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I’ve seen it more times than I care to…a company develops a great vision of growth, begins following through with that plan for growth and then suddenly it all comes to a grinding halt because the company doesn’t have the processes in place to support the growth.  I think if I use a sports analogy the idea might be clearer.   All football teams have a playbook.  This book includes those plays that the team expects to run.   Each play details the responsibilities of each offensive player; where they are to go and what opposing player to block.  If each player is able to complete their task successfully, more often than not the team will be able to move the ball downfield. Offenses can be complex or relatively simple, but one characteristic is absolutely necessary for the team to be successful…the team must be able to block, throw, catch and run.  Without these basics, the team will always struggle.  Peyton Manning is tremendously successful because of the ability of his offensive line to protect him.  When he has not had that protection, he, and the team, struggle. 

While the Colts may have a fairly sophisticated offense, that doesn’t mean the offense must have a large number of plays in the playbook to win.  In fact, the great Vince Lombardi only had seventeen offensive plays for his offense.   However, the key for the Packers was their ability to hone the execution of those plays.  Lombardi emphasized blocking and tackling.  The Packers might have only had a few plays, but could they ever run those plays well!

Like football, business activities are complex and require numerous players to meet their various individual responsibilities for the company to achieve.  In business, however, too many owners and managers believe that because they have the tools necessary, like great software, they have everything they need to be successful.  Unfortunately, that generally isn’t the case.  The ability to use that software well, just like in sports, requires constant repetition and improvement.  Software is like any tool, if you don’t use it well, it isn’t worth much and, in some cases, it might make matters worse.  You have to be skilled at the basics before you can really implement large scale visionary growth strategies.  Otherwise, in my experience, you will find yourself facing some difficulty that becomes a major roadblock.

I was CFO for a company that had been recently purchased.  At a meeting of our senior executives I asked each of them what they thought were our biggest challenges.  They each responded with process problems that we faced like stock outs, poor bill of material data, bad inventory control or our inability to forecast sales demand.  I forwarded these meeting minutes to the company that now owned us. 

Within a few hours, I received a call from the individual who was my primary contact from the “parent” company.  He was not happy.  The Meeting Minutes indicated a lack of basic “blocking and tackling” and the overarching strategy of the buying corporation called for us to focus on growth, not process.  The subsidiary company was directed to press forward and work on growing the business.  If we had these basic problems, we would have to work on correcting the problems concurrently as we grew.  Unfortunately, we didn’t have the personnel or resources that allowed us to do both.  As a small organization, we had talented people but they were already working hard.  We really needed about 90 days to focus on our immediate process problems so that we could be in a position to execute the larger plan.  Like good sports organizations, we needed time to correct our weaknesses and improve our internal execution and technique.  Just as Game Day is not a good time to learn to run a new play, it is tough in business to both correct fundamental execution flaws and grow. 
However, we had our marching orders and we plowed ahead. The results were predictable; sales suffered when the organization wasn’t able to properly execute the strategic plan.  Sales forecasts were missed and revised and then the sales staff became hesitant to make commitments, because now, the company was not meeting delivery dates or worse yet some members of the sales team decided the best way to get things done was to make promises on delivery dates and hope the company could meet these promise dates.  While we were able to meet most of these dates; that wasn’t good enough to keep all of the customers happy. 

Ultimately, too many dates were missed because the company had poor processes in place.  Not surprisingly our growth was eventually hampered because we failed to master the business basics of good bill of materials, good inventory control and on-time delivery.  Without these foundational processes, the growth of any company is limited. 

The alternative is to allocate the time necessary for the organization to improve sufficiently so that it begins to master these areas.  Recognition of the problem and development of a plan to generate the necessary improvement allows the whole organization to visually see commitment from management along with follow through and success.  This success helps foster confidence throughout the company and the culture begins to change.  In the end, mastering the basics also helps reinforce the need to do individual jobs well throughout the entire organization.  The ability to master these basics will help the company achieve the larger goals.

In life, it is important to know your individual strengths and to recognize your limitations or weaknesses.    For a person employed professionally this becomes more important.  You really need to know what you do well and where you need help.  On my first day in a new job, I was introduced to my administrative assistant, “Terry”.  This was a luxury I had never previously enjoyed.  Later, when we met privately, we discussed how we worked best and told her what I thought were my strengths and areas that she could really help me. 

