Jay Sachetti joined Jeff O’Brien, partner at Husch Blackwell and Dyanne Ross-Hanson, president of Exit Planning Strategies talked about the market for mergers and acquisitions, exit planning opportunities for companies that don’t end up for sale and how companies can maximize their eventual sale price during an early October panel at the first Upsize on Tap event at Summit Brewing Co. in St. Paul.
When the state Legislature passed a law requiring employers to provide paid leave and safe time for employees, Justin Bieganek started hearing differing details from friends, colleagues and peers.
I quit my day job at Franchise Times in a rage in May, after the owner got cold feet and killed one of my articles detailing serious allegations against a large franchise brand.
At first, I felt devastated to let down the dozens of individual owners who were counting on me to give them a voice. I felt disrespect from the publication I helped build into a news powerhouse during the past dozen years. I felt odd, to suddenly not be on deadline for three stories a week as I’d been for nearly four decades.
But soon I felt … free! How great to be old and not broke, and finally able to look power in the eye and say no thanks to a bad decision. “I dissent,” as my sneakers say quoting the late, great Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and I walked.
So now what, as all my colleagues and sources ask. Where am I going next? The answer is another first for me: I don’t know, except to say I’ll continue writing this column for as long as Upsize readers will have me. What a delicious and scary feeling. I’m betting many business owners can relate.
I’ve been a reporter since I was 16 and essentially had the same job until now, age 61, at different publications including this magazine I was proud to co-found. I’ve always loved my work — who gets to learn an inch’s worth of info about a mile-wide list of topics and people, and stuff their brains and their pages with the wacky or profound or inspiring in life?
But I’m determined this time to think differently — to “manifest,” as the kids say, meaning roughly “if you can see it, you can be it.” There’s the YouTube star Danny Duncan, who grew up poor in Florida and now, at 31, makes millions every year doing silly pranks in arenas packed with raving fans. Did he know he’d make it, when he was climbing the Hollywood sign in California wearing only a Speedo, I asked him for a recent story. “I was positive. I was 100 percent sure. I knew I’d be wealthy one day,” he replied.
There’s Suzy Welch, the business professor and best-selling author who wrote a recent Wall Street Journal column about her 20-something students. They’re not interested in striving and grinding like her fellow baby boomers. Rather, they seek “funemployment,” not a career but a series of gigs and experiences to enjoy life and get by. She was equal parts appalled and envious. “The idea of ‘funemployment’ struck me as bonkers. But then I thought back on my decades working seven days a week,” she wrote.
There’s my 24-year-old son and his bandmates, who work what my best friend and I used to call “slob jobs” while they pursue their passion for music. He’s the drummer in four bands, including Odd Prospect. He composes and releases music regularly and he has his first gig at the storied 7th St. Entry in Minneapolis in July.
So, what should I manifest in my encore career? Sailboat captain? Symphony orchestra conductor? Mayor of Minneapolis, where my husband and I returned this summer after a five-year adventure in Chicago? I can’t wait to find out.
And what about you? Drop me a line, I’d love to hear about it.
