The Uncommon Business Bulletin #1
Our (new) roundup of relevant news, tidbits, and resources for small and medium sized businesses, leaders, employees, entrepreneurs, and curious humans.
Dear Readers -
Thus far, Uncommon Business has featured interviews with business leaders who do things differently. We have had five top notch guests so far:
Jason Fried, founder/CEO of Basecamp
Cory Carman, CEO of Carman Ranch
Ari Weinzweig, founder of Zingerman’s Community of Businesses
Darren Marshall, CEO of Smith Teamaker
Wes Kao, Founder of Maven and altMBA, Writer, and Coach
We are going to keep doing our interviews. But we’re also trying something new.
Starting today, we are sharing regular roundups of news, articles, and other things that (we hope!) are relevant to small- and medium-sized business, entrepreneurs, leaders, employees, and readers who are generally interested in entrepreneurship, leadership, economics, policy, and finance.
Scroll down to read our first Uncommon Business Bulletin, and then let us know (with brutal and unsparing honesty) what you think.
Peter
The Uncommon Business Bulletin #1
ChatGPT announces SearchGPT. You can learn more and join the waitlist now. ChatGPT has already replaced Google for many of my queries, and SearchGPT takes it the next level.
Non-Compete Agreements are becoming illegal effective September 4th, thanks to a recent court decision upholding the proposed ban from the Biden administration. From CNBC: “About 30 million people, or 20% of U.S. workers, have signed noncompetes, according to the FTC.” Now those workers will be able to freely join competitors or start their own competitor. Make sure whoever leads HR at your business (maybe you?) is aware of the rule change.
“A Successful Owner Chooses an Innovative Exit” - I (Peter) was recently a guest on the 21 Hats Podcast alongside Laura Anderson, founder and former owner of Local Ocean Seafoods. Laura is a former client, and during this episode we talked about her decision to transition the company into an Employee Ownership Trust. You can listen/read on 21 Hats, Spotify, Apple, etc.
If you rollover an old 401k, don’t forget to invest it! From the Wall Street Journal: “When people roll 401(k) balances from their old company’s plan into an individual retirement account, the money is frequently held as cash until they select new investments. Many never do, according to new research from Vanguard Group. Nearly a third who rolled savings into IRAs at Vanguard in 2015 still had the balance sitting in cash seven years later.” (P.S. When you do invest it, probably the best thing to do is to choose boring index funds like Kamala Harris and Doug Emhoff. NFA, etc, etc.)
This is a cool profile of Central States Manufacturing from
over at . Central States Manufacturing is employee owned via an ESOP (Employee Stock Ownership Plan). “There are 47 millionaires working for Central States Manufacturing, and they’re not all in the C-Suite. Many of them are drivers or machinists—blue-collar workers for the company.” The articles covers the company and also gives a 101 on ESOPs for readers who may not be familiar. (Note: Here at Lumo Group, we help founders exit into Employee Ownership Trusts or Purpose Trusts, which are a “cousin” of ESOPs)KYM: Know Your Memes. When your colleagues are chatting by the water cooler or in the #random channel of your company Slack, you don’t want to be the only one who doesn’t get it. This week’s KYM is simple, and incredibly viral: Kamala is Brat. If you care, here is more from the Atlantic.
Alright! That is all for the first edition of The Uncommon Business Bulletin.
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