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.
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Bottom line must
be everyone’s focus,
not just accountant’s
by Beth Ewen
“IN THIS NEW economy, there are no staff jobs. Everyone has to be responsible for profit,” says Michael Miller, founder of the Twin Cities firm Miller Ventures LLC.
He presented a talk called “Surviving and Thriving in Harsh Economic Times” last fall, as the quarterly offering of the UpSwing Leadership Series, presented by Sharp Upswing in Edina.
Make the marketing manager accountable for profits, Miller urges, with goals that are specific and measurable. Do the same for each of your employees, linking every person’s job with the goal of increasing income.
If anyone protests, look carefully, Miller says, relating an example when he was building one of his companies. “I thought it made sense to step out and bring someone in to professionally run the business. After a few months I heard screams from the gallery and thought we were way off course. I say to him, we’re off course. He started in with the excuses.
“Here’s the million-dollar lesson: Trust but verify. If someone is defensive and doesn’t want to be held accountable, they should go someplace else,” Miller believes.
As the name suggests, Owatonna-based Kamp Automation looks for customers with a process they’d like to automate. It could be a small, inconvenient, tiny part that people can’t assemble. It could be a high-volume product so needed that the customer can’t find enough labor to produce it in the necessary quantities. “We’ll work anywhere from medical device companies to the seed industry for corn and soybeans,” says Kent Patterson, co-founder, president and CEO. “We just jump all over wherever there is custom automation.” The company started in his garage. Patterson and his partners built a machine. The company started to grow to the point where now it has 48 employees — and had a bunch of people and stuff in different locations. “We went from a garage to a shop to a shop and just kept moving to new places and signing leases,” he says. “We got to a point where it’s like, OK, this is getting big enough and sustainable — we felt that we wanted to look for our own space.’”
