What should I do to not be "greedy"

[LordBrownTrout]

If you still have the piss and vinegar, do it kaz. I sure as hell didn't care about who gave a shit about me when I sold two companies.

 

[Preacher]

#3 but hire more people,give current workers nice raises,donate it to charity etc.

 

[kaz]

This actually was a choice I had to make:

After a career in management and management consulting where I was embarrassingly overpaid, I risked everything and started my own business. I bought five businesses over three years. I spun two back off and merged the other three. There were a lot of difficult times, but over the last two years we have settled into year over year stability and profit and revenue growth. My life is pretty easy now and I have enough money. Sure, if I had a lot more it would change my life, but unless it's a lot more, it won't make any difference.

A year and a half ago, I had lunch with a friend of mine. He ran a business similar to mine, but about half my size. I proposed we merge and he would be COO and run operations and I would be CEO. Besides knowing each other, he knew my staff, I knew his, it would have been a good fit if he wanted to do it. We had a nice lunch and he said he'd think about it, but he said it would probably not work because we'd both want to run the company. I figured that before I asked, but I figured I'd throw it out there. About two weeks later, he had a brain aneurism and died pretty much instantly. We were the same age, wow.

---------------------------------------------

So here's the problem. I wanted to help out his widow and keep his staff employed, but liberals keep telling me that if I earn more than I need than I'm greedy, and I din't want to be greedy. So here were the choices, which would have I have done? The business was worth far more to me than anyone else because I knew his staff and I knew his business and I knew it folded right into mine. I also had the cash to close on a deal right away, and the widow wanted that badly.

1) Turn down the deal, let the widow know I'm sorry and let the jobs go. It's a difficult time to sell businesses, but she probably could get something for it and maybe they would have kept some of the staff, but hey, I can't earn more, I earn enough and I didn't need the money so it would have just been wrong for me to do that.

2) Buy the business and give all the earnings to the widow and her employees. OK, they turn out better, but I have to put up the money to buy the business, more money to operate it and I have to work harder to integrate it into mine and continue to run a company doing more work. I care about the people, but damn, I have to do all that and get nothing out of it?

3) Buy the business for a fair price so the widow is set, hire the people so they have jobs, and keep the money. But damn, I didn't need the money, so that would make me greedy.

So, those are the choices. Do I let the jobs go because I have enough money, do I spend my money and work for free or do I earn money that won't in any way change my life?

These BTW are the real choices you are giving business people and investors when you tell us we earned enough. What do you want us to do exactly? Please clarify

Thanks Emily, as I mentioned, this was a year and a half ago. I know you're responding in this to the first post, I added a lot more after that as to what actually happened. But I'll respond to your points as of the time then add to that as to what happened as appropriate. Good brainstorming, I appreciate the post.

Can you leverage a buy out and sell it back to the remaining employees after you train the best choice to take over for the man who used to run it? Is there anyone in that group willing to mentor under you to take over?

You can turn this into a win-win situation. work out a fair deal to buy it to re organize it where you allow or train another person and board to take over and manage it from there where the workers have the option of becoming their own shareholders.

These scenarios are a variation of each other, so I will address them together. There was one candidate, let's call her Susan. I'm going to make up names starting with the correct first letter to make it easier. The person who died we will call Jason. Susan was Jason's right hand and she could certainly operate the business. The widow, let's call her Cindy, actually offered to Susan to buy the business. While the operations were fully in Susan's capability, she did not have the experience on the business side to deal with the financials and management side of the business and she didn't have the capital to operate it even if she bought it over time. So Susan would have had to get enough capital both for the purchase and for working capital while taking on a job she wasn't at that point able to do. Susan decided she couldn't do it effectively and declined it. There were no other candidates.

For me to buy it and sell it back would have been a major capital outlay and harmed my own business. Even if it was leveraged, I would have had to fund it or back the funding and that would have been on me and I would have had to continue to fund it or back funding until they paid me back. It would not have been debt and risk I would have wanted to take on when I am already doing that for my own business. I would have had to run both companies as she came up to speed, if she came up to speed, a lot bigger task than buying it myself and merging it into my company.

