ABOUT 

O'HARA BUSINESS STRATEGIES, LLC.!

O'Hara Business Strategies, LLC. aims "to help clients strategically succeed". The term strategically refers to maintaining attention on the critical issues and trends that impact your business, along with the long-term prosperity of your organization. You can visit our website at:   https://oharabiz.com .

O'Hara Business Strategies, LLC. leverages a multitude of POWERFUL, PROVEN, AND PROPRIETARY STRATEGIES, SYSTEMS, AND SOLUTIONS to transform your business into a "Franchise-Ready Model," as well as becoming the place to fulfill your dreams!

The late Stephen R. Covey, in his classic book, "The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People" captured the strategic mindset with his "Begin with the End in Mind" and "Put First Things First" habits. 

Daniel D. O'Hara, along with his network of associated professionals, is here to assist you in making the right choices for your organization. Choices that sidestep the pitfalls and allow you to stride confidently forward. Choices that enhance your company's stability and facilitate consistent progress toward your goals.

Therefore, we invite you to explore this blog (just scroll down) for concise articles on business subjects and trends, useful internet resources, timeless quotes, suggested readings, and details about O'Hara Business Strategies, LLC.--including the services provided, Daniel D. O'Hara's credentials, and more.

ENERGY INDUSTRY SPOTLIGHT: 

A CONTRARIAN VIEW ON THE COST-EFFECTIVENESS OF RENEWABLE ENERGY... 

In the interest of discerning the truth, amidst a prevailing propaganda narrative on given topics, I present "the other side of the story" about the alleged narrative that renewal energy (wind and solar) are cheaper than fossil fuel sources like coal and natural gas in this post....

The 2017 Trump Dept. of Energy Staff Report to the Secretary on Electricity Markets and Reliability, commissioned under Secretary Rick Perry during the Trump administration, provides several key reasons why variable renewable energy (VRE) sources like wind and solar are not considered competitive with fossil fuel-based energy (such as coal and natural gas). The report emphasizes that while VRE has seen cost reductions and growth, this is largely driven by subsidies and policies that distort markets, and inherent technical limitations make VRE reliant on fossil fuels for reliable grid operation. Below is a structured summary of the main arguments from the report.

1. Intermittency and Variability

• Wind and solar generation depends on weather conditions (e.g., wind speed or sunlight), leading to fluctuating and unpredictable output. This results in low capacity factors (e.g., wind typically 25-41%, far below fossil plants' steady baseload performance).
• Unlike fossil fuels, which provide consistent, dispatchable power, VRE creates challenges like the "duck curve" (sharp ramps in net load demand, midday oversupply, and evening shortfalls), over-generation, curtailments, and risks during high-penetration scenarios (e.g., 10-60% VRE share).
• This intermittency necessitates backup from flexible fossil resources (e.g., natural gas combined-cycle plants) for balancing, ramping, and essential reliability services like frequency and voltage support, increasing overall system complexity and costs.

2. Reliability and Resilience Shortcomings

• VRE is non-synchronous (inverter-based), reducing grid inertia and heightening risks of instability, frequency deviations, and blackouts (e.g., references to events like South Australia's 2016 blackout or ERCOT's low wind output periods).
• Fossil fuels offer inherent advantages, such as onsite fuel storage (e.g., coal stockpiles or natural gas pipelines), making them more resilient to severe weather or supply disruptions. VRE lacks this fuel assurance and is location-specific, often requiring remote siting that adds transmission challenges.
• High VRE penetration can lead to capacity deficiencies and operational risks, as noted in NERC assessments integrated into the report, without the steady baseload that fossils provide.

