Non-traditional Small Business Loan Lenders – Be Very Careful

May 4, 2016 by

59948705Not too long ago there were only a few options when a small business (SMB) owner needed a loan.  There were banks, savings and loans or credit unions.  If you didn’t qualify for a traditional loan there was always your brother-in-law who knew a guy, who knew a guy.  But, as gangster movies have taught us, that never goes well.

But, now with internet banking the choices have grown.  There are hundreds, possibly thousands, of non-traditional lenders.  They operate entirely online and are offering loans to SMBs who are considered too risky by traditional banks.  They can be just what you need or ruin your company.  Remember the lessons of the Great Recession? 

It was fueled, in part, by the housing loan industry: greed, aggressive lending practices, bad underwriting, poor regulation, dishonesty and matching customers with unsuitable products.  They put people into houses they couldn’t possibly afford with loans they didn’t understand.

There’s limited regulation of online SMB lending companies and many are following in the housing loan industry’s footsteps.  The unscrupulous ones are giving money to owners who don’t understand the loan’s terms and will never be able to service the debt.  It’s up to you, the borrower, to protect yourself by knowing what you’re getting into.

Look for companies who are transparent.  The pricing and terms (i.e. one time charges, upfront costs, administrative and origination fees) should be easy to find and understand.  The annual percentage rate (APR), which shows the loan’s true and total cost, should be prominent. 

They should be willing to answer clearly (no jargon) and completely (go over it as many times as you need) any questions you have.  They’ll provide, in writing on the website, full disclosure of all their products and services, and won’t try to steer you to ones that aren’t in your best interest.  There should be no hard up-sell or dismissal of your concerns.

Many lenders use brokers and salespeople who earn commissions from making loans.  There’s a growing problem with unscrupulous people giving SMB owners loans they have no hope of paying back – which usually results bankruptcy or re-borrowing.   An honest, ethical salesperson will reveal their commission structure and the borrower’s cost. 

Good business people take out bad loans.  Most get one with the full intention of paying it back, but then are unable to do so.  Ethical alternative lenders know the consequences of doing business with riskier customers and they work with responsible third-party debt collectors.  Their disclosures should plainly spell out your rights to fair collection practices. 

Nontraditional business loans are complex and hard to understand.  It’s easy for someone to get confused and make a bad decision.  It’s the responsibility of the SMB owner to make sure he has a fair lending experience.  Don’t put yourself in a no-win situation because you didn’t take the time to do your due diligence.

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CyberSecurity And Your Business

April 5, 2016 by

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Billions of dollars are spend yearly in cyber security globally, and according to the most recent surveys, that amount is likely to reach $101 billion by the year 2018.

But, although billions of dollars are spend trying to secure the amount of information hackers or other people have access to, many cyber analysts believe that spending more in cyber security does not necessarily mean better security.

For more about this topic, follow the links below.

Mobile Messaging Apps: 8 Tips For Keeping Your Workplace Secure

The old struggles over BYOD have been replaced with application struggles, as employees use favorite mobile messaging apps for enterprise purposes. As with BYOD, pushing back isn’t the answer. Innovating forward is.

Using popular third-party messaging apps such as Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, and Snapchat for business communication can introduce a level of discomfort for IT, as well as for your legal, corporate, and governance and compliance teams. In many ways, it’s like the early days of the Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) movement; these days it’s all about Bring Your Own Apps.

“The issue of employees using personal social media accounts/networks, and their non-work personas, for business purposes is very real and it does impact IT, especially when considering that electronic communications should be retained for legal and regulatory purposes,” Mike Pagani, the chief evangelist at Smarsh, told InformationWeek in an interview.

Smarsh offers an archiving platform that supports social media, text messages, email, and other platforms so that they’re indexed, policy-checked, able to be supervised, and easily retrievable if they’re needed for auditing or litigation.

A reality check for security leaders on insider risk

Mike Tierny shares his insights on successfully implementing processes to combat insider risk by engaging the right people at the right time in the program.

“I trust the people in my company. I still monitor everyone.”

That statement came during the MISTI CISO Leadership Summit I lead on Sunday at InfoSecWorld. One of the security leaders made that comment during our session on trust. It got a lot of nods and even more discussion.

