Small Business Hiring And Other News

business (1)It is always good for the small business owner’s morale knowing hiring is up and the economy is recovering.  According to recent numbers, hiring in June has been the strongest since two years ago, and that can only be good for the US economy and the small firms across the United States.  For more info about this and other stories follow the links below.


Small business hiring surges to fastest pace since early 2012

Now that’s more like it.

Small businesses nationally added 117,000 jobs in June, a 60 percent increase over their average for the first five months of the year and the fastest pace of hiring since early 2012, according to the latest numbers published Thursday by payroll processing firm ADP.

More than the companies in any other size category, those small firms pushed the overall job numbers last month to 281,000, the highest mark since fall 2012. Construction, transportation and professional services sectors posted the steepest gains.

“The job market is steadily improving,” Mark Zandi, chief economist for Moody’s Analytics, said in the report, noting that the gains were “broad based across all industries and company sizes.”

Still, it’s a particularly important rebound for the county’s smallest employers, who are often lauded as the most steady job creators but hadn’t cracked six-digits in monthly job gains since November. In addition, June was the second straight month that small companies have contributed more than 40 percent of all jobs created — a mark they fell shy of during the first four months of the year.


The Not-So-Small Business Administration

Last month the Small Business Administration updated the criteria it uses to determine what qualifies as a “small business” for the first time since 2008. The formula varies by industry, sometimes calculated by number of employees, other times by annual revenues or total assets. Thanks to the change, approximately 8,500 more companies (some with more than 1,000 employees) will now be eligible for the designation—and the federal assistance that goes with it.


Modern Tools for Mom-and-Pops

MOUNT KISCO, N.Y. — Operators at KES Dispatch keep track of the company’s taxis on a yellow legal pad. They communicate with cars using a two-way radio. Drivers navigate their journeys largely by memory.

In the age of Uber and Lyft, the company is desperate to modernize.

“I gotta change something,” said Miguel Duarte, who has run his Mount Kisco, N.Y., company for 13 years. “I gotta stay ahead of the competition.”

Help is on the way. Dashride, a new start-up, wants to give KES Dispatch a fighting chance. It is helping Mr. Duarte modernize his company’s clunky dispatch system, starting with a mobile app that will soon let customers book, track, pay for and rate rides.

Dashride is just one of several web-based start-ups with a mission of empowering small, local businesses — often in struggling, traditional industries — by equipping them with tools and strategies that could help them keep up with changing times.

For example, Cups, a coffee subscription app that came to New York in April, helps independent coffee shops compete with giant chains like Starbucks and Dunkin’ Donuts. It is working with 50 small shops in Manhattan and Brooklyn. ShopKeep, a New York company, helps small businesses ring up sales, accept credit cards, email receipts or print remotely with an iPad-based checkout system.


Small Business News you Cannot Afford to Miss

business (10)The Small Business Administration office of Advocacy defines a small business as an independent business that has fewer than 500 employees.  This comprises 99.7% of all U.S employer companies and provides almost 50% of the private sector employment in the U.S.  In 2010 there were 27.9 million small businesses, and government agencies and officials realize the importance of this sector for the U. S. economy when dealing with policies and tax breaks.

Read more about this topic by following the links below.


Why Congress can’t afford to ignore small businesses this fall (5 reasons)

Right up there with cheesy slogans and attack ads, praise for small businesses has become a staple of campaign season in Washington.

It’s likely to be the same again this fall, and with good reason. Congressional hopefuls, both incumbents and their challengers, can’t afford to overlook the nation’s smallest employers, not just because the rest of the country has a soft spot for them, and not just because it makes for sound economic policy.

Rather, small business owners themselves represent a key voting bloc — individually not with quite the sway of large corporations, of course, but influential just the same. Here’s why.

1. They vote

Only about three in four eligible Americans are registered to vote, according to most estimates, and barely more than half cast a ballot during the 2012 elections, according to research by the Bipartisan Policy Center.


DCA Commisioner Menin Promises ‘Big Announcements’ on Small Business Fines

City Department of Consumer Affairs Commissioner Julie Menin promised a group of small business owners a series of “big announcements” in the coming weeks around the agency’s inspection and fines process.

Speaking this morning at the annual meeting of the Columbus Avenue Business Improvement District, Ms. Menin pledged to follow through on Mayor Bill de Blasio‘s campaign declaration that he would lessen burdensome regulations on small business owners.

“As a former small business owner, and one who dealt a lot with the DCA, I really know what it’s like to have a DCA inspector come and not know what they’re looking for,” Ms. Menin told the audience of around 50 business owners from the Upper West Side area in the breakfast meeting at Isabella’s restaurant. “We’re already starting to make changes at DCA.”


