21 Hats Podcast

This week, Gene Marks explains the global tech outage: what actually happened, how seriously we should take it, and what business owners should do (but probably won’t) before the next outage. Those lessons include: 1) Try to keep some paper handy. 2) Stay calm. The internet is going to go down from time to time. 3) Have a disaster-recovery plan. 4) And if you don’t have a disaster-recovery plan, g...

This week, in episode 205, Paul Downs, Liz Picarazzi, and Jaci Russo discuss how they review employees and how they make the hard calls when someone is right on the cusp. The conversation starts with a couple of tricky situations that Paul is trying to think through and then progresses through several other issues: Do you use personality tests to avoid or resolve personality conflicts? Paul, Liz,...

As CEO of MultiFunding, Ami Kassar sees a lot of small business P&Ls, and he sees how banks are responding to loan applications. And in his view, the ground is starting to shift—although he’s not sure where we’re headed. But in times of uncertainty, he emphasizes, there are always opportunities

This week, in episode 204, Jay Goltz and special guest Cathy Caroll talk about family businesses, with Jay asserting that they are even more combustible than most people realize and with Cathy offering some smart coping strategies. We start with Cathy explaining how her own experiences in a family business propelled her to write a book, Hug of War , and to become a family business coach. Why are f...

This week, John Arensmeyer, founder and CEO of Small Business Majority, reminds us that the State Small Business Credit Initiative is sending billions of dollars through the states specifically for small businesses. Because every state is handling the money differently and there is no one-stop shop for information, there is some confusion—but the money is real and John explains how to figure out i...

This week, in episode 203, special guests Laura Anderson, founder of Local Ocean , and Peter Koehler, her succession-planning advisor , explain why Laura decided to sell her thriving seafood business in a transaction that created a business model that is neither widely known nor widely understood. It’s called an employee-ownership trust, and there are only about 50 of them in the United States. Bu...

No, says Gene Marks, who — it may surprise you to hear — offers three main reasons he doesn’t believe business owners should panic over the U.S. government’s growing debt. That said, he does believe that we are likely to have to operate in an environment of higher inflation and higher interest rates for some time, and he says that is likely to require some adjustment in the thinking of business ow...

This week, in episode 202, Paul Downs, Jaci Russo, and Sarah Segal talk about how they wound up pitching their products and services not to consumers, but to other businesses. They all agree that selling to business is more profitable, and they all agree that it has other advantages, as well. “In general,” says Paul, “it's easier to sell to businesses because the person you're talking to, it's rar...

This week, Gene Marks and Loren Feldman discuss the Supreme Court’s decision, released on Friday, that takes authority to interpret laws passed by Congress away from federal agencies and gives it to judges. Whatever you think of the merits of the ruling, Gene points out, it creates tremendous uncertainty for businesses trying to comply with the law. For example, a new overtime rule is supposed to...

This week, in episode 201, we bring you what we’re calling an Entrepreneurial Fish Bowl with Chris Hutchinson. As you may remember, we recorded one of these at our 21 Hats Live event in Fort Worth, where I shared some of my challenges trying to build 21 Hats and got feedback from the group. We recorded that conversation and turned it into a podcast episode. This time, we’re doing the same thing ex...

Companies don’t like to admit it, says Gene Marks, but that’s kind of the point. So far, it’s mostly big companies with millions to spend that have been able to replace humans with bots, but he believes smaller businesses will soon be doing the same thing. Should we be worried about that? He doesn’t think so. Plus: Why a lot of businesses still don’t offer 401(k) plans. And if job candidates want...

This week, in episode 200, Shawn Busse, Liz Picarazzi, and Jaci Russo talk about how the marketing world is turning upside down. For decades, business owners have treated search engine optimization as something of a religion. They may not have been able to explain it, but they had faith that, if they obeyed the rules, Google would discover their sites and rank them. But search engines are getting...

This week, Shawn Busse talks about why the business-advice books we’ve all read often fall flat. Shawn says it’s because much of what they suggest is predicated on a traditional model of a business that makes widgets. As a result, that advice may work fine if you are a manufacturer, but it’s far less likely to help if your product or service is more customized. That may seem obvious but the thinki...

