Mind Your Business

Jennifer Zurko

No self-respecting city girl does her own hair.

I don’t buy the box of hair color at the store and do it myself and I don’t go to the local Great Clips to get my hair cut. I have nothing against Great Clips or coloring your own hair in the bathroom sink—I’ve just had things go horribly awry in that bathroom, which needed to be fixed by a professional. And finding someone that can give you a good haircut is like finding a good doctor: you don’t go to anyone else.

I’ve been going to Dawn since she worked at a local salon over 10 years ago. In that time, we’ve become friends and shared gossip and secrets as I sat in her chair while she worked her magic. Her goal was to someday own her own salon, and when the one she was working at closed, it was the kick in the butt she needed to stop talking about it and finally do it. She and her sister partnered up and bought a nice little place and have been working on keeping it successful. There have certainly been up and down years, as Dawn has told me, and now that she and her sister have young children, trying to juggle their business and home lives has been stressful.

I know I couldn’t do it. I remember one day I was sitting in her chair talking about something and I used a big word that we writers like to slip into conversations sometimes. She interrupted and asked me what it meant. She laughed and said, “I’m not as smart as you.” I took her arm so she would stop cutting my hair, looked her straight in the eye and said, “Don’t say that. Just because I went to college and you went to beauty school doesn’t mean I’m smarter than you. You own your own business and that, I know, I could never do. Don’t sell yourself short.” She agreed that being a business owner may cause premature gray hairs (thankfully, she can get her hair colored for free), but it makes for a fulfilling career if you can keep it successful.

So, in homage to all of you owners and managers, we’ve made December the Business Issue for the second year in a row. We’ve focused all of our features on topics that we hope will help you handle the business and human resources part of running your growing operation.

• Our cover story features the succulent man of the hour, Ken Altman. Chris Beytes sat down with Ken and his wife Deena to learn how they’ve grown Altman Plants into a successful, multi-location business … and they keep on growing.

• I asked a couple of known greenhouse owners to tell me about their biggest business mistakes, what they did to fix it and the lessons they learned.

• I turned Ball’s West Chicago headquarters into my own personal laboratory, using some employees as subjects for an informal experiment to see what each age group wants out of their careers. The results were really interesting and it was fun to sit down and chat with them about their professional goals.

• One of my favorite people, Dr. Charlie Hall, explains the methods behind cost accounting.

• Mary Ann Rose, who works in the Pesticide Safety Education Program for The Ohio State University Extension, breaks down the new provisions in The Worker Protection Standard that employers will need to comply with by 2017.

• And, as always in the December issue, we have the results of our annual Wage & Benefit Survey. This year, we asked about the new overtime rule. GT