Donald Sauder, CPA

Preface: Welcome Gino Wickman! All entrepreneurs and business leaders face similar frustrations—personnel conflict, profit woes, and inadequate growth. Decisions never seem to get made, or, once made, fail to be properly implemented. But there is a solution. It’s not complicated or theoretical. Based on years of real-world implementation in more than 100 companies, the Entrepreneurial Operating System® is a practical method for achieving the business success you have always envisioned. In Traction, you’ll learn the secrets of strengthening the six key components of your business. You’ll discover simple yet powerful ways to run your company that will give you and your leadership team more focus, more growth, and more enjoyment. Successful companies are applying Traction every day to run profitable, frustration-free businesses. Book Report Here: Traction: What do you want from your business  

Preface: Partnerships require vision. Partnerships require collaboration. Partnerships require trust. Partnership require risk. Partnership require effort. Trust is a pillar of any highly successful partnership. Long-lasting, enduring trust keeps partners working together for a life-time. Business Partnerships: Buy-Sell Agreements Let’s say you get along well with your boss, and you like the idea of share driving responsibility, and you want to drive the bus. Great! Then be certain to compose an articulate buy-sell agreement. A buy-sell agreement is a necessary legal document for any business with multiple owners. The cost and time to compose a buy-sell is miniscule compared to the benefits incorporated. A buy-sell agreement can help peacefully resolve family business disputes resulting from values-based or relational conflicts that require a change in ownership. It can help keep a business flourishing and help avoid liquidity or goodwill problems that arise during partnership conflicts, with a limited on the intensity of the conflict. Buy-sell agreements can be either cross-purchases or redemptions say. A cross-purchase permits another partner to purchase the business interest while a redemption permits the business partnership to purchase the interest. In a partnership, these purchases have specific tax rules applicable with a IRC 754 step-up with either a Section 743 or Section 734 partnership tax basis adjustment. A buy-sell agreement can result in automatic and involuntary sales of a partnership business interest, even at a specific price, should certain events occur, e.g. disability or death. It can also specify valuation metrics and sale parameters should a partner want to voluntary egress ownership, e.g. new opportunities, relocation, etc. Some businesses have specific buy-sell rules that prevent business interests, i.e. partnership, from being entangled in certain disputes with proactive involuntary rules of sales written in the buy-sell agreement. A buy-sell agreement for a business partnership should be composed with…

Preface: Partnerships require vision. Partnerships require collaboration. Partnerships require trust. Partnership require risk. Partnership require effort. Trust is a pillar of any highly successful partnership. Long-lasting, enduring trust keeps partners working together for a life-time. Business Partnerships Conflicts from personality differences or value differences, result in stress that will reach beyond the business partnership; and the stress will usually interfere with healthy relationships with employees and immediate family. Then again, is that any more stress than being an employee? Maybe. Because the cost of a partnership dispute is not only emotional, but financial; and since can employees feel the stress, it can be double concern. Trust is a pillar of any highly successful partnership. Long-lasting, enduring trust keeps partners working together for life-time. Every successful partnership, has a substantial of trust among the partners. Honesty, Integrity, Ethics. Trusted character results in respect. If you look at the best examples of business partnership, the recurring theme is pillared trust, gilded with collaboratively supportive talents that power the partners individual respect for each other’s unique and differing strengths. That respect for the unique contributions of each partner’s skills, builds the business supported with a pillar of trust that accomplishes lasting business partnership success. The eye has need for the mouth, and the mouth for hand. Again, the best domestication of successful partnerships is established on the appropriate trust and respect among the partners. One item of note, is the lack of educational efforts towards preventing partnership conflicts and disputes before they occur. Firstly, you have a good idea right now if you’d be a good partner. If you have doubts that business collaboration is for you, or you cannot get along with your current boss, then you’ve answered your question relatively honestly. Periods of long silence when discussing key circuits of a…

Preface: Partnerships require vision. Partnerships require collaboration. Partnerships require trust. Partnership require risk. Partnership require effort. Trust is a pillar of any highly successful partnership. Long-lasting, enduring trust keeps partners working together for a life-time. Business Partnerships Business partnerships are alike to a chorus; a key conductor is always required. Secondly, someone must study the scores. Thirdly, scheduling, auditions, and promotion of the concert(s) are par for the course. It requires a vision, planning, effort and energy. And the more experienced the conductor, the more pleasant it is for everyone – the choir and audience. The probabilities of succeeding in business with a business partner are much greater, than the probabilities of succeeding without one. Yet, business partnerships may appear from a distance to be a easier and effortless climb to the pinnacle of entrepreneurial success. At the start, all you think about is the scenery from the top. Increasingly, studies show that the most successful companies are partnerships with more than one owner. In fact, supposedly less than 10% of today’s top performing entrepreneurial ventures are sole proprietorships. That says more than 90% of top companies have multiple owners, e.g. they are partnerships. Knowing beforehand what a partnership venture involves can be helpful. Before entering any partnership agreement, you need to ask yourself “Why should I be partner?” You’ll need to share more than profits. You’ll need to share more than decisions. You’ll need to share emotions, risks, and the work. A partnership is like a business marriage – sometimes too easy to get into. So, if you’re planning a business and thinking about entering a business partnership, or you’re working in business and have opportunity to be an owner, being forewarned is being forearmed. Are there better options than a true partnership? Often partnership provide opportunities that are not available…