Over the course of the next few weeks, we worked on a process that allowed her to assist me in those areas that limited my effectiveness.   I gave Terry the right to eliminate any superficial items from my inbox, things that were not of high priority to the company but did add to number of daily activities I needed to complete.  I had worked for companies that had no filtering process at all.  Every offer, ad, mailer or opportunity that was addressed to me or to the title I held, ended up in my in-basket.  With her assistance that came to a halt.  Now I was able to address the true issues of the company.  I also was able to communicate effectively with her so that we could outline financial control processes and she would then write up the fuller process.  This even went so far that when we needed to make significant changes to our facility, I was able to delegate most of this responsibility to her.  She had a remarkable ability to communicate the information that I needed to know and sift out the more mundane.   In the process, my strengths improved.  I didn’t have to have my energy drained performing tasks that were simply not areas of strength for me.  Terry was able to get these done efficiently and I was significantly more productive.  

Many business owners face similar problems.  They lack the resources, experience or manpower to be as productive or as profitable as they can be.   Sometimes you just don’t know what you don’t know.  That is why it is important to surround yourself with a good team.  This team should have a background that is sufficiently broad to provide familiarity with other business perspectives, methodologies or processes that may be able to influence your company toward greater success.   I believe that, particularly for small firms, it is important to look for help outside of the company walls.  What may be state of the art within the company might be really be antiquated thought in most parts of the business world.   Someone outside the company might provide a different more novel approach that turns those weaknesses into strengths.

Recently, I went through a SWOT Analysis with a new client.  In this process, the company points out their Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats.   After the session, one of the managers confided in me that they go through this process on a regular basis.  He said, “it may have seemed like we have a number of weaknesses but you’d be amazed at the number of our strengths that we previously would have listed in the weaknesses category.   Once we are able to recognize those problems, we take steps that really improve us as a company.”

That is the key to this process.  Know yourself as a company well enough and done right, you need to be brutally honest with yourself to recognize you do have problems.  Fixing those problems is therapeutic and you end up with a better company.  At B2B CFO®, we have the knowledge and experience to provide those insights.  We’d love the opportunity to help.

What is the difference between a good CFO and a great CFO?  Maybe we should start with some basics…what does a CFO do anyway?  Typically, these responsibilities fall into three general categories:

Accounting – Oversight of the Controller function.  Typically the controller is responsible for the accuracy of the reporting of financial information; in other words, accounting and accounting personnel.  This function tends to focus on activities that are in the past as well as protecting the assets of the company.

Treasury – investment of money, liquidity, minimizing the risk that the company faces, bank relationships and managing the capital structure of the company all fall under this function.

Economic Strategy and Forecasting – A CFO should be able to identify areas that provide the greatest opportunities for the company as well as those products or activities which are least profitable for the company.  With this data, the company can begin to make adjustments to help maximize profitability.

In the long run, the most important thing that a CFO does is help their companies see into the future.  When a company can see the direction that it is headed there is usually time to make alterations so that a different outcome can be achieved, if necessary.  I believe the ability to see into the future is one of the most important aspects that any CFO can provide. 

 As a W2 CFO, one of my bosses would tell me, “Mike, you’re the policeman.  You know what is supposed to happen.  Your job is to make sure it does.”   To do that, the company needed to have a couple of key items.   First, the company needed to develop a business model.  Depending on the complexity of the business and number of business sku’s, this could be a big undertaking.  Fewer sku’s or product families simplify this process. 

I’ve written earlier about budgeting for balance sheet items.  The implications for the business are enormous.  When you include balance sheet items, you begin to develop a process that allows you to forecast the effect of changes to assets and liabilities on the entire organization.  Forecasting the balance for cash, accounts receivable or the line of credit won’t be perfectly precise.  Instead, the focus should be on the general direction of those items.  This model should be able to provide answers like will there be enough cash for what we intend to do.  How much availability will we have on our line of credit?  Will inventory and accounts receivable be able to support our line of credit?  These are critical questions.  Knowing that you will be short of a key resource provides the opportunity to make adjustments.  That knowledge creates tremendous freedom.

“Mike, you know, we were talking about it the other day and we aren’t even the same company we were when we first met you last year.  Dave (operations manager) told me that if we hadn’t made these changes over the past year, we wouldn’t even be able to meet our customer demand today.” 

