Small Business Lending – Are The Terms In Your Favor?

May 4, 2016 by

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Many small business owners try to keep cash in hand to cover payroll and any other contingencies they may have month in and month out.  If some small businesses have problems meeting payroll that month, they have to come with a solution right away.  Small business loans are a solution for them, but sometimes the terms of the loan are not worth the trouble. Small businesses are the most susceptible to scams, or poor loan rates that eventually are more harmful than not.  Before you signed on a loan that you really need, be careful what you are signing for, understand the terms, and borrow only what you need and not more.  Shop around first, and if a bank is not offering the best terms for you, there are many others that will want to work with you, and your business.

For more about this and other topics follow the links below.

SMALL BUSINESS ALTERNATIVE LENDING: Alternative roads to capital will add billions to the small business lending market.

Small businesses are the backbone of the US economy. Small businesses — businesses with less than 500 employees — represent 99% of US companies, 54% of total sales, and 55% of all jobs, according to the US Small Business Administration. And these businesses need capital in order to grow.

But small businesses are underfunded — only half of small businesses with $100,000 to $1 million of annual revenue received at least some of the financing they applied for from large banks in late 2015. This is partially because banks have retreated from this segment because issuing loans to small businesses using the traditional underwriting model is expensive. This leaves a massive amount of unfulfilled loans that we estimate reached $96.5 billion in Q4 2015.

Alternative lending companies have stepped in to capitalize on the opportunity available in helping meet more small business’ lending needs. Alternative small business lending platforms use machine learning and digital tools to extend credit to a wide array of small businesses quickly and efficiently, particularly to those that have been rejected by banks. Alternative small business lending companies provide digital platforms that connect small business borrowers to capital using nontraditional means.

Small Business Loan Approval Rates Surge

Big banks have long been accused of turning a blind eye to small businesses’ credit needs, but things are changing for the better now.

According to the Biz2Credit Small Business Lending Index, March 2016, the monthly analysis of more than 1,000 small business loan applications on Biz2Credit.com, loan approval rates at big banks and institutional lenders has hit new highs.

By contrast, approval rates declined slightly for small banks, credit unions, and alternative lenders.

Key Highlights

Some of the top findings of the monthly study include the following:

  • Big banks approved 23 percent funding requests in March, up two-tenths of a percent from February 2016,
  • Institutional lenders improved their approval rates to 62.8 percent, up from 62.7 percent in February,

Chase Quietly Launches Its Online Small-Business Loan Platform

Following months of behind-the-scenes work with OnDeck Capital, JPMorgan Chase has quietly started offering online loans to its existing small-business customers.

The New York megabank launched its digital lending platform on a limited basis last week, spokeswoman MaryJane Rogers confirmed Monday.

Existing Chase small-business customers are being prescreened, and some of them are being invited to apply for loans of up to $250,000, according to Brian Geary, director of platform solutions at OnDeck.

JPMorgan has roughly 4 million small-business customers. The bank declined to say how many of those clients have received invitations to apply for a loan, or when its online lending platform will be opened to a broader group of prospective applicants.

 

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Apps And Tools To Make Your Small Business Run Efficiently

April 28, 2016 by

Customer Relationship Management business chart on a digital tab

According to the Small business administration (SBA) small businesses in the United States have increased by 49% since the 1980s. and provide more than half the jobs in this country. And although small business owners employ many workers, their personal loads at work have increased. They do more than one job at any specific time, and their long hours seem to never be enough to catch up with the many things they have to accomplish daily.  If you find yourself in a similar situation, then this article might benefit you tremendously.  Read more by following the links below.

Top 10 mobile apps for business executives

Anyone with a smartphone or tablet knows that a good app can make life easier — and business executives are no exception. These are the top 10 consumer apps that business people turn to for day-to-day productivity.

