Listen to this Post Though there are countless books, blogs, podcasts, and social media accounts that serve as thoughtful and informative resources for current and prospective entrepreneurs, unfortunately there appears to be an equal number of resources that demonstrate seemingly no limit to the fundamentally bad advice that they’re willing to impart upon others. EarlyContinue reading “Evaluating the Correlation Between Hours Worked and Success Achieved”
Author Archives: sdivitkos
The Smallest Changes That Had the Largest Impacts: 4 CEO Case Studies
My Guests This is a very special episode of In The Trenches: In today’s episode, I will be interviewing 4 different CEOs of 4 different SMBs, and asking them just a single question: “What are some of the seemingly small changes you’ve made that have had the largest impacts?” When taking over a new business,Continue reading “The Smallest Changes That Had the Largest Impacts: 4 CEO Case Studies”
Constructing, Managing, and Working with a Board of Directors
Listen to This Blog Post Though most people have experience reporting directly into a boss or manager of some sort, very few people can say that the “boss” into whom they report is represented by the company’s Board of Directors. Indeed, in most companies, only a single person (namely, the CEO) can make such aContinue reading “Constructing, Managing, and Working with a Board of Directors”
Mike Zani, CEO of The Predictive Index: Hiring, Personality Profiling Tools, Working with a Partner, and Other Lessons from 20 Years as a CEO
My Guests My guest today is Mike Zani, CEO of The Predictive Index. The Predictive Index serves more than 9,000 clients across 142 countries, helping businesses optimize their hiring and team composition decisions through a combination of behavioral science, software, and professional consulting from the world’s top workplace behavior specialists. Mike has been CEO ofContinue reading “Mike Zani, CEO of The Predictive Index: Hiring, Personality Profiling Tools, Working with a Partner, and Other Lessons from 20 Years as a CEO”
The Current State of the Debt Capital Markets
My Guests My guests today are Cory Kaiser and Timothy Eaton, Vice President & Associate Vice President respectively within TD’s Commercial Banking Group. Between them, they have over 40 years of experience lending to lower-middle market businesses not just to finance their acquisitions, but also to finance growth initiatives, day-to-day working capital needs, and leveragedContinue reading “The Current State of the Debt Capital Markets”
Evaluating 5 Very Different Approaches to Acquiring a Software Company
Listen to This Blog Post Enterprise software is considered to be among the world’s best business models, and for good reason: Revenue tends to be highly recurring. Switching costs, pricing power and customer retention rates are often high. And businesses have the ability to scale in a non-linear fashion owing to the fact that additionalContinue reading “Evaluating 5 Very Different Approaches to Acquiring a Software Company”
Brent Beshore: The “Forrest Gump of Private Equity”
My Guest My guest today is Brent Beshore, Founder and CEO of Permanent Equity, a private investment firm that invests in Founder-owned private companies. Permanent Equity is a long-term investor that typically intends to hold portfolio companies indefinitely, often without the use of any leverage. In addition to his role as an investor, Brent isContinue reading “Brent Beshore: The “Forrest Gump of Private Equity””
Tools in Managing My Own Psychology
Listen to This Blog Post In a previous blog post, Lessons in Managing My Own Psychology, I presented the five most meaningful lessons that I had learned during my tenure as a CEO related to better managing my own emotions. In today’s post I get much more tactical, and discuss the specific tools, routines, andContinue reading “Tools in Managing My Own Psychology”
A.J. Wasserstein: Reflections of a Founder, CEO, Investor and Educator
My Guest My guest today is A.J. Wasserstein, the Eugene F. Williams, Jr. Lecturer in the Practice of Management at the Yale School of Management. His research, writing, and teaching concentrates on search funds, entrepreneurship, programmatic acquisitions, and small businesses. In addition to his role as an educator, A.J. is also a private investor inContinue reading “A.J. Wasserstein: Reflections of a Founder, CEO, Investor and Educator”
The CEO as Chief Capital Allocator
Listen to This Blog Post In his book, The Outsiders, William Thorndike makes a comprehensive and compelling case that effective capital allocation is one of the most important skills that any CEO can possess in their pursuit of value creation. Some very influential people seem to agree, with both Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger includingContinue reading “The CEO as Chief Capital Allocator”