Just the week prior, I talked with Mike Tierney (LinkedIn, @mikejtierney) the COO of Veriato Inc. about the reality of insider threat and our need to engage others in the process. As COO, Mike is ultimately responsible for organizational security.  His insight on insider risk is forged by experience and his success implementing processes across the organization.

During our conversation, he talked about the leadership approach of engaging others in the process – before we have problems. He shared some things I hadn’t seen implemented before. Approaches that made sense.

Cybersecurity spending: more does not necessarily mean better

Cybersecurity is not something you can just buy, but something you should thoroughly build.

Last week, I had a great opportunity to explore the APAC cybersecurity market and meet many brilliant people during Black Hat Asia 2016. Singapore’s economic miracle made its cybersecurity market as attractive as the North American one, attracting the largest security vendors to the region.

Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) protection, Threat Intelligence, Enterprise Immune Systems, Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB), User and Entity Behavior Analytics (UEBA) – these are just a few of the offerings currently available on the cybersecurity market. I bet that many security industry professionals (including myself) hardly understand the real meaning of some of these terms, or to be more precise – the real difference between them and the generic terms existing for years. But this is a topic for a dedicated article, and in this piece we would rather concentrate on cybersecurity budgets and related challenges.

 

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Growing Your Business? Here Are Some of The Challenges to Overcome

March 30, 2016 by

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Office meetings are costly.  The associated cost of office meetings have to be evaluated to gauge whether the weekly or monthly meetings are detrimental to the bottom line of the business, and whether you are having them too frequently. Having employees sitting around a desk because they have to be present is costly.  Should the time spend listening to ideas be spent by every single employee in the business? Shouldn’t productivity be measured, and projects evaluated before having office meetings with everyone? Before scheduling an office meeting, is there an agenda associated with this meeting, or is it on the spur of the moment meeting?

To read more about small business, follow the links below.

Tired of Useless Meetings? 9 Ways to Make Them More Effective. (Infographic)

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Meetings. What a drag they can be. They go longer than they’re supposed to. Someone blabs out of turn or off topic. Your mind drifts to tasks you could be checking off instead of sitting there, stuck. Then come the action items and, tag, you’re it. Your to-do list just got longer.

Sound familiar? Sure does to us. But, believe it or not, not all meetings are total timesucks and not all meetings are boring. Some run like clockwork. With an attendee nip here and an agenda tuck there, they can be much more efficient, productive and, if you’re lucky, even a little fun.

From holding walk-and-talks outside in the fresh air, to scheduling start times like a Swiss train conductor (we kid you not), here are nine clever ways to have more effective meetings, care of the meeting makers at CT Business Travel. Bonus: Not one mention of Robert’s Rules of Order, we promise.

5 Reasons In-Person Meetings Still Matter

Being in the event planning industry, salespeople are constantly trying to sell me the newest virtual technologies to make events more easily accessible from a wider audience.

One memorable experience I will always remember is when a salesman came into my office to pitch his virtual event product and at the end of the meeting I asked, “If this product is so great, why are you sitting here in person?” After a few moments of silence, he said, “It’s more effective to sell in-person than through a computer.”

Meeting over.

According to a recent Meeting Professional International survey, virtual attendance is projected to grow at twice the rate of live attendance. This rise is the biggest change in how meetings are run since the introduction of PowerPoint.

However, while I believe that virtual meetings can be useful in certain circumstances (when time is short or distance is too far), there are many reasons why in-person events are more effective for businesses, large and small.

3 Growth Challenges Facing Small Businesses Right Now

Hiring is simultaneously one of the biggest opportunities and one of the biggest challenges small businesses have. Expanding your staff is necessary for taking your company to the next level of growth, and the right hire can help your sales skyrocket. On the other hand, it can be incredibly difficult to find the perfect candidate, and if that person turns out to be the wrong choice, it can cost a lot of time and money to replace him or her.

Based on recently released studies and reports, here’s what you need to know about the current state of small business hiring and growth, and what challenges business owners are dealing with.

Seventy percent of small businesses experience problems during the hiring process.

Small businesses were responsible for nearly half of all new U.S. jobs in 2015, and yet the vast majority said that the hiring process takes longer and is more difficult than they expect, found an ADP survey. ADP polled more than 1,000 owners and managers of companies that had fewer than 50 employees, finding that the biggest specific challenges were longer hiring cycles (34 percent), a loss of productivity (28 percent) and new employees not meeting expectations (25 percent).

