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Suggest who benefitsI Think We’re Ready for the Tariffs
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Suggest questionThis week, in episode 230, Liz Picarazzi tells Paul Downs and Sarah Segal that after a year of anxiety, she’s eager to find out what Donald Trump is really going to do about tariffs. Whatever it is, she thinks she’s prepared enough options to survive. “If your tax rate went from 11 percent to 60 percent,” she says, “I think most of us would be pretty freaked out, and I am, but I'm a little bit less so because of this work that we've done to be ready.” Paul, meanwhile, thinks there’s some chance his business could benefit from the tariffs—although he’s far more focused on his business’ very slow start to 2025. “It’s a little bit scary, frankly,” he tells us. And Sarah has been dealing with the pain of having to let one staffer go and the disappointment of having one of her senior people choose to go.
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.