In this short work, debut author Legler offers practical advice about transferring a family business to future generations.
The Canadian author was born into a family business and also married into one. As a result, he concentrates less on a standard building-a-business approach and more on the unique aspects of ownership, governance and continuance of such businesses. Although the acronym SHIFT is a bit contrived, it allows Legler to anchor the guide around five specific areas in successive chapters: “Start” looks at how to begin a conversation about the future of a business; “Help” considers different types of advisers; “Invest” generally addresses the time and money it takes to operate a business; “Flexible” suggests that no single approach is right for everyone; and “Talk” emphasizes the importance of open communication. Two additional chapters look at how to govern a business through a family council and how to establish an office to manage wealth. The information that the author provides does have value, but it’s sketchy at best and occasionally rambling and repetitive. Legler offers his observations and opinions but few references to other works and no case studies or examples; the book is a scant 58 pages, including resources. Still, the author’s counsel, clearly based on experience, could prove helpful, as when he observes that “[p]hilanthropy can play another great role in a family business: finding a cause that gives the senior generations something to do after retirement.” Also, some of these pearls of wisdom will surely resonate with its target audience: “Family businesses are inherently complex because families are all about love and business is all about profit. They do not always go well together.”
An abbreviated family-business overview that might have benefited from more in-depth treatment.Pub Date: July 4, 2014
ISBN: 978-1460249659
Page Count: 96
Publisher: FriesenPress
Review Posted Online: Oct. 11, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Categories: GENERAL NONFICTION
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Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
Categories: GENERAL NONFICTION
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Noted jazz and pop record producer Thiele offers a chatty autobiography. Aided by record-business colleague Golden, Thiele traces his career from his start as a ``pubescent, novice jazz record producer'' in the 1940s through the '50s, when he headed Coral, Dot, and Roulette Records, and the '60s, when he worked for ABC and ran the famous Impulse! jazz label. At Coral, Thiele championed the work of ``hillbilly'' singer Buddy Holly, although the only sessions he produced with Holly were marred by saccharine strings. The producer specialized in more mainstream popsters like the irrepressibly perky Teresa Brewer (who later became his fourth wife) and the bubble-machine muzak-meister Lawrence Welk. At Dot, Thiele was instrumental in recording Jack Kerouac's famous beat- generation ramblings to jazz accompaniment (recordings that Dot's president found ``pornographic''), while also overseeing a steady stream of pop hits. He then moved to the Mafia-controlled Roulette label, where he observed the ``silk-suited, pinky-ringed'' entourage who frequented the label's offices. Incredibly, however, Thiele remembers the famously hard-nosed Morris Levy, who ran the label and was eventually convicted of extortion, as ``one of the kindest, most warm-hearted, and classiest music men I have ever known.'' At ABC/Impulse!, Thiele oversaw the classic recordings of John Coltrane, although he is the first to admit that Coltrane essentially produced his own sessions. Like many producers of the day, Thiele participated in the ownership of publishing rights to some of the songs he recorded; he makes no apology for this practice, which he calls ``entirely appropriate and without any ethical conflicts.'' A pleasant, if not exactly riveting, memoir that will be of most interest to those with a thirst for cocktail-hour stories of the record biz. (25 halftones, not seen)
Pub Date: May 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-19-508629-4
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Oxford Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1995
Categories: GENERAL NONFICTION
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