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The Art of Picking The Right SBA Lender

The top 100 SBA lenders are far from interchangeable. They come in many different shapes, sizes, and competencies. And they also come and go.

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21 Hats Live: We're Going to Ann Arbor!

We will have peer-group conversations on the issues you want to discuss. We will tour local businesses. We will eat good food. We will build relationships. And we’ll leave inspired.

About 21 Hats: What We Do. What People Say. How We Got Here

Have you read our testimonials? At 21 Hats, don't tell you how to run your business. But we do publish news articles, Q&As, webinars, podcasts about what it takes to build a business.

Introducing the 21 Hats Marketing Workshop

This is a very unusual opportunity to participate in a collaborative workshop with fellow business owners led by someone with real expertise. Everyone leaves with a real strategic plan tailored specifically to their own business!

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Latest PODCAST EPISODE
Episode 219: I'm Not Building Wienermobiles My Whole Life
I'm Not Building Wienermobiles My Whole Life

This week, special guest Travis LeFever shares the unusual journey he and his co-founder wife, Amanda, have taken to build Mission Mobile Medical, which makes mobile health clinics in Greensboro, NC. That journey started with Travis partnering in a construction business by taking out 39 credit cards to borrow $250,000. The business did well, and he eventually bought out his partner, but when Travis’ father died unexpectedly, he was moved to sell the construction business and look for something more meaningful to do with his life. That extended search led him, somewhat improbably, to overseeing sales for a company that manufactured specialty vehicles, including the Oscar Mayer Wienermobile. It was there that Travis had another life-changing experience when a nurse with a federal grant asked if he could build a mobile clinic to reach patients in underserved communities. That was the spark that led Travis and Amanda to cash in their insurance policies and start Mission Mobile Medial in 2020. The company, whose remanufacturing process allows it to create clinics in less time and for less money than its competitors, expects to hit $60 million in revenue this year.

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Why You Should Run Your Business on EOS (Or Not)
TIME TO LISTEN: 50:23

This week, Shawn Busse, Paul Downs, and Laura Zander call on their own experiences to assess whether the EOS operating system—as explained in Gino Wickman’s book Traction—lives up to its promise of freeing owners from frustration, helping them put the right people in the right seats, and generating all of the scale they want. Laura hired an implementer to install EOS in her business years ago. Paul took more of a do-it-yourself approach, picking and choosing from the book’s suggestions. And Shawn while Shawn hasn’t tried EOS in his own business, he has seen how it works in lots of client businesses. As a result, all three have strong opinions about what types of owners and what types of businesses are likely to do best with EOS. Laura, for example, tells us: “I think it's helpful for people like me 10 years ago, who just don't know what they're doing.”

Is This the Succession Plan For You?

This week, Jay Goltz and special guests Peter Koehler and Jimmy Kalb discuss the hottest new thing in succession planning. You may recall that earlier this year Peter was a guest on an episode in which he explained how he helped Laura Anderson sell her seafood restaurant to what’s known as an employee ownership trust or a perpetual purpose trust. Both Jay and Jimmy listened to that episode and were intrigued. Both had questions for Peter. So we recorded a conversation in which we discuss what makes a business a good candidate for trust ownership. The issues we address include: Is this only for businesses that have a save-the-world type of purpose? How much does it cost to create an ownership trust? Can owners sell to a trust and still run the business as they wish? And perhaps the biggest question of all: What can go wrong?

How to SAVE a Customer
TIME TO LISTEN: 42:12

This week, Jay Goltz, Jaci Russo, and Jennifer Kerhin discuss some of the systems they’ve created that have made their businesses successful. Jay established a process that helps employees diffuse conflicts with angry customers. Jaci has a process that tracks the performance of her agency’s lead-generation efforts and has helped her target clients more precisely. And Jennifer recently created a process to deal with change orders that makes it easier to walk the line between offending customers and forfeiting profits. Plus: We follow up on some issues we’ve discussed in previous episodes. Jay told us recently that he’s cutting back on his advertising spend. Is that the best response to a softening market? Jennifer told us when she first joined the podcast about her long march through what is often called the valley of death. Is she still in the valley of death? And Jaci told us at the beginning of the year that she had two big clients that were ready to sign on. Did they in fact sign on?

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Never miss a 21 Hats Podcast episode
Latest CONVERSATION
The Changing Face of the Yarn Industry

For many, knitting may still conjure an image of a grandmother in a rocking chair, her cats sleeping and her doilies taking shape. In recent years, however, the quiet industry of tiny neighborhood yarn shops scattered across the U.S. has become an unlikely cultural battleground. It’s been divided by charges of racism and cultural appropriation that have erupted in a series of social media firestorms, prompting some owners to close, sell, or rebrand their businesses. It may seem surprising that such a quiet pursuit could produce so much conflict, but it’s really not all that different from the fissures afflicting the country as a whole. In this conversation, we meet three women who were not content to stick to their knitting: Adella Colvin, whose business, LolaBean Yarn Co., is a prominent independent dyer based in Grovetown, Ga.; Gaye “GG” Glasspie, a leading yarn industry influencer whose signature color is orange and who is based in Clifton, N.J.; and Felicia Eve, who owns String Thing Studio in Brooklyn, N.Y., one of the few Black-owned yarn shops in the country. The video offers our entire conversation. You can also listen to a slightly edited 21 Hats Podcast version of the conversation wherever you get podcasts.

Top CONVERSATIONs
A Business Owner Dares to Start a Real Conversation About Race

White owners often ask Mel Gravely, CEO of TriVersity Construction, what they can do to help. He’s got an answer for them, which he offers in this interview and in his challenging new book, ‘Dear White Friend.’

What’s Wrong With Small Business Marketing?

It’s not always about marketing. Sometimes, the real issues go deeper. Sometimes, before you can figure out how to sell, you have to figure out who you are.

The Changing Face of the Yarn Industry
TIME TO WATCH: 1:34:43

For many, knitting may still conjure an image of a grandmother in a rocking chair, her cats sleeping and her doilies taking shape. In recent years, however, the quiet industry of tiny neighborhood yarn shops scattered across the U.S. has become an unlikely cultural battleground. It’s been divided by charges of racism and cultural appropriation that have erupted in a series of social media firestorms, prompting some owners to close, sell, or rebrand their businesses. It may seem surprising that such a quiet pursuit could produce so much conflict, but it’s really not all that different from the fissures afflicting the country as a whole. In this conversation, we meet three women who were not content to stick to their knitting: Adella Colvin, whose business, LolaBean Yarn Co., is a prominent independent dyer based in Grovetown, Ga.; Gaye “GG” Glasspie, a leading yarn industry influencer whose signature color is orange and who is based in Clifton, N.J.; and Felicia Eve, who owns String Thing Studio in Brooklyn, N.Y., one of the few Black-owned yarn shops in the country. The video offers our entire conversation. You can also listen to a slightly edited 21 Hats Podcast version of the conversation wherever you get podcasts.

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