Mobile apps for business executives

Apps make your life easier. You can place an order for nearly anything with the touch of a button, you can call a cab to your door or schedule an appointment all without talking to a live person. It seems only natural that as apps make our personal lives more efficient, they’re also making our business lives more productive and functional.

“Over the last five to 10 years we have seen enterprises move away from in-house apps to off-the-shelf or SaaS models. Many of these are consumer-grade services that are retrofitted to specific enterprise needs,” says Dan Rowinski, editor in chief of the Application Resource Center (ARC), publishers of the report and the editorial and research arm of app quality and testing company Applause.

4 Tools That Make Your Small Business Look Big

Being a small company has its benefits: You’re agile, able to change directions at a moment’s notice. You’ve got autonomy, as your business is independent of a giant conglomerate. No, you’re not attracting the same number of consumers as a household name business, but that doesn’t mean  you can’t look every bit as professional to the consumers you do reach. You can make your small business look big.

Build/Update your Website:

The U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) estimated last year that 50 percent of all small businesses still didn’t have a website. Without a presence on the web, your small business can easily go unnoticed by potential customers. Now the good news: It’s easier than ever to create a website, especially one that your customers can access from their mobile devices. More than 75 percent of mobile phone users access the internet through them, and the number will rise to nearly 86 percent by 2018. Google now favors sites which work well on mobile in its search results: You definitely want to be one of the top results when people go looking.

KANSAS CITY — A little over a month ago, Tony Spagnoli, an aspiring coffee roaster in Philadelphia, discovered his fledgling business had received $3,500 from Mondelez International, Inc. Specifically, the money came from Triscuit Maker Fund, a project launched with crowdfunding web site Indiegogo to support artisanal food makers. On March 23, the cracker brand invested $250,000 to help fund 55 food makers’ campaigns on Indiegogo. Ranging from microbrewers to food trucks to small farms, the businesses represent a diverse scope of backgrounds, products, size of organization and geographic location across the United States and Canada.

“The timing of the Triscuit Maker Fund was just impeccable,” Mr. Spagnoli told Food Business News. “I had reached the point where I needed new capital to do some training and buy additional equipment, and I was also in the process of changing the brand name, so I had to redo a lot of collateral and the web site.”

 

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Ohio Small Business News

April 20, 2016 by

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Last Oct. 2015 the Unemployment rate for the state of Ohio was a 4.7%, and since then it has been increasing slowly, but surely to a 5.1% as of last month. A small increase to be sure, but it does make you wonder whether there are better times to come for the state, or things are going to progressively get worse.  Small businesses in Ohio are not as optimistic as they were last year, and some are still wondering wether the minimum wage increase will have other ramifications for their businesses.  For more news bout Ohio, follow the links below.

The State of Small Business: Ohio

As part of our yearlong project “The State of Small Business,” Business News Daily plans to report on the small business environment in every state in America. In this installment, we asked a few of Ohio’s roughly 1 million small business owners about the challenges and opportunities of operating in their state. Here’s what they had to say.

Ohio’s economy has had its ups and downs over the years, experiencing decline long before the rest of the nation felt the effects of the financial crisis. In the years preceding the recession, Ohio’s manufacturing sector was hollowed out, contributing to a drop in per capita income and a drastic slowdown in growth. And while the unemployment rate has plummeted, the labor force has shed nearly 300,000 workers since its peak in late 2007, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. And as employment rises, so does the demand for skilled or experienced labor, and business owners find it progressively harder to hire the employees they need at the cost they want.

However, in 2008 — amid the recession — Ohio’s per capita income started to gain compared to the national average, and the U.S.’ seventh-largest economy has seen some bright spots. Despite a difficult decade — between 2004 and 2014, the compound annual growth rate of Ohio’s GDP was an anemic 0.3 percent, according to the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) — entrepreneurs in Ohio are seeing promise again. For small business owners in the Buckeye State, the sentiment is tepid optimism that a fledgling startup community and the return of manufacturing in the form of tech-focused companies will propel the economy forward in the years to come.

