Oh my gosh. Road Trip #7 is coming.... Details soon! … [Read more...]
Review: “Powerful Lessons for Small Business”
Check out this review of Roadside MBA on Small Business Trends. Five stars! … [Read more...]
Saint Joseph, Missouri
Saint Joseph, Missouri sits on the Missouri River about 50 miles north of Kansas City. The town was once the eastern terminus of the Pony Express, and was also the "jumping off point" for the Oregon Trail. The town played an important role in the settlement of the American West. And the local residents haven't forgotten. Pretty much everything, we found, is Wild-West-themed in Saint Joe; it's a bit like living on the set of Gunsmoke. At right is a photo from the evening's lodging, the Stoney Creek Inn. Note the exposed wood beams and railings, the bear (?), and the Pony Express … [Read more...]
Will Crowdfunding trigger an explosion of investment in small business?
Crowdfunding is a new type of investment that was approved by Congress last year. The idea is that we should make it easier for individuals to invest directly in small business, and the 2012 JOBS Act sets down some rules for how to do that. Here's a link to a recent article on the subject, sent in by a loyal reader.Some have argued that crowdfunding will lead to a boom in small business investment, and there are internet sites sprouting up all over to try to take advantage. And on our travels we've certainly heard an earful from small business owners about the difficulty of getting access to … [Read more...]
The Fall Line
In the song Levelland, James McMurtry wonders why the city fathers of that West Texas town decided to put the town where it is. Flatter than a table top Makes you wonder why they stopped here Wagon must have lost a wheel Or they lacked ambition. We've often pondered related questions as we've driven from town to town on our journeys. Why is Hattiesburg MS there? How did Frankfort KY come to be? And why is Liberal, KS where it is? (And why, come to think of it, is it named that? But names are a whole other blog post...) The topic arose again as we sat down to dinner in … [Read more...]
Slidell, Louisiana: Fight Day
I write, exhausted, from a Delta flight back home to Salt Lake. What a great week.... I'll get to the business stuff in a minute, but first let me fill you in a bit on our travels. It was sunny but cool in Slidell, LA today; really pleasant for driving around. The not-so-nice part is that it was, well, Thursday. Our six Roadside MBA tours to date have all had similar timing; we meet Sunday, travel Monday through Thursday, and return home Thursday night. We spend most of each day talking to business leaders, then drive two to four hours to the next city, compare notes and decompress … [Read more...]
72 in Pensacola
Hello to all you winter-bound northerners... We were in partly sunny Pensacola Florida on Tuesday (72 but windy). Big Navy presence down here, and lots of pelicans too. Local public art combines the two, with interesting effect: We spoke to businesses from both ends of the age spectrum here. One was a fish market, a local institution started by the current proprietor's father back in the 1930's. Frank Patti, now in his eighties, runs Joe Patti's, and still begins his days with 4 am phone calls to Spain to place orders for fresh fish to be flown in, and ends them by cleaning the … [Read more...]
Hitting the Road
Hi all, and welcome to our very first post on the Roadside MBA blog! We are in the process of preparing our sixth Roadside MBA tour. We've gotten a little better at our trips each time, and I think our big innovation on this one will be weather. You see, the last time we took in a trip in January we traveled from Denver to Oklahoma City, visiting smaller cities in Colorado, Kansas and Oklahoma along the way. Average high temps were in the single digits, which was difficult on Paul, him being a Californian and all. So, this time we are headed south! The three of us (myself, Mike … [Read more...]