May 2009

Wise Words for Turbulent Times
What would you do if asked to speak to entrepreneurs about how to succeed in business? Probably what I wanted to do: Decline as fast as possible. Here I was, part of a management team running as fast it could to stay ahead of disaster, and a group of entrepreneurs wanted me to talk to them about success. Talk about bad timing. Since I knew I wasn’t a fountain of knowledge on business in tough times, I called on a friend. In this particular case, it was a friend who died in 2005. It has been said t...

Hall of Name
Oops, I slipped on some gelatin dessert while reaching for a facial tissue. Anyone have an adhesive bandage? While trademark lawyers might prefer that sentence, most of us would substitute the words Jell-O, Kleenex and Band-Aid. When a brand name becomes common in general use, it’s known as a proprietary eponym, a term in no danger of being commonly used. The technology world has certainly spawned its share: We Xerox copies, Wite-Out mistakes and Scotch Tape torn pages. Our computers come packed i...

Lessons from the Links
Stephen O'Bryan Partner-in-charge, Taft Stettinius & Hollister I belong to Westwood Country Club, and we just revamped our clubhouse and refurbished a couple of holes. We’re really, really excited about the upcoming year. We tore down the old clubhouse and built a new one. It just opened March 18, and it is beautiful. The place has been packed — great new restaurant area with a family section, beautiful new grill and men’s locker and workout facility. I’m looking forward to seein...

A Bear Fight
It was tough-going for Ellis Tallman and his family in 1974.   Then 16 and living in Queens, N.Y., the future economist watched as the recession forced his middle-aged father out of his career as an insurance underwriter. They hunkered down, tried to hold on to their house and weathered doom-and-gloom comments from others. Even the family car, a Chevy Impala, seemed to want to give up, stalling just like the nation. “We really did not have an upbeat perspective,” Tallman says. So the pr...

Low Plow
The owner of Cleveland’s Blue Moose Snow & Ice Management (See “No Business Like Snow Business,” January 2009) deemed this past winter “kind of disappointing.” And early spring wasn’t much better. Only an inch of snow fell in March, one of the lowest amounts recorded for the month, according to the National Weather Service. “I’m even wondering if we did any work in March,” Freer says. “Thanks for bringing up a sore subject.”   Click ...

Position Players
Jack Trout is “Captain Obvious,” and he has Dick Maggiore to thank. In 2004, the president and CEO of Canton’s Innis Maggiore ad agency sent Trout a copy ofObvious Adams: The Story of a Successful Business Man. Trout, a marketing consultant, had never heard of the little green book, which was published in 1916. Yet Maggiore, who’d worked with him on several projects, knew it affirmed many of Trout’s marketing principles. “The book resonated with Jack’s simple-mi...

Rental Center
Don Werner’s system wasn’t working. As president of the Metrex Property Group in Denver, he manages 18 rental properties with 800 units. He has almost 200 vendors that help his 15 employees keep his buildings running. And he has to keep track of them all. Work orders, unit status reports, apartment painting schedules: all of that had to be tracked. Werner was working in QuickBooks, spreadsheet programs and Microsoft Word to keep his documents in order — which didn’t actually keep...

Real Deals
So maybe Beyonce won’t sing you a little ditty in a shimmering gold outfit like in that DirecTV commercial, but if you’re considering new office space, now is the perfect time to upgrade. With more landlords offering incentives to counter the financial crisis and maintain occupancy rates, growing businesses — or even ones with expiring leases — should be able to land a beauty of a deal. David C. Wagner, principal of the Chartwell Group, a full-service commercial real estate firm ...