I have to admit, when I look back on it, the changes over the past year were significant; the company had underperformed for the past three years and 2008 had been particularly poor.  They made significant cuts in expenses and were really focused on finding new, significant customers that allowed the company to enjoy consistent profitability.  In fact, early in the year, the president established a list of customers that the company would like to add.  When one of these new customers began ordering products, the president would put a simple checkmark next to the customer name.   By mid-November, there was a check mark next to each name.   Throughout the year, the company did a great job of staying true to the goals and on working to improve sales and margins.

Also during the year the company purchased new operating software.  This allowed the company to begin understanding margins by part and by customer.   In almost every respect, information became accessible on at least a daily basis and generally hourly and even up to the minute. 

That doesn’t mean that everything went as we had hoped…overall sales were down about 20%, but the drop in sales was primarily for goods with poor margins, so the impact on the bottom line was minimal and the company improved margins significantly with the addition of new customers.  Early in the year we recognized that one division of the company was in for a struggle.  Sales would be down drastically.  However, there were opportunities in the remaining division and we concentrated efforts on finding customers and improving margins…the overall result was a profitable year despite lower sales. 

As the company heads into 2010, sales will continue to be bolstered by three new products, again with sound margins.  The president of the company has done a great job of talking to the key customers and finding out what products they would like to offer.  In turn, the company has responded by developing these products and providing them to customers.  The key here is that not only did the company talk to their customers, but they listened and provided exactly what the customers were seeking. 

In turn, the customers recognized that the company provides outstanding support and that recognition helps create greater teamwork between the company and their customers.  This cooperation provided additional opportunities and improved profitability.  Despite the poor economy, this firm has a reasonable expectation of increasing sales by more than 25% this next year.

At an industry meeting, last week, the president was asked what the company had done to prepare for 2010.  He responded by saying that the company had installed new software.  This software provided visibility that the company had never previously experienced.  As he talked to me about it he said, “You know, without you, we wouldn’t have done that.  It took someone from the outside to see that we needed the software.  It wasn’t easy to say that we needed to spend $100,000 for a system, but in retrospect, it was absolutely the right thing to do.” 

And that is what makes my job fun!

Once a budget for revenue and expenses for the year is established (see last month blog, Flexibility-The Key to Sound Budgeting), I strongly recommend that you continue on and also budget for balance sheet items.  To be honest, there was a time in my career that I viewed trying to budget assets and liabilities as a tremendous waste of time, and if the budget was stagnant and we missed our sales targets, it was!  However, using flexible budgeting, you can build a budgeting model that ties the income statement and balance sheet.  Even if you miss the sales target, you can still link assets and liability to revenue and expense accounts.

My favorite software for developing a budget model is MS-Excel®.  Put all active asset and liability accounts into your model.  It is important that all your revenue and expense accounts be linked to some account on the balance sheet.  As an example, if you typically sell on open account with 30 days turnover, you must link to net revenue to accounts receivable.  If you manufacture a product, you will need to build the purchasing and production cycle into your model.  Materials will need to flow from raw inventory to work-in-process and through finished goods. 

This process also provides the ability to create a detailed capital budget that includes the timing for your purchases.  You can also tie depreciation expenses to accumulated depreciation.  I’ve found that the process works best if you have separate lines for the beginning balance, debits to the accounts and credits to the account.  When transactions are complex, you can add a line for each level of detail.  Total the beginning balance, debits, and credits (credits should be negative numbers) together for the ending balance.  Using the ”sumif” function makes calculating totals for balance sheet information easy.

Why is this useful?  Imagine that you sell a product through a commissioned sales force that is paid 5% commission.  By tying the commission expense to the accrued commission liability account, you can watch the liability go up with additional sales or fall on lower sales.  That is the beauty of this process.  Not only does this account reflect what happens in a “what-if” manner, but done properly, all accounts move up or down in relation to activity within the organization.  Taken as a whole, companies can anticipate the future movement of asset and liability accounts based on reasonable assumptions.    In total then, cash needs can be forecast.  Anticipating future cash movement goes a long way toward managing cash and making sure your organization has the cash necessary to grow and be successful.

Using this information allows you to forecast the balance sheet by month.  Once a forecasted balance sheet is in place, you can have your internal accounting personnel generate a formal projected statement of cash flows by month.  This becomes particularly useful when you want to know the effect of reducing accounts receivable days outstanding or the effect of increasing inventory turns by a full turn annually.   The changes created by these improvements become very visible and often this visibility helps drive organizations to realize these benefits.

