The Island Inn Way

Joe Orndorff, the president and CEO of the Island Inn, wants you to know this about the Sanibel hotel: “There's no benefit to being a shareholder.”

If you're one of the inn's 160 shareholders, you don't get preferential rates, nor do you get to pick the room in which you want to stay. You can't sell or give the share you own to anyone who hasn't been vetted by the board, and each shareholder has the right to only one vote regardless of how many shares he owns. Shareholders get no dividend and don't share in any profits. Even if you were thinking about selling your share, no one will even tell you what a share of the Island Inn might be worth. A shareholder himself, Orndorff's salary is $1 a year.

You've got to wonder: What kind of business is this?