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Suggest who benefitsI’m Not Going to Shut the Doors
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Suggest questionThis week, we introduced a new member of the podcast team, Paul Downs, whose company, Paul Downs Cabinetmakers, makes custom conference tables. Paul wrote about how close his company came to failing in both The New York Times’ You’re the Boss blog and in his own book, "Boss Life: Surviving My Own Small Business." That was during the Great Recession. Unfortunately, Paul is once again finding it challenging to sell high-end conference tables during a crisis. “My game plan is to stick it out,” he told us in this episode. “I’m not going to shut the doors. And two years from now, I may be a smaller company, but I'm going to be around, and then we're going to ride this back up.”
About 21 Hats
The proponents of employee stock ownership plans can make them sound like the greatest thing ever. A business owner can take a big chunk of money off the table—or even all of it—while still getting to run the business. And there are some pretty great tax breaks. Oh, and it will also solve income inequality in America. On the other hand, if ESOPs are so smart, why are there so few of them?
Jim Kalb of Triad Components Group in San Diego and Jeff Taylor of Crafts Technology in Chicago have both implemented ESOPs. Jay Goltz of the Goltz Group in Chicago has reached his 60s without a succession plan, and he’s considering his options. In this 21 Hats Conversation, you get to listen in on a street-smart discussion of the pluses and minuses of ESOPs from the business owner’s point of view.