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Continue reading →: Strategic Sale vs. Recapitalization: A Founder’s GuideWhich Is Better for a Growing Business? Strategic sale vs recapitalization comes down to certainty today versus more upside and more risk tomorrow. When I sold my first company to Petco, I learned how quickly a founder can go from owning every decision to owning none. Recent middle-market deals averaged…
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Continue reading →: How to Buy a Domain Name in 2026 Without OverpayingA workable domain takes about twenty minutes to secure and costs less than a burrito, so stop treating it like a fork in the road. Every company I’ve started began the same way: an idea, a name I liked, a domain search, and a few quiet minutes of disappointment. That…
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Continue reading →: How to Check If a Business Name Is AvailableYou can form the LLC, buy the domain, and print the signage, and still not have the legal right to use your own company’s name. It happens all too often. An excited small business owner comes up with the perfect name for their business and 6-12 months down the road…
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Continue reading →: Men Not in the Labor Force: What the 2026 Data ShowsThe unemployment rate improved last month because 264,000 people stopped being counted. I once spent eleven weeks trying to fill one warehouse lead role at a consumer products company I helped build. Four applicants, two no-shows, and a lot of me insisting the labor market was just tight. The real…
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Continue reading →: Debt Settlement Companies: Where the Money GoesThe biggest debt settlement companies are private, profitable, and paid on the balance you enroll, not the money you save. I run a small Google Ads campaign in small business lending, so I know what a click costs in consumer finance. Debt relief keywords, meanwhile, sit a tier above that.…
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Continue reading →: How to Name a Business Without Overthinking ItA business name has to be memorable, sayable, and legally usable, and the requirements pretty much stop there. I named my last company PetInsuranceQuotes.com, which is either the least imaginative name in insurtech or the most honest one. Petco bought it anyway. That’s worth remembering while you stare at a…
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Continue reading →: Business Loan APR’s: How to Compare Any OfferEvery lender quotes cost differently, and only one number puts them on the same scale. Learn how to compare loan offers and borrowing costs apples-to-apples. Every working capital offer I have seen as an operator leads with a number engineered to sound small. A 1.25. An 8 percent fee. A…
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Continue reading →: FICO Score Ranges 2026: What Lenders Really Look AtYour personal FICO score still sets your business borrowing terms, and two of the rules governing it changed this year. Every business line of credit I have signed for came with a personal guarantee attached. The bank was underwriting me, not the company, so my personal credit file set the…
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Continue reading →: What Happens to a Business When the Owner Dies (2026)The estate tax is rarely the thing that kills a closely held company. The buy-sell agreement nobody updated usually gets there first. More than half of U.S. small-business owners are now over age 55, up roughly 30% since the early 2000s, and one in four is 65 or older. McKinsey…
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Continue reading →: Strategic vs. Financial Buyer: A 2026 Founder’s GuideThe highest-stakes call in a sale is not the price, it is which kind of buyer you hand the keys to. The first time I watched a founder take the lower offer, the gap was eleven million dollars and the reason was one line in the LOI about who kept…
