FRONTReviews > Readers and patrons of the business journal are invited to submit reviews (along with an optional photo) to news@vbFRONT.com. We’ve expanded our reviews to include books, music, art, performances, culinary—with a preference for local productions. Reviews must be original, include the author’s name and location, and should be brief, under 350 words.
An easy ride
walls. Seventy percent of all businesses are family businesses in the United States, Attend a festival around here (yeah, but only two thirds survive past the first remember those?) or hit up the local generation. For too many family businesses, brewery circuit, and sooner or later you’re while it may be a given that children will sure to run into Blue Mule. Not a farm animal become the next leaders, they don’t receive or a drink (though one could easily craft such the preparation or training to succeed. a concoction), the Blue Mule band is usually five guys who’ve played enough spaces and In Dirty Little Secrets of Family Business years together to create a tight sound. Most (3rd edition): Ensuring Success from One fans start with the appreciation of their Generation to the Next (Greenleaf: 2016) bluegrass—but the Mule flat foots on family business expert Henry Hutcheson over to genres as diverse as jazz, rock, offers any organization the roadmap to blues, and country. ensure succession and prevent failures. He debunks the myths of family businesses It’s a good-feel, dance-attracting, easy and illuminates the best practices — to take sip-n-listen kind of jive you can enjoy in any a family business from startup to a wellsetting. Played with such a smooth acoustic established, long-standing company. group form, listeners might not even notice how perfectly it’s delivered. They’ll just keep —David Lewis tapping toes. Like just about EVERY other local band, the website hardly keeps up with the current schedule; so just follow on Great Society–or colossal failure? social media or take your chances running into the likeable guys at your next venue or It’s an argument we all just lived through gathering. It’s the easiest, enjoyable way – again – during last month’s presidential to ride. election: the merits of pure capitalism versus economic redistribution and even socialism. —Tom Field Do government funded programs to lift people up, to place them in “better” public housing for example, to create back to work Keeping it in the family programs for those on public assistance – does any of that work in the long run? It’s Family businesses are unique in their close obvious that bestselling author Amity connections and shared trust. But children Shlaes is not a big fan of public sector of the founders need to be able to make their reforms, at least its history, in Great Society: own way into the business, and that includes A New History (Harper Collins, 2019). Shlaes learning, and working, outside the company wrote Coolidge (an excellent history) and
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