Financial Bits and Bytes

I worked for a businessman that said, “The devil you know is better than the devil you don’t know.” Although there may be truth to that, this witticism allows people to delay making decisions. The status quo is always easier than forging a new path or admitting that you had made a mistake. The smart move, though, is to make those hard decisions as you see business problems looming in front of you. It seems the decisions that are hardest to make involve employees. Every business owner has faced a mismatch of an employee to a position. In most cases,

A mission-critical lesson that was reinforced for me in 2019 is that risk and return are inverse when it comes to investing financial capital in human capital! A common adage when it comes to investment of any kind, from managing a real estate deal or a portfolio of stocks: the greater the risk, the greater the potential return. The economics 101 definition: “Higher risk is associated with greater probability of higher return and lower risk with a greater probability of smaller return. This trade off which an investor faces between risk and return while considering investment decisions is called the

I recently attended a Crain’s Chicago Business Small Business Breakfast. The panel consisted of 4 CEOs of dynamic companies – the Boka Restaurant Group, Athletico, Career Builder and Hickory Farms. There was wide-ranging conversation about their work history, what inspired them, and how their companies have grown. During one part of the panel conversation, there was a brief discussion on dealing with customers. A lot of it was focused around keeping customers happy, since happy customers lead to sales. There were two stories, two Major Factors that caught my attention: Understanding the beginning and end of that experience The challenge

As a business owner, you face Business Risk on a daily basis. Here are three business risks that you must address. If you don’t manage them ahead of time, you will have to chase solutions later. It’s painful, but much easier to plan for these before they strike. Employee Risk Risk of Change Succession Risk Employee Risk There are really two issues involved here. The first is Retention, and the second is Engagement. There is a certain amount of churn among employees in any industry. As unemployment rates drop, there are fewer skilled employees to select your next employee from.

We’ve all seen the headlines touting the companies that have found an untapped niche in the market and have taken off like rockets.  Their outlook was extraordinarily promising in terms of a captivating vision – so many of them the darlings of Wall Street. On paper, everything with these companies seemed almost perfect; leaders with excellent credentials, top notch education, the perfect product, the best pitch, meaningful purpose, etc… It seemed that they could do no wrong and people started believing everything they said was the holy grail…. Until it wasn’t Ultimately taking a look underneath the hood, often there