When Entrepreneurs Sell Out to Large Corporations
Add comment November 3rd, 2007
Amazingly enough, as a Founder of a Franchise System, which really started in my early youth, I decided to sell the company I loved and built. Many folks and friends asked why I sold out and cut my dream short. The answer is really simple, it was a lot of money and I was getting entrepreneurial fatigue with all the over regulation and over lawyering in the franchising sector.
Still, as an entrepreneur with no exit strategy in my business plan, it seemed so out of character for me to just up and quit. Well, indeed, it did to me too, but, there is something to be said for going out on top and there is nothing preventing me from doing it again, if I decide I want to bust my balls and go for it. I recently, read a great book of another entrepreneur who did just that. If you are in this same situation, let me recommend:
“Divorce Corporate Style” by Don Gussow - 1972.
This tale describes how an entrepreneur purchased the company he build back after he sold it to a large corporation. Don grew his trade journal business and then sold it to Cowles Communications Corporation in 1966. The large corporation faltered during a recession and he went to borrow only a million dollars to buy it back.
The book is a critique of corporate board rooms and big business bad decision making as much as it is about a passionate, hard-charging entrepreneur, who knew how to get things down and how to win.
The difference between entrepreneurial businesses and large know-it-all boards of directors in giant corporations is quite large. When people talk about MBAs and Business, often the entrepreneurs and the corporate company executives and their academia business professors are talking a completely different language. Do you ever wonder which is best? If you do, read this book and there will be no doubt.
L. Winslow is an Economic, Political and Technology Advisor to the Online Think Tank, a Futurist and retired entrepreneur http://www.worldthinktank.net Currently Mr. Winslow is planning a bicycle ride from Canada to Mexico and in Spring across the US from San Diego to Virginia Beach to raise money for charity. Previously he was a track star athlete, private pilot, involved in politics, community volunteerism and a Franchising Founder. Mr. Winslow has chosen 100 titles of Books he wishes to write and has completed ten thus far. The subjects include; Community Planning, Future Tech, Franchising, Small Business, and Third World Issues.