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The Problems Plaguing The Small Business Owner

March 22, 2016 by

59350241

For many small business owners sales and marketing are not the only problems they have to contend for the success of their business.  Not long ago, the idea of  online marketing, online retail, and having a social media presence for their business was a remote possibility for them. Now, the small business owner has realized the importance of utilizing the web to expand, promote and acquire the sales required for its survival. As a small business owner, what is a big problem within your business? Is it the amount the taxes you have to pay every year, the paperwork, or hiring the right people for your business?  Follow the links below to learn what are some of the problems plaguing the small business owner in the United States.

3 Growth Challenges Facing Small Businesses Right Now

Hiring is simultaneously one of the biggest opportunities and one of the biggest challenges small businesses have. Expanding your staff is necessary for taking your company to the next level of growth, and the right hire can help your sales skyrocket. On the other hand, it can be incredibly difficult to find the perfect candidate, and if that person turns out to be the wrong choice, it can cost a lot of time and money to replace him or her.

Based on recently released studies and reports, here’s what you need to know about the current state of small business hiring and growth, and what challenges business owners are dealing with.

Seventy percent of small businesses experience problems during the hiring process.

Small businesses were responsible for nearly half of all new U.S. jobs in 2015, and yet the vast majority said that the hiring process takes longer and is more difficult than they expect, found an ADP survey. ADP polled more than 1,000 owners and managers of companies that had fewer than 50 employees, finding that the biggest specific challenges were longer hiring cycles (34 percent), a loss of productivity (28 percent) and new employees not meeting expectations (25 percent).

DIY IT: What Your Small Business Needs to Know

Cybersecurity is an issue that’s probably on the mind of every business owner. The growing list of corporate data breaches, coupled with the more-secure EMV credit card chip technology that emerged last year, has made businesses and consumers alike highly aware of the security risks that exist in today’s world.

Despite numerous studies and statistics on hackers targeting small businesses, many owners still have an, “It won’t happen to me” attitude about security. This is a dangerous way of thinking that could ultimately leave your business open to a whole host of potential risks.

“Many small business owners underestimate how vulnerable they are to security threats,” said Sanjay Castelino, vice president of marketing at Spiceworks, a provider of information technology solutions. “Our recent IT security report shows business owners are facing a number of threats from malware to phishing to ransomware, and the attackers range from lone hackers to rogue employees. Once [a business is] successfully attacked, earning back customer trust and fixing the damage is often too costly for small companies.”

What Many Small Businesses Call Their Biggest Challenge

The 2015 Small Business Credit Survey Report on Employer Firms, released March 3 by seven Federal Reserve Banks, contains disturbing news.

Twenty-two percent of small businesses with annual revenues over $10 million identified compliance with government regulations as the biggest challenge they faced over the past 12 months. That’s up from only four percent in a similar but smaller survey last year.

Participants in the 2015 survey ranked government regulations as more problematic than credit availability, cash flow, the cost of running a business, taxes, and other problems.

For an overview of how government regulations continue to climb, see The Heritage Foundation’s “Red Tape Rising: Six Years of Escalating Regulation Under Obama.”

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Small Business Saturday

December 1, 2015 by

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This last Saturday (Nov. 28) was the event small businesses look forward to every single year.  Or is it just hype? Many marketers fail to see whether Small Business Saturday does anything to a small business or not.  Yes, there are figures out there that say small businesses do benefit from this event of the year, but cannot tell you where those figures come from. Whether you shop locally and try to do business with the small shop in your city, the question to ask is whether one day a year will make a big difference in the life of the small business owner. For more about this topic follow the links below.

It’s Naive for Small Business to Expect Much From Small Business Saturday

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Can you feel it? The building anticipation for what seems to be the small business event of the year. I’m talking, of course, about next weekend’s Small Business Saturday (Nov. 28). Sandwiched between Black Friday and Cyber Monday, this is the day that all of America is supposed to be honoring small businesses. It’s our moment. We’re hanging signs and putting out the displays. “Support us!” we demand to our communities. “We’re small businesses!”

Really? Are we that naïve? Do you really think that Small Business Saturday means anything to your customers? Do you really believe articles like this one that report that there were “88 million Small Business Saturday shoppers in 2014” and that they “spent $14.3 billion.” Oh c’mon…where does this data come from? And how many of these shoppers would’ve been out shopping during that first unofficial weekend of the holiday season anyway? Do you think this was because of Small Business Saturday? Believe me…it’s not. But don’t tell that to some.

