Voices of Reason Michael Gansl & Matt Plociak talk with Ira Rovitz of Newmark and Dennis Galante of Bond New York Real Estate about the current state of the commercial and residential real estate markets and about their history in the real estate business. See Mike and Matt interview business owners/entrepreneurs as they talk candidly about their business and the lessons they have learned, and offer the one golden business nugget to help other business owners be better themselves.
Important PPP Loan Information for Small Business Owners
Guidance on the U.S. Government’s Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) is changing almost daily and it’s important for small business owners to be aware of the latest updates and guidance.
See the presentation on the Paycheck Protection Program presented by Michael Gansl, Jack Sullivan, Matt Plociak, Naman Trivedi at Dave Bresler’s Network!Network! Forum on June 10, 2020.
Zenefits Scandal Highlights the Perils of Rapid Growth
Stuart Goldenberg
Zenefits can serve as a cautionary tale of a startup that grows too quickly and results in as much of a tremendous failure as growing too slowly. Zenefits is a health-insurance brokerage firm and offers small businesses HR benefits without the middleman. The HR software was highly favored and brought high expectations for serious growth. These promises led investors to pour $500 million dollars last year at a $4 billion valuation, one of the largest recent financing rounds.
Unfortunately, just last week, Zenefits announced that Parker Conrad, its co-founder and chief executive had resigned and that the company had become irrespon
sible in its culture and ethics. In return for the massive fundraising valution, Zenefits over promised and undelivered. Mr. Conrad had promised the moon, but instead he was unable to grow a tiny start up to unattainable goals and the company spiraled out of control.
Zenefits began hiring people who had little experience in the software sales in highly regulated industry that led to a growth from 15 to 1,600 employees in just one year. With all the speed bumps and things that can get in the way of such incredible rapid growth, Zenefits inevitably fell short of its revenue goals. Changes in management, and changes in their business ethics only made things worse.
What can we learn from this? Growth is important for any business but it should not be a race. As a small business owner for many years, I know short cuts are not worth it in the long run. Rapid growth is not for everyone, and certainly not for the faint of heart. And most of all, integrity counts, especially if you want to be in business for the long run.
How much are you worth to Facebook?
I recently read an interesting article in The Washington Post about how much money you – yes, you – are worth to Facebook. In the United States in 2016, the average Facebook user is worth $13.54.
You read that right – Facebook is making $13.54 off each and every one of us who uses their social network. The value per user is based off of impressions on mobile and video ads and content.
Of course, if you use Facebook to market your business through organic content and ads, you are probably worth a bit more, as you are spending advertising dollars with them. Other interesting takeaways from the article were that Facebook’s active user base was up 14% over 2014, to 1.59 billion total monthly active users. There was also a 52% increase in revenue from the same period in 2014. Facebook had truly stellar performance in the past year.
The next time you log on to Facebook, think about how you are contributing to the bottom-line of one of the hottest-performing technology companies.
2015 Reflections: Make 2016 Better!
As the new year begins, I encourage everyone to reflect back on 2015; determine what worked and did not work, and use those lessons learned to make 2016 an even better year. Here’s a useful download to help you do that.
Here is a simple one page template that I believe can be extremely helpful for starting the new year off on the right foot, which is something my mother always used to say to me in days gone by. Of course, if you are left handed, I’m sure using the left foot to start the new year will be good too!
Here’s to a successful 2016!
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