an earnout. Plus: Jaci talks about why she used a recruiter to help her hire a business development person and why she ended up choosing someone who checked none of the boxes she initially thought most important. “I thought I needed some hotshot East Coast, West Coast, big city dude who came in with all the slick talk,” she tells us. Instead, she found her winner in rural Alabama.
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This week, Rob Levin, co-founder and chairman of WorkBetterNow, talks about why he sees business owners—despite the uncertain economy—still struggling to fill key roles. He also discusses the importance of creating a culture by design, how owners can manage their profiles on Glassdoor, and what he thinks of Gen Z employees. Plus: Rob explains how he’s been infusing AI into all aspects of running his business.
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This week, in Episode 244, Jennifer Kerhin, Jaci Russo, and Sarah Segal talk about how they’ve been using ChatGPT. Jennifer has deputized the AI chatbot as a key advisor, feeding it all kinds of performance data and soliciting its analysis before making hiring, financial, and strategic decisions. Recently, she asked it to identify her biggest blind spots as a CEO. Five seconds later, it spat out five answers with detailed explanations and suggestions. And what did Jennifer think of the feedback? “It was right on,” she tells us. “I mean, it was totally, absolutely true.” We even brought ChatGPT into our conversation in real time, asking it whether Jaci had hired the right business development person, whether Sarah had been fully prepared two years ago to buy back her PR firm, and what’s the best podcast for small business owners. Plus: while we were talking, Jaci asked ChatGPT to evaluate the performance of her co-founder and spouse, MIchael. Let’s just say, it does have some concerns.
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This week, Gene Marks highlights some recent tech developments, including: Quickbooks is selling a lifetime version of its software for just $250. Microsoft has reintroduced its somewhat controversial Recall AI tool, which captures and indexes screenshots of user activity every three seconds—a function that is intended to improve cybersecurity but that has raised some interesting questions. Plus: Gene explains how—if you have the time and money—you can now connect the various software platforms you use and turn them into a smart AI assistant.
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This week, in Episode 243, Liz Picarazzi tells Sarah Segal that she’s taking another pass at finding a domestic fabricator. Maybe it’s wishful thinking, Liz says, but she’s hoping that now that her business is more established, she just might find an American factory that wants to partner with a growing business and would be eager to help her re-shore her manufacturing. She’s also decided she’s going to keep speaking out about the tariffs despite the hate mail she’s been getting: “I'm not going to be ashamed of manufacturing in Asia,” she tells us. “I had my reasons, and they were very good reasons.” Plus: Sarah talks about how she’s been using AI, including to create her own GPTs, which help her promote her clients. She’s also found a software platform she loves that makes it easier to find and file requests for proposals.
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But not every business knows how and where to tell it? This week, Sarah Segal talks through what business owners should know about public relations: How can they get better at explaining what they do? How can they figure out what others will find interesting about their business? Should they share their story themselves or reach out to a journalist? If they decide to reach out to a journalist, should they do it themselves or hire a PR person to do it? If they decide to hire a PR person, how much should it cost?
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This week, in Episode 242, Jay Goltz and Lena McGuire talk about an expense a lot of business owners may not even realize they’re paying. When former employees collect unemployment, they get a check from the government, but then their former employer gets docked. It can add up to real money, and that’s likely to become a bigger issue if the economy deteriorates. Of course, as Jay and Lena discuss, one way to keep your unemployment insurance as low as possible is to do a better job hiring. Jay and Lena also talk about whether it ever makes sense to rehire someone you’ve had to fire. Plus: With Lena’s clients and potential clients putting on the brakes, she’s using this slow period as an opportunity to improve her systems. She’s hoping to avoid a mistake she made last time when she built a business that she was unable to sell.
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This week, Gene Marks offers some suggestions for how businesses can survive President Trump’s trade war. Those suggestions include exploring free-trade zones, raising prices strategically, scouring the world for alternative suppliers, and getting out of China. Despite all of the disruption and upheaval, Gene continues to believe that the long-term gain will be worth the short-term pain.
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This week, in a conversation recorded on March 27—shortly before Liberation Day, the day Donald Trump announced his so-called reciprocal tariffs—Liz Picarazzi told Shawn Busse and Jaci Russo what it was like to get her most recent tariff bill for a shipment of trash enclosures from China. “I knew what it was going to be, because I had calculated it,” she says, “but to actually see it on paper was terrifying.” And of course it’s only going to get worse now. In our conversation, we discuss a couple of points that bear emphasis: One, Liz tried everything she could think of to find a way to manufacture her products in the U.S. It hasn’t been economically viable in the past, and it’s unlikely to become viable any time soon. And two, Liz wonders—if these tariffs really are intended to bring manufacturing back to the U.S.—why isn’t some of the tariff money being directed toward supporting that transition? Plus: it’s been widely reported that only a tiny percentage of women business owners surpass a million dollars in annual revenue. As it happens, Jaci and Liz have both done it, but why is it so rare?