3. Higher System and Integration Costs

• While VRE has near-zero marginal costs and declining capital costs (e.g., solar PV dropped 60-70% since 2009), these are offset by high integration expenses, including expanded transmission lines (e.g., 24,000 miles added in recent years), grid modernization, storage needs, and increased reserves.
• VRE forces more cycling of fossil plants (starting/stopping to compensate for variability), raising maintenance costs ($1.50–$4.80/MWh for gas, higher for coal) and reducing plant lifespans.
• Levelized cost of energy (LCOE) comparisons show regional disadvantages for VRE, especially when factoring in full system costs; fossil fuels like natural gas are often lower-cost in key areas due to shale abundance and easier siting near demand centers.

4. Dependence on Subsidies and Market Distortions

• VRE growth (e.g., 60% since 2000) is heavily subsidized through federal incentives like the Production Tax Credit (PTC) for wind and Investment Tax Credit (ITC) for solar, plus state Renewable Portfolio Standards (RPS) covering 55% of U.S. electricity sales and mandatory purchases under PURPA.
• These subsidies suppress wholesale prices (sometimes to negative levels, e.g., -$22/MWh bids), displace fossil generation, and cause revenue shortfalls for baseload plants, leading to premature retirements of coal and nuclear facilities.
• Without these distortions, VRE would not be economically viable in competitive markets, as it shifts costs to consumers (e.g., RPS adds ~$12/MWh or 1.3% to retail bills) and undermines fuel diversity. Fossil fuels, by contrast, compete on merit without equivalent mandates, benefiting from low natural gas prices rather than policy favoritism.

Aspect	VRE Drawbacks	Fossil Fuel Advantages	Report Implications
Output Reliability	Variable, weather-dependent, low capacity factors	Steady baseload, dispatchable	VRE requires fossil backups, raising total costs
Grid Impacts	Intermittency causes ramps, curtailments, instability	Provides inertia, frequency support, resilience	High VRE risks blackouts without fossil integration
Economic Factors	Subsidy-reliant, high integration/transmission costs	Lower LCOE in many regions, no policy distortions	Subsidies mask VRE's true uncompetitiveness
Market Effects	Price suppression, revenue loss for others	Viable in flat demand environment	Policies accelerate fossil retirements, harming diversity

The report concludes that while VRE can hedge against fossil fuel price volatility, its deployment often increases overall supply costs and reliance on natural gas, without delivering the affordability and reliability of a fossil-dominant system. It recommends policy reforms to value baseload attributes and reduce distortions favoring VRE.

Sources: energy.gov and Grok AI

 

WHY IS DISCERNMENT SUCH A KEY SKILL FOR CONSULTANTS?

Discernment is one of the highest-leverage skills a business or management consultant can possess because it directly determines the quality, speed, and impact of every recommendation, diagnosis, and decision you make for a client. Here’s why it’s absolutely critical:

1. Separating Signal from Noise
   Clients are drowning in data, opinions, dashboards, and anecdotal “truths.” Discernment lets you quickly identify which 5% of the information actually explains 95% of the performance gap, while everyone else is still chasing vanity metrics or the latest management fad.
2. Spotting Root Causes Instead of Symptoms
   Most people (including many executives) fix the wrong thing because they lack the discernment to trace effects back to true causes. A great consultant can listen to a sales leader complain about “low close rates,” but discerns that the real issue is misaligned incentives in marketing or a broken lead-qualification process two steps earlier.
3. Reading People and Politics Accurately
   Business problems are rarely purely technical; they’re almost always entangled with egos, hidden agendas, and power dynamics. Discernment allows you to:
• Know whose buy-in actually matters (vs. who has the fanciest title)
• Detect when someone is threatened by your findings and will sabotage them
• Sense when a leader is posturing versus when they’re genuinely open to painful truth
4. Judging What’s Sustainable vs. What’s Cosmetic. Many solutions look brilliant in a PowerPoint but collapse in reality. Discernment helps you recognize which cultural, operational, or financial constraints will kill an idea before you waste months (and your reputation) pushing it.
5. Knowing When to Push and When to Pull Back
   Great consultants don’t just deliver truth; they deliver it in a way that gets acted upon. Discernment tells you:
• Is this client ready to hear that their pet project is a disaster?
• Will confronting the sacred cow get us fired or finally unlock progress?
• Is this the right hill to die on, or should we get a few quick wins first?
6. Protecting Your Own Credibility
   Without discernment, you’ll overpromise, chase shiny objects, misread the room, or recommend theoretically perfect solutions that are practically impossible. Each of those erodes trust fast. Strong discernment keeps you from looking naive or academic in the eyes of battle-scarred executives.
7. Pattern Recognition at Warp Speed
   Experienced consultants with high discernment walk into a new client and within days (sometimes hours) see familiar patterns: “This is classic over-decentralization,” or “They’re in the middle of the founder-to-professional-CEO transition trap.” That ability to compress months of analysis into weeks is what clients actually pay premium rates for.

