21 Hats Podcast

This week, Gene Marks tries to sort through some confusion. First, he talks about Kamala Harriss’s proposal to 10X a small business tax deduction, which sounds great except that it’s not really going to help small businesses. And then he addresses the comments of a Houston CPA who asserts that small businesses have the best tax deal in America. Gene sees it a little differently.

This week, I’m replaying an oldie but goodie, an episode that Shawn Busse and I recorded with Jeff Braverman, who turned his family’s failing retail business into a thriving ecommerce business. I’m replaying this episode both because Jeff has a great story to share, with lots of takeaways, and because—well, actually, because I took a little time off last week. But listen to this: Jeff walked away from a career as an investment banker and went to work in the family’s nut store, the Newark Nut Company. “My dad and my uncle told me I was nuts,” says Jeff, but he made them an offer they couldn’t refuse. He would put the family’s snacks online—this was way back in the early dotcom days—and they wouldn’t have to pay him unless he actually sold some nuts. As it turned out, Jeff’s little internet play wound up unleashing explosive growth and consumed the business. And despite being a former investment banker, he managed to do that without taking any outside capital. Since we first published this episode Jeff has promoted himself from Chief Nut to Chair Nut.

This week, in episode 210, Jay Goltz, Jaci Russo, and Jennifer Kerhin discuss some of the systems they’ve created that have made their businesses successful. Jay established a process that helps employees diffuse conflicts with angry customers. Jaci has a process that tracks the performance of her agency’s lead-generation efforts and has helped her target clients more precisely. And Jennifer recently created a process to deal with change orders that makes it easier to walk the line between offending customers and forfeiting profits. Plus: We follow up on some issues we’ve discussed in previous episodes. Jay told us recently that he’s cutting back on his advertising spend. Is that the best response to a softening market? Jennifer told us when she first joined the podcast about her long march through what is often called the valley of death. Is she still in the valley of death? And Jaci told us at the beginning of the year that she had two big clients that were ready to sign on. Did they in fact sign on?

This week, Gene Marks notes that the two major presidential candidates happen to agree on something, which is that we should stop taxing tipped income. Unfortunately, Gene explains, it’s a boneheaded idea. Plus: Gene’s been looking into the progress that manufacturing companies are making adopting artificial intelligence applications, and he says—at least when it comes to manufacturing—the promise of AI is starting to get real.

This week, in episode 209, Shawn Busse, Jaci Russo, and Jay Goltz discuss what it takes to stand out these days, especially if your business—like most businesses—isn’t exactly the Next Big Thing. What about trash collection? What if your business is selling scrap metal? What if you happen to be one of 69 picture framers in Chicago? What’s an owner to do to stand out then? Is it enough to execute really well? Can any business make itself remarkable? Shawn, Jay, and Jaci all believe it’s possible, and they offer examples from their own businesses as well as those they’ve observed. Plus: As Google waffles about whether it’s going to kill cookies on Chrome, will business owners still be able to target customers digitally? And Jay’s not happy about a very big bill he got from his accounting firm. Should he just go ahead and pay it?

This week, Gene Marks offers some suggestions as to what it would take for the presumptive Democratic nominee to earn his vote and those of other small business owners. Suggestion No. 1: make clear that in the debate over whether to extend the Trump tax cuts she favors keeping the Qualified Business Income Deduction for owners of pass-through businesses. He’d also like to see her promise fewer regulations and more tax breaks for owners trying to sell their businesses.

This week, in episode 208, Paul Downs, Mel Gravely, and Sarah Segal talk about the tricky calculation all entrepreneurs must make between sticking to their vision and accepting advice. Sarah explains why she is reluctant to take advice from people who don’t really know the inner workings of her business, which is pretty much everyone. Paul, on the other hand, says taking advice from outsiders helped save his business during the Great Recession. And Mel talks about why he thinks every business should have a board of advisors—and why he thinks having a board would have saved him from a big mistake he made recently. But then, Paul asks: If you do have a board, can you not take its advice? Plus: Reacting to a recent post on Reddit, the owners discuss the right way to wind down a failing business, a process with which Mel and Paul have some familiarity.

This week, Gene Marks talks about three very different topics. First, he explains how helping employees find affordable health care can actually generate business growth, and he walks through the ways even very small businesses can help. Next, Gene weighs in on proposed legislation in California that is designed to keep AI models from causing catastrophic harm. And finally, he explains how a new hire just out of college helped a Chevy dealer create a sitcom parody that went viral. But did it sell cars?

This week, in episode 207, special guest Sharon Gillenwater lets us in on some dirty little secrets about Silicon Valley. She’s the founder of two businesses. The first one was backed by venture capital and then destroyed by venture capital. Despite that experience, Sharon tried to raise capital for her second business, Boardroom Insiders, a software-as-a-service marketing tool that helps businesses sell to the top decision-makers at big corporations. But this time, the VCs weren’t interested. So she bootstrapped the business with the help of an angel investor—and proceeded to learn some surprising lessons, many of which she shares in her book, Scaling with Soul. Perhaps the biggest surprise came when she sold her business and learned the happy lesson that the founder of a relatively small bootstrapped business can walk away with more money than the founder of a venture-backed business that sells for far more. In our conversation, Sharon is unusually candid about what it took to build her business, what she learned about B2B marketing, and precisely how much money she made along the way.

This week, Gene Marks reminds us once again that AI tools by and large still aren’t ready for prime time, but he does find a handful of people doing interesting things with AI—like getting a fresh take on the risks and opportunities their business is confronting. Plus: Gene and Loren Feldman discuss whether Gene is right that his business taxes will definitely go up if Kamala Harris is elected president.