For me to buy it then find another owner would have been difficult because as I mentioned in later posts, whoever I sold it to would have to be able to run the company or pay someone else to run it while paying me and the acquired debt back, which means the profits they had would have likely been greatly diluted again leaving the debt risk on me.

kaz if you are not in a position to mentor the remaining employees and mgmt to take over and pay back your costs for saving their company in the meantime, this is still a great opportunity. Why not contact a local business school with graduate students looking for an internship where the school might provide the mentoring? Or contact a nonprofit group that helps create jobs or business for Veterans? SCORE is a nonprofit of retired executives who offer assistance to nonprofits, usually in financial or management areas Free Small Business Advice How-to Resources Tools Templates SCORE. Could this be turned into a business opportunity to train a new owner to take over?

Love the thinking. I'm a Michigan MBA, which is a top 10 program. We are in the Triangle where there are several excellent MBA programs, Duke, UNC, Elon for starts. The problem with that goes back to money. I still would have had to fund it or backed funding and I would have had to run it until someone came up to speed. And then even if the schools provided candidates and we found a fit, I would have had to run it until they were up to speed, and then they still would have had the same funding issue as they did, an MBA with a bunch of debt isn't going to be able to provide working capital. It might work, but it would be a long term proposition with ongoing work for me and capital risk.

=============================================================
P.S. kaz I'm a liberal progressive Democrat who believes in microlending and business training, especially in areas of ownership management and self-govt, to uplift people from lower socioeconomic class but through the free market system and investing in education.

If you like my ideas or answers, will you please comment WHICH parts are doable or workable and which are not practical? So you can teach liberals how to exchange ideas effectively in order to cooperate on agreed solutions freely. And not force redistribution of wealth or taxes which doesn't address the root problem of why people aren't financially trained or equally educated. I prefer sustainable models of "teaching people to fish" and can cite progressive programs, including Grameen Foundation Connecting the World s Poor to Their Potential and Home

http://www.ithacahours.com

I know you're liberal, and I do have a large body of respect for you because I agree with what you say, you are open minded and think. Note despite the chance to discuss a real situation with a real business owner with real experience, you are the first liberal who wanted to actually discuss it despite that it's in direct response to their endless ranting of greedy capitalist dogma.

Also please reply if my response as a liberal is more helpful to solving the problems being complained about, or if Luddly Neddite's approach is more helpful. Please use this to teach us liberals which ways are the most constructive and which just create more hostility and division.

Why not use this economic opportunity for jobs and positions for Vets mentored by volunteer executives from the community or nonprofit groups, or business grad students mentored by their school, or maybe minority leaders to take over and own their first business?

If I was retiring from my own business, I think these are all excellent ideas. For me though the practical choices were to buy it or step out from it. I bought it. Susan is as I mentioned in a prior post very happy in her new role and I asked after almost a year if she regretted not trying to run it and she emphatically said no.

To follow up on her, once she got up to speed on her new job of running Customer Service, she became the backup to my operations manager and she has gotten deeply into sales support doing quotes and even going on sales calls with sales. She took the lead on contacting customers for the old business and transitioning them to us and she did a great job. She also worked to sell new service to her old customers, including a major website she sold and are working on now, which has really helped us grow that new portion of our business

 

[kaz]

Sounds like a personal problem, but it's like this: Don't work yourself into an early grave, don't take food off of a poor man's table and most importantly, don't let your possessions own you.

Thanks! I don't believe I do any of those. I work to live, I don't live to work, but you spend so much time at your career it's important to do something rewarding, and that involves work. Now I'm in my 50s and I'm deciding where to go from here. I feel I've paid my dues, I am glad I worked my ass off the last 30, but I don't plan to do that the rest of my days

Move somewhere warm, buy a sailboat, drink good booze, catch fish and do something rewarding to keep food on the table, worked for me.

That's the plan, but being 51 I'm not ready to do that yet. I need a middle course for a while first

 

[kaz]

Because you used this thread as a vehicle for a really stupid lie about liberals

This is why it's not possible to have a real conversation with liberals. You are just flat out intellectually dishonest. Whether you want to apply what liberals constantly say to my situation or not, to say it's a "really stupid lie about liberals" and you don't know what I am talking about is frankly a "really stupid lie"

Dishonest is you demanding that I answer and then conveniently forgetting to quote what I wrote.

I quoted the part I was addressing. If you seriously don't grasp this thread in the context of liberals and the endless greedy capitalist attacks, you are completely lost

 

[kaz]

If you still have the piss and vinegar, do it kaz. I sure as hell didn't care about who gave a shit about me when I sold two companies.