In short, technical skills, frameworks, and industry knowledge get you in the room. Discernment is what makes clients say, “They just get it,” and keeps them calling you back for the next crisis, transformation, or strategy project. It’s the difference between being a smart analyst and being a trusted advisor.

 

Source: Grok AI

COMMON SMALL BUSINESS "PAIN POINTS"

Common small business pain points include, per Grok AI:

1. Cash Flow Management: Difficulty maintaining consistent cash flow due to delayed payments, high expenses, or unpredictable revenue.
2. Customer Acquisition and Retention: Challenges in attracting new customers and keeping existing ones, often due to limited marketing budgets or competition.
3. Time Management: Owners juggling multiple roles, leading to inefficiencies and burnout.
4. Hiring and Retaining Talent: Finding skilled employees and keeping them, especially with limited budgets for salaries and benefits.
5. Marketing and Visibility: Struggling to stand out in crowded markets or effectively use digital marketing tools.
6. Technology Adoption: Keeping up with new tools or software, often due to cost or lack of expertise.
7. Compliance and Regulations: Navigating complex legal, tax, or industry-specific regulations.
8. Inventory Management: Balancing stock levels to avoid overstocking or shortages, especially for retail or product-based businesses.
9. Scaling Operations: Difficulty growing without compromising quality or overstretching resources.
10. Access to Funding: Securing loans or investment to start or expand, often due to strict lending criteria or lack of credit history.

These challenges vary by industry and location but are widely reported across small businesses.

Additionally, a sample of some other specific "pain points", I have observed, consistent with the above-noted "pain points" include:

• Bank CEO reports dealing with federal government regulators, especially in the former Biden Administration, that are not sympathetic to the need for profits and growth.
• Coin dealer reports that the POS (Point-of-Sale) system is glitchy, doesn't work as stated.
• Roof repair franchise reports having to pay excessive fees (up to $2000 a week) for franchise marketing and referral fees, including having to pay for referrals that are unreachable by phone, text, or email. Additionally, not being informed about former franchisees' failures and why they occurred.
• Roofers are reporting unpredictable weather that irritates customers, and customers are unwilling to provide references due to privacy concerns.
• Sometimes, customer acquisition becomes "selective" in the case of Wal-Mart, Target, and other large retailers (and most likely small retailers), choose to close inner-city stores due to theft and safety concerns. Or, liability concerns about reckless or criminal customers cause a "re-think" of store layouts. A convenience store on a Montana Indian reservation allows customers to enter only a small "foyer area," where they ring a bell, and the store owner or manager then selects the desired products. A small-town Montana tavern posts a list of "bad check" writers on its street "reader board," while another small-town grocer posts a list of "banned people" prominently at the front of the store, like a modern-day "scarlet letter."

DAVE RAMSEY'S ................PAIN POINTS IN THE TRAILBLAZER PHASE

 Dave Ramsey, in his excellent new book, "Build a Business You Love" did an excellent job of identifying the different stages in the life of a small business, along with frustrations ("pain points") found in each stage.

