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.
As Debbie Fors drove down 50th Street in Minneapolis, she thought it was going to be a normal day. But then she pulled into the parking lot of the Dairy Queen she and her husband manage and started to shake.
The windows of the building they lease were boarded up and the back half of the roof was gone. There were charred holes in the side that still breathed smoke.
How could they recover? This was Jon and Debbie Fors’ challenge, and along with help from building owner Martha Head, they have overcome and rebuilt.
“Almost all of the windows were cracked or broken. At first I thought someone had broken in. There was very little smoke, but I saw that parts of the old roof were removed or charred.
I didn’t know about the fire until the morning after. I had no idea the firefighters wouldn’t call us.
When you get your license they put your name in a computer with the city, but the fire department can’t access those computers. If you want to be informed immediately you have to bring down your name and phone number to the fire department.
We are in the process of getting a fire box on the side of the window. This contains a key, your address and your phone number. It would allow the firefighters to enter through one of the doors instead of breaking the windows. They will then notify you when they get there. It’s a good idea. You can get the application from the fire marshal.
I would rather have been awakened in the middle of the night. This might sound funny, but I would rather have watched it burn. At least then I would not have been alone when I found out. Nothing would have moved any faster, but it’s still important to be contacted. You don’t want to drive up and find your building like that. It’s a shock.
We did have insurance. You need to have very good insurance. You want to have enough insurance to cover the property, the building, your employees and your loss of business. Loss of business is the important part. You just use the records from the same months of the year before to calculate it.
You should consider that when you have the loss of business insurance it doesn’t cover your increases in profit each year. You should make sure your records are kept somewhere else. We were fortunate that ours were safe in the basement.
You don’t want depreciation value insurance, you want replacement value. You want the value to stay the same with time.
We also had insurance for employee retention pay. That way all of your employees can have income and they do not have to find another job. Then when you re-open, you still have employees. We were closed just short of five months, and all the employees that were with us got a steady income the whole time. It was a huge benefit for us, too, because we didn’t have to train everybody over again.
By the time we got the paperwork filled out and sent in for the insurance, we had to wait a month until the money actually started to show up. That was a whole month without income. I mean, insurance pays for it, but you don’t get it until later.
It was hard to walk through the building. All the water was frozen on the ground and it was very dark. The entire back section was burnt, and most of it had collapsed. We were walking over glass and ice and ceiling tiles. The windows had been boarded up so there was no light. The basement was pitch black. There was obviously no electric, so my husband and I had to go get flashlights from the gas station across the street.
You really don’t realize the extent of the loss until you actually have to sit down and inventory everything. We had shelves that were covered in mounds of dripping, melted plastic that used to be scoops. The plastic was just drizzling down the stainless steel shelves. How many scoops did you have?
When Jon and I were trying to take inventory we had a week of sub-zero temperatures. We would come in for 15 minutes and then we’d have to go across the street to the gas station to warm up.
You have to do the inventory before you can collect on any insurance. I am keeping all of the receipts from everything we bought so we won’t have to go through it again. You have to watch out if you lease a building though, because everything that was in there when you moved in would have been bought by someone else. Most insurance companies won’t hassle you about it, but it is better to be safe.
The most difficult part about the whole ordeal was not having something to do. I am hyper. I was tempted to get another job, but I had things to do around the house. Those are things you just can’t plan for.
I had to put up an application box outside the business because I had to hire people from our house. They would call and leave me a message and I would send them an application. They would send it back or leave it in the box, and then I had to call for an interview. I had interviews on the patio, or in the construction trailer when it rained.
You also have to make sure you order your equipment with time to spare.
The whole opening was later than we expected. We were originally going to open on a Wednesday and then it went to Thursday and Friday. We finally opened on Friday afternoon.
It was stressful. You wonder if you have enough insurance to cover the difference. Is it ever enough? Getting started again was stressful. You have to hire new employees, time everything right; it is on a pretty strict schedule. Construction gets delayed and throws you off your schedule. That can be stressful.
We’ve both been working constantly. For the last two weeks we have been working 14 to16 hour days. I can just say it’s nice to have the new building.”
— As told to Craig Kotilinek
[contact]
Debbie Fors is co-owner of the Dairy Queen at 3709 W. 50th St. in Minneapolis: 612.926.0025; dj******@***oo.com
The use of fractional executives — those hired by companies on contract to work a fraction of the hours at less cost than full-time hires — has been on the rise for years. That accelerated during the COVID-19 pandemic. John Arms, co-founder of Voyageur U, helped establish the organization to help educate free agents on what it takes to make it as a fractional executive. He’s now put that knowledge into print, recently releasing the book “Consult Your Way to a Full-Time Job.” Arms joined Upsize Minnesota Editor Andrew Tellijohn to talk about how the book can help potential fractional executives carve their new paths.
Branding expert Kate DiLeo wrote a book about how branding agencies need to do less storytelling and more listening to better meet their clients’ needs.
