‘Being Civilized Ain’t Gonna Do It’

In our latest podcast episode, the owners talk about their favorite job-interview questions and what to do when you get stiffed on a bill by a bigger business.

Good Morning!

Here are today’s highlights:    

• Do you have to be polite with ChatGPT?

• The Wall Street Journal thinks private equity roll-ups are great for business owners; Josh Patrick disagrees.

• Creating an ESOP doesn’t guarantee that employees will act like owners.

• Those haunted houses you see popping up have very scary business models.

THE 21 HATS PODCAST

This week, Shawn Busse and Jay Goltz discuss the trendy job-interview strategy of trying to get beyond canned responses by asking candidates unexpected questions along the lines of, “If you were a superhero, what powers would you have and why?” Or, “What animal best represents you as a person?” Not surprisingly, Jay isn’t a big fan of those questions, and he offers an alternative strategy that features four questions of his own design. Shawn does like to ask unexpected questions, but specifically those that help him figure out whether a candidate is likely to work well with others.

• Shawn also talks about what it was like attending the recent going-out-of-business sale of a company he had declined to take on as a client three separate times.

• And Shawn and Jay respond to a Reddit post, where a business owner asks what he can do about a large commercial client who simply refuses to pay a $40,000 bill. “Did I just learn a $40,000 lesson?” the devastated owner asks. “What now?”

• You can subscribe to the 21 Hats Podcast wherever you get podcasts.