While small business owners acknowledge that there are some downsides to increasing wages for their entry-level workers, many of these business owners also find positives in doing so, new research finds.

Nearly 60 percent of small business owners said they favor raising the minimum wage, and the same percentage said they would likely vote for a state or national candidate who supports a minimum-wage increase, according to a study from Manta, a provider of products, services and educational resources for small businesses.

The results were released as both California and New York recently approved measures to gradually increase their minimum wages to $15 per hour.

The majority of small businesses surveyed are already paying their employees above what’s required. The research revealed that 40 percent of small business owners pay entry-level employees “far above” the required minimum wages in their areas of operation, while 38 percent pay “slightly above” the minimum wage. Just 14 percent are paying the state or local minimums, and only 9 percent are paying the federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour.

Small Business Confidence Hits New Two-Year Low

Small business confidence fell to a fresh two-year low in March amid persistent worries about sales and profits, the latest indication that economic growth braked sharply in the first quarter.

The National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB) said on Tuesday its small business optimism index dipped 0.3 point to a reading of 92.6 last month, the lowest since February 2014.

It has declined from a reading of 100 in December 2014 and has pushed further off its 42-year average of 98.

“A ‘chartist’ looking at the data historically might conclude that the index has clearly hit a top and is flashing a recession signal. The April survey will decide whether or not the alarm should be rung,” the NFIB said in statement.

The soft reading fits in with recent economic data on consumer and business spending as well as wholesale inventory investment that have suggested economic growth slowed sharply from the fourth quarter’s 1.4 percent annualized rate.

 

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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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Cybercrime; Is Your Business Vulnerable?

March 9, 2016 by

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Big and small business are vulnerable to cybercrime.  Many small businesses frequently do not have the budget necessary to protect their data from a cyber attack, thus making them more vulnerable. For many small businesses the financial hardship they endure due to this crime leaves them unable to recover for many years, setting back their business and profits for the near future.

For more about this topic, follow the links below.

 Hacked! Business bank accounts vulnerable to cybercriminals

It’s a chilling moment when a small business owner discovers hackers have stolen thousands of dollars from the company checking account.

Cybercriminals took an average of $32,000 from small business accounts, according to a December survey of owners by the advocacy group National Small Business Association. And businesses don’t have the same legal protection from bank account fraud consumers have.

The Electronic Funds Transfer Act, passed in 1978, states that it’s intended to protect individual consumers from bank account theft, but makes no mention of businesses. Whether a business is protected depends on the agreement it signs with a bank, says Doug Johnson, a senior vice president with the American Bankers Association, an industry group. If the business hasn’t complied with any security measures required by the agreement, it could be liable for the stolen money, he says.

Businesses fail to prepare as cybercrime surges globally

Cybercrime is now the second most reported economic crime and has affected at least a third of organizations in the past 24 months, yet many businesses are still underprepared, a PWC report has found.

According to the Global Economic Crime Survey, cybercrime has jumped from being the 4th to 2nd most reported kind of economic crime, behind only asset misappropriation. Meanwhile, the losses associated with cybercrime are huge and growing, but an alarming number of businesses don’t have a plan in place.

The report finds that only 37% of organizations have a cyber incident response plan, despite the fact that 61% of CEOs said they were concerned about cybersecurity. This backs up the findings from last week’s RSA Conference report, which found just one in seven security chiefs report directly to their CEO, despite rising concern within their businesses.

Around 50 respondents to the PWC survey said they had lost in excess of $5 million, while a third of these said the figure was greater than $100 million. According to the Wall Street Journal, the percentage of companies reporting losses of more than $1 million as a result of cybercrime attacks doubled since 2014.

 Chris McCarty: Protect big, little data against cybercrime

​You probably know about the big breaches. JP Morgan Chase. Home Depot. Target. Maybe you even read a few of those juicy emails between Sony executives bashing Angelina Jolie and Will Smith. I can imagine your reaction: “That’s crazy, but what’re the chances it happens to me or my little company?”