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This week, John Arensmeyer, founder and CEO of Small Business Majority, talks about the unprecedented crisis confronting small businesses. At the same time their business models are being upended by President Trump’s tariffs, business owners are also watching their support infrastructure get decimated by budget cuts. John talks about what owners can do to hunker down, to survive, and to make sure their voices are heard.
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This week, in episode 240, Paul Downs tells Jaci Russo and Sarah Segal about laying off a third of his workforce. “Here's the problem in a nutshell,” he says. “Last year, January to March, we sold $1.356 million. This year, January to March: $680,000. March is on track to be the worst month I've had since I started taking records.” Paul also tells the owners that he used to have a rainy-day fund for such occasions, but he used it to renovate his house. He does think the layoffs and other cash savings have put him in a strong enough position to hang in there until business picks up. “We’re getting calls,” he says, “we’re just not getting orders.” He’s also trying out a digital marketing service that can identify and contact anyone who spends even just a few seconds on his website. Plus: Paul tells us that sometimes, when forced to lay off people, you learn things about your operation that you might not otherwise have known—like that you’ve been overpaying your sales tax by at least $30,000 a year for quite some time.
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The problem, says David Barnett, who helps people buy and sell businesses, is that if we all hang on to our cash, we will definitely have a recession. David, who’s based in Canada, also talks about how the current disruption looks from north of the border, what advice he’s giving to people trying to buy or sell businesses, and where there might be opportunities lurking within the uncertainty.
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In this week’s bonus episode, Dylan Jones shares his entrepreneurial journey, which includes serving in the Air Force, a Master’s degree in business analytics, a failed software business, and a brand new consumer packaged goods business that draws on his knowledge of military working dogs—most importantly that it can be a challenge to keep military dogs (and pets) hydrated. Jones came up with a solution and started selling it at farmers markets where he would simply announce, “Hey, I have Gatorade for dogs.” That drove interest and sales, but not enough to make money. And when his wife delivered their second child, Jones started thinking about maybe selling out his inventory and looking for a job. But then, at one of the last farmers markets he planned to attend, he ran into an investor. That led to a conversation, an investment, a reformulation, a rebrand as Lyx, and a product that is now rolling out with big aspirations, especially for a solopreneur. As Jones puts it, “We want to be the Kleenex or the Google or the Apple of dog hydration.”
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This week, five years after Covid arrived and as we find ourselves in another period of dramatic uncertainty, Jennifer Kerhin, Lena McGuire, and Sarah Segal talk about the advances their businesses might never have made had it not been for the pandemic, from the technology they use, to the people they employ, to the systems they’ve created. “It was very scary early on,” says Jennifer, “but it was transformational.” Plus: Do you hire full-time employees in anticipation of more business or when the new business is in hand? And Sarah asks what she should do when a new client signs a contract and her agency goes through all of the preliminary onboarding work only to have the client walk away. Lena’s suggestion? Review your cancellation policy, but she also tells us: “My business is 100 percent up-front. I get paid, and then I do the work.”
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This week, Tracy Bech, co-author of the 60 Minute CFO, tells us that for a surprising number of business owners, the answer is no, their financial statements for last year have not yet been prepared. And that’s a problem, especially in a year with so much change and so much uncertainty, because it means those businesses have been flying blind for much or all of the first quarter. Many of these owners, Tracy tells us, think that so long as they have cash in their checking account, they’re okay, but that can be a dangerous way to run a business.
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This week, in Episode 238, Mel Gravely tells Shawn Busse and Jay Goltz that he believes we will eventually find out that the U.S. economy has already slipped into a recession. The funny thing about recessions is that they can start and even end before the GDP numbers make it official, which leads us into a conversation about what businesses can do to prepare for a possible recession. Mel, for example, says his team is checking in on everyone and everything: suppliers, customers, and employees. We also discuss why a lot of pricing models no longer work, why some businesses have never fully recovered from the pandemic, and how Mel turned around a facilities-management business that was losing $1 million a year. Plus: the owners discuss the relative merits of planning to fund your retirement by investing in a 401(k) vs. by selling your business.
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This week, Gene Marks explains why he thinks business owners should be patient. Gene says that whatever economic pain they may be experiencing right now will be worth it in the long run, and that’s because he believes President Trump is taking necessary steps to fix the economy and level the international-trade playing field, which will greatly benefit small businesses over time. (Podcast host’s note: I do have a few questions for Gene about that.)
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This week, in episode 237, Jaci Russo tells William Vanderbloemen that she’s a little surprised, given all of the uncertainty in the air, how well her marketing business is holding up. Marketing, as we all know, is often the first thing businesses pull back on. Jaci says her strong results may have something to do with the changes she’s made in the way her agency closes sales. We also get Jaci’s and William’s takes on the conversation we’ve been having about whether owners should consider their employees’ personal circumstances when making HR decisions. But our main topic today is weightier than usual: William’s wife and co-founder Adrienne recently received a cancer diagnosis and has begun treatment. Long-time listeners may recall that William has spoken in past episodes about his efforts to make sure the business can run without him. “And oh my goodness,” he tells us, “how thankful I am that we started that process so long ago.”
- Visa fler
