The Holiday Season and Your Business

Less companies are throwing holiday parties. Companies are planning their parties later in the year than usual. Companies are planning potlucks instead of hiring caterers. These are just a few of the methods that companies are using to save money this holiday season. Instead of scratching the holiday festivities altogether, read the below articles on ways to save money this holiday season while still celebrating with your employees and customers.

Party Poopers - Holiday Parties Take a Hit in Hard Times

Small Business - Partying simply with smaller events, iPods instead of DJs

Small Businesses - Still giving holiday gifts to customers

NACS State of the Industry Annual 2008

NACS State of the Industry Report of 2008 Data
New addition to our collection!

"This comprehensive report provides the convenience and petroleum retailing industry with analysis of 2008 data and serves as a premier benchmarking resource."

The 2008 edition does not include the CDROM unlike the 2007 edition but is still packed with lots of good data on the convenience store/forecourt and petroleum retailing industry.

100 Best Websites for Business News, Know-How

From onlineclasses.org:

If you’re preparing for a career in the business world, you’re undoubtedly devoting a lot of time and effort to your schoolwork, internships and networking. But keeping up with business news is equally important, and these websites can help you apply what you learn in class to real-world situations, from the stock market, to international business, to starting up your own company to social media marketing. Here are 100 best websites for your business news and know-how.

The list includes General Media (Forbes, Fortune), Blogs (the Curious Capitalist), Social Media (Fast Pitch, PartnerUp), Stock Market and Finance (CNNmoney, Business Index), Entrepreneurship (Entrepreneurship.org, SBA), Business Education (Harvard Business Publishing, MIT Sloan School of Management), Tips, Tools and Tutorials (All Things Workplace, Business Owner’s Toolkit), Career (Penelope Trunk’s Brazen Careerist, Wisconsin School of Business Careers), and my favorite, of course, Green Business (HBRGreen.org, SustainableBusiness.com). there are even links to sites about ethics and etiquette.

Businesses and H1N1

H1N1 is everywhere. By now, it is extremely likely that you know someone, or at least know of someone, that has contracted H1N1, or the swine flu. Getting the vaccine is not easy unless you are an individual that can be categorized as high-risk. Businesses are being faced with many decisions about how they should handle H1N1 if (some people might say when) it infects their business. Should managers send employees home that exhibit symptoms? What precautionary measures should be taken to alleviate the impact of the flu? How will employers know that their employee really has the flu and isn't lying to get time off? These and many other questions should be asked before the flu strikes. Below are links to resources on the H1N1 Flu and Small Business Preparedness.

Guide - Planning for 2009 H1N1 Influenza: A Preparedness Guide for Small Business from Flu.gov

Survey - Harvard School of Public Health National Survey of Businesses - Four-Fifths of Businesses Foresee Severe Problems Maintaining Operations If Significant H1N1 Flu Outbreak

Preventing H1N1 - Swine Flu Prevention Tips for Small Businesses

Check out this previous post from back in May on H1N1.

How Mom’s Use Their iPhones, and How You Shouldn’t

Want your marketing efforts to reach moms on their iPhones? There’s a new study, showing that mothers frequently let their children play with their phones , and use their phones to make purchasing decisions, particularly in price comparison, shopping list applications and locating the nearest store.

Now I imagine that most of us are excellent and super-polite smartphone users, but just in case you need a refresher, if you must text during a holiday party, do it in the bathroom, and turn ‘em off during religious events, dates and social occasions.

USA Counties

A site I've come across only recently, but which may be of use to advisors and their clients without going to various locations.

From the Census Bureau:

USA Counties features over 6,500 data items for the United States, States and counties from a variety of sources. Files include data published for 2008 estimates and many items from the 2000 Census of Population and Housing, the 1990 census, the 1980 census and the 2002, 1997, 1992, 1987, 1982 and 1977 economic censuses.

Information in USA Counties is derived from the following general topics: age, agriculture, ancestry, banking, building permits, business patterns, crime, earnings, education, elections, employment, government, health, households, housing, income, labor force, manufactures, population, poverty, retail trade, social programs, veterans, vital statistics, water use, and wholesale trade.

