November 22, 2011
The Economy – Mixed Signals
Pick up any publication and you'll see headlines about the European financial markets collapsing, our stock markets moving like a yo-yo, companies like Kodak in…
November 15, 2011
Growth, Buyouts and Cash
I'm in the middle of two internal buyouts. In both cases the companies are in a growth mode, 20-25% over the last year and projecting…
November 11, 2011
Small Business can Learn from Big Business
The October 7, 2011 Wall Street Journal's Marketplace section's headline was: "Apple's Game Plan: Avoiding Culture Shock" and dealt with Apple's decade-long succession plan for the late Steve Jobs.…
November 7, 2011
Quantity or Quality?
October 18, 2011 At the end of September Allstate announced that they were changing their commission structure and thinning their ranks (Wall Street Journal, September…
November 5, 2011
What you See his What you Get – The 2011-15 economy
October 11, 201 The cover story of the September 21, 2011 Wall Street Journal was titled, "Home Forecast Calls for Pain." The main point made in the…
November 3, 2011
Are you Simply Shadow Dancing?
October 4, 2011 I didn't get it after watching the group Silhouettes perform on America's Got Talent (I was, however, the only one in my…
November 2, 2011
Watch Your Debt
The Wall Street Journal recently had an article about how many midsize chain restaurants are struggling. The interesting commonality was that food costs were up…
October 19, 2011
Watch Your Vendor Concentration
A former client took me to lunch recently and shared that his top manufacturer, accounting for 60% of his revenues, had dropped him as their…
September 30, 2011
Banking Realities in 2011
Weekly Memo - September 6, 2011 On August 26, 2011 Mike Flynn, former publisher of the Puget Sound Business Journal and now active in the world of…
September 17, 2011
Three Tips on Preparing for Sale
At my Rotary Club meeting recently Tim Gibbons, co-founder and president of PharmacyOneSource, spoke about the evolution of the company and its sale to a…
