I got a call Monday night asking me if I had heard about Fran Johnson’s closure and public plea for  help. I knew about the closure because in the past couple of weeks we had been trying to help Cindy Johnson pursue options that might save the 30 year old golf/tennis retail institution. Sure enough, I checked out Masslive and found the article outlining Cindy’s request to help her raise $250,000 to save the store.

Sadly, stories like this are becoming more and more common.  One particular story that has been making the rounds is the story of Aaron Durand who via Twitter offered to buy burritos for people who visited his mothers bookstore in San Francisco and bought books.  There are also stories out there about small communities who are raising money to save general stores and restaurants.

The reason we are seeing more stories like Fran Johnson’s is because small business is losing the battle. Let me be clear, there is no single bad guy in this story or in most of the stories you will read about community institutions closing. Rather, there are lots of bad actors that are creating the situation. The business owner will no doubt be able to point to some bad decisions as being at the crux of the problem. You will also find big box/chain competitors, bargain driven customers, fundamental shifts in industries/demographics and a bad economy.

More often than not, you will also find community banks that are unwilling (maybe unable) to do their job and lend money. Don’t believe the propaganda out there from the American Bankers Association about banks wanting to lend money. They largely don’t and because of this many small businesses are unable to secure financing for growth.  In most cases, this is the most glaring cause and it has nothing to do with lending money to the troubled business.  Rather, by not lending money to businesses that warrant a loan, they are not able to hire, or buy.  This means they aren’t spending money at businesses on the edge. This is  the trickle down effect and its slowly killing small business.

My rant about banks aside, the loss of a small business like Fran Johnson’s from the local landscape are in the long-term devastating to communities. Fran Johnson’s is owned by a local family with a commitment to the region. At any charitable golf tournament in the region, you will find goods donated by Cindy as well as sponsorships. You won’t find Dick’s Sporting Goods doing that. You also won’t find the customer service and quality of selection, but that is Dick’s problem.  The other side of it is that local companies spend their money locally; chains and big box stores take their money home to where they live.  So, every dollar no longer spent at Fran Johnson’s is likely not being spent again here in Western Massachusetts.

Lastly, if Fran Johnson’s closes, it means that our region has also lost another local brand.  Local brands help create a bond within the community of a shared experience.  If you are my age or older, you remember shopping at Steiger’s.  Up until a couple of years ago, me and every other professional in the area shopped at Yale Genton.  Both are now gone, leaving us with Macy’s and Jos A. Bank.  That is the nature of business, but it still sucks!

At the end of the day, I can’t tell you whether or not you should give money to Cindy to save Fran Johnsons.  I can’t tell you its a good or bad investment or whether you will ever get your money back.  To be honest, its not the point.  I made a pledge because I know Cindy and I know she is good people. But, just as importantly, I pledged because I live here and am vested in the community.  For our region to be a viable and desirable place to live, our community needs small businesses like Fran Johnson’s.  If you would like to help, email Cindy at cindy@franjohnsons.com

As a self proclaimed business guru, I have long advised my clients to hire smart people, ideally people smarter than themselves. Its long been a hallmark of great management; hire smart, talented people, give them the resources and support they need to be successful and let them go do what they do.

Our first hiring decision was to  hire an adviser to help us with the project.  Due to some relationships we have, we were able to find someone who had several successes in building technology/process based platform companies to assess what we wanted to do and find the best approach to doing so. He undertook an extensive amount of research and was able to: 1) validate that our concept was on target; and that 2) much of what we wanted to accomplish could be done with available software and services.  We found that what five years ago would have cost well into six figures could be accomplished for a fraction of that.  This was very exciting as it meant we could start this business for a lot less than we thought and get to market faster than we envisioned.

Continuing to appreciate that we knew what we didn’t know, we hired him to manage the project for us. In doing so, he was able to find a great web design/developer for us to work with; these guys are incredibly bright as they have both an understanding of the technology and the business case for technology.  This is a very unique trait and once again tied into our philosophy about hiring smart people.  As important as finding the right firm to work with, our adviser was able to negotiate a great fixed price contract for us.  As some of the subsequent lessons will show, this was perhaps one of the smartest decisions that was made.

At this point in our start up’s life, we felt we were in great shape and doing all the right things.  We were able to think beyond our initial idea to find something unique, we identified what we didn’t know and hired people smarter than us to shepherd us through the development process.  Just as important, development was moving along and the initial design was looking great.  This was early January and we were targeting a late March launch that looked right on target.

This is when we learned an important and invaluable lesson about hiring smart people.  Its good to give smart people freedom and flexibility to do what they do best, its generally going to result in a great return.  But, one should never forget that smart people also make mistakes.  Because smart people are still people its critical to question and challenge them on key decisions and recommendations.  This is incredibly hard to do because as someone who doesn’t know, its easy to be intimated by their talent and your lack of knowledge. In as much as its incumbent upon a leader to recognize what they don’t know, its also necessary for a leader to have enough confidence to ask questions; remember there are no stupid questions.

As the next post will discuss, I didn’t have the confidence to dig deep into a decision that in hindsight should have been challenged.