Files contain a collection of data from the U. S. Census Bureau and other Federal agencies, such as the Bureau of Economic Analysis, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the Social Security Administration.

I particularly like the COMPARE function, where one can compare the county in question with other counties in the state.

Cyber Security - the challenge never ends

Last night, I watched the segment on "60 Minutes" that cast light on just how much vigilance is required to protect electronic sytems designed to operate critical financial, social and defense systems in this country (and elsewhere). It was sobering to watch, to say the least.

News lives in an echo chamber, it seems. An article from last week's PCWorld dwelled on the proliferation of cyber theft into the world of small and medium-sized businesses and organizations.

The bulk of the article focuses on the FBI's awareness of the growth in ACH (automated clearinghouse) fraud, where thieves manipulate online banking systems to create false payees, whereby significant sums can be then transferred out of the country by (sometimes unwitting) online payroll clearinghouse operations.

Vigilance, again, is the key word here. Many of these scenarios unfold by an employee unknowingly triggering malware embedded into an email (the article cites the example of Microsoft sending out notices to upgrade software), and are exacerbated by incomplete or out-of-date online protection in place at smaller financial institutions.

Folks, be careful out there. Train employees to be leery of suspicious emails like this, and demand reassurance from your financial institution that they have systems in place that can spot unusual occurrences like this (and not simply & blindly pay out sums to fictitious individuals). As a line in this article says, "Once the money is out of the country, it is gone for good."

Social Media and the Boss

I have read many articles dealing with the use of social media and employees. Some employees have been reprimanded and in some cases even fired for things they have said online about their workplace, pictures they have posted of them doing illegal activities, etc. The other day, I read an article about a boss who found himself in a sticky situation after posting pictures on his Facebook page of him attending the annual "weeklong anything-goes festival" Burning Man. The CEO of Joie de Vivre, a company that operates a collection of boutique hotels in California, posted pictures of himself (including one of him in a tutu) having a good time while off work. The reaction from his employees was less than favorable. In the end, he decided to keep the pictures online, despite the recommendations of some of his executive staff. It makes me wonder about rules for social media usage for both employees and the boss. Should your employer (or employees) dictate what you can and can't do online? And how should the rules be determined? Illegal activities are one thing. What about activities that may not be socially acceptable? All I know is that it will be interesting to see what happens in the future.

National Association for Sick Child Daycare

I love that there is an association for just about everything. The National Association for Sick Child Daycare is one you may not have come across yet. This association has been around for a number of years and supports those running quality childcare services for sick children. With so much in the news about the challenges faced by workers with little or no sick time or single parents who bear the brunt of sick season, the issues are significant and the solutions thin on the ground.

"Obstacles exist that hamper the development of needed sick child care programs. There is an absence of providers largely due to lack of
information, lack of licensing procedures for sick child care, difficulty
getting insurance, and funding challenges. "

We have occasionally had requests for clients starting specialized daycare programs and this association offers a number of how-to documents for reasonable prices - most are about $30, with the directory of sick childcare facilities costing quite alot more at $295. There is a survey report, guidelines for starting a hospital-based daycare program, as well as guidelines for serving mildly ill children. Very clearly there is need, with more awareness there will be more programs and assistance to support those programs.

Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life: U.S. Religious Landscape Survey

You can find details on the religious composition of the United States, including religious makeup, religious beliefs and practices in the U.S. Religious Landscape Survey. More than a study of religion, the Pew survey also includes the social and political attitudes affiliated with religious traditions in the United States. The survey is based on interviews with more than 35,000 Americans.

One element I found particularly interesting is A Brief History of Religion and the U.S. Census. From the document:

The U.S. Census Bureau has not asked questions about religion since the 1950s, but the federal government did gather some information about religion for about a century before that. Starting in 1850, census takers began asking a few questions about religious organizations as part of the decennial census that collected demographic and social statistics from the general population as well as economic data from business establishments...Although the census takers did not interview individual worshipers or ask about the religious affiliations of the general population, they did ask members of the clergy to identify their denomination – such as Methodist, Roman Catholic or Old School Presbyterian. The 1850 census found that here were 18 principal denominations in the U.S.

