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Suggest who benefitsDashboard: Tracking the Entrepreneurial Economy
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Suggest questionThis week, Brandon Gray, a partner with CRI Simple Numbers, talks about how his firm tracks the performance of what he calls the entrepreneurial economy. As we all know, what’s happening on Wall Street doesn’t always reflect what’s happening on Main Street, which is why Simple Numbers tracks the performance of 100 smaller businesses. Right now, Brandon says, the performance of those businesses isn’t looking great, which doesn’t necessarily bode well for 2026. How should an individual owner make use of that information? Brandon has some suggestions.
About 21 Hats
The proponents of employee stock ownership plans can make them sound like the greatest thing ever. A business owner can take a big chunk of money off the table—or even all of it—while still getting to run the business. And there are some pretty great tax breaks. Oh, and it will also solve income inequality in America. On the other hand, if ESOPs are so smart, why are there so few of them?
Jim Kalb of Triad Components Group in San Diego and Jeff Taylor of Crafts Technology in Chicago have both implemented ESOPs. Jay Goltz of the Goltz Group in Chicago has reached his 60s without a succession plan, and he’s considering his options. In this 21 Hats Conversation, you get to listen in on a street-smart discussion of the pluses and minuses of ESOPs from the business owner’s point of view.