Written for the leaders, owners and professionals of the 11 million businesses with between $50,000 and $50 million in revenue.

Companies relocate for many reasons, such as more affordable office space, a wider talent pool, or a lower tax burden. But the decision to relocate places other burdens on employees.

Last week, Disney workers sued the company for backtracking on a planned move from Los Angeles to a new office in Orlando, Florida. The employees had already sold their homes, which have since increased in value; one plaintiff says they had to downsize as a result. (Their new, smaller home didn’t feel like a magic castle.)

If you’re moving your business to Florida — or any other state — check out business.com’s guide to Movin’ on Up: Why Relocating Offices Doesn’t Have to Suck.

Exit Stage: What if your kids don’t want the family business?

Resilience: Is all the talk about it making anyone more resilient?

Delegate: Why developing talent is key to handing off duties

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In the coming decades, some $53 trillion in assets are expected to be passed down from baby boomers to their heirs, including family businesses — think restaurants, retail, and local services — that younger generations may not necessarily be interested in taking over.

“Young people want to be YouTube influencers and crypto traders, not run their dad’s pool cleaning biz,” says Brian Prince, a serial entrepreneur who’s sold off two internet-based businesses, Hotel Hotline and Best of the Web. 

That might sound harsh, but Prince isn’t wrong: 1 in 4 Gen Zers plan to become social media influencers.

Families have until the end of 2025 to maximize the amount of wealth that can be tax-efficiently passed to heirs, notes accounting firm BDO. So, business-owning parents have a big incentive to sell now.

As such, these “boring” mom-and-pop businesses have become hot opportunities for entrepreneurs who want to avoid the stress and 

trial and error of starting a business from the ground up. Small business acquisitions grew 10% between Q1 2023 and Q1 2024, according to BizBuySell’s Insight Data.

Existing businesses most likely to sell have paying customers, existing cash flow, contracts/leases in place, and relationships with vendors or suppliers. “The right people can update and digitize these legacy business models for continued growth,” says Prince.

And the proceeds from a sale could even float an aspiring influencer until they reach stardom.

Restaurants have unique point-of-sale (POS) needs, from turning tables quickly to connecting front and back of house. Restaurateurs also need powerful reporting capabilities to help them manage inventory, reduce waste and analyze sales to make strategic menu changes.

Enter Toast, a powerful POS system designed specifically for restaurants, cafes, bars, food trucks, and food-service businesses of all kinds. Waitstaff can navigate Toast’s user-friendly software easily on the dining room floor, and itsstress-tested hardware can stand up to high heat and spills in a kitchen environment.

New restaurant on a budget? No problem! Toast offers a Starter Kit that includes one hardware terminal at no cost and no interest, so you can get started now and pay later. See why more than 112,000 restaurants trust Toast with everything from POS to payroll.

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Resilience is a word that can light up everything from a job interview to the title of a self-improvement bestseller. It’s a quality regarded as essential in business. A whopping 97% of executives consider resilience “very or somewhat important,” analytics firm SAS found in 2023.

Very few stories of entrepreneurial success involve giving up at the first sign of adversity. We learn as kids that, if at first we don’t succeed, we should try again.

However, a new study from Northwestern, Cornell, Yale, and Columbia’s business schools found that “people systematically — blissfully — overestimate the likelihood of resilience following failure,” the researchers summarized to NBC News. Interestingly, they added, “But from a helping perspective, exaggerating the benefits of failure is disastrous.”

While resilience itself is good, there may be a problem with a motivational industry that glamorizes hardship, from bestsellers to podcasts, TED Talks, and costly professional development workshops. Enduring adversity can be part of building your business, but that doesn’t mean you should seek it out — or, worse, subject your employees to it.

This can manifest as “caring not about employee well-being but their ability to quickly ‘rebound or bounce back’ from poor working conditions, mistreatment, illness, and loss,” says Kelly Campbell, CEO-turned-leadership coach and author of Heal to Lead. This is especially true if “emotional suppression … is rewarded in business through praise and promotions.”

AIIR Analytics President Derek Lusk, who holds a PhD in business psychology, cautions that prizing resilience above all else might cause leaders to overestimate their abilities, pursue unrealistic goals, and develop “false hope syndrome.” This makes it harder for them to pivot and adapt. “I wouldn’t be surprised if the word [resilience] changes to having a more negative connotation later down the trail,” Lusk says. 

On the other hand, Lusk feels that resilience’s cultural moment reflects positive social changes around the management of our mental health. Indeed, the American Psychological Association suggests that “the resources and skills associated with resilience can be cultivated and practiced.”

Just ask yourself: If you truly need help building resilience, is the solution downloading some influencer’s audiobook — in the hope of someday using your struggles as a flex — or just going to actual therapy?

Dr. Ben Baran is an associate professor at Cleveland State University and co-founder of Elevating What Works.

Busy managers often say they want to delegate some of their tasks but don’t know how to start. The science of delegation can help.

A classic study collected behavioral data from almost 90 managers and 400 of their direct reports. The researchers found delegating was most common when supervisors viewed directs as competent. (It also helped when the directs were aligned with the manager’s objectives.)

If you don’t develop your direct reports before delegating tasks to them, you’ll be setting them up for potential failure — and yourself up for disappointment. By developing them first, you’ll feel more confident about delegating; there’s also a higher likelihood they’ll succeed in their tasks.

What might this look like?

First, identify a task that you would like to delegate and a direct report to whom you’d like to take charge of it. (Pick a task you’re willing to train someone to do over time and pick a direct report whom you trust.)

Then, show that direct report how to do the task, gradually moving from the simple aspects to the more complex parts.

As you notice an increase in skills and knowledge, transfer ownership of the task.

Another key to increasing your delegation is to ensure your full team is aware of their objectives. People are much more likely to be successful when they know what needs to be done — and can get help to build their skills from a manager who cares about them.

• 1855: The Sigma Chi fraternity was established. Its members have included CEOs of Kroger, Disney, Hilton, Uber, Sara Lee Foods, DuPont Chemical, Bonobos, WebMD, and Expedia.
• 1894: With a stroke of President Grover Cleveland’s pen, the U.S. formally began recognizing Labor Day. 
• 1902: America paid France $40 million to build the Panama Canal. 
• 1971: It’s Elon Musk’s birthday, which is probably the least controversial headline you’ll read about him all year.

Written by Lauren Vino, Jake Wengroff, and Ali Saleh. Comic by John McNamee.