The same basic questions on religious institutions were included in the 1860 and 1870 censuses. In 1880, census takers started collecting more in-depth information from religious leaders on topics ranging from average worship attendance to church income, expenditures and debt. The scope of inquiry about religion was expanded again in 1890, when census takers gathered information about the number of ministers in each denomination. Classifications for the denominations also were more detailed...

There were no other significant changes in data collection on religious bodies until 1902, when the U.S. Census Bureau was established as a permanent government agency and census officials decided to separate some data collection from the regular decennial census. This led to the statutory creation of the Census of Religious Bodies, which began in 1906 as a stand-alone census to be taken every 10 years.

Novelties

We so often get requests for ideas to help market existing businesses and occasionally I see businesses that are doing little things that we can learn from.

This Halloween weekend I took my daughter and a friend to breakfast and afterwards stopped into Candyland, a local candy shop, cake and candy supply retailer. I spoke with the owner, who told me about the classes they offer in candy and cake-making and decorating. shop was answering the question from more than one perspective. They offer a way for businesses to get themselves noticed and they share their expertise as well as their product, by offering classes and recipes both online and off. By giving a little away, they build goodwill.

The owner showed me some beautiful and delicious chocolate favors in novel designs, explaining that she had corporate clients who ordered these gifts from her for employees or their clients. Another product that seemed like a clever alternative to the typical holiday card was a chocolate card with a holiday greeting in color made from edible dyes. The cards can be made to any design including company logos. She also offered company "business cards" also printed in edible color.

I thought, what a great way to keep clients sweet while marketing a business. The owners of Candyland are succeeding in marketing their own business, by offering classes, adapting designs to the season, trying new things, and even offering free recipes like the one I picked up for making peppermint bark.

Energy Efficient Business

A recent article in the Albany Business Review brought to my attention an important program available through National Grid, the core business of transmission and distribution of electricity and natural gas to customers in New York, New Hampshire, Massachusetts and Rhode Island. The Small Business Program was designed for business customers with an average demand use of 200 kilowatts or less (or 40,300 kilowatt-hours or less) per month, National Grid can help you reduce your company's energy costs by installing energy efficient equipment.

•National Grid can provide a free energy audit and report of recommended energy efficiency improvements
•National Grid will pay 70% of the cost of the installation of energy efficient equipment and you can finance the remaining 30% interest free for up to 24 months.
•Cost-cutting, energy efficient equipment available through this program include:

◦Lighting Upgrades
◦Energy Efficient Time Clocks
◦Photo Cells For Outdoor Lighting
◦Occupancy Sensors
◦Programmable Thermostats
◦Walk-in Cooler Measures

Long Island Power Authority's Commercial Construction Program was created with the needs of Long Island businesses such as yours in mind. Lower operating costs and increased efficiency offer savings, a key component to success on Long Island. LIPA’s incentives help to lower the cost of purchasing energy-efficient measures. There are three paths in the Commercial Efficiency program; each one designed to fit the needs of a particular customer.

•Prescriptive Approach - Offers incentives for choosing equipment from a pre-qualified list of energy-efficient measures.
•Custom Approach - Provides technical assistance, incentives and the flexibility to choose unique measures not on the Prescriptive list.
•Whole Building Design Approach - A comprehensive approach in which you, your building design team and LIPA-supported experts work together, from concept to completion, to develop an energy efficiency plan specially designed for your entire building.
•Not-For-Profit Organizations - In addition to the offerings listed above, there are additional incentives for qualifying Not-for-Profits.

Wherever you are in New York State, make sure you contact your local power provider regarding these incredible financial incentives for creating a more energy-efficient business.

For more information:

LIPA - Save Energy & Money

National Grid's Large Business Program

New York State Energy Research and Development Authority's Commercial/Industrial Programs

No business like snow business

It's getting a little chilly up here in Upstate! With that in mind, here are a few resources related to winter sports:

SIA- SnowSports Industries America:
Research includes sales by state and region of Nordic, Alpine and Snowboarding equipment.

