We are pleased to announce that The Vann Group is now The Massachusetts Association of Realtors’ (MAR) Affinity Program provider of succession planning and transactional advisory services. This new relationship with MAR will allow The Vann Group to fulfill our mission while providing the knowledge and services surrounding succession planning and transactional advisory services that is needed in Massachusetts.

Our services include:

Succession Planning

The Vann Group’s Succession Planning Services are unique to each customer. We help identify candidates and provide guidance in positioning the agency to be attractive to potential buyers.

Agency Divestiture & Acquisition Services

• Valuation of Agency

• Identification and Contact of Targets

• Due Diligence Services

• Negotiation and Facilitation

• Development of Marketing Strategies

• Financing assistance-direct and indirect

• Deal Structuring for Tax, Financial and Operational Issues

Please feel free to contact us if you have any questions regarding succession planning or agency divestitures or acquisitions, 413.543.2776 info@vann-group.com       

We are also participating in MAR’s Annual Tradeshow and Conference held in the DCU center in downton Worcester, MA from Tuesday, October 19 to Wednesday, October 20. If you happen to be attending the conference please stop by our booth, #412 to visit! We look forward to seeing you there!

The Vann Group is pleased to announce that Simply Booked, a Vann Group affiliate, has officially launched their website. Simply Booked is an affordable, easy to use outsourced bookkeeping service for small to mid-sized business owners that leverages top-tier financial pages and the expertise of seasoned bookkeepers, financial managers and business people.

Putting their best practices and procedures to work for their clients, Simply Booked combines the features and benefits of an online service with the functionality and expertise of a dedicated accounting department. Simply Booked, still in beta-testing, is offering a risk-free trial of their services for 30 days.

Contact Simply Booked directly for your risk-free trial or personalized consultation by e-mailing info@simply-booked.com, or calling 888-239-5432.

The summer can be a time for relaxing and vacationing but it’s also a great opportunity to dedicate time and effort to areas of your business that may be lagging.

If you’ve felt some frustration with your current website, or would like to explore creating an online presence, take advantage of your business’ slower months to get the ball rolling.

 The  idea of revamping your website may seem daunting but it doesn’t have to be.  Chris Merrill, CEO of Super  Web-O-Matic, is hosting a small business website makeover event on August 19, 2010 from 6-8 p.m. at their Waltham, MA office. During the event the Super Web-O-Matic team will unlock your website’s potential and identify what you need to create a user-friendly website that will generate leads.

Five lucky attendants will receive free website redesigns by  Super Web-O-Matic and will be featured during the event.

The process to sign up is really simple. If you’re interested in attending, just register!

We are pleased to announce that our new company, Hire EQ was recently featured on greatstartups.com which is a weblog that writes about interesting start-ups. You can read greatstartups.com‘s profile “Hire EQ Takes takes the Frustration Out of Hiring” by clicking the link.

Hire EQ is a outsourced recruitment services company that is dedicated to helping small/mid-size businesses find talented employees who fit their organization in a timely and affordable manner. If you have a recruiting need, don’t hesitate to contact Dave Pollard of Hire EQ for more information, or check out the site at www.hireeq.com

Just after the collapse of Lehman Brothers I was talking with a  friend about the state of the country’s economic affairs when he said, “well, at least we will be able to say we lived through this”.  Those words resonated with me because it occurred to me that each generation needs its seminal moment.  Whether we truly knew or not at the time, this “Great Recession” was my generations defining moment.

In the 18 + months since that conversation I continue to be amazed by the impact of this recession and its seemingly never ending ability to upend institutions and beliefs that seemed to be self evident. As I type this, officers from Goldman Sachs are in front of Congress attempting to provide a logical and technically accurate defense for their self-serving actions.  I never would have imagined a firm as respected and as admired as Goldman being in this position.

Of course, the impact of this recession isn’t limited to the stories of Wall St. excess and greed.  The real story is the impact on those of us who comprise the vast majority of this country’s commerce – the small and mid-size businesses that generate jobs and tax dollars that seem to support everyone else. During this time we’ve seen countless numbers of these businesses disappear and many others hanging by a thread, fighting on and hoping for a recovery and a return to some type of normalcy.

