What it takes to run a business

Podcast

This week, Jay Goltz and Laura Zander talk about the limits of their own management. Once a business gets past a certain size, no owner can do everything or even be aware of everything. But where do you draw the line? Does the owner need to be conversant with most aspects of management, marketing, and finance to oversee the business? This came up, in part, because Jay told us recently that his framing shops routinely ask customers how they learned of the business and that a recent review indicated that his social media efforts were not having an impact. But when asked about those efforts, Jay wasn’t entirely sure what they consisted of or if they even existed. Perhaps surprisingly, it also became clear that Jay wasn’t all that interested in learning more. It was working well enough, he’d concluded, and that was all he needed to know. And that’s the starting point for today’s main conversation. Along the way, we also address such questions as: Where’s the line between being a manager and being a therapist? Do owners need to be passionate about their businesses? What does the phrase “people over profits” really mean? And while “the customer is always right” has become a cliche, is it really a good policy?

This week, Hans Schrei explains why he’s pursuing a deal with Costco and why his vision is to get Wunderkeks cookies into every supermarket in the country. When Jay Goltz counters that instead of thinking big, or thinking small, maybe Hans should think medium, Hans says that may no longer be possible with consumer packaged goods: “The little brand that grows and thrives by growing little by little doesn't really exist any more in this space,” he says. Underlying the discussion of how fast Hans wants Wunderkeks to grow and how quickly he wants to exit are the stress-related mental health issues that he’s discussed previously on the podcast and the fact that his partner, Luis, is in the U.S. on an entrepreneurial visa, which means that if the business were to fail, they might have to leave the country.

This week, Shawn Busse and Loren Feldman talk to Jeff Braverman about how he walked away from a career as an investment banker and went to work in the family’s nut store, the Newark Nut Co. “My dad and my uncle told me I was nuts,” says Jeff. But with an instinct for taking risks—like acquiring the URL Nuts.com—Braverman has turned the family business into an internet juggernaut, unleashing years of explosive growth. And despite being a former investment banker, he’s managed to do that without taking any outside capital. And he’s far from finished. “To this day,” he says, “we're doing deep brand research: What is Nuts.com? What can it be? Can it scale? Can it transcend just the word nuts?”

This week, Liz Picarazzi and Sarah Segal talk about their attitudes toward growth, including how they set goals, the tension between revenue and profit, deciding when growth requires additional bodies, choosing between contractors and employees, and how they would use the money if someone were to give them a million dollars to invest in their business. Plus: What will it take for them to consider themselves successful?

This week, Shawn Busse and Loren Feldman are doing something a little different. This is the first in a series of episodes we’re calling Marketing Workshops. In an attempt to confront one of the biggest pain points business owners face, we’re offering a series of conversations with owner-operators about their marketing experiences: what’s worked and what hasn’t. We’re starting with Grayson Hogard, co-founder of Grove Cookie Company. For Grayson and his wife, Marie, the company is a bootstrapped side hustle, but in a very short time they’ve come to some very smart conclusions about their marketing that might seem counterintuitive at first. Most importantly, they’ve figured out that the most effective sales channel for their cookies is, of all places, LinkedIn.