I DID! Thanks lordbrowntrout. And I have no apologies either. I make more money, I have more in the bank. And it has changed nothing in my life, I live in the same place and spend the same money

 

[kaz]

This was an act of compassion, not one of self interest. It would serve you far leftists well to know the difference.

It is also ironic that far leftists speak of compassion and mercy, but only evoke it when it comes at the expense of the taxpayer. "Think about the poor people, the women, and the children! Don't be greedy!" Hah, in reality none of you would open your door to or give a penny to someone in need. Hypocrites.

You don't force generosity and compassion at the proverbial point of a gun. Never.

And then they still don't walk away from a dollar themselves, do they Templar?

Indeed.

"Do as I say, not as I do."

Very telling that the admitted board welfare leech would say this.

This is your chance to school a real live capitalist on your ideology, why aren't you interested? You can tell me what I did wrong both when I had the opportunity and what I did after since I told you. Why aren't you interested in the opportunity? Would it be because once you move past the endless shallow Democrat talking points you actually have no clue what you are talking about and even you realize that's the real opportunity for you here to show that?

 

[kaz]

#3 but hire more people,give current workers nice raises,donate it to charity etc.

Actually that's choice #2, buy it and work for free. You have to read the questions more carefully. Why would I want to work for free? Do you do that?

 

[Preacher]

#3 but hire more people,give current workers nice raises,donate it to charity etc.

Actually that's choice #2, buy it and work for free. You have to read the questions more carefully. Why would I want to work for free? Do you do that?

How is that working for free? You A. Hire more people would produce more work which gives you more money or B. Just keep current workers and give them raises or even better C. Do both. Keep them but since you have MORE business on your hands give them raises and hire more people.

 

[LordBrownTrout]

If you still have the piss and vinegar, do it kaz. I sure as hell didn't care about who gave a shit about me when I sold two companies.

I DID! Thanks lordbrowntrout. And I have no apologies either. I make more money, I have more in the bank. And it has changed nothing in my life, I live in the same place and spend the same money

I wish there was more that I could add but from reading your proposition, it looks like you have thought everything through. I do have a question though. I'm about to launch another business that involves bartering and I had a marketing firm that built my website. I'm going to need someone who is able to handle customer service calls that relate to any problems that arise while using the site. Would you hire someone first or do it yourself until the the work was too consuming?

 

[LoneLaugher]

This actually was a choice I had to make:

After a career in management and management consulting where I was embarrassingly overpaid, I risked everything and started my own business. I bought five businesses over three years. I spun two back off and merged the other three. There were a lot of difficult times, but over the last two years we have settled into year over year stability and profit and revenue growth. My life is pretty easy now and I have enough money. Sure, if I had a lot more it would change my life, but unless it's a lot more, it won't make any difference.

A year and a half ago, I had lunch with a friend of mine. He ran a business similar to mine, but about half my size. I proposed we merge and he would be COO and run operations and I would be CEO. Besides knowing each other, he knew my staff, I knew his, it would have been a good fit if he wanted to do it. We had a nice lunch and he said he'd think about it, but he said it would probably not work because we'd both want to run the company. I figured that before I asked, but I figured I'd throw it out there. About two weeks later, he had a brain aneurism and died pretty much instantly. We were the same age, wow.

---------------------------------------------

So here's the problem. I wanted to help out his widow and keep his staff employed, but liberals keep telling me that if I earn more than I need than I'm greedy, and I din't want to be greedy. So here were the choices, which would have I have done? The business was worth far more to me than anyone else because I knew his staff and I knew his business and I knew it folded right into mine. I also had the cash to close on a deal right away, and the widow wanted that badly.

1) Turn down the deal, let the widow know I'm sorry and let the jobs go. It's a difficult time to sell businesses, but she probably could get something for it and maybe they would have kept some of the staff, but hey, I can't earn more, I earn enough and I didn't need the money so it would have just been wrong for me to do that.

2) Buy the business and give all the earnings to the widow and her employees. OK, they turn out better, but I have to put up the money to buy the business, more money to operate it and I have to work harder to integrate it into mine and continue to run a company doing more work. I care about the people, but damn, I have to do all that and get nothing out of it?

