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.
Ruth Lane and four other Minnesota entrepreneurs joined 22 counterparts from around the United States for a trip to France in January. The mission: to encourage entrepreneurship in France, where a workforce that prefers governments jobs to starting businesses crimps the economy.
Nancy Carter, who holds the Richard M. Schulze Chair in Entrepreneurship at the University of St. Thomas College of Business in St. Paul, heeded the call from the U.S. Department of Commerce to add local members to the delegation, and accompanied the group.
Lane, who heads AllOut Marketing Inc. in Wayzata, says she went because her med-tech clients introduce products in France, often before they do so in the United States. “I went to try to identify a strategic alliance,” she says. “And the fact that it was Paris. I’m always trying to get people to get out of their region and think more globally.
“The French government is trying to encourage entrepreneurship, because 80 percent of their population grows up wanting to work for the government. That’s not good for the economy,” Lane says.
She and her compatriots had lunch at the U.S. embassy, talked about the euro, and observed a Senate session in which French entrepreneurs asked questions. “There are lots of regulations there. It tends to keep the businesses small because they have to go through so much to grow,” Lane says. The French companies chosen to present “were all small, less than $5 million in sales, and they were the elite of the elite.”
She accompanied client Katharine Gray, a fellow attendee and CEO of Twin Cities firm Sage Health Management Systems, to a hospital where Gray presented her company’s product. “To be honest, the point wasn’t bona fide business deals, it was about relationships. Of course being we’re Americans, all of us made contacts,” Lane says.
And then there were the fringe benefits. “This was the French, so there was champagne and beautiful food,” Lane says. “When I came back I had French withdrawal.” All the sessions were conducted in French, which Lane doesn’t speak, and were interpreted except for one session with the Senate. “I just sat next to a very attractive French man and had him tell me what was going on in my ear.”
Ruth Lane, AllOut Marketing Inc.: 952.404.0800; ru******@***********ss.com; www.alloutsuccess.com. Nancy Carter, University of St. Thomas (on sabbatical in London): nm******@******as.edu