If all this sounds like a process that would really help your company but you don’t know who or how to go about developing, our partners at B2B CFO® are experts at putting together business models.  Our experience makes the process much easier for clients and provides a sound business tool that helps companies understand the effect of incremental changes on the business.  Feel free to contact us.

Early in my career, I had a narrow view of budgeting.  To me, budgeting was a very constricted exercise that an organization plodded through annually.   At the end of the process, the company would generate a very defined budget that was "hard-coded".  By hard-coded, I mean a set number or desired number for each account on the projected income statement, by month, for the budget year.  Then, when this process was generated, these numbers would be entered into a "budget" file, typically within some module of the general ledger operating system.

As the year would proceed, we would compare this information to the actual results and measure the difference between actual and budgeted expenses.  Typically over time, the gulf between the budget and actual sales and expenditures would grow as the year progressed.  Over time, this difference began to make the budget process feel more like the writing of an unnecessary piece of fiction, than a necessary management tool.

Fortunately, I was introduced to the folks at Oliver Wight and, in particular, to Tom Wallace.  I was lucky because Tom was able to show us that there was another, better way to budget.  He pointed out that the problem with most budgets were they were based on a sales forecast.  Usually, these forecasts were generated by some member of senior management.  Almost without fail, these estimates were the best guess or desired sales goal of the organization;   almost equally without fail, we would miss those numbers on the low side.

Tom pointed out to us that essentially there are three kinds of expenses:  fixed, variable and semi-variable.  Fixed expenses do not vary.  For example, depreciation expense remains fixed unless the company buys or sells fixed assets.  Regardless of whether sales go up or down, fixed expenses remain constant.  Variable expense, on the other hand, is entirely tied to the fortune of sales.  If there are no sales, then there is no variable expense.  As sales rise, so does a variable expense.  An example of a variable expense would be ice cream at an ice cream stand.  The vendor buys the ice cream and that purchase remains an asset on the books of the firm until someone comes and orders ice cream.  Once the ice cream is sold, the cost is shown as expense under materials sold.

Occasionally, an item will act as a semi-variable expense.  These costs run somewhere between a fixed cost and a variable cost.  Semi-variable costs act like a fixed cost up until there is some triggering event.  A triggering event is some decision or action that forces the company to add expenses, such as additional supervisors when a shift is added to a plant or additional indirect personnel to meet the demands of production.  In my experience, these expenses are almost always treated as fixed and then the budget is adjusted if the triggering event occurs.   Or, rather than having expenses increase, a company decides to downsize.  Essentially, these costs are reductions of semi-variable expenses.  In fact, almost every fixed cost is actually semi-variable.  Given some event, those costs can and will go up or down.  That is why controlling the discretionary decisions related to fixed costs are often key for companies to reach or regain profitability.

Eventually, we were able to develop a process that allowed for "flexible" budgets.  A flexible budget means that rather than comparing the budget against a constant sales figure, sales are adjusted as well as variable expenses.  Then the budget is compared against figures that are consistent with the actual results.  The end result is a budget that is consistent with sales; far more realistic when compared with actual sales and expenditures and a budgeted bottom line that, not only is understandable, but plausible. 

This reasonableness creates "buy-in" or acceptance from budget managers and gives owners, CEO's and CFO's a much better ability to generate "what-if" scenarios.  In essence, you create a model that provides a roadmap for the organization showing the effect of increases or decreases in sales.  With that roadmap, the company can begin to improve their ability to forecast future profits. Once the company is able to master this process, closing the financial statement becomes an exercise in verifying the profitability the firm expected instead of closing the books to find out the financial results each month.

For management to have a good idea of what is taking place with their company, they need to have access to all the information related to the company.  Many firms are satisfied looking at information after the fact, when they review the financial statements.  Unfortunately that is almost always too late. 

I’ve seen it happen in construction too many times as an example.  A project is nearing completion, all the reports look like the project will finish under budget when all of the sudden several invoices arrive that the project manager forgot about and the accounting personnel didn’t know about.   Suddenly the project that was a winner becomes a big loser and now the company has to find a way to pay for the additional unexpected costs. 

