Articles by Bill Bentley
Family Business – Ways to Transfer or Sell Your Business
Own a Small Business? At some point you’re going to have to decide when will be the right time to step out of the family business and how you’ll do it. There are many estate planning tools you can use to transfer your business. Selecting the right one will depend on whether you plan to retire from the business or [read more]
Made-in-America is Good in Today’s Business Climate
Republicans and Democrats don’t seem to agree on much. But 95% of voters — regardless of which U.S. presidential candidate they favor — support American-made products. The vast majority of Americans also favor training programs, trade enforcement, tax incentives and a national strategy to support U.S. manufacturing, according to the Alliance for American Manufacturing. This organization is a not-for-profit, nonpartisan [read more]
Monopolistic Competition
You know how they say down at the seminar, “It’s all about quality, service, and price?” Well, it isn’t – it’s about price, product, and sales activities. Somewhere along the line, many of us took Econ 101 and we bought into the simplistic fiction that “as price goes down, demand goes up.” And, “as price goes up, demand goes down.” [read more]
Factoring Uncertainty into the Value of Your Business
Businesses currently face numerous uncertainties in the marketplace. As President Trump and Republican congressional leaders work toward fulfilling their campaign promises, tax laws could substantially change, the estate tax could be repealed, and various laws and regulations (including the Dodd-Frank and Affordable Care Acts) could be repealed or revised. Interest rates and inflation could both rise. Economic relationships with other countries could [read more]
Some Thoughts on Ice When You Get to Mars, It’s Properties on Earth, and Memories of WWII
The atmospheric pressure on Mars is just a bit below the triple-point pressure. That’s why the textbooks all say liquid water is unstable on the surface of Mars. Any liquid water will rapidly evaporate and the rest, cooled by evaporation, will freeze. Low spots on Mars may have pressures above the triple-point pressure, but are usually far too cold. Even [read more]
There’s Big News in the Packaged Ice Industry
[avatar user=”williambentley” size=”160″ align=”left”]Bill Bentley Editor-in-Chief[/avatar] Arctic Glacier (AG) has been sold. And, I believe the sale to The Carlyle Group (CG) is good for our industry for at least two reasons. The first is the purchaser, Carlyle Global Partners, Carlyle Group’s long-duration investment fund. Some industries/companies are rightly situated to do the three year private equity fund flip. I [read more]
The Basics of Property Insurance – December 2016
Your livelihood is dependent on the survival of your business, so it is imperative that you protect it against any potential threat—big or small. For instance, a fire could destroy your business’s warehouse and the contents inside, or a burst frozen pipe could damage important documents and valuable papers. Worse, you could have trouble paying your employees during a loss [read more]