How Congress could give small businesses a bigger incentive to invest in growth

Under current law, small businesses can expense only $25,000 in capital expenditures this year, a level far below the $500,000 Section 179 expensing limit that went into effect in 2003.

Congress is likely to remedy that problem in December, just like it did last year, when it retroactively raised the Section 179 expensing limit for 2014 to $500,000 on Dec. 19. That left small businesses 12 days to buy eligible equipment and put it into service in order to take advantage of this tax break. This short window sharply reduced the impact of this tax incentive for small businesses to invest in growth.

How to Secure Your Small Business With Big Business Protection

Layer Your Security

The challenge: Network attacks are becoming more widespread, intelligent and difficult to detect, leaving SMBs at an even greater risk due to limited resources and budgets to fend off threats. Network entry points are not the only publicly-facing attack surfaces; employee devices also may be compromised by users outside of the corporate security perimeter. The solution: A layered network security approach brings a new level of scrutiny to network traffic moving into a SMB, making network protection more complete and manageable.
Small businesses face exactly the same security threats as large organizations. However, they also must contend with the perennial challenge of limited budgets for IT expenditures. The job of administering the network in a small business often falls on the business owner or on the default in-house techie, both of whom wear many other hats in the organization and usually do not have the time, resources or expertise to work on complex deployments and administration. Often small businesses think that enterprise-grade protection is beyond their means.
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Entrepreneurial Stubbornness – the Good, the Bad, the Ugly

November 4, 2015 by

59948705Persistence, not listening to the nay-sayers, determination, following your dream: All things which contribute to starting and building a thriving business. All things which are fueled by good old-fashioned stubbornness.  I have yet to meet a successful small business owner who doesn’t have a very large streak of it.  Unfortunately, that’s not always a positive.

The Good

Stubbornness is a positive quality when it’s driving you to create, build and sustain a business.  The desire to “do things my way”  is a powerful motivator.  It’s what keeps you on track to work the long hours and make the hard decisions.  It has built multi-national Fortune 100 companies, as well as the local machine shop.

The Bad

As the saying goes, “There are 2 sides to every coin.”  There’s a bad side to entrepreneurial stubbornness.  It’s human nature to become attached to our own viewpoint – not only do we get stuck in ruts, we furnish them for additional comfort.  This makes it difficult to see other’s (accountants, consultants, employees, managers) points of view and listen to their ideas. 

Ideas which are good for you and your company.  When a company is growing there’s a juncture when the owner should shift from “a one-man show” style of management to a team approach.  Many don’t make that change, they stubbornly hang on to old ideas and ways of doing things, which often leads to the ugly.

The Ugly

There comes a time when an owners’ refusal to modify his inflexibility crosses the line from poor management skills to self destructive behavior-“the old way is good enough, no  one is going to tell me what to do”.  Resulting in — due to the owner’s unwillingness to recognize and adapt to changing ideas, technologies, employee’s needs and market requirements — a bankrupt company. 

Good entrepreneurial stubbornness often turns bad and ugly over time.  Owners fail to understand that we all need to evolve if we are to thrive in an ever changing world, and we have to be willing to listen to others to do so.  As Benjamin Franklin said, “We are all born ignorant, but one must work hard to remain stupid.”

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Is SEO For The Small Business Owner?

October 29, 2015 by

Customer Relationship Management business chart on a digital tabFor some businesses SEO sometimes does not make sense.  It is no wonder then that many of the small businesses in the United States are not engage in trying or using SEO for their business. If you are a small business owner you may not have the budget or the incentive to undertake SEO as well. And although many businesses struggle to measure the ROI when hiring a company to do they search engine optimization, it is important to be aware of the benefits SEO brings to businesses when they do it well.

7 Credit Card Perks for Small Business Owners

You won’t get these sign-up bonuses and introductory APRs with consumer cards.

Owners of both new and established small businesses can benefit from a broad range of valuable perks offered with credit cards. Business credit cards not only provide a means for building and establishing business credit, but they can assist in record-keeping, preserving cash flow and separating business and personal finances. Much like consumer credit cards, the right business card can offer a plethora of rewards that you can redeem for flights, hotel stays and cash back on purchases.