In manufacturing, a similar problem would occur when a physical inventory is taken.  For example, if goods are received but the company has done a poor job of recognizing goods that have been received but the invoices have been processed into the general ledger.  This means the cost for those goods won’t be considered in the inventory balance in the general ledger.  Inventory is understated and the company understates the cost of goods sold.  When the invoice does arrive the company will be forced to recognize   additional expenses.  Depending on the size of the invoice this could have a major effect on profitability.

If your company falls into that trap, how do you break free from this negative cycle?  You need to close the loop.  “The loop” is the ability to monitor what is taking place within the company.  For example, if you don’t have the ability to use the software system to identify what is on order for inventory or for a project you have an open system.  Your system forces you to guess about the dollars you have committed to purchase, either as part of a project or as part of purchase to replenish inventory, or for other company needs. 

Why is this important?  Because it affects two key aspects of your business:  cash and profitability.    Eventually you’ll need to pay for anything you order.  With a closed system, management has the ability to forecast the specific cash requirements of the company while having the ability to recognize the costs that will occur.  For example, in construction, it is typical for a company to bid or make an estimate related to specific projects.  As construction begins, actual costs begin to be recorded against project and can be compared against the original bid.   As the project develops and later nears completion, management attempts to estimate the profitability of the job.  However, if all purchases are not being recorded and collected within the software system, management is effectively blind to any costs which have not been received into the payable system.  This can lead to poor decision making.

Closing the loop means that not only are purchases recorded so that management can tell the cost associated with those orders, but also that visibility of purchase orders are always present.  In other words, when orders are received, recognition of the receipt and associated liability is recorded in the general ledger.  In a good system, upon receipt, a debit is generated immediately for the goods or services received and a liability, typically called something like, “received not yet invoiced”, is also immediately generated.  Then when the invoice is received “received not yet invoiced” is debited and accounts payable is credited.  At no time is any liability “invisible” within this system.  Management is always aware of all costs associated with the company and surprises are virtually none existent. 

Without this process, large expenditures may be incurred by the company without management having any knowledge that the company has incurred this liability.  The results can be devastating.  Save yourself and member of your company from headache: close the loop so that you can know your costs and your cash requirements.

As a business person you need to have goal clarity.  One of my B2B CFO® partners, Rick Daigle wrote a great blog on the importance of goal clarity that I strongly recommend (Osprey parenting).  In his blog, Rick points out that the male Osprey knows that he has to catch six fish every day to support his mate and hatchlings.

In business, too often, the CEO may not know what information is really important and key for their business to succeed.  As a result, they may jump from one really exciting piece of information to another without consistently looking at the data that really matters.  Fortunately, after going through this struggle they may find that as long as this activity is happening, everything is going well.   Once this becomes important to the owner, president or CEO it is easy to get other members of the company to pay attention to the same data. 

One of the most telling experiences I ever encountered occurred when I was leading an MRP II implementation (today we would call it an ERP implementation).  For MRP to be successfully implemented, you need 98% bill of material accuracy, at least 95% routing accuracy and at least 95% inventory on hand accuracy.  When we started the project, our accuracy was abysmal, hovering around 35%.  We had a long way to go.  We made changes in our processes, felt that we had the accuracy necessary in routing and the bill of material, and should see a dramatic improvement.  We took a full inventory and our accuracy had improved but was still only around 70%.  We continued to count but had no improvement in our accuracy.  We needed to do something different.

First, we chose one afternoon and almost all members just under the “C” level of the company went into our stockroom and started counting.  I imagine it was embarrassing for the folks who ran our stockroom to see us out there on their turf.  We set a date to repeat the action in a week.  When we returned seven days later, the stockroom had already counted the parts and made it pretty clear we would not need to repeat the effort in the future.

The second thing we did was to begin graphing our results and posting the results in the cafeteria.   Each week, we would update the information and management paid attention to the graphs.  It did not take long before the pride of the individuals in the stockroom took over.  They wanted to succeed.  They offered a number of suggestions to help improve our processes and they became determined that they would achieve the goal of 95% inventory accuracy.  Almost immediately, the numbers started to improve; within 30 days we saw 95% accuracy for the first time and the numbers stayed there.  The real key was making the goal visible. 

Some years later, I was working for a company in the automotive industry that was attempting to implement QS-9000.  Like ISO, QS-9000 requires that a company set goals and then measure the ability to meet those goals.  This requirement forces companies that want certification to set goals that can be measured.   But another truism becomes obvious when you follow this requirement: if you want a specific outcome, measure it, graph it, and change it.