The chances are much greater than you think. In November, during a data breach and privacy law program in Chicago, I attended a session presented by Wesley Hsu, the executive assistant U.S. attorney who headed up the Sony investigation. Here a few statistics provided by Mr. Hsu that should open the eyes of anyone in business:

Every day, there are twice as many cybercrime victims as newborn babies;

There are 50,000 new victims each hour, 820 new victims each minute and 14 new victims each second;

The total number of estimated cybercrime victims over the past year is greater than the combined populations of the United States and Canada.

 

 

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Financial Cyber-Attacks – A Growing Management Problem (Part 1)

March 8, 2016 by

donk1-300x266Anyone who has been paying even the slightest bit of attention knows that financial cyber- attacks against all types of companies, organizations and governments have increased dramatically.  The attacks have included stealing data to sell, high jacking the information system and holding it for ransom, or taking money.

Any business can be vulnerable and the attacks have hit companies of all sizes.  However, there’s been a significant increase in the attacks on small businesses (SMB).  The Internet now makes it possible for an Eastern European crime syndicate to hit an Akron contractor.

Cyber thieves have become more sophisticated and organized.  They’ve realized that SMBs are low hanging fruit and are targeting them more often.  Small companies don’t have security or IT departments and they seldom have any policies or procedures in place to deter online, or offline, theft.

SMB owners are notorious for not paying attention to the financial health of their companies.  They often leave “all that stuff” up to an accountant or bookkeeper.  They don’t pay attention to, understand or have any checks and balances in place for financial matters.  This leaves them wide open to external (and internal) larceny. 

Cyber criminals are taking advantage of this lack of management oversight – SMBs are becoming their objective of choice.  They’ve discovered that the way into larger companies is through their SMB partners or vendors, who are much easier to hack.  It’s believed the 2013 Target breach, of 70 million customers, was made possible through accessing a HV/AC contractor’s system.

Therefore, SMBs are high yield for cyber-attacks.  It’s simple to gain access and siphon money, with the added bonus of having easy access to larger companies up the chain.  But, it doesn’t matter if your business is the intended victim or collateral damage, either way you lose. 

It has been estimated that half of the small businesses who are cyber attacked close within six months.[1]  They simply can’t afford the loss.  It’s unfortunate, because a conscientious owner – with a little discipline and some common sense procedures – can prevent or minimize the possibility of a successful attack. 

Next month we’ll go over some steps you can take to protect your company with Part 2 of Financial Cyber-Attacks – A Growing Management Problem.

[1] Testimony of Dr. Jane LeClair, Chief Operating Officer, National Cybersecurity Institute at Excelsior College, before the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Small Business (Apr. 22, 2015), http://docs.house.gov/meetings/SM/SM00/20150422/103276/HHRG-114-SM00-20150422-SD003-U4.pdf

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Retirement For The Small Business Owner

February 25, 2016 by

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Many small business owners work way past the time they can retire.  The reasons are simple:  They enjoy their business and the challenges they face day in and day out.  Many small business owners take an active role in their business even if the reins have been passed down to their business partners or their children. Financially, many small business owners are prepared.  Others do count on their retirement that they have set aside, but believe social security will provide some of the funds they need to live well during their retirement years.  If you are a small business owner and need help funding your retirement ,or don’t know where to start, follow the links below for more information.

Captain401 Raises $3.5 Million to Help Small-Business Employees Save for Retirement

Captain401 Inc. has raised $3.5 million in seed funding to help small businesses and startups give their employees retirement savings help similar to that of larger and deeper-pocketed employers.

The company’s site and service allows an employer to set up a 401(k) retirement savings plan for employees in minutes, without the paperwork, manual administration, repetitive data entry and high fees affiliated with traditional retirement plan providers like MetLife MET -0.47%, Fidelity, or Charles Schwab SCHW -2.45%.

