Now, more than ever, startup organizations are popping up and even moving to the Heartland. But what is it about the Midwest that has these startups trading the opportunity to sit beachside for flatland and grass? In other words, how are cities like Minneapolis, Indianapolis, Kansas City, and Madison luring new businesses to their respective states?

The Midwest is outgrowing the “Flyover Country” nickname, and it isn’t by accident. The lower costs, abundance of talent, and business-friendly policies found in the Midwest region all favor startup organizations. In fact, Forbes recently ranked the Best States for Business in 2016, and seven of the top fifteen are Midwest states. You read that right: half of the top fifteen states for business are located in the Midwest.

Our friends at M25 Group recently dug into this with their assessment of the best startup cities in the Midwest.

Still don’t believe it? Here are a few more reasons:

At Gutwein Law, we live by the idea of continuous learning and improvement. In fact, it's one of our five core criteria when evaluating potential employees to join our team. We feel it's not only beneficial to ourselves, but we hope it ultimately impacts our clients and others around us in a positive way. So, in addition to attending CLE's, volunteering for speaking engagements, mentoring, judging panels, and holding internal cross-training sessions, we read. A lot.

One of my latest and more valuable reads is a book by Brett Bartholomew called Conscious Coaching: The Art & Science of Building Buy-In. If you're not familiar with the title, Conscious Coaching provides insight on how to be a better leader, not only in sport, but in the workplace and in life in general. Although it was originally intended for strength and conditioning coaches, the principles and lessons throughout can be applied to leaders in any framework. The book details four components of the coaching compass: buy-in, relationships, social intelligence, and time. In a nutshell, Bartholomew brings a more balanced approach to coaching that involves science and art.

      Butler University recently ran its first cohort through a business program for lawyers called Lawyer to Leader and I was fortunate enough to be one of the participants.  If you desire to become a leader in your law firm or organization, I highly recommend you apply for the next class at Butler.  This program was especially fitting for me as our firm has grown from 5 people in 1 location to ~25 people in 3 locations in the 4 years we've been in existence.  I've personally gone from 95% legal work for clients to less than 25% legal work for clients and now most of my time is devoted to strategy, communication and team development.  The years of being part of many business decisions with clients and having a significant interest and activity in outside interests in real estate services and venture capital have been very helpful but time dedicated to concentrate on developing leadership skills has been extremely valuable for my own growth and I plan for the numerous lessons to impact our law firm. 

 I love baseball - the sport (the athleticism required, the explosiveness, the coordination), the game (the strategy, knowledge of the game and its intricacies), and of course the competition.  Baseball season is officially under way.  Pitchers and catchers have reported for MLB spring training, last Friday was opening day of college baseball and winter practices have started for youth baseball.   

For several years now, I've been coaching youth baseball and one of my favorite things about coaching is watching a young boy transform over a season of baseball - turning from that scared boy timidly stepping into that scary batter’s box, all alone to the confident plate pounding little man child ready to knock it out of the park. The thoughts running through his head

For the past few months, we have been discussing the questions companies should consider when initially considering a joint venture or merger (see Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3). In our final installment of this series, we will go over what questions will help determine the financial health of a prospective business partner’s company.