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Excerpt from “Characters”. Character 14: Janitor

Excerpt from “Characters”. Character 14: Janitor

by Michael Best | Jul 18, 2022 | Articles and excerpts

Unfortunately for this company, a benchmark for screen printing ink manufacturers had been established in my mind months before when I attended a similar meeting at an ink factory near Atlanta. The contrast couldn’t have been starker. There were no ink stains on...
Excerpt from “Characters”. Character 15: Neighbour

Excerpt from “Characters”. Character 15: Neighbour

by Michael Best | Jul 17, 2022 | Articles and excerpts

The degree to which this type of business neighbour can be detrimental ranges from merely irritating to seriously destructive. Such neighbours could break your small business if, in a worst-case scenario, by their presence or behavior, they discouraged customers from...
Excerpt from “Characters”. Character 16: Burglar

Excerpt from “Characters”. Character 16: Burglar

by Michael Best | Jul 16, 2022 | Articles and excerpts

This character is a regrettable reality with whom a small business owner is bound to cross paths—in some cases, repeatedly. I’ve chosen the burglar to represent an entire class of characters with the same objective in mind: ill-gotten gain at the expense of a small...

Excerpt from “Characters”. Character 17: Employee

by Michael Best | Jul 15, 2022 | Articles and excerpts

When you hear former small business owners say that this is the character they miss the least, what they’re really saying is that employee management is not a walk in the park. Employees are idiosyncratic creatures, and when we pour all those idiosyncrasies into a...
Excerpt from “Characters”. Character 18: Company Pet

Excerpt from “Characters”. Character 18: Company Pet

by Michael Best | Jul 14, 2022 | Articles and excerpts

Their first encounter set the tone for all subsequent visits. Ryley was woken from a deep sleep in the sunbeam by a sniffing noise and a rubber cup inches from his nose. The rubber cup instantly suffered the same fate as a veterinarian’s stethoscope that was...
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