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Boston,
Massachusetts: In this week's show, you'll met a man who loves Boston,
the Charles River, the history of this country's early struggles for religious
toleration and freedoms, equality, and rights of life, liberty and the pursuit
of happiness.
The amazing
thing is that Andy Wilson made a business that incorporated all of these
passions and so much more.
We first met
Andy back in 1997 at a White House conference where he received an award from
the President as the Massachusetts
Small
Business Person of the Year.
So, how does
one turn many passions into a single business? In this show we learn how Andy
got that initial inspiration to quit his full-time job and start. We'll also
learn how he went about raising over $1 million dollars to launch Boston Duck
Tours in 1994.
Of course,
Andy is passionate about this tour; it is 80-minutes and historically-narrated.
You meet some of the founding fathers and mothers of the USA. On this
sightseeing tour you ride in a Duck -- an authentic World War II amphibious
landing craft -- first around the narrow streets of Boston and then into the
Charles River. When he was recognized in 1997, Boston Duck Tours did about $4
million in sales with anout 50 employees. The business had become one of the
hottest attractions in the Commonwealth. By 2002 they had increased sales to
over $6 million and over 75 employees.
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- READ THE TRANSCRIPT.
Reading the entire script of this episode of the show causes one to reflect on
key ideas in critical ways. You will find that you can easily bounce from the
transcript to the case study guide from that
dialogue.
- EXPLORE THE CASE STUDY. In the beginning
these case
study guides were prepared for the special broadcast by PBS into the
schools and universities throughout the USA. Since that time, Prenctice Hall
and Thomson Learning have include these case studies in their best-selling
business textbooks.
- JOIN, JOIN, JOIN. Boston Duck Tours is a
member of the
Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce and their
local public television station. In all our programs we encourage you to do as
Andy has done; join your local Chamber of Commerce, make friends with the
people at the SBA, and keep your membership current with your local PBS-member
station.
- SELECTION: Everybody had
Andy Wilson and this business on their list.
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- 1500+ Questions and Answers
within SmallBusinessSchool. Within every show there are about 15
questions and answers. Within the school, there is a place to record your
answers to these questions. Your answers to the same questions that Hattie
has asked all the other business owners become part of your own secure
database where you have options to re-display your best answers within this
site as your own
profile page (that is this page), essentially
an executive summary , a
study
guide and/or a
transcript.
- Exit Strategy and Succession Planning.
70% of all businesses fail to pass the baton to the next generation. They fail
to reach sustainability beyond their personality. That business is called a
lifestyle business.
If you
want to be rewarded for all your hard work, by the time you hit 40 years of
age, you had better have some ideas about your own exit strategy and a
succession plan. By 50 years old, you should have the basic elements in place.
By 55, we all should be working on it. By 60, we need to be harvesting some of
our equity (ESOP - DPO - IPO). In the key point of the study guide just above,
review points 5 and 6.
- FIRST PRINCIPLES: Starting a
business is the road to economic independence for most of us average people.
Read a little more to see why
incorporating a business keeps the passion of
the American revolution alive!
-
MORE ABOUT FINANCES. We have a section
about money and it can be useful. BUT -- and this
is a big one -- we all need to know about RMA --The Risk Management
Association. This is real insiders information on your financials so take
note.
This organization is the banker's banker. They know more
about key critical ratios than anybody on earth. Over 3000 banks and 16000
other kinds of financial organizations contribute the essential financial data
from their loan inventory to RMA's "Annual Statement Studies" to calculate key
critical ratios for every major industry type (and for most subsets of business
vis-a-vis the SIC and
NAICS).
With over 150,000 loans per year, that is statistical relevancy.
Do you
know the average key ratios within your industry? We haven't learned ours yet
for the TV/Production Industry, so we all need to ask our banker. To
really make a study of it, keep an eye out for the next seminar by RMA in your
area. It'll be the best money you'll spend to understand the organic nature of
your business, and learn what it is that your banker so quickly knows about
your industry. For more, read online:
RMA seminars,
RMA history, and their
small business scoring (i.e. used by the SBA
for their Low Docs).
If you'd like to study the history behind the RMA
(it goes back to Robert Morris, a signer of the Declaration of Independence),
click
here.
- SUPPORT PUBLIC
TELEVISION:
Become a member of your local station. If you are
already, great. If not and your business is doing well, consider joining the
Producers' Club ($1000).
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