Here are seven significant credit card perks for small business owners.

1. Valuable sign-up bonuses. Many credit cards offer a range of one-time promotions designed to attract new cardholders and business owners. These promotions might include sign-up bonuses allowing you to earn hundreds of dollars if you meet a specific spending requirement within a few months of opening the account. Sign-up bonuses may also award enough miles and points that you start out with free airline flights or hotel stays, simply for using your credit card.

Why Aren’t More Small Businesses Using SEO?

For more than a decade, thousands of businesses have enjoyed the benefits of high rankings in Google searches (and searches on competing engines) thanks to their SEO efforts. Larger corporations pour hundreds of thousands of dollars and allocate entire departments to gaining more online visibility, but even small- to mid-sized businesses can use a fraction of that budget to get more traffic and sales.

However, according to a recent survey by the Small Business Authority (SBA), less than 50 percent of small business owners in the United States think of inbound traffic from search engines as an “important” source of future business. Another 14 percent declared themselves unsure.

It’s also worth noting that only 17 percent of surveyed small business owners are actively investing in SEO. However, a startling 39 percent of business owners aren’t investing in any marketing strategies whatsoever, indicating that SEO alone may not be the problem.

How will the candidates help small business?

​All politicians express support for small business. These enterprises are the engines of our economy and represent the entrepreneurial grit that has made this country great. Unfortunately, these rhetorical commitments to Main Street have not always been accompanied by meaningful actions. As a result many small businesses are finding it difficult to launch or grow, while others are failing altogether.

Since the misdeeds that led to the financial crisis of 2008, the federal government has adopted a myriad of regulations and requirements designed to reduce risk-taking by Wall Street. The quest for safer banks and greater financial stability is a good thing. However, we must be careful of what we wish for. The most stable financial system is one with no lending at all and many small businesses today are struggling to find credit.

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The U.S and Ohio Economies

October 14, 2015 by

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The Ohio unemployment rate has slowly but surely being decreasing over the last few months.  Back in March the unemployment rate was at 5.1%, and in August it was 4.7%. Compared to the U.S as a whole, Ohio is just a bit better than the national average and the small business confidence seems to have increased for a couple months now. For more about this and other topics, follow the links below.

US small business confidence edges up, sales a worry

U.S. small business confidence rose marginally in September as stock market volatility raised concerns about sales growth, suggesting the economy was expanding at a moderate pace.

The National Federation of Independent Business said on Tuesday its Small Business Optimism Index gained 0.2 point to 96.1 last month. It said that level was consistent with a 2.5 percent annualized growth rate.

“Financial markets did not provide any encouragement to owners, instead providing volatility that only a trader could like. This produces uncertainty,” the NFIB said.

Seven of the index’s 10 components eked out small gains last month, while the share of small business owners expecting stronger sales volumes in the next few months fell six points.

Why Small Businesses Are Feeling An Economic Crunch

ATTN: Baby Boomer-Aged Small Business Owners

Congratulations, you’re one of the 4 million Baby Boomers who currently own and operate American companies. You deserve credit for building strong brands and reputations, for employing countless others, for providing for your families and communities, and for effectively living out the American Dream. But as strategic as you’ve been in business, you’ve likely kicked the succession-planning can down the road and continue to do so. That’s a mistake, and hopefully this gets your attention.

Basic Facts

You and your peers represent roughly 66% of all domestic businesses with employees.

You, being a member of the generation born between 1946 and 1964, began turning 65 years old in 2011 at a rate of about 10,000 people per day and will continue passing that age milestone through 2029.

In Business, Does Size Matter?

Conventional wisdom says that startups and closely held companies should be far more nimble, less bureaucratic, and less political than large corporations. But that’s more myth than reality. In the real world, small businesses are just as likely to be poorly run and dysfunctional as big enterprises. Perhaps more so.

I was just commiserating with a friend about the company where she works. “It’s hard to believe such a small firm can be so screwed up,” she said. “You’ve heard of silo mentality between departments and divisions? We have silos of like one or two people. It’s nuts.”

“Size doesn’t matter, at least not when it comes to organizational dysfunction,” I said. “There are great leaders, lousy leaders, and everything in between. Big or small, they determine how their companies function … or don’t.”

