Hello and welcome to Business 300.

My name is Philip Kulenshov and this is 300 seconds about business.

We're all a busy people, so I have five minutes or less to get my point across.

Ready, fire, aim. Off we go.

Business ownership looks and feels differently if you're a passive investor or an owner operator.

Not every shareholder or investor is a business operator, even if they are responsible for the business operating well.

A passive investor hires out the work of managing the business either to a non-owner or to a partner who wears that operator hat.

Maybe your business is a partnership with an investor and an owner operator.

The ownership is split with each owner carrying the risk, responsibility, and reward for the business.

But the work to run the show is delegated to the operating partner. The passive investor isn't as immersed in the daily operation,

and so he doesn't have as much tribal insight into the performance as the operator does.

He doesn't have a sensory gauge on the condition of the business. In one sense, this is a downside

to being a passive investor. You don't

have the inside scoop of how the business is doing on a daily basis, so it's more difficult to make

ownership-level decisions. You're trusting the managing partner to give you accurate information. But in

another sense, there is a certain kind of advantage that comes from being removed from the daily

operation. Even though the investor has skin in the game with his invested resources,

his emotions and ego are not connected to the business as the operators might be.

That provides a certain kind of clarity in decision-making.

It's not complete, as sometimes you need to see things more up close.

But sometimes, when you're too close, the object you're looking at becomes blurry and out of focus. Some distance is helpful when aiming for the best decision.

So there's an advantage to this sort of partnership. There is strength in having both the

...