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Building a Business with Your Kids

Building a business with your child can be extra-rewarding, but also riskier. Scott Nicholson has not only successfully done that, but has built businesses together with all three of his kids.

Scott built KO Business Solutions with his daughter Brianna. KO Business Solutions is a consulting and recruiting company. It helps organizations create hiring strategies, especially call and contact centers. It also helps them execute on those strategies.

Next, he and his son Jake decided to acquire the Chicago franchise of Jurassic Junk, a completely different kind of business. The company focused not only on helping residences and offices get rid of unwarranted items. But it also has revenue streams for scrap metal and resale. The goal, Scott says, is to minimize items going to the landfill.

Scott’s daughter Shannon worked in the KO Solutions business for a while, but it soon became apparent that she wanted to find something that allowed her to use her creative side. She established THR33 Marketing, and with Scott’s input, provides marketing services to KO, to Jurassic Junk, to Scott’s other businesses, as well as several other clients.

Scott shares how his father helped nurture his business sense and his entrepreneurial spirit, and how he’s tried to do the same with his kids.

He has plenty of advice to offer about involving children in your business, as well as other family members, or even friends.

If you’re thinking about building a business with your kids — or others close to you, this is a must-listen interview!

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Advantages of CEO Peer Group Mentoring

Being the founder/CEO of a startup or small business can often be lonely, confusing, discouraging, and downright overwhelming. Most of us start a business around an idea we’re passionate about, and it often revolves around something we’re good at or know well.

But building and running a business requires many skills, and few of us are good at all of them. We need to make good decisions, but we don’t always have the expertise or skill to make them.

That’s why there are many CEO peer mentoring groups, both formal and informal. There are Meetup Groups, and online groups. But there are also in-person, more structured groups. For these groups, a time commitment is required, and a membership fee assessed.

There are nationwide organizations that match and facilitate these groups. The best-known is probably Vistage, but YPO and LX Council, among others, are also well-established.

And if you poke around, you’ll also find lots of CEO peer mentoring groups that are locally organized. Some are industry-focused. Others focus on startups. Some are based on religious affiliation. There are even groups for entrepreneurs who are moms, juggling business and family. Some focus meetings driven mostly by current member challenges, and others have a fairly formal curriculum.

Lori Dann’s President’s Leadership Council is a Chicago-based CEO peer mentoring group facilitator. She puts togethers groups of CEOs of small but fairly well-established businesses in non-competing industries. Lori says their working sessions are focused on solving existing problems experienced by the group members.

She joins The Savvy Entrepreneur Radio Show to share a bit of her own journey and how she decided to create her business.

Lori also offers some helpful tips on how to find the right CEO peer mentoring group for you, if you’re a CEO and/or founder.

Click on the arrow to take a listen!

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Business Risks and Insurance

Are you insured for the risks your small business presents?

Anna Maria Viti-Welch, principal of the Viti Companies, joins The Savvy Entrepreneur Radio Show to talk about some of the many misconceptions people have about business risks and insurance coverage they may want or need.

For example, a common assumption is that, if you work on your business out of your home, that your homeowners insurance policy will cover you. Another is when you need business auto insurance. A third common mistake is not ensuring for data privacy breaches and other cyber risks. A fourth is risks to officers and your directors and even investors.

Anna Maria takes listeners step by step through the different types of business insurance and the kinds of business activities that might need to consider insurance.

Business insurance is not the sexiest of topics for entrepreneurs, but Anna Maria believes all small business owners need to be fully informed to adequately assess their the risks and knowledgeably address them. Only then will they be able to balance the cost of coverage with the downside risks of operating without insurance or being underinsured.

Click on the arrow to listen to a topic that most small businesses need to know more about!

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Fluid Running

What do you do if, six weeks before the biggest and most important marathon race of your life, you tear your calf muscle?

Jennifer Conroyd’s 5 siblings were all coming to town to run the Chicago Marathon with her. They were raising money for Juvenile Diabetes, a disease her nephew had been diagnosed with at age 2. Jennifer had organized all of this, and so the race was a big deal for her.

Her doctor was adamant that she couldn’t run. A lot of people — maybe most of us — would simply chalk it up to bad luck and wait for our next opportunity.

But most of us aren’t Jennifer Conroyd. She researched deep water running, and decided to try it, even though there’s not much known about it in the U.S. She hired a coach and diligently did a deep water running program.

And guess what? She not only was able to run her full marathon — the first time she had run on land in 6 weeks — she even qualified for the Boston Marathon!

At that point, Jennifer knew she was onto something pretty special. She shares with The Savvy Entrepreneur the story of how she’s built and grown Fluid Running. Fluid Running is a novel fitness concept — although popular in Australia and Canada, it really is unknown in the U.S.

Jennifer has been through a number of iterations with her business models, and trying different ways to build awareness of the benefits of deep water running.

It’s a wonderful story, and well worth a listen, especially for any new business trying to create awareness for a great idea that people don’t yet know they need!

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Tips to Successfully Scale Your Business

Thinking about scaling your small business?

There’s lots of great reasons to scale your business. Scaling often makes you more attractive to potential investors. It lets the founders/owners and other key people in the business grow professionally or allows them to focus on doing the things they are best at and enjoy most. And it can bring in more revenue, allowing the business to expand strategically.

Jeff Galas, CEO of OnPurpose Growth, is passionate about helping small businesses scale. But more than that, he is a process-driven guy who wants to make sure businesses scale the right way.

Jeff shares with The Savvy Entrepreneur Radio Show a bit about his structured process for helping businesses make sure they focus on the right things first, including whether they are really serious about scaling or not.

There are more than a few businesses out there whose owners say they want to scale, but their behavior. There are plenty of others that have successfully scaled, but left the owner(s) unhappy because they lost touch with the things in the business that mattered most to them.

Jeff believes that owners/founders need to be crystal clear about the parts of being in the business that makes them happy and soul-searching about where they want their scaling journey to take them. Jeff offers some insights about his process, and also shares some of the most common scaling mistakes he’s seen over the years.

Every business owner who has thought about scaling needs to listen to this interview!

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