Succession Secrets

How friends differ from flatterers and how business coaches differ from friends. Includes a plug for my favorite podcast, Philosophise This, by Steven West. https://bit.ly/2I8HHaM

They say there is no silver bullet, but I think I may have stumbled upon an exception, when it comes to creating scalable businesses. Check out this week's episode.

In today's episode, I lament about the strategy of an IT resource placement company I recently met, which is selling itself to contractor candidates on the "strength" of its benefit packages. Listen to the show to find out how successful this strategy has proved to be and what could help them, as well as you del listener, to reposition yourself in the eyes of future employees. (Hin

We had some fierce conversations about my daughter’s pondering whether to drop a class with which she may have overreached. My wife gave her a hard time about it, which I felt was perhaps unreasonable. However, it reminded me of Sam Walton, Walmart’s founder, who stated that “High Expectations are the Key to Everything”. Remember Steve Jobs? he wasn’t exactly a nice guy,

I received a question from Christos Nikolau the other day about the difference between Leadership and Coaching. Thanks for the questions Christos! Leadership is the action of influencing people to achieve goals. Coaching is one of the ways to exert this leadership. In today’s episode, I am discussing the three ways to exert leadership. The first one is Modeling, where you are lea

Tune in to the story of how we sold a communications business in late 2008, when the bottom fell out of the mergers and acquisitions market. Hint: it was not about strong-arm tactics and yes, speed was a HUGE factor.

When you are a buyer of a business or an investment banker, it is critical to figure out the motivation of the seller. In today's episode, I tell the story of the reluctant seller, whose spouse was driving the transaction that he wasn't committed to make happen. Eventually, the deal worked out great for the seller and there are two lessons in this tale worth hearing and processing.

There are three main triggers for the succession of the business owner: (1) necessity, (2) an irresistible offer, and my favorite: (3) a more compelling future. In today’s episode, I tell the story of a former client of mine, Csaba Kovacs, a Hall of Fame hockey player (not in the NHL, but still a Big Deal) who initiated his exit to realize a much bigger dream, that was to benefit

One of my favorite books is “On War” from an early 19th century Prussian general, Claus von Clausewitz. This is possibly the most famous book on military strategy after “Art of War”, that most of you have heard of. In his book Clausewitz talks about grouping officers into four clusters in terms of their intelligence and diligence. There are the dumb and lazy officers, who s

One of my clients, who runs a major advertising agency in Richmond, introduced himself to our Vistage CEO peer group as the “Chief Enabling Officer”. In today’s episode, I share with you a story about one of my early bosses, Hassan, who was a Chief Enabling Officer of the Structured Finance department of the bank where I worked 20 years ago. Hassan never seemed to be doing mu