National Ski and Snowboard Retailers Association:
The site offers participation figures and articles on industry trends (including the impact of the recession)

Transworld Business: "The leader in boardsports news and information" will keep you up-to-date in snowboarding equipment trends and the hottest cold-weather companies.

National Ski Areas Association: Industry statistics include participation figures, number of ski areas by state, and helmet usage data.

State of the Blogosphere 2009

From the description by Eric Olsen, Publisher of Blogcritics/Technorati

Earlier this month, denizens of the blogosphere descended on Las Vegas for three days of networking and socializing at the 2009 BlogWorld & New Media Expo. Besides the conference and trade show, there was much to learn from the keynote speakers, and of particular interest was the 2009 State of the Blogosphere delivered by Technorati CEO Richard Jalichandra.

The 2009 State of the Blogosphere

Introduction: Why the results of the survey are displayed according to four different types of bloggers.

Day 1: Who Are the Bloggers? We delve into the demographics.

Day 2: The What and Why of Blogging: Why we do what we do.

Day 3: The How of Blogging: How often we blog, what technologies we use, and whether or not we track our traffic.

Day 4: Blogging Revenues, Brands and Blogs: Branding and monetizing our blogs.

Day 5: 2009 Trends: Political Impact of Blogging, Twitter Usage.

In addition to the survey results, you'll find illuminating interviews with some of the blogosphere's movers and shakers:

Michael Arrington, TechCrunch
Penelope Trunk, Brazen Careerist
Steve Rubel, Edelman Digital, Micro Persuasion
Alex Santoso, Neatorama
Henry Copeland, Blogads
Arianna Huffington, The Huffington Post
Jonathan Salem Baskin, Dimbulb
Mathew Ingram, Toronto Globe and Mail
Seth Godin, Squidoo, sethgodin.typepad.com
Simon Mackie, Web Worker Daily
Dan Gillmor, dangillmor.com
Duncan Riley, The Inquisitr

About the State of the Blogosphere

Since 2004, Technorati's annual State of the Blogosphere report has followed growth and trends in the blogosphere. For the second time, bloggers, generous with their thoughts and insights, were surveyed directly to provide the data for the report. The 2009 State of the Blogosphere survey demonstrates that the growth of the blogosphere's influence on subjects ranging from business to politics to the way information travels through communities continues to flourish. In a year when revolutions and elections were organized by blogs, bloggers are blogging more than ever, and the State of the Blogosphere is strong.

It's Too Early . . . or is It?

Yesterday, the 12-year-old in my house reminded me that it was just two months until Christmas. It dawned on me that I'd not yet heard a single holiday song in a store, nor have I seen aisles of pharmacies or supermarkets turned over entirely to that season. I thought this to be a big change from recent years, when I began to think that the Halloween season had been absorbed in to Christmas, much like how small towns in the country wake up one morning to find out that they've become a suburb to a big city.

Coincidentally, I would up reading this press release heralding the 2009 Online Buyer Economic Trends Study from Performics. This firm conducts consumer surveys every six months regarding their attitudes towards spending. This survey focused specifically on holiday shopping.

Its findings include:

- Almost 20% of the respondents had begun their holiday shopping in mid-September;
- Nearly 75% of shoppers plan on buying fewer items overall; and
- Friends, co-workers, and extended family are likely not to receive gifts like they had in the past.

There's a lot more in the report. Information on obtaining a copy can be found in this press release. It's free of charge, and would make a nice gift for your coworkers.

And Happy Halloween, everybody.

Information you need...to start a restaurant

In today's fast-paced world, eating out at restaurants has become a normal aspect of life, with convenience a main factor in choosing where to eat. According to Dun & Bradstreet's Million Dollar Total, there are over 30,000 eating places in New York State. With so many restaurants, is it a feasible option to choose a restaurant as the business that you want to start? In one word, yes. If you can fill a need or create a new and exciting option for locals to eat at, a restaurant can be a very viable business idea. Below are resources to help you start your restaurant.

