The art of ownership transition

By Jeff Servais, principal, and David Laugtug, principal, CLA In the life of a business, ownership transition is inevitable. Whether selling to private equity or to the next generation of your family, someone else, at some point in time, will own your company. Most owners don’t realize how this process, often highly emotional, balances a

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Understanding the Employee Retention Credit for Recovery Start-Up Businesses

By Dawn Morgan, CPA and Kathleen Martin, CPA Many entrepreneurs in Tampa Bay entered 2020 with new business ventures in motion or expansions of existing business—opening new locations, new entities or a combination of the two. Despite hits from the COVID-19 pandemic, the Tampa Bay area saw a trending increase in new business applications, according

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Preparing Florida’s youth for personal and financial success

In this economic climate, financial literacy is a pivotal issue that can determine a person’s quality of life. The Florida Council on Economic Education, a nonprofit group on the front lines of the state’s educational system, is preparing young people for personal and financial success. It achieves this initiative through educational programs in economics, the

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New market president named for First Horizon Bank’s Tampa Bay region

First Horizon Bank has appointed Jim Donatelli as market president for the Tampa Bay region. As market president, Donatelli will lead the consumer, commercial and wealth banking teams and is responsible for the company’s growth and expansion plans for the Tampa Bay market, including Tampa, St. Petersburg, Bradenton and Sarasota, a statement said. “As First

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How to increase profits by knowing your numbers: Part 2

In my last column, I covered the importance of knowing your numbers as a way to grow your business and make it more profitable. We explored the closing ratio. This month, we’ll look at two other key performance indicators, customer lifetime value and customer churn rate. Customer lifetime value, or CLV, is sometimes referred to

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Q&A with The Bank of Tampa’s new CEO

The Bank of Tampa announced a significant change in its executive leadership in January, but the bank had been planting the seeds for succession long before the announcement hit the public. T. Corey Neil, a 19-year banking veteran at The Bank of Tampa, was named president and chief executive officer, with Bill West, previous CEO,

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How to increase profits by knowing your numbers

As Marcus Lemonis, the businessman and star of The Profit says, “If you don’t know your numbers, you don’t know your business.” Today, you will begin to know your business better. The Small business Administration states that only about 50% of small businesses make it to their fifth anniversary. There are several reasons for this,

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Accounting firm Dixon Hughes Goodman announces major merger

Dixon Hughes Goodman, an accounting firm based in Charlotte, North Carolina but with a presence in Tampa Bay, has announced it will merge with BKD CPAs & Advisors. The merger of the two firms creates a national top-ten firm that will have a combined $1.4 billion in revenue, a statement said. Tom Watson, current chief

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Still struggling with forecasting sales for 2022?

Sales has traditionally been an intuition-driven profession: “What’s in your pipeline?  What do you think is going to close?” But these days, that approach puts companies and organizations at a major competitive disadvantage. In this data-driven era, sales leaders need to make decisions in response to real-world market changes, up-to-date assessments of the marketplace, accurate

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Jim Marshall
Do Wharton students know what the average income is in Tampa? Probably not.

“I asked Wharton students what they thought the average American worker makes per year and 25% of them thought it was over six figures. One of them thought it was $800,000. Really not sure what to make of this (The real number is $45,000),” tweeted Nina Strohminger, a professor of legal studies and business ethics

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Tampa’s HealthAxis receives growth equity investment

HealthAxis, a Tampa-based administrative processing services company for health care payers and organizations, received a growth investment from Revelstoke Capital Partners. McGuireWoods acted as legal counsel to Revelstoke. Shumaker, Loop & Kendrick acted as legal advisors to HealthAxis. The terms of the transaction were not disclosed. “HealthAxis and Revelstoke understand there is an urgent need

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Leaders in banking, real estate and tourism share their thoughts heading into 2022

Tampa Bay Business and Wealth reached out to leaders in their respective industries to see what trends they are seeing and what they mean. Here’s what they had to say. BANKING & FINANCE By Chris Nichols, director of capital markets, SouthState Bank It’s never been harder to be in the economic forecasting business than it

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