Best Practices

Family businesses are the heartbeat of the US economy. Their contribution to the nation’s GDP, job creation and employment are unmatched. Indeed, 35% of the Fortune 500 companies are family businesses, but those companies have beat the odds. According to the Family Firms Institute, 70% of family business will not survive to the second generation and 90% will not make it to the third. Many of those family businesses have proven successful and are sold, merged with another company, or undertake an IPO. Some, however, just fail. The reasons family businesses are sold vary from lack of interest by subsequent [...]

There are three different types of procrastination that we see today.  First is classic procrastination which is the act of consciously delaying what we know we should be doing:   I come home from the office at night and I have a stack of bills on the kitchen counter that need to be paid. I’m tired and exhausted. Rather than paying the bills, I’m going to sit on the couch and zone out and watch Sports Center.  That’s the classic form of procrastination we are familiar with.  There is also another type of procrastination which I’ve coined a phrase for, instead of [...]

Resolving business failures cheaply and rapidly has never been more important, with Covid-19 and the recession about to push record numbers of companies under. But consider what a small-business owner faces: Your company is on the brink, you can’t pay your employees or suppliers, and now you’re expected to master the complex vocabulary of federal bankruptcy law. There’s Chapter 11, Chapter 7, Chapter 13, Subchapter V, Section 363, and on and on. The process looks expensive and time-consuming, and the chance of emerging with a going concern seems slim. The Uniform Commercial Code, which traces its origins to 1892, just might be the answer. It’s [...]