Preface: There have been many good books on human rationality and irrationality, but only one masterpiece. That masterpiece is Daniel Kahneman’s Thinking, Fast and Slow. Kahneman, a winner of the Nobel Prize for economics, distils a lifetime of research into an encyclopedic coverage of both the surprising miracles and the equally surprising mistakes of our conscious and unconscious thinking. He achieves an even greater miracle by weaving his insights into an engaging narrative that is compulsively readable from beginning to end.  — 10 Best Books of 2011 * New York Times * Selected by the New York Times as one of the 100 Notable Books of 2011 * New York Times *    Summary of the Book: Thinking Fast And Slow

Preface: Assuming you’re the type of business owner that’s on the ground floor, you know you need passion for the journey. This week our due diligence on “Fruits” leads to Startajuicebar.com. Realize what your role is in the business, and what you want to do day to day. Andrew McFarlane give’s great advice. Is it the right time? Does the business excite you? Do you have experience in the business? Are you confident about starting the business? Being someone who likes fruit, is different than serving customers who like fruit. Technician, Manager, or Entrepreneur – what do you consider your role? Where knowledge and skill lack, passion will have to make up. Thank you Mr. McFarlane!  

Preface: In May 2017, Beyond Capital finalized a $50,000 investment into East Africa Fruits Farm (EAFF), a production, trading, and distribution business aimed at minimizing post-harvest losses in Tanzania by buying produce directly from smallholder farmers and delivering to major local markets via cold chain logistics. In this brief interview, Eva Yazhari (CEO, Beyond Capital) asks Elly Timothy (CEO, East Africa Fruits Farm) about EAFF, the market for cold-chain logistics in Tanzania, and Elly’s vision for the future of the company. Due Diligence on “Fruits” – Enjoy….open source planning…..    

Preface: Peter F. Drucker in “The Daily Drucker” say society’s next corporations will be simply top management. Everything else will be outsourced. So what does top management do? They focus on the organizations values, mission and vision, solely.  Entrepreneurship — It is defined as the pursuit of [business] opportunity regardless of the resources you currently control. Hinged to every successfully managed and developing entrepreneurial activity is a business plan. Entrepreneurship is an activity or behavior as opposed to a person or ideology as described from Harvard Business School; and those activities or behaviors all begin the same way — with a vision.  It all starts with a vision. A [business] vision is about articulating a problem, or process improvement, that creates a business opportunity with a solution. The vision leads to a mission, and the mission results in action. To succeed in business, it helps to get right early on to succeed i) the leadership, ii) the model, iii) the generation of opportunity. To start with the problem, you must assess why it is a problem likely to result in a value driving opportunity, e.g. hunger is a problem, and what opportunity result from solving a hunger problem? [consider the brand recognition of fast food franchises, Darden’s suite, and many more]. Next, in developing vision, what is the scale of the problem or process, and what are root causes? Because the opportunity is the need for a solution from a problem or process improvement. The vision development looks like this — whose tried it before, and what will the world like after the problem is solved? That is the beginning of the vision – envisioning the world after the problem is solved or process improved, e.g. have your every considered a world without hunger? In this blogging series, we would like…

Preface: Good to Great – Why Some Companies Make the Leap and Others Don’t —  is a book of intellectual adventure to discover what it takes to turn a good business into a great business. It is said the best students are those are never quite sure if they should believe their professors. The book provides an explicit narrative on data of great companies. You’re the judge and the jury. Let the data speak for itself. Good to Great – Why Some Companies Make the Leap and Others Don’t. A Book Report Written to At-Work Entrepreneurs [Segment II] “You can accomplish anything in life, provided you don’t mind who gets the credit”  Harry Truman. Darwin E. Smith chief executive officer of the paper company Kimberly-Clark in the 1970’s was a mild mannered lawyer. Smith’s favorite company was electricians and plumbers and vacation’s were a time to dig holes with his backhoe and move rocks on his Wisconsin farm. When an WSJ journalist ask him about his management style his answer was simple – “Eccentric.” Smith met obstacles with the same resolute will as Sophia Marie Campa-Peters. An aside: Nine year old Sophia Marie Campa-Peters is eating pizza again, after a successful highly risky brain surgery in January. While doctors were pessimistic about Sophia’s ability to walk, her response was “If you’re only going to talk about what I can’t do, then in don’t want to hear it. Just let me try to walk.” Her doctors are now dumbfounded. Campa-Peters hoped to get 10,000 people praying for her on the day of her surgery January 26th. Interestingly, among the those who cared about Sophia, President Trump was one of those praying that day, and his words to Sophia are something every entrepreneur should keep in mind “Never give up, keep inspiring us…

Good to Great – Why Some Companies Make the Leap and Others Don’t. Author: Jim Collins A Book Report Written for At-Work Entrepreneurs.  Preface: Good to Great is a book of intellectual adventure to discover what it takes to turn a good business into a great business. It is said the best students are those are never quite sure if they should believe their professors. The book provides an explicit narrative on data of great companies. You’re the judge and the jury. Let the data speak for itself. Good to Great – Why Some Companies Make the Leap and Others Don’t. A Book Report Written for at-work Entrepreneurs Great is Great; Great is not Good. Good is the enemy of Great. Jim succinctly communicates why satisfaction with good business is the reason there is an absence of great business. Many companies are very good, and they are happy with that. That is the main reason they never become great? How do jump from good, and get to great? The project of studying good to great companies in the book spans more than 10.5 years of effort, and the reading of 6000 articles and 384 million bytes of data. The first data point of relevancy is that great CEO’s of companies came from inside the company 90% of the time. They were home grown; not a paid celebrity. In addition, compensation to corporate performance was not a lead factor of the great CEOs. Great companies invest more time in long-range strategic planning than good companies. They think in-depth through what tasks do not create value and subsequently stop doing those tasks. They work on not only what actions propel the business towards greatness, but what equally what actions detract from greatness as a company. The data indicates that technology alone does…