How to Start a Restaurant (Entrepreneur Start-up Guide)

How to Run a Restaurant - Start-up Costs (Forbes)

Evaluating Restaurant Opportunities (University of Wisconsin-Extension and the Wisconsin Main Street Program of the Wisconsin Department of Commerce)

Food Services and Drinking Places Industry Snapshot (2007 Census)

The National Restaurant Association

From Theory to Practice

I think the trouble with a lot of marketing ideas is that they fall outside our comfort zone. I imagine that a lot of small business owners are good at making lasagna or tables or cleaning yards but the marketing of the business is where they are not comfortable. Especially when the business is home-based, the "business" doesn't feel that different from the individual. When we send a bunch of great marketing ideas on to the client, I wonder what proportion are useful in that they feel capable of executing them. What I notice in my daily travels are businesses who seem not have taken very simple steps to promoting their businesses. My biggest peave are shop windows that look so dark and uninviting that business appears closed. Lighting a window, improving a sign, finding a niche and capitalizing on it seem like steps even the shyest business owner can implement.
While some suggestions sound modest and not necessarily worthy of a literature search, proposing that owners carry business cards, and make specific requests to current clients to circulate cards to colleagues or a reciprocal referral relationship with other businesses may be small steps to reach out a little every day to new customers.

"How-To" with social media

I'm pretty sure I've blogged about specific articles from Mashable - The Social Media Guide, but if you have any questions about social media and how to use it, this site has a lot of helpful information.

Today I discovered their neat-o "How-To" section. Topics are diverse and include "How to Integrate Facebook with Your Blog," "How to Get Started With Google Wave" "How To Customize Your YouTube Channel," and even "How to Plan a Wedding on the Web" (I'll be reading that one on my own time). There are lots of comments and suggestions from other readers, so one way or another, you're likely to learn something pretty practical.

Facts and Forms

From the website:

411SmallBusinessFacts.com is a searchable data base of approximately 2,000 facts about American small businesses and their owners (or managers) produced by the NFIB Research Foundation. The Foundation developed this information from telephone surveys of small employers – those employing from one person in addition to the owner(s) to 250. Data collection began in 2001 and continues through the present. The data are gathered regularly for a series of publications known as NFIB’s National Small Business Poll. New Poll data are added to 411SmallBusinessFacts.com eight times annually. The small business facts presented in the data base address a wide range of subject matter and include material which typically cannot be found in other sources.

You can do a quick search, but it's easier to search by keyword, category, or poll.

From HillSearch.org:

If you're looking for a centralized location to access government forms, try Forms.gov. Forms.gov provides access to a catalog of business and citizen federal forms needed to interact with the Federal Government. Forms for both voluntary and regulatory interaction with the Federal Government are included.

Forms.gov includes over 5,400 forms, with new and updated forms being added daily. Users can search for forms by agency, form name, form number, or keyword. If you don't find the form you need, try visiting the applicable agency's form page (links provided at http://www.forms.gov/bgfPortal/nav.do?oa=agencyForms).

Forms.gov also identifies some of their frequently accessed forms, such as: tax forms, small business forms, social security forms, FEMA forms, and more. Try it today at http://www.forms.gov/


So I did. I think it's most useful when people have no idea what bureaucracy they should be dealing with. Still, I discovered that Schedule C is a form not only of the IRS but of FAR as well. BTW, W2 generated no response, but W 2 got me information about W-2 IRS forms.

Venture Capital and Angel Financing - Do Your Due Diligence

An article titled "Perform Due Diligence on Potential Investors" appeared recently on Business Week's website. Its author (Tom Taulli) reminds those pursuing venture capital and/or angel financing that, despite current lending conditions, there's still an obligation to review the qualifications and histories of potential investors. Just because traditional lending sources have tightened is no reason to act desperate, and give away too much during negotiations.

Several suggestions are then offered as to what "due diligence" should be done. In addition to these, I recommend these two sites (both of which I've recommended in previous blog posts):

1) TheFunded (written about here on 5/21/07)
2) Punctuative - the Venture Capital Database (written about here on 8/6/08)

Both sites are useful in that they enable those seeking investment to comment, critique, and/or condemn the performance of some funds out there. A little background, then, can only help.