3) Buy the business for a fair price so the widow is set, hire the people so they have jobs, and keep the money. But damn, I didn't need the money, so that would make me greedy.

So, those are the choices. Do I let the jobs go because I have enough money, do I spend my money and work for free or do I earn money that won't in any way change my life?

These BTW are the real choices you are giving business people and investors when you tell us we earned enough. What do you want us to do exactly? Please clarify

Shut up. Liberals are not telling you anything.

 

[LoneLaugher]

Your money is yours. Don't be ashamed of being prosperous. And for the life of you, don't succumb to those liberals who think you're "greedy" for making a lot of money!

Do what you think is best, kaz.

Holy shit! Sage advice from a certified slacker! Awesome!

 

[occupied]

Sounds like a personal problem, but it's like this: Don't work yourself into an early grave, don't take food off of a poor man's table and most importantly, don't let your possessions own you.

Thanks! I don't believe I do any of those. I work to live, I don't live to work, but you spend so much time at your career it's important to do something rewarding, and that involves work. Now I'm in my 50s and I'm deciding where to go from here. I feel I've paid my dues, I am glad I worked my ass off the last 30, but I don't plan to do that the rest of my days

Move somewhere warm, buy a sailboat, drink good booze, catch fish and do something rewarding to keep food on the table, worked for me.

That's the plan, but being 51 I'm not ready to do that yet. I need a middle course for a while first

I'm the same age you are, got tired of the high pressure rat race living in a city, started getting high blood pressure, road rage alone on my commute was killing me, had to do something. I still work hard 5-6 days a week for a lot less money but I got to throw away the blood pressure medicine.

 

[kaz]

If you still have the piss and vinegar, do it kaz. I sure as hell didn't care about who gave a shit about me when I sold two companies.

I DID! Thanks lordbrowntrout. And I have no apologies either. I make more money, I have more in the bank. And it has changed nothing in my life, I live in the same place and spend the same money

I wish there was more that I could add but from reading your proposition, it looks like you have thought everything through. I do have a question though. I'm about to launch another business that involves bartering and I had a marketing firm that built my website. I'm going to need someone who is able to handle customer service calls that relate to any problems that arise while using the site. Would you hire someone first or do it yourself until the the work was too consuming?

Great question.

First, bartering is a difficult business. I know you didn't ask me about that, but I hope you really thought through the business model. I've had meetings with multiple bartering businesses who were pitching to me to join their exchange. From my end, I had a hard time getting my head around the model working from my perspective. I like the initial pitch, I'm providing things that are not full cost to me in exchange for my services which I'm saving the markup. However, when I try to envision the actual exchange, the things I couldn't get to are:

1) We carefully select all our vendors and test and retest them and change them if they don't work out. For the bartering, I'm limited to the vendors who join their network to get the bartering benefit. Every vendor evaluation rather than being with carefully selected vendors is somewhat random.

2) The pricing. While in theory prices would be the same, but in reality would they be? It struck me there would be an endless game of their trying to raise price and claim we get the benefit since we aren't paying full cost in our own products

3) Really it's an opportunity to expand your customer base. However, remember it's the same for them. I thought companies who would be interested in joining would generally be smaller, more desperate companies for work and what I get would be of inconsistent quality. And the good ones as they got profitable would stop bartering.

I didn't do it, so I can't say that is correct, but it was my fear. I felt in the end we were better off just dealing with the best firms in real currency and our time was better expended growing the business instead of trying to manage that.

That aside, my thought on how I would approach customer service is this:

1) Set up a virtual PBX with a firm like OOMA or Vonage. That way you can have several extensions and have them ring anywhere.

2) Look for a firm that places people with disabilities. We use OE Enterprises for some jobs where we need variable staff, like fulfillment projects.

OE Enterprise

If you talk to them about what you want, they will work very hard with you to find people who can do it and people who don't have disabilities that would affect your business. For phone, I would think there would be plenty of people with physical disabilities who would be great at it. They will work any number of hours, and they really appreciate it, they have great attitudes.

So what you do is work out a schedule. For busy times, you can set up the PBX so it rings to your variable staff. For other times, you can route calls to home or to your mobile. You can also set up so your mobile is backup, so they get the first call when they are on duty, then the calls roll over to you as long as they are tied up, then it goes to VM. That sort of thing.