And once employees enroll, it helps them set goals and automatically invest towards meeting them.

Investors in Captain401 include SoftTech VC, SV Angel, Y Combinator, Crunch Fund,Slow Ventures, Susa Ventures, FundersClub and several individual angel investors including NerdWallet co-founder Jacob Gibson and Stripe Chief Technology Officer Greg Brockman.

Captain401 co-founder and Chief Executive Roger Lee said he was inspired to help small businesses extend a 401(k) plan to their employees while earlier working an advertising tech startup, PaperG, which is still in business.

“I’m an advocate of personal financial health, and it’s the right thing to help employees save for the future and on taxes,” he said. “But without a full-time HR person, accountant and the like, it took us years to offer a 401(k) benefit, even though that would be a basic part of an offer to employees from a larger company.”

Retirement planning steps for small-business owners

According to the Small Business Association web site, there are 28 million small businesses in America — and that number is growing. For many of these entrepreneurs, their business may be their single largest asset.

So what happens when it’s time to retire?

Often, the business owner may look to cash out of the business either by selling it or by passing it on to family members. In both instances, the business owner needs to have a succession plan in place well before he or she plans to retire.

Unfortunately, many business owners don’t have a written succession plan. According to the Financial Planning Association/CNBC Business Owner Succession Planning Surveyreleased in 2015, 78 percent of respondents said they plan to sell their businesses to fund their retirement, and that the proceeds are needed to fund 60 percent to 100 percent of their retirement needs. Yet, less than 30 percent actually have a written succession plan.

The goal of a succession plan is to allow an organization to continue to conduct business even in the event of a key individual’s departure — whether that departure is planned (such as through retirement) or unplanned. While business succession planning is critical to the survival and stability of any organization, it also is crucial to the retirement goals of millions of aging baby boomers.

 Small businesses could pool retirement plans under Obama proposal

President Barack Obama wants small businesses to help more Americans save for retirement.

One-third of American workers don’t have access to a retirement savings plan at work, and many of them work at small businesses. Only half of employees at businesses with fewer than 50 employees have access to a retirement plan through their employer, according to the White House.

As part of his upcoming budget plan, Obama wants to encourage more small businesses to offer retirement plans by making them easier to administer and providing tax credits to offset some of the costs.

His proposal also includes a new mandate for employers to make part-time workers eligible for their retirement plans. Workers who have worked for at least 500 hours per year for a company for three years would be eligible for this benefit.

This mandate is opposed by the National Federation of Independent Business.

“Many small businesses have a handful of full-time employees and larger part-time workforce,” said NFIB Research Director Holly Wade. “If they’re forced by the government to offer retirement benefits to everyone, some may very well discontinue the plan altogether. That would be a classic unintended consequence.”

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Small Business Financial News

February 18, 2016 by

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Depending on what news you read small business in the United States might be doing great or it may not.  According to CNBC -small business confidence is at the lowest since February 2014.  If you instead look at the survey conducted by Gallup at the beginning of this year for Wells Fargo, you will find that small business optimism jumped 13 points to reach the highest level in a year.

As a small business owner you have to decide for yourself – Bank statements handy — whether the economy and your optimism are at a good point at this time for you and your business.  Your industry may be doing extremely well while others industries are collapsing, or you may be ready to hire employees this year independently of what the polls are telling you. You know your small business better than anyone, make decisions that benefit your business and those working for you. Everything else will fall into place.

For more about this and other topics, follow the links below.

Small businesses in best financial shape in eight years

Most small business owners are feeling good about their financial situation, and that’s improved their outlook for the coming year.

That’s according to a quarterly survey of small business owners conducted in January by Gallup for Wells Fargo. This survey’s index of small business optimism jumped 13 points from November to 67, its highest level in a year.

