Posts written by Mason Myers

Owners’ Words Best When Reflect Both Noble Purpose & Bottom-Line

This revealing story was told by speaker Lisa McLeod at the recent Murphy Conference for their impressive network of business brokers across the country.  McLeod gave a very nice talk based on her book Selling with Noble Purpose. McLeod was facing a conundrum in her… Continue reading

Business Brokerage: Greybull Stewardship Makes Growth Investment in Murphy

My investment fund, Greybull Stewardship, has made a growth investment in Murphy Business Brokerage, the #1 business brokerage company in North America.  The press release about this investment can be found here at the Greybull Stewardship blog.  I am very enthusiastic about this investment for… Continue reading

Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting Notes for 2014

For those you have not attended a Berkshire Hathaway annual meeting, picture this scene at the 2014 meeting.  A stadium is filled to its capacity of 30,000 people with another 8,000 in overflow rooms at the adjacent conference center and hotel.  For nearly six hours,… Continue reading

Berkshire Hathaway: If You Love the Management, Set Them Free

Private equity investors often take the “father knows best” approach to working with their management teams.  To me, this is crazy — particularly when the management team has years of experience with the business, the investors are new to the business, and the track record… Continue reading

We’re In Seed-Stage Boom, Not a Series A Crunch

Two related trends in venture capital investing have been getting attention for the last few years. The first is the growth in angel investing, particularly after the crowd-funding provisions of the JOBS Act. The second is the “Series A crunch” where many companies that receive… Continue reading

Nine Secrets for Avoiding Failed Business Acquisitions

Failed businesses always have both myth and logic around the reasons for their failure.  This is even more true for a failed business acquisition because there are the elements of the transaction added onto the elements of the business itself.  The reality is always complicated,… Continue reading

6 Pitfalls Between Letter of Intent and Closing the Deal

When selling your business, it is so much work to find the right buyer and to get to a letter of intent.  That may feel like the hard part.  It is not.  It is just as hard to manage everything that comes next and get… Continue reading

Business Improvements in Marketing As Well As Factory

W. Edwards Deming went from the USA to Japan after World War II and his ideas about continuous business improvements came back to the USA from Japan as a business management tool — kaizen: daily small improvements building a better process over time. See Deming. … Continue reading

Managing Business, Managing Time, and the Case for Doing Nothing

Balance is an elusive concept — and so relevant to so many business situations.  I have enjoyed adding to our series on Balance — last year, we identified more than 20 things a business owner must balance.  Should we focus inside or outside?  Should we… Continue reading

Evergreen venture fund structure offers new strategy

Heartening to read a blog at Axial about the Evergreen Venture Fund Structure that we use at my Greybull Stewardship:  http://www.axial.net/blog/evergreen-fund-structure/ Thanks to Billy Fink and his M&A blog, I’m excited to have the conversation about how the traditional fund protocols are changing with new… Continue reading