We sense from our client base that after 18 months, the frustration and apparent lack of a definitive recovery has become disheartening.  There is a deepening concern that “normal” may never return to what we remember it being.  The reality is that the version of normal we recall will never return.  Significant changes in business models were occurring before the beginning of the recession and rather than slow it down, it has only served to accelerate the pace of change.

It is our opinion (and we reserve the right to hindsight) that in the future small businesses will not be able to achieve past heights solely from the benefit of a rising tide.  In the current and future economic reality, the tide will act more like a whirlpool, dragging down companies that are unwilling or unable to adapt to ever changing market conditions.  Rather than make it easier to scale a new business, we may find that rapid technology and business innovation hinders growth because new companies may not have the runway to gradually grow.

I know that the last thing anyone wants to hear is predictions of more doom/gloom and continued difficulties in being in business.  Prognosticating the end of the world and doing nothing about it is not something we want to be part of.  Our team is comprised of a group of motivated and dedicated individuals who believe in action, in creating our own destiny.  Rather than accept what we see, we prefer to challenge the Gods of Commerce, Finance & Technology.  However, we know that not everyone can rise up to the challenge without some guidance and leadership.

Because of this, we decided to create “Rise Up”, which is our effort to communicate the most basic of entrepreneurial messages – that it’s on you to make the first step to get energized.  Of course, we also know that rising up is only part of the equation; people need help and we are here to provide that assistance. Accordingly, we are pleased to announce our new offering – “Help Me Mr. Wizard”.

Whether you enjoy “Rise Up” or not and whether you decide to get some help from Mr. Wizard, we wish you the best of luck with your business endeavors.

We want to thank our friends over at Web-O-Matic for featuring  Hire EQ on their most recent blog post. The blog post, entitled “Small Business Hiring Problems and The Solution” discusses the challenges that small/mid-size businesses face when trying to find quality talent at the right price.

Hire EQ is the Vann Group’s latest venture.  The Company is a recruitment outsourced solution designed for small and mid-size businesses that provides a companies with a frustration free hiring experience.  Hire EQ leverages organizational development & recruitment best practices with a leading technology platform which allows the Company to deliver a quality candidate in a timely and affordable manner. As an FYI, Hire EQ is currently running a contest to give away one free recruiting engagement.  For more information on it, please click follow the link to the Take a Hat Off contest.

Yesterday, our affiliate company Hire EQ announced the launch of the “Take a Hat Off” contest.  The contest is focused on helping small/mid-size businesses that are thinking about hiring do it.  We know that many small/mid-size business owners and their teams are stretched pretty thin right now.  They desperately need the help from that next key hire, but don’t have the time to dedicate to being “the recruiter” or they are reluctant to dedicate the resources to outsource it to a Company like Hire EQ.

Accordingly, Hire EQ has decided to give away a free recruiting engagement to one lucky small/mid-size business.  The process is really straightforward.  Just go to the contest page, read the details and then submit an entry via the entry form.  The form is real easy to fill out, just tell Hire EQ why you need the position and why they should choose you.  Hire EQ has assembled a great team of judges with lots of experience with small/mid-size businesses to choose the winner.

GOOD LUCK!

Do you remember the movie War Games with Mathew Broderick?  It had those fantastic 1980′s computer graphics showing a world-wide nuclear strike.  Each strike would have this little dot and before you knew it, the whole map was covered in these dots.  Check out this video that shows the growth of Wal Mart over the past forty years.  Its just like it.

By the way, I am not comparing Wal Mart to a nuclear strike, although I’m sure its critics will happily note that you could also do a map of small retail business concentration before and after a Wal Mart store hits and get the same effect!  Happy watching.

I got a call Monday night asking me if I had heard about Fran Johnson’s closure and public plea for  help. I knew about the closure because in the past couple of weeks we had been trying to help Cindy Johnson pursue options that might save the 30 year old golf/tennis retail institution. Sure enough, I checked out Masslive and found the article outlining Cindy’s request to help her raise $250,000 to save the store.

Sadly, stories like this are becoming more and more common.  One particular story that has been making the rounds is the story of Aaron Durand who via Twitter offered to buy burritos for people who visited his mothers bookstore in San Francisco and bought books.  There are also stories out there about small communities who are raising money to save general stores and restaurants.