In Stage 3, a growing phase, what Ramsey refers to as the "Trailblazer" phase, he identifies:

      SIGNS OF BEING IN THE "TRAILBLAZER" stage: 

• Working longer hours isn't working like it did before.
• Hiring more people to solve problems doesn't work anymore.
• Processes and systems are not strong enough to support the vision.
• You're striving to establish plans and processes to scale your business.
• You're working on the basics of a powerful and healthy organization to get reliable results.

     FRUSTRATIONS YOU FACE IN THE TRAILBLAZER stage:

• You're trying to figure out how to operationalize the company. 
• You don't know how to get your leaders to think about bigger-picture problems.
• You're having trouble scaling the business.
• You feel stretched way too thin.
• The team has more work than they can handle.

While I agree that these are common signs and "pain points" in the startup phase of a business, we at O'Hara Business Strategies, LLC. can help address these issues with savvy, strategically-based, and cost and time-effective business coaching, and other services.

*Used under the Fair Use Rules of the U.S. Copyright Law and also in accordance with the book's allowance for "...brief quotations in critical reviews or articles..."

DAVE RAMSEY'S ...........PAIN POINTS IN THE "PATHFINDER" PHASE 

Dave Ramsey, in his excellent new book, "Build a Business You Love" did an excellent job of identifying the different stages in the life of a small business, along with frustrations ("pain points") found in each stage.

In Stage 2, or the Startup phase of a business, what Ramsey refers to as the "Treadmill Operator", he identifies:

      SIGNS OF BEING IN THE "TREADMILL OPERATOR" stage: 

• Team member turnover. 
• You have unreliable results.
• The team doesn't demonstrate the values that created your initial success.
• The team is not aligned.

     FRUSTRATIONS YOU FACE IN THE PATHFINDER stage:

• You're used to putting out fires, and you feel uncomfortable about being "not needed" now that you've delegated some of those responsibilities.
• You're unsure about how to spend your time--it's a big shift from leaving the cave, killing something, and dragging it home. Now the team is doing that.
• You're making more money than you ever have before, and you don't know how to invest in the business.

While I agree that these are common signs and "pain points" in the startup phase of a business, we at O'Hara Business Strategies, LLC. can help address these issues with savvy, strategically-based, and cost and time-effective business coaching, and other services.

*Used under the Fair Use Rules of the U.S. Copyright Law and also in accordance with the book's allowance for "...brief quotations in critical reviews or articles..."

DAVE RAMSEY'S THOUGHTS ON SMALL BUSINESS "PAIN POINTS" IN THE STARTUP PHASE  

Dave Ramsey, in his excellent new book, "Build a Business You Love" did an excellent job of identifying the different stages in the life of a small business, along with frustrations ("pain points") found in each stage.

In Stage 1, or the Startup phase of a business, what Ramsey refers to as the "Treadmill Operator", he identifies:

      SIGNS OF BEING IN THE "TREADMILL OPERATOR" stage: 

*The business owner is working "in the business" way more than he is working           "on the business."

*The entrepreneur can't take time off because no business would get done and   because he would not make any money.

*The business owner is at risk of "burnout", physically and emotionally.

   "PAIN POINTS" IN THE TREADMILL OPERATOR stage are:

*The business owner doesn't have time to grow his/her business.

*A feeling of being "trapped" by the business.

*Business stops when the business owner stops so taking a vacation is difficult.

While I agree that these are common signs and "pain points" in the startup phase of a business, we at O'Hara Business Strategies, LLC. can help address these issues with savvy, strategically-based, and cost and time-effective business coaching, and other services.

*Used under the Fair Use Rules of the U.S. Copyright Law and also in accordance with the book's allowance for "...brief quotations in critical reviews or articles..."

MCKINSEY REPORT OFFERS INSIGHT INTO SMALL BUSINESS "PAIN POINTS"

 NOTE: O'Hara Business Strategies, LLC. does not necessarily agree entirely with McKinsey's recommendations or conclusions for small businesses or what they term, MSMEs. O'Hara Business Strategies, LLC. also asserts that developing systems and processes (as noted in the book, "The E-Myth") can help small businesses succeed, as well as using the expertise of strategy-focused consulting firms like O'Hara Business Strategies, LLC! Additionally, sometimes staying small is a choice for small business owners; productivity gains and growth can be achieved by using independent contractors instead of additional employees. In short, McKinsey is focused on large corporations and its perspective can be "out of touch" for MSMEs.! Statist instead of being entrepreneurial!

