Drop in on six owners working through the problem you’re wrestling with.
The Anvil round table, twice a week, for owners of 3 to 20 person businesses. One real problem, argued from every side. Free.
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01One problem
Every issue is one real situation from a small business (a bad hire, a stale quote, a price you haven’t raised), argued from both sides.
02Six operators
The Anvil round table: experienced owners who’ve run, grown, and sold 3 to 20 person businesses. No gurus, no theory.
03Five minutes
Twice a week, readable in one coffee. The peer conversation owners pay $4,000 a year to get in a forum group. In your inbox, free.
“I keep thinking if I give her another month.” Hector runs a 12-person HR consultancy and treats his team like family. “It feels cruel to pull the plug on someone trying this hard.”
Joe, a Pittsburgh HVAC owner, leaned in. “You want to know what’s cruel? Eleven weeks of her failing at a job she can’t do, while she watches your team route around her. She knows, Hector. She feels it every day.”
Margot, who’s planning a 2027 exit, nodded. “And every week you wait, your other nine people learn what you’ll tolerate.”
Hector was quiet for a second. “…I’m protecting myself from a hard ten minutes. Not her.”
“The kind thing,” Joe said, “is to be honest, fast. Tell her the job you actually need. If she can’t do it, letting her go is how she finds the seat that fits her. Dragging it out is the only version where everyone loses.”
Issue 001 · The Anvil round table
- Every month you don’t raise prices, you cut them.
- Some of your work really needs you. Most of it doesn’t.
- The quote you sent 8 days ago isn’t dead.
- The hardest employee to let go is the one who’s genuinely trying.
I’ve spent 17 years running a service business. The whole time, I paid to sit in rooms with other owners doing the same. Fifteen masterminds, $5,000 to $50,000 a year, mostly people running companies the size of yours.
Those rooms taught me something uncomfortable: I’m very good at telling myself the story I want to hear. For a year I swore I had to fix my operations before I could sell more. I was hiding behind process and couldn’t see it. One room caught it in a single meeting. I changed one thing and grew sales 40% the next quarter.
That’s what a table of peers does for you. There’s rarely one right answer in a small business, and a good table makes you better at weighing your options. That’s the skill that compounds.
Most owners never get into a room like that. I wish I had, sooner. Anvil is the closest thing I could build for everyone else: a seat at the table, free, even if we’re never in the same room.
Joel WidmerEditor-in-Chief