These results run counter to what the National Federation of Independent Business found in its January survey of its members. NFIB’s small business indexfell last month to its lowest level in two years. The questions in each survey are slightly different, so that might account for some of the difference in the results.

The most noteworthy finding in the Wells Fargo survey was that two-thirds of small business owners rated their financial situation as good. That’s the highest percentage in eight years. More than 70 percent expect their financial situation will be good 12 months from now.

What small businesses can learn from a big business’s mistakes

It’s not hard to think of big businesses that have run into problems trying to grow in an economy that’s expanding in low single digits and where organic growth is very hard to generate. Mergers and acquisitions are increasingly becoming the best way to deliver the rapid growth that owners want and investors demand. Unfortunately merging and acquiring is a minefield – no matter how big or small the numbers involved might be.

The list of businesses that have overreached by borrowing money to buy a rival is long. Think of Hewlett Packard’s $5 billion write-off following its $11 billion acquisition of the software group Autonomy. Or Quaker’s disastrous takeover of Snapple, a deal which ended up costing Quaker $2 million for every day it owned the soft-drink group. Then there was the telecommunications giant Sprint, which ended up writing off a staggering $29.5 billion after buying Nextel. Its due diligence and haste to make the deal happen resulted in one of the biggest write-downs in corporate history.

Are the Conservatives losing the small business vote?

Government cuts alongside changes to tax returns, pensions and taxes on dividends is leading to a growing sense of outrage among entrepreneurs.

hen the first Conservative majority government in nearly 20 years came into power last May, there were high hopes among business owners. The Tories had assiduously courted support from SMEs during the election campaign, even launching a small business manifesto, pledging to cut red tape and review business rates.

With Cameron et al in Downing Street, many business owners breathed a sigh of relief. Among them was Richard Merrin, managing director of communications business Spreckley. “The biggest inhibitor over the past year was the prospect of the general election itself,” says Merrin. “It was no surprise to me that the very next day we saw an immediate uplift in new business inquiries and there is no doubt that the more business friendly Tories gaining an outright majority added to that confidence.”

 

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Small Business Confidence in The United States

February 9, 2016 by

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2016 has not been kind to the stock market. The quarter of a percent increase to the interest rate last year scared many people, even though analysts predicted the change would not be felt too much.  Globally, the markets are not doing any better than the US market, and commerce has slow down across the country and industries.  But despite all these issues, and despite the fact the small business confidence it at its lowest since 2014, the small business community feel confident about the labor market in this country.

For more about this follow the links below.

US small business confidence at two-year low

U.S. small business confidence fell in January to its lowest level in nearly two years amid worries about the near-term outlook for business conditions and sales growth, consistent with a recent slowdown in economic growth.

The National Federation of Independent Business said on Tuesday its Small Business Optimism Index fell 1.3 points to 93.9 last month, the weakest reading since February 2014. Still, small businesses remained fairly upbeat about the labor market.

The NFIB said there was little sign that a stock market selloff and December’s interest rate hike by the Federal Reserve, the first in nearly a decade, had impacted confidence. Owners’ perceptions of business conditions in six months weakened sharply as did their views of expected sales.

Workers Are Ready To Quit; Small Business Pay Hikes Hit 8-Year High

Americans are ready to quit, while small firms are hiking pay rapidly despite weak sales and gloomy forecasts. Business continue to trim inventories too.

Job Openings Jump; More Workers Quit

Job openings rose to 5.61 million in December from 5.35 million in November, the Labor Department said in its JOLTS survey. The number of hires climbed to 5.36 million from November’s 5.26 million. That’s the highest since September 2004.

Total separations climbed to 5.1 million. Quits hit a 10-year high of 3.06 million, up sharply from November’s 2.86 million. That suggests workers are growing more confident about finding other, better employment.

