Year-end holidays starting with Thanksgiving are the times for sending messages of gratitude, goodwill, wishes for happy holidays, happy and successful New Years, etc. to clients, customers, employees and various business partners and vendors. Mostly they are mass-produced and -printed, and in a business context are of dubious value.  For example, how many beautifully-designed holiday cards are sent to executives

By Tony Mulkern If you are a business owner and hope to sell or may want to sell your business sometime within the next five years, you need to start preparing now.  As explained last month, only 17% of businesses put on the market actually sell: https://mulkernassociates.com/leadership/can-sell-business-time-comes. To help ensure that you are among that 17% when the time comes,

If you own a business, you plan to sell it sometime in the future. Unless the sale will be to a family member for a nominal amount, your expectation is probably to gain a substantial monetary reward for all your years of hard work, risk, and personal sacrifice to build a valuable enterprise.  Unfortunately, the odds are not in your

Every leader of a growing and successful entrepreneurial firm, with its informal and loose management controls, will inevitably be advised by consultants that as soon as possible the enterprise should become professionally managed.  This transformation, it is implied, is the formula for future growth and success, not to mention survival.  My experience is that this can become a dangerous illusion.

     The economy essentially flat-lined in the first quarter with a growth rate of 0.1%, notwithstanding the addition of 288,000 jobs in April and the fact that the overall outlook for 2014 remains positive.  In this slow recovery, the sense of frustration experienced by many businesses calls to mind a scene from one of those adventure movies with tall ships

Donald Trump made headlines again last Fall when he announced that instead of naming one of his three eldest children as heir to his fortune, as would have been customary, they will all share equally in ownership and responsibility in leading his multi-billion financial and real estate empire.  Also notable is how carefully he and they prepared for this decision,