The fourth annual 21 Hats Live will take place in Cincinnati in May. It's a rare opportunity to connect with other owners who understand what it takes to build a business.
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.
The model, which tracks a diverse set of entrepreneurial businesses, indicates companies with less than $10 million in revenue are growing at less than 1 percent a year.
Most business owners say they want balance in their lives. They tell themselves they just need to get through this one crisis, this one launch, this one quarter—and then life will settle down. But what if that’s not actually the goal? This week, Mel Gravely, Lena McGuire, and Ted Wolf talk candidly about what it really takes to build a business—and about whether balance is something owners are truly striving for or simply something they feel they’re supposed to want. “I gotta tell you,” says Mel, “I just don't know if people were really honest that they'd say that they'd be one to spend their time at their kid’s parent-teacher conference.” Lena stresses that it’s not about right or wrong. It’s about owners making the choice that’s right for them. “You have to make yourself happy first,” she says. “It’s kind of—we always use that, ‘Put your oxygen mask on yourself first, and then you can help others.’” The owners agree that there’s a seasonality to entrepreneurship. There are periods when the business demands more, and owners have few real options. That pressure can intensify when a company is struggling—but, intriguingly, it can be just as intense when the business is growing fast. Of course, all businesses endure periods of crisis. But what if the crises never end?
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.
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.
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.
This week, we talk to two people who walked away from promising careers to buy blue collar businesses. Long before search funds and sweaty startups became all the rage, Bob Schwartz left a Wall Street investment banking career to buy a chain of laundromats, SuperSuds, which operates in Delaware, Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Virginia. More recently, Mills Snell left a prominent private equity firm to buy a roofing contractor, Aqua Seal Manufacturing and Roofing, which is based in Columbia, South Carolina. In this conversation, Schwartz and Snell talk about what they were thinking, what they learned about buying a business, what they’ve learned about operating a business, and whether they’re looking for an exit.
