It isn’t all that unusual to have family ownership of a landscaping and irrigation business. What sets apart the two companies – Bailey Enterprises and Alternate Rain Company, owned by husband-and-wife team Doug and Jackie Bailey of Elkhorn, Neb. – is the fact they began the business in their teens and now it’s more than 20 years old.

Their companies started as Doug’s junior high school mowing enterprise to earn extra money. Today, with an eye toward diligent customer service and a management consultant’s help in organizing the growing business, their operation has become one of the major businesses of its type in the Omaha area. The companies employ more than 25 people in summer. The Bailey companies began as a way for Doug to earn money when he was 13. By the time he graduated from high school in 1979, Doug had his father and grandfather working for him while he was at football practice and his then-girlfriend, Jackie, taking over the bookkeeping duties. Through the college years, getting married, having six children (one girl and five boys), and acquiring three dogs, the entrepreneurial couple has always tried to keep their lives in balance. They use a sharp eye on the business aspects of their lives, while enjoying the pleasures that their hard work has earned them and their family.

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Huntsville, Alabama: Every town needs people like Janet and David Milly. As a business they light the stars; as a passion, they light their town. In this show you will meet all kinds of people who love Huntsville, who love Janet and David Milly, and love the stuff of making their community a great place to live. How does one get to where these two are today? We tell much of this story through David’s eyes. He started early. When he worked in a grocery store, he learned he wanted to be the boss. He also observed a neighbor just a few doors down the street who had started his own business in his garage; it was called SpaceCraft, Inc.. Olin King’s company became SCI and today has 33,000 employees in 19 countries … one of the largest businesses in Alabama.

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Dan Hall went from being janitor to owner of Church Brothers Collision Repair, but it took a little help from his wife, Rhonda, to put the company on top of the auto body world. It takes guts to make light of going to church, especially when making money is the driving force. But to Dan and Rhonda Hall, owners of Church Brothers Collision Repair, live radio spots of local celebrities sanctimoniously testifying before Billy Graham Cracker and billboards preaching “Go to Church” are piddling compared to the risks they’ve shouldered since 1974.

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At Napa Food Center in Napa, Calif., there are, certainly, concerns about turnover of the store’s stock of fresh fruit, meat and baked goods. In reference to employees, however, turnover is a relatively moot issue. In an industry where turnover rates can soar past 125 percent a year in some regions, Napa Food Center is an exception. Granted, the full-service store employs only 17 people and last year lost six of its 14 young employees five to college and one to a better job.

Still, the store earns high praise from the Napa community and especially its employees who are quick to confirm they love their jobs. Most acclaim goes to the boss, Jeff Obranovich, who with his wife, Darlene, owns and operates the 42,000-square-foot store. According to one employee, Obranovich is more than a boss; he is also a mentor, role model and friend. Surely Obranovich hides a secret for instilling job satisfaction and keeping turnover rates low.

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“Of course, what bothers me is that if we really do seek God’s guidance on every day’s activity, on every project” “What you’re saying is a business God runs doesn’t need the counsel of an efficiency expert?” “I guess so, except” “Except what?” “Put it this way,” I tired to explain. “I’m human. Though I try to follow God’s guidance, I’m not immune to making mistakes.” Juanita looked at me but did not comment.

“It’s the stewardship side that concerns me,” I went on. “Every additional hundred dollars we can turn in profit means that much more we can give. I want to be sure I’m not doing things which might hinder profits. Nobody’s pressuring me. We aren’t running into any obvious problems of any sort. But the idea of getting some counsel has been on my heart for some reason.” “Maybe that’s because you should do it,” my wife said. “You’ve always been on your own. You don’t have the usual type of corporation board for counsel. You never had a chance to pick up executive experience from an employer the way many men do. Maybe an efficiency expert could give some helpful suggestions.”.

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Independent Advisor May Provide Creative Ideas to Avert a Crisis

(update a detailed case history of this client is available here)

Family owned businesses that operate without a succession plan face serious risks if and when the company president dies, the DeWitt Family of North Carolina learned that lesson the hard way when 78 year-old L.G. DeWitt passed way in 1990, unexpectedly leaving both L.G. DeWitt Trucking and North Carolina Motor Speedway in the hands of his wife and two daughters. “My father ran the two companies out of his head,” said Nancy DeWitt-Daugherty, L.G.’s daughter who assumed presidency of trucking company. “My dad did not have a chain of command. Everybody could go to him. When he died, there was a void.”

The problem facing the DeWitts is a problem facing many small and family owned companies: no formal organization chart or chain of command and often no modern business systems for the successor to fall back on. When the founder dies, the company faces a crisis. The void was the biggest in DeWitt Trucking, which was facing heavy, mounting debts. The racetrack was still profitable, but was trying to fend off growing competition with a manual accounting and ticketing system and outmoded facilities.

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Don’t make wellness a budget casualty

By Connie Roethel , for SBT Published October 17, 2008

As the economy tightens, America’s small businesses are struggling with ways to respond to today’s market conditions. In a recent Milwaukee Biz Blog, Steve Jagler, executive editor of Small Business Times, referenced a new poll of 516 small-business owners across the United States conducted by management consulting firm George S. May International. In the survey, American small-business owners ranked the following issues as the most important to them: the economy (23 percent); health care (20 percent); taxes (17 percent); the Iraq war (15 percent); energy (12 percent); housing (7 percent); and immigration (5 percent).

With health care ranked as the second-highest concern and, for many employers the second-highest cost, it seems imperative that efforts to keep the workforce healthy and productive should continue, despite serious concerns about credit, budgets and cash flow.

In years past, doing wellness programs on nominal budgets and sometimes at no cost was common. Staff and practitioners got by on minimal dollars, health fairs, creativity and free community programs.

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