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Suggest who benefitsThis Is What It Takes to Build a Business, Vol. 2
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Suggest questionThis week, we take a look back at the conversations we had last year about the many rewards and responsibilities of business ownership, highlighting some of our happiest, smartest, funniest, and most difficult exchanges from the past year. Along the way, we discuss topics such as escalating salary demands, how much profit a business should make, a new way to sell a business, the problems with ESOPs, how to sell cookies on LinkedIn, breaking a million dollars in annual revenue, escaping the valley of death, and the pain of having to fire a long-time employee.
There aren’t many places where you can hear entrepreneurs talk about the real-life problems they are confronting right now, today, as they happen—with no guarantee of a happy ending. But those are the conversations I have every week with Paul Downs of Paul Downs Cabinetmakers (https://www.custom-conference-tables.com/) , Shawn Busse of Kinesis (https://www.kinesisinc.com/) , Jay Goltz of Artists Frame Service (https://www.artistsframe.com/) , Mel Gravely of Triversity Construction (https://www.trivc.com/) , Jennifer Kerhin of SB Expos & Events (https://discoversb.com/) , Liz Picarazzi of Citibin (https://citibin.com/) , Jaci Russo of BrandRusso (https://brandrusso.com/) , Sarah Segal of Segal Communications (https://segalcommunications.com/) , William Vanderbloemen of Vanderbloemen Search Group (https://www.vanderbloemen.com/) , Dana White of a soon-to-be-named successor to Paralee Boyd (https://www.paraleeboyd.com/) , and Laura Zander of Jimmy Beans Wool (https://www.jimmybeanswool.com/) .
In this episode, we also highlight several appearances by special guests who stopped by in 2023 to discuss their journeys, including Muhammad Abdul-Hadi of Down North Pizza (https://www.downnorthpizza.com) , Jeff Braverman of (https://nuts.com) , Michael Brown of Teamshares (https://www.teamshares.com) , Brad Herrmann of Text-Em-All (https://www.text-em-all.com) , Grayson Hogard of Grove Cookie Company (https://www.grovecookiecompany.com) , Lance Tyson of the Tyson Group (https://www.tysongroup.com) , and Ari Weinzweig of Zingerman’s (https://www.zingermanscommunity.com/about-us/) . If listening to one of these highlights makes you want to go back and listen to the full episode, that can be done most easily by going to (https://21hats.com/) . There you’ll find a transcript of this episode with links to all of the episodes we sample.
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.