エピソード

  • Dashboard: Turning Tradespeople Into Business People

    Dashboard: Turning Tradespeople Into Business People
    2025/11/07
    This week, Julian Scadden explains how the organization he runs, Nexstar Network, helps the owners of plumbing, HVAC, and electrical firms become better business owners. Along the way, he discusses the challenges home-service businesses are confronting, why Nexstar is member-owned (and what that means), and an intriguing decision he made recently to part ways with the 30 percent of his members who are private-equity backed. Those members represented half the organization’s revenue at the time of the decision. I also ask Julian which is the better path: learning a trade and building a business or buying a business and figuring out the trade.
    続きを読む 一部表示
    30 分
  • I Thought It Was the Worst Day of My Life

    I Thought It Was the Worst Day of My Life
    2025/11/04
    This week, in Episode 269, we welcome Ted Wolf, co-founder of Guidewise, as the newest regular member of the 21 Hats Podcast crew—and Ted arrives with a pretty good story. Back when he was building his IT staffing business with his brother, a senior employee walked out. But he didn’t walk out alone—he took key employees, key accounts, and 40 percent of the company’s revenue. At the time, Ted thought it was the worst day of his business life. Turns out, he says, it was his best. Because that disaster forced him to rethink everything—how decisions get made, how profits get shared, how responsibility gets distributed. And that shift led not only to healthy growth but eventually to the kind of exit business owners dream about. That experience continues to inform the work Ted does today, helping companies integrate AI into their operations. The hard part, he tells Jennifer Kerhin, isn’t the technology—it’s the people. It’s managing the change, the fear, the implications. The technology matters, too. Ted and Jennifer also discuss whether small businesses should try to retrofit AI into their current tech stacks—or whether the smarter move, painful as it may be, is to start fresh.
    続きを読む 一部表示
    43 分
  • Dashboard: A Business Owner Chooses His Third and Final Act

    Dashboard: A Business Owner Chooses His Third and Final Act
    2025/10/31
    Josh Patrick’s first act was building and eventually selling a successful vending-machine business. His second act was building a thriving consulting practice in which he helped other business owners learn the lessons he’d learned the hard way. In our latest Dashboard episode, Josh, a cancer survivor whose cancer has returned, is exploring two experiences—retirement and death—that he believes most owners are ill-prepared to confront. He’s planning to address that in his writing. As for himself, Josh tells us that he’s not afraid of death, but he is afraid of retirement.
    続きを読む 一部表示
    42 分
  • Should I Buy the Building? Or Stick to the Business?

    Should I Buy the Building? Or Stick to the Business?
    2025/10/28
    This week, in episode 268, Jay Goltz, Lena McGuire, and Liz Picarazzi discuss a common concern: When does it make sense to buy a building for your business? Under the right circumstances—say, with an SBA loan, a good location, and a little luck—the real estate could end up being worth more than the business itself. But what if the business is just getting started? Or what if the owner is nearing retirement age and may not be around to reap decades of appreciation? Is buying the business still a good idea? Meanwhile, Liz and Lena also compare notes on their ever-evolving tariff challenges. One thing Lena has observed is that some owners in her industry have just had it. They don’t want to deal with the uncertainty, and they’re just packing it in: “We're going to see who survives all this,” she says, “and I want to be a survivor.” Plus: Liz has her first “aha” moment with an AI tool her team built, one that’s already helping convert sales.
    続きを読む 一部表示
    48 分
  • Dashboard: Even Made in the USA Manufacturers May Not Survive the Tariffs

    Dashboard: Even Made in the USA Manufacturers May Not Survive the Tariffs
    2025/10/24
    This week, Greg Shugar, owner of Beau Ties, a men’s accessories business, explains how the tariffs have the potential to destroy the very businesses they are supposed to protect. As Shugar points out, President Trump has said all along that if you make it here, you won’t have to pay the tariffs. Well, Beau Ties makes it here -- but it has to import fabric from overseas because the silk fabric it needs is simply not produced here. And those imports are being taxed at a very high rate. At the moment, Shugar is waiting to hear whether Trump will indeed, as he has threatened, slap an additional 100-percent tariff on imports from China, which Shugar says could force him to shut down. The threat alone means that he can’t make plans two weeks out -- let alone start thinking about next year.
    続きを読む 一部表示
    36 分
  • Your Employees Want a Career Path. Can You Keep Them?

    Your Employees Want a Career Path. Can You Keep Them?
    2025/10/14
    This week, in episode 266, David C. Barnett, Jay Goltz, and Kate Morgan wrestle with one of the trickiest challenges for business owners: how to give employees room to grow without losing sight of the company’s mission. David points out that every business is on its way to obsolescence unless it deliberately evolves—and one way to do that, he says, is by letting employees experiment and try new things. That approach, Jay says, is exactly what led to his building a furniture business. Plus: Kate and Jay agree that while many aspects of running a business can be stressful, nothing has been more stressful for them than the period when their businesses were growing the fastest. And the owners react to a Reddit post from someone who has found that hiring employees has created more problems than it has solved. “Is this just what having employees is like?” the owner writes. “Please tell me I'm not the only one losing my mind.”
    続きを読む 一部表示
    45 分
  • Dashboard: You Probably Should Be Doing More with AI

    Dashboard: You Probably Should Be Doing More with AI
    2025/10/13
    This week, Ted Wolf, who co-founded Guidewise, which helps businesses manage change, offers a slew of valuable AI suggestions for business owners, regardless of how big or small their businesses are and regardless of whether they’re just getting started or they’ve already taken the leap. Those suggestions range from how much to pay for an AI tool to how to protect your data to how to ease employee resistance to how to figure out where to begin. Here’s one step you can take right now: Ted explains how to use ChatGPT to do an instant SWOT analysis comparing your business’s performance with your competitor’s.
    続きを読む 一部表示
    43 分
  • It’s Not Too Early to Be Thinking About 2026

    It’s Not Too Early to Be Thinking About 2026
    2025/10/07
    This week, in episode 264, David C. Barnett and Jennifer Kerhin say they’re already making plans for next year: adjusting pricing, conducting employee reviews, and setting budgets. In the past, Jennifer has chosen to restrain growth to give her employees and her processes a chance to catch up. But this coming year? She says she’s ready to “unleash the hounds.” And for the first time, she’s planning to budget for profit first and then force her expenses to fit her margins. Unlike Jennifer, who conducts employee reviews throughout the year, David saves his evaluations for the end of the year. As he looks forward, he’s trying to figure out what the economy means for his business. He’s seeing more companies in distress, but also more opportunities to help people with severance packages who decide to buy businesses. Plus: David and Jennifer share how they’ve each been experimenting with ChatGPT of late.
    続きを読む 一部表示
    45 分