McKinsey research on small business pain points?

Major global consulting firm, McKinsey & Company offered the following findings on small business pain points:

McKinsey Global Institute (MGI) has conducted extensive research on micro-, small-, and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs), highlighting their critical role in global economies while identifying persistent challenges that hinder their growth and productivity. A key 2024 report, America's Small Businesses: Time to Think Big, analyzes U.S. MSMEs (defined as firms with up to 500 employees), which comprise 99.9% of all American companies, employ nearly 60% of the workforce, and contribute about 40% to national value-added output.

Despite this, MSMEs face a significant "productivity gap," operating at roughly half the productivity level of large firms—a disparity more pronounced in the U.S. than in other advanced economies, where small firms achieve about 60% of large-firm productivity.

This gap stems from structural barriers that limit scale, innovation, and efficiency. A companion MGI analysis, A Microscope on Small Businesses: Spotting Opportunities to Boost Productivity (also 2024), uses granular data from 17 countries to examine nonfarm MSMEs globally, revealing similar issues. It notes that while MSMEs drive job creation and innovation, their productivity lags due to fragmented ecosystems and uneven access to resources.

Below, I summarize the primary pain points identified in these reports, drawing directly from McKinsey's findings, along with targeted recommendations. Key Pain Points for Small Businesses McKinsey's research emphasizes that challenges vary by subsector (e.g., retail vs. manufacturing) and geography, but common themes emerge. These are often interconnected, creating a cycle of low growth and vulnerability.

 

MCKINSEY-IDENTIFIED "PAIN POINTS"

A) Low Productivity and Scale Barriers - MSMEs struggle to grow beyond micro-size (under 10 employees).

B) Limited Access to Technology and Digital Tools - Small firms under-adopt automation, AI, and digital platforms, missing efficiency gains.

C) Talent and Human Capital Shortages - Difficulty attracting/retaining skilled workers, especially in specialized roles, hampers operations and growth.

D) Finance and Funding Constraints - McKinsey reports that, in Israel, SME credit grew 61% vs. 16% for large firms (2010s), yet gaps persist; U.S. MSMEs rely heavily on personal savings or debt.

E) Weak Market Access and Networks - Isolation from supply chains, customers, and ecosystems limit sales and knowledge sharing.

F) Regulatory and Policy Hurdles - Broad policies fail to address granular needs, like incentives for tech adoption or subsector support. U.S. MSMEs need tailored measures; Singapore's GoBusiness model shows how incentives can boost tech uptake.

Recommendations from McKinsey to address these, McKinsey advocates a "think big" mindset, urging MSMEs to leverage ecosystems and policy support: 

A) Build Networks: Foster ties between large firms (for mentorship/supply chains) and small ones (for innovation). Examples include Sacramento's ag-tech cluster, where nonprofits like AgStart provide labs and funding to over 20 startups.

B) Adopt Technology Strategically: Use incentives (e.g., grants) to integrate digital tools, focusing on high-impact subsectors like manufacturing. 

C) Enhance Human Capital: Invest in training and clusters to attract talent; policy makers should promote minority-owned business ecosystems. 

D) Tailor Policies: Shift from broad measures to subsector/geography-specific interventions, like India's focus on the "missing middle."

E) Scale via Acquisitions/Partnerships: Large firms can acquire MSMEs for mutual gains, as seen in U.S. clusters like High Point furniture.

These insights underscore that closing the productivity gap could add trillions to global GDP, with U.S. MSMEs alone potentially boosting output by 30-50% through targeted action.

SOURCE: MCKINSEY.COM