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.
After 32 years of marriage, I considered my husband and me a well-oiled machine, capable of handling the business of life with unspoken mastery and a clear delineation of duties.
At dinner parties, I roast the prime rib; he makes the dessert. For household chores, I do the laundry; he gets the groceries. I didn’t think we’d ever need to hash out anything new again because we had this life management thing down cold.
Then we bought a sailboat.
It’s an 18-foot Precision we named “The Wind is our Friend.” The first year, the very nice man who sold it to us showed up to help get it on the water. This year, we were on our own. It turns out the seemingly seamless Ewen-Amann partnership has a few yawning gaps.
For seven hours — yes, seven — on the Sunday before Memorial Day, Jeff put things together and took them apart, stared and stared at the photos he had taken the fall before, directed our muscle (our son and our daughter’s boyfriend), to put up the heavy mast, then take it down again because something was wrong, then put it up, then take it down. This happened three times, including the time my son dropped it on Jeff’s head.
My husband’s method was trial and error, guided by the belief that the only way to learn something is to figure it out step by step on your own.
My role was to gasp, and gasp again, fearful that my loved ones would be injured by the towering piece of metal high above their heads. This turned out not to be helpful. Also, I made suggestions as to what we should do, all of which involved some version of calling on the experts. Was there a service we could hire? Would the former boat owner be persuaded to help us again if we bought him lots of beer? Could we YouTube it?
As a lifelong reporter, I realized my method is to ask many people about the best way to do something and then write it up for others to learn.
What does this have to do with running a business? I was thinking of all the business partners out there who have things down cold until something new comes up — in other words, all the time. How do they navigate to get the new job done?
For Jeff and me it involved grit, especially when the first day-long ordeal ended in another gut-punch: When we finally got on the water, depleted, one of the spreaders broke, a piece of equipment crucial to the boat’s structural integrity. We would have to take out the boat and take down the mast yet again. Divorce seemed the only option.
But instead we fell back on an old standby.
We invoked “Amnesty International,” which was the code phrase we adopted the last time we didn’t have any idea what we were doing — when we had our first baby 24 years ago. Delirious with fatigue and crazed with worry, we decided nothing we said or did in the middle of the night could be held against each other the next day. This simple idea helped us survive our babies so it would help us now repair the sailboat.
Also, we divided the duties. Jeff “suggested” I stay away from the job site during the re-do, and I accepted his “suggestion,” only showing up at the designated time with sandwiches and some cash to pay our helpers. The result? Three hours total in and out of the water and “The Wind is Our Friend” was back in business.
Ever since, it’s been smooth sailing, on the water and in life.