Hope that helps

 

[rickm19]

Option 4. Buy the business, (the widow is set) integrate into yours, promote within the company to offset the workload. Put more faith in your help and give them opportunities to have a share and a stake in the business. If you don't need the money im sure the people that have busted their ass for you would love to have an opportunity to do more with their lives. You don't have to do everything yourself. I know there is a lot that goes on in business today with all the stupid laws we need to follow but i'm sure people are qualified even if they don't have a piece of paper that says so. I think too many people get caught up in thinking they know what is best for everything and forget to listen to the world around them. You know that story sounds very familiar...

 

[Mr. H.]

Rule #1: Fuck Liberals.

 

[Book of Jeremiah]

The verdict is unanimous. Keep the money! Can we move on now?

 

[thereisnospoon]

This actually was a choice I had to make:

After a career in management and management consulting where I was embarrassingly overpaid, I risked everything and started my own business. I bought five businesses over three years. I spun two back off and merged the other three. There were a lot of difficult times, but over the last two years we have settled into year over year stability and profit and revenue growth. My life is pretty easy now and I have enough money. Sure, if I had a lot more it would change my life, but unless it's a lot more, it won't make any difference.

A year and a half ago, I had lunch with a friend of mine. He ran a business similar to mine, but about half my size. I proposed we merge and he would be COO and run operations and I would be CEO. Besides knowing each other, he knew my staff, I knew his, it would have been a good fit if he wanted to do it. We had a nice lunch and he said he'd think about it, but he said it would probably not work because we'd both want to run the company. I figured that before I asked, but I figured I'd throw it out there. About two weeks later, he had a brain aneurism and died pretty much instantly. We were the same age, wow.

---------------------------------------------

So here's the problem. I wanted to help out his widow and keep his staff employed, but liberals keep telling me that if I earn more than I need than I'm greedy, and I din't want to be greedy. So here were the choices, which would have I have done? The business was worth far more to me than anyone else because I knew his staff and I knew his business and I knew it folded right into mine. I also had the cash to close on a deal right away, and the widow wanted that badly.

1) Turn down the deal, let the widow know I'm sorry and let the jobs go. It's a difficult time to sell businesses, but she probably could get something for it and maybe they would have kept some of the staff, but hey, I can't earn more, I earn enough and I didn't need the money so it would have just been wrong for me to do that.

2) Buy the business and give all the earnings to the widow and her employees. OK, they turn out better, but I have to put up the money to buy the business, more money to operate it and I have to work harder to integrate it into mine and continue to run a company doing more work. I care about the people, but damn, I have to do all that and get nothing out of it?

3) Buy the business for a fair price so the widow is set, hire the people so they have jobs, and keep the money. But damn, I didn't need the money, so that would make me greedy.

So, those are the choices. Do I let the jobs go because I have enough money, do I spend my money and work for free or do I earn money that won't in any way change my life?

These BTW are the real choices you are giving business people and investors when you tell us we earned enough. What do you want us to do exactly? Please clarify

Keep it open and keep the people working....Ansd please...Do not be concerned with being popular with the liberals.
if your conscience bothers you, donate to charities of your choice.
Build a habitat for humanity home.
Give back to the community in the best way you know how....To hell with the opinions of naysayers.

 

[thereisnospoon]

Let it go.

If you do what seems to be the right thing you'll have a stroke from the high blood pressure it'll give you.

In fact, if you have enough, watch who buys the business and, while they're in a spending mood, take their money to buy yours two and run like hell. Your own "Atlas Shrugged" moment!

I am more concerned with the lives other than Kaz's that this affects.
He can always clear his conscience by giving back to the community.

 

[thereisnospoon]

Ask Judicial review

This thread is for you, Luddy. Well, maybe not personally you. But you're the Marxist demographic. This is your change to provide some actual content, why don't you do that for a change?

When we earn "enough" what are you looking for us to do then? Please clarify

Because you used this thread as a vehicle for a really stupid lie about liberals, I knew you were lying and posted accordingly. Now, you've followed it up with a lie about me. (Please take the time to familiarize yourself with the definitions of words you obviously don't know or understand.)

But, pretending your question is real, its your money and "greed" is a subjective term. Decide what is important to you, decide you want to accomplish and do it.

I am in the position of not needing more money and it gives me the opportunity to do things I could not do in my younger years.

There. How's that for content?

I knew this was coming.. You libs are a fucking cold Pick 4.