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It’s Time to Get Serious About Strategic Planning

October 6, 2015 by

business (11)It’s that time of year again. The time of year when companies are — or should be — developing their strategic plans for 2016. Compared to larger companies small business owners are in an enviable position. They have more control over the development and execution of their plans. They can have a greater impact on the profitability and success of their business, with significantly less hassles and politics.
But, the downside is they have fewer resources (people, experience and knowledge) to draw from while formulating their plans. Often, in a small business, owners don’t know where to start or what’s needed to put one together and they need to figure it out for themselves. Here are 3 things they can do to fill in these gaps.
Combine data with intuition
Successful planners strike a balance between relying on just their gut or just the numbers. Usually, an owner falls into 1 of 2 camps — the “I don’t even look at the numbers, I go with my gut” guy and the “I’m a by-the-numbers, they don’t lie” guy. Neither is productive for the long term health of the company, good strategic thinkers use both to counterbalance each other.
Develop a trusted group
The most effective planners solicit information from others (i.e., peers, experts, employees, managers, vendors, customers) who’re successful. Because no one can know everything they seek out knowledge they don’t have. They cobble together their own panel of specialists. However, this isn’t group decision making — it’s about owners gathering data and opinions, and then reaching their own conclusions.
Be willing to learn
Questioning and listening aren’t the same thing. We all know people who ask questions, then don’t pay attention to the answer. The best strategic thinkers are open to what others have to say. They don’t substitute someone else’s judgment for their own, but they’re willing to learn from others.

In addition, not only do they seek knowledge, they look for insight from others. Businesses fail everyday because the person(s) in charge made mistakes based on uniformed, misguided assumptions, ideas and biases. Effective planners learn from mistakes and don’t do them again; ineffective planners make the same ones over and over expecting different results.
Successful, well thought out strategic planning relies on good critical thinking skills, which leads to good decisions. As one of our greatest generals Dwight D. Eisenhower said, “In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable”.

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Ohio Small Business News

September 16, 2015 by

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The small business sector has long been considered a big job creator for the United States economy. Small businesses have a long history of creating jobs and employing over half the workforce in the United States. It is no wonder then that the federal government has disburse millions of dollars to support the small business sector in Ohio. For more about this and other topics, follow the links below.

U.S. small businesses feel mixed impact from China’s economy

NEW YORK: China’s economic problems have been a windfall for some U.S. small businesses — and pose a threat to others.

A nearly 40 percent plunge in the Shanghai stock market since mid-June, a response to the country’s weakening economy, has sent Chinese investors looking for safer investments. Some are focusing on U.S. real estate, including the condos Peggy Fucci’s real estate brokerage sells in Miami. She’s sold six condos to Chinese buyers in the past month, twice what she’s typically sold in that amount of time.

“It’s the insecurity of continuing to lose your [stock market] investment,” said Fucci, CEO of OneWorld Properties.

Chinese buyers, who pay an average $1.2 million for the condos in a downtown Miami development where she’s sold some homes, want them as an investment rather than a place to live, she said. Fucci is heading to China this weekend on a sales trip, optimistic that she’ll find more buyers.

Feds give Ohio over $18 million for small businesses

Ohio has received more than $18.7 million in State Small Business Credit Initiative funds to help small businesses access capital to grow and create jobs, the U.S. Treasury Department announced recently.

To date, more than $55 million in initiative funds have been disbursed to the Ohio Development Services Agency to support small businesses and the local economy.

“Small businesses are the nation’s leading job creators, and the State Small Business Credit Initiative connects sources of capital to the small businesses that need it,” said Jeffrey Stout, director of the initiative, in a statement.

“The funds announced … will continue to support loans and investments in Ohio’s small businesses,” Stout said.

TAX TIPS: Ohio budget bill provides considerable tax savings for local business activity

Ohio’s operating budget for 2016 and 2017 calls for reductions in tax rates that could prove important to small business owners in the Buckeye State.

This summer, Gov. John Kasich signed into law the two-year Ohio budget bill that expands deductions for small businesses and reduces tax rates on business income and individuals. Kasich originally called it his “Blueprint for Ohio.”

Perhaps most significant is an exemption on a certain portion of business income for Ohio small business owners that do business as an S corporation, limited liability company or sole proprietorship.

The provision does not apply to C corporations, but any business that is structured as a pass-through entity so that its income flows directly from the business to individual shareholders for tax purposes.

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