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 grew up on a farm, which comes with endless hours out in the field, driving the combines and trucks and tractors with no bathroom breaks because there are no bathrooms.
My sister and I grew skilled at standing up to relieve ourselves, albeit with an awkward squat and the all-important pulling of the clothing forward. (Women will know what I mean: skip this step and your pants get soaked.)
My sister Ann, being older than I by four years, educated my Dad not to come roaring up in his pickup, ready to troubleshoot, the minute one of our machines stopped. Sometimes we need a few moments, she let him know, and he sheepishly obeyed the message, one that his male hired hands and my older brother had failed to teach him.
I’ve always thought of this as a useful and tangible skill, and one that provides us farm girls a competitive edge against the city-bred, however more worldly they may be. (True, the need doesn’t come up that often, but when it does—watch out. No wet pants for us!) But the act always seemed to take far too long, especially considering the massive rear exposure it requires.
So you can imagine my delight when I ran into Mark Parks, the COO of Go Girl in Minnetonka, in the parking lot at the Minneapolis Club, no less, after our most recent Upsize- and Club E-sponsored workshop about managing a high-growth company.
Go Girl, he told me, is a nifty plastic device that allows women the convenience of standing to urinate, without any body parts flapping in the wind, and he even took me to his car and gave me a sample. “It’s clean, portable, discreet and reusable,” the package says, and it’s great for camping, boating and other outdoor activities, and also popular with women who travel to exotic locales and women in the military.
“The first time you try it, use it in the shower” to get the hang of it, he urged me, yet for now I’m just taking him at his word and will tuck it in my pack on some future adventure.
Some may say this is too much information, but I’m sharing this story because this is why I love entrepreneurs: for every problem, someone will dream up a solution. And Upsize is committed to helping them build their ideas into successful businesses.
“It’s painful,” Parks said, about operating a rapidly growing company. “I can’t get supplies in the door fast enough,” especially since Walgreens, for one, has recently upped its order for Go Girls by the thousands.
He had come to the workshop to get advice from entrepreneurs and experts who had navigated similar straits, and he said he was leaving with some good ideas. I’ve included highlights from the workshop in the Upsize Primer in this issue, and I’m proud we can provide a little bit of help—OK, I’ll say it, a little bit of relief—for him and others.
You go, Go Girl, and all the other companies out there taking an ingenious idea and trying to make it fly. Sure, this one’s a little late for my sister and me, but we and our brothers and sisters still have plenty of other needs that require stand-up solutions.