Wholesale Destockpiling Continues

December wholesales inventories fell 0.3% vs. the 0.2% drop expected. November stockpiles were revised from -0.3% to -0.4%. Meanwhile, wholesale sales fell 0.3% after tumbling 1.3% in November. The data suggest inventories were a slightly larger drag on Q4 GDP than first thought. Q4 GDP growth was initially estimated at a 0.7% annual rate, with other data also signaling downward revisions.

Rural businesses are struggling to recruit young people

Poor public transport, sluggish broadband and a talent drain to big cities is making it hard for countryside enterprises to survive

​face a number of challenges with running my rural Indian cookery school in Somerset. So when I had a chance to question George Osborne at the recent Federation of Small Businesses policy conference in London, I asked: “What assistance will there be to attract skilled young people to settle and take jobs in rural areas?”

Osborne suggested broadband was the answer, much to our amusement. His response missed the point: we do need better broadband, poor internet speeds are an ongoing problem in rural areas, but it isn’t the solution to attracting young talent.

To recruit young people I’m competing with a talent drain into the cities. Many young people who grow up in rural Somerset leave for university in Bristol, Bath and Cardiff and never return. Poor public transport links and living costs put them off. The majority of new people moving to my village are retirees.

 

 

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2016 Small Business Outlook

December 30, 2015 by

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What’s your outlook for 2016? Did the interest rate increase change your outlook for 2016? Have some of the business decisions for next year changed, because of this increase?  Many business analysts believe small business owners are looking forward to a better 2016 despite the rate increase and a slow economy that didn’t see an increase in their revenues. At the end of the year though when many small business owners are reflecting about what they did right and what went wrong during the year, they are also planning about the next year, and so far the outlook is positive.

For more about this follow the links below.

Paid Leave Policies Can Level the Playing Field for Small Business

The fourth quarter is the busiest time of year for most small business owners. Many of them are working overtime to meet the holiday rush and tie up loose ends before the new year–which means they’re leaning more than ever on their employees to help get things done. This busy season reinforces what small business owners already know: good employees are their best assets, and keeping workers happy and healthy is key to a strong bottom line. Small business owners can take many different steps to retain talented and productive employees, like offering higher wages or health insurance. But what many people may not know is that paid leave can be an effective benefit to help attract and retain a talented workforce.

Paid leave has been a hot topic at the national and local level. Lawmakers around the country are weighing initiatives to allow workers to earn paid sick days or implement family medical leave insurance pools. Maryland’s Montgomery County recently approved a law allowing employees to accrue a limited number of paid sick days, and in the beltway, D.C. is weighing a law that would establish an insurance pool to provide up to 16 weeks of paid family leave.

Small Business Owners Bullish on 2016 Outlook

Small business owners are charging full speed ahead into 2016 despite some concerns over growth in the last year.

The Wells Fargo/Gallup Business Index, which is measured each economic quarter and measures small business owner optimism, says the overall index score fell by several points in 4Q. The report attributes the decline to a drop in the number of small business owners reporting increases in revenue.

While small business owners may feel somewhat negative about their progress (or lack thereof) in 2015, The Bank of America (BAC)Small Business Report says 78% plan to grow their business over the next five years, compared to 67% a year ago.

“There was a marked jump over a year ago, and while Millennials continue to be the most optimistic generation, there was notable increase across the board,” said Bank of America Small Business Executive Robb Hilson.

With 2016, we small-business owners get another chance to do it better

For all the good that happened in my business this year, 2015 also brought its share of frustrations.

Twenty-fifteen, you’ve been a good year, but I can’t say I’m altogether sad to see you go.

We had some great times, like the September afternoon when a client called from out of the blue to propose a much bigger contract. Wow! I felt on top of the world that day.

You also taught me some key lessons about business, and I finally broke free of a vendor relationship that simply wasn’t working for me. Looking back, I wonder why I stayed so long, and I am now much happier in my new arrangement.And then there was the economy. I can’t speak for others, but 2015 was the year I finally saw the unmistakable signs of a robust recovery, not the slow gains I’d seen in previous years emerging from the Great Recession.

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