I remember it like it was yesterday, I was involved in a full scale argument with my wife of about 3 weeks.  Now, understand, I grew up in a house where I never heard my parents argue.  It just wasn’t done.  Sure mom and dad had discussions together when they disagreed, but a raise-your-voice-heated exchange?  Never happened, never has.  The consequence of our argument was clear to me… my marriage was doomed.  Arguing was a clear sign, in my mind; this marriage was a huge mistake.  So I asked, in a very tentative voice, what seemed to be logical at the time…”So…do you want a divorce?”

At that point, my wife gave me a tremendous gift.  She was incredulous.  Yes, absolutely incredulous and absolutely livid.  “What are you talking about!?!?” she demanded.  “I don’t want you to EVER, EVER use that “D” word with me again!!!”  If I remember correctly, her voice became even more shrill and her volume increased significantly!  “ I am married to you, Michael Landrigan and I will always be married to you.   Nothing, absolutely nothing I say or you say will make me stop loving you!  We are married and that is the way it will stay!”  Succinctly and pointedly, she let me know that she was absolutely committed to being my wife and no matter how harsh the words or how pig-headed either of us might be (typically that would be me), she was determined to make our marriage work.  What a blessing!  That was over 30 years ago and I now remember it with a chuckle. 

Everyone that enters into marriage brings their own particular views of what a marriage is and their own expectations.  I naively thought married folks never argued, primarily because my parents provided us with a remarkable example.  My wife knew better and had a clearer view of what was necessary to make our marriage survive in the long term. 

Business partnerships are much the same.  Each person joins the partnership with certain ideas or concepts about how the partnership will operate and unfortunately, when the partnership doesn’t live up to their idealist impression, the partnerships often fail.  These partnerships lack the absolute commitment and determination to do whatever it takes to make the partnership succeed.  I’ve been around about a half dozen partnerships.  Unfortunately, most partnerships became exercises in futility.  Often, one partner perceives that another partner had somehow wronged him.  This leads to accusations, often exacerbated by external personnel, like attorneys, accountants or spouses, each adding their opinion and often creating new demands and more hard feelings.   It is a terrible, awful, disgusting downward spiral which ends up in failed communications, silence and bitterness, loss of capital and probably failure.  What a shame!

On the other hand, I have witnessed a couple of partnerships that work incredibly well.  In these companies, you’ll hear the principals say things like, “Let me talk about that with my partner,” or “Before we go any farther, I’d like to get my partner involved.”  In each case, the commitment to doing the right thing for their partner is of higher importance then taking care of themselves.  There is an absolutely selfless aspect to their actions and total dedication to maintaining the health of the partnership.  They are willing to forgo their own needs rather than limit their partner and there is complete financial transparency and constant communications.

In perhaps the best partnership I ever saw firsthand, the partners had adjoining offices with a door through their common wall that allowed them easy access to each other.  It was the norm for either of the partners to actually yell through the door, asking questions or getting caught up to date.  To an outsider, this would have seemed unusual, but for those partners, it was absolutely essential and allowed them to communicate effectively. 

In another partnership, the partners have divided up the work based on activity.  One partner is primarily responsible for sales and another is responsible for operations.  However, they constantly communicate with brief updates during the day.  They are also absolutely committed to making the partnership work and you can hear it with phrases like, “I’d like to move ahead, but let me get some input from my partner. 

Another key element is the concept of forgiveness.  I’ve seen brothers, and fathers and sons who come to an impasse over some sloppy or dumb activity undertaken by their partner.  Unfortunately, they haven’t been willing to “give the benefit of the doubt” and the partnership suffers and eventually decays and dies.  The lesson is this, if you have partners and there is the possibility the other person has done something foolish, talk with them and give them the benefit of doubt.  The worst thing partners in conflict can do is stop communicating.  Shutting off communications may well lead to a total “war-like” environment within the firm.  This often spills over into personal lives and in at least one case I'm familar with, led to the end of what had been a solid marriage and complete estrangement of parents and some of their children.  Instead, you must talk to work through your situation or disagreement and be willing to forgive!

Business partnerships are like a great marriage…it takes absolute, tenacious commitment to the partnership and a willingness to sacrifice!