This week, in episode 199, Jennifer Kerhin tells Shawn Busse and Jay Goltz that she finally managed to take her first real vacation since starting her business almost 20 years ago. The vacation is part of a decision she made last year to regroup a bit, in part by backing off on her sales and marketing outreach. The goal is to give her team and herself a bit of a respite while they catch their brea...

This week, Tracy Bech, who is co-author of the “60 Minute CFO” and who has bought and sold businesses herself, offers some guidelines on how to approach an acquisition. Some of it is looking at the numbers, of course. Some of it is understanding the story behind those numbers. And some of it is psychological, controlling your emotions and maintaining a willingness to walk away from the deal if som...

This week, in episode 198, we get updates from Laura Zander, Sarah Segal, and Jay Goltz. Laura wonders whether the time she’s put into integrating her latest acquisition might have been better spent focusing on her core businesses. Sarah, who has shifted to pursuing smaller clients, asks Laura and Jay to articulate the PR pitch that would interest them. But how do you evaluate the effectiveness of...

This week, Gene responds to a New York Times article suggesting that CEOs should be among those worrying about whether artificial intelligence will take their jobs. For one thing, companies could save a lot of money replacing their leaders with bots. But Gene’s not buying it—although he does see Microsoft and Google making big progress with their AI offerings, so much so that he’s adjusting the se...

We’re calling it a We-SOP. The term, coined by Jay Goltz, refers to a business transition that is something of a do-it-yourself ESOP, or employee stock ownership plan, but without the expense and complication and debt of a full ESOP. It’s a transition that lets owners get money out of what has been their life’s work. It’s a transition that lets loyal employees keep their jobs and preserve the comp...

It’s easy! Anyone can do it! This week, in episode 196, Shawn Busse, Jaci Russo, and William Vanderbloemen talk about a whole slew of marketing challenges. From strategizing for trade shows, to whether your logo has to tell a story, to understanding what constitutes a brand, to whether that iPad ad Apple pulled was terrible or brilliant, they discuss what makes marketing so difficult. It all start...

You are. That’s Gene Marks’ story, and he’s sticking to it. This week, Gene talks about all of the people who love to hate on Workday’s HR platform, and he argues that whatever problems exist are really the fault of the companies using the software, not the company that makes it. Plus: Gene tells us what we need to know about the latest ChatGPT upgrade. Spoiler alert: He says we will long remember...

This week, in episode 195, Mel Gravely tells Jay Goltz and Liz Picarazzi about his recently executed succession plan, including what’s worked and what could have gone better. The main thing that could have gone better, Mel says, is his purchase of another small business where he says he misdiagnosed the challenges the business is confronting: “I thought they just had a bad model and they weren't m...

This week, Gene talks about an intriguing banking trend that’s come out of Europe and could be headed our way. It sounds a little dicey, but it could take some of the work out of applying for a loan. Plus: business owners say they expect artificial intelligence to increase--not decrease--their headcount. Could they be right? And can we all agree on the definition of a small business?

This week, in episode 194, Shawn Busse, Jay Goltz, and Jaci Russo talk about the new rules that may—or may not—ban non-compete clauses, increase the number of employees who must be paid overtime, and eliminate TikTok in the U.S. How much would those changes matter to each of their businesses? What might the owners do differently? Do the changes make sense? And why does it so often seem as if it’s...

This week, Shawn Busse talks about his belief that, for all kinds of understandable reasons, business owners have been fixated on marketing tactics that amount to a losing battle of digital trench warfare. Over time, he says, those tactics have come to cost more and return less. But there are alternatives, and Shawn takes us through some examples. Plus: Are there lessons for smaller businesses in...

The wrong way to make innovation happen, Ty Hagler says in this week’s special bonus episode, is to have a great idea and then go all-in trying to create it. That, he says, is a really expensive way to find out if your idea works. The right way to pursue innovation, he says, is to take your idea to customers so you can assess the pain points and opportunity spaces before proceeding. Hagler, who is...