The reason we are seeing more stories like Fran Johnson’s is because small business is losing the battle. Let me be clear, there is no single bad guy in this story or in most of the stories you will read about community institutions closing. Rather, there are lots of bad actors that are creating the situation. The business owner will no doubt be able to point to some bad decisions as being at the crux of the problem. You will also find big box/chain competitors, bargain driven customers, fundamental shifts in industries/demographics and a bad economy.

More often than not, you will also find community banks that are unwilling (maybe unable) to do their job and lend money. Don’t believe the propaganda out there from the American Bankers Association about banks wanting to lend money. They largely don’t and because of this many small businesses are unable to secure financing for growth.  In most cases, this is the most glaring cause and it has nothing to do with lending money to the troubled business.  Rather, by not lending money to businesses that warrant a loan, they are not able to hire, or buy.  This means they aren’t spending money at businesses on the edge. This is  the trickle down effect and its slowly killing small business.

My rant about banks aside, the loss of a small business like Fran Johnson’s from the local landscape are in the long-term devastating to communities. Fran Johnson’s is owned by a local family with a commitment to the region. At any charitable golf tournament in the region, you will find goods donated by Cindy as well as sponsorships. You won’t find Dick’s Sporting Goods doing that. You also won’t find the customer service and quality of selection, but that is Dick’s problem.  The other side of it is that local companies spend their money locally; chains and big box stores take their money home to where they live.  So, every dollar no longer spent at Fran Johnson’s is likely not being spent again here in Western Massachusetts.

Lastly, if Fran Johnson’s closes, it means that our region has also lost another local brand.  Local brands help create a bond within the community of a shared experience.  If you are my age or older, you remember shopping at Steiger’s.  Up until a couple of years ago, me and every other professional in the area shopped at Yale Genton.  Both are now gone, leaving us with Macy’s and Jos A. Bank.  That is the nature of business, but it still sucks!

At the end of the day, I can’t tell you whether or not you should give money to Cindy to save Fran Johnsons.  I can’t tell you its a good or bad investment or whether you will ever get your money back.  To be honest, its not the point.  I made a pledge because I know Cindy and I know she is good people. But, just as importantly, I pledged because I live here and am vested in the community.  For our region to be a viable and desirable place to live, our community needs small businesses like Fran Johnson’s.  If you would like to help, email Cindy at cindy@franjohnsons.com

As a self proclaimed business guru, I have long advised my clients to hire smart people, ideally people smarter than themselves. Its long been a hallmark of great management; hire smart, talented people, give them the resources and support they need to be successful and let them go do what they do.

Our first hiring decision was to  hire an adviser to help us with the project.  Due to some relationships we have, we were able to find someone who had several successes in building technology/process based platform companies to assess what we wanted to do and find the best approach to doing so. He undertook an extensive amount of research and was able to: 1) validate that our concept was on target; and that 2) much of what we wanted to accomplish could be done with available software and services.  We found that what five years ago would have cost well into six figures could be accomplished for a fraction of that.  This was very exciting as it meant we could start this business for a lot less than we thought and get to market faster than we envisioned.

Continuing to appreciate that we knew what we didn’t know, we hired him to manage the project for us. In doing so, he was able to find a great web design/developer for us to work with; these guys are incredibly bright as they have both an understanding of the technology and the business case for technology.  This is a very unique trait and once again tied into our philosophy about hiring smart people.  As important as finding the right firm to work with, our adviser was able to negotiate a great fixed price contract for us.  As some of the subsequent lessons will show, this was perhaps one of the smartest decisions that was made.

At this point in our start up’s life, we felt we were in great shape and doing all the right things.  We were able to think beyond our initial idea to find something unique, we identified what we didn’t know and hired people smarter than us to shepherd us through the development process.  Just as important, development was moving along and the initial design was looking great.  This was early January and we were targeting a late March launch that looked right on target.

This is when we learned an important and invaluable lesson about hiring smart people.  Its good to give smart people freedom and flexibility to do what they do best, its generally going to result in a great return.  But, one should never forget that smart people also make mistakes.  Because smart people are still people its critical to question and challenge them on key decisions and recommendations.  This is incredibly hard to do because as someone who doesn’t know, its easy to be intimated by their talent and your lack of knowledge. In as much as its incumbent upon a leader to recognize what they don’t know, its also necessary for a leader to have enough confidence to ask questions; remember there are no stupid questions.

As the next post will discuss, I didn’t have the confidence to dig deep into a decision that in hindsight should have been challenged.