Even Small Business Owners Can Use These Tax Breaks

Two recent news clips caught my attention. One involved a company trying to avoid the IRS. The other involved the IRS trying to avoid trouble. Taken together, I can see how a small business owner might cynically ask if a small business has a fighting chance as far as taxes.

The first news item was about the latest rage in large company tax planning: “tax inversions.” U.S. companies seek to sidestep U.S. corporate taxes by relocating offshore through foreign mergers. The most recent example is the proposed Medtronic/Covidien merger. Even though Covidien has headquarters in the U.S., officially it is located in Ireland where the top marginal tax bracket is 10% lower than in the U.S. Apparently Medtronic hopes to save taxes by merging with an Ireland-based company.

The second news item relates to an ongoing scandal where the IRS is accused of targeting certain not-for-profit organizations because of their political leanings. The IRS announced this month that it can’t find two years of emails from Lois Lerner (the former head of the troubled not-for-profit tax division) to the Departments of Justice or Treasury. An agency spokesman blames a computer crash.


Should You Have a Business Mentor?

business (4)There are many issues a small business owner has to look into when running their own business.  Whether you have employees or not, all the decisions to be made come and stop with you.  Small and big business decisions and the success of your company are strictly correlated to the choices you make. Regardless of what decisions you take, research has shown time and again that having a small business mentor is extremely important and beneficial for you and the success of your business. To read more about this topic follow the links below.


Small business weekly: Health care, tax breaks and veteran entrepreneurs

A review of the biggest small business and startup stories from the past week, with a focus on Washington.

Under siege: Critics of the health care law, including many business owners, have long bemoaned a provision that requires employers to provide health coverage to their full-time workers. Now, some of the law’s supporters are starting to call for the rule’s elimination, too, warning that it will push employers to pull back on hours. (OSB)

More delays for many: The Obama administration last week approved 18 states’ requests to delay for a second year an important feature of the health law’s new insurance exchanges for small business. The feature was supposed to allow employers to give their workers a choice of multiple plans through the online marketplaces. (POL)

Suddenly small: The Small Business Administration last week announced that it would adjust its small-business size-standards for inflation, lifting the cap on either receipts or assets for 487 industries. Consequently, roughly 8,400 previously large companies can now apply for resources restricted to small businesses. (WBJ)


Look for support to combat small-business isolation

Years ago, when I first decided to start a business, a friend who had owned a small business for more than a decade gave me some words of advice.

She warned me that I would have to overcome three main challenges: a lack of financial stability; a need to be disciplined: the isolation of being a business owner.

I certainly understood that things would be rocky financially. And I quickly came to realize I had to establish strict work and spending habits to succeed.

But I brushed off her comments about isolation. How could someone like me, with so many contacts, friends and family ever feel isolated?

However, my friend was right.

Running a small business is a lonely business, especially if you work from home.

Even if you have an office and employees, all important decisions and major difficulties are yours. The buck stops with you — and that’s isolating at times.

Who do most people turn to so they won’t be in a vacuum?

• Spouse. Most spouses lose patience hearing the gritty details of your business.

Their own fears about money, the demands on your time, and their perception of your capabilities often color their advice. Besides, it’s often nice to have someone with whom you can escape from work worries.

• Employees. Employees can be a good sounding board for many things, but for


New insurance proposals give more choices to small business

PORTLAND, Maine — On average, insurers in Maine are seeking smaller increases to health insurance premiums for small businesses in 2015 than in the past decade, when annual increases have most often been in the double-digits.

The filings for 2015 still require state and federal review, but the first look at rates proposed by the five insurers planning to offer small group insurance next year in Maine show rate proposals for the first quarter of 2015 will rise 5.7 percent from the first quarter of 2014. Premiums have increased by at least 10 percent annually for the past seven years.

“At a high level, I can say what I’m looking at on paper is good news for small businesses,” said Joe Ditre, of the Augusta-based advocacy group Consumers for Affordable Health Care.

The average rate increase figures give a sense of how much more money the entire small group market stands to spend on health care costs. It doesn’t reflect what each business owner will experience.

“I think companies just kind of brace themselves for the annual quote from their brokers or agents and then see how they can handle it,” said David Clough, state director of the National Federation of Independent Businesses. “That’s been going on for a number of years.”


Ohio Unemployment

business (3)The United States unemployment rate for April was 6.3% down from 6.7% back in March.  The April rate is a 1.2% decrease from last year, and it seems it has been steadily decreasing over the last 12 months. In Ohio we are doing a little bit better than the national average. Ohio’s unemployment rate was 5.7 % in April 2014, down from 6.1 % in March.  Small businesses across our nation provide a great percent of the jobs created, and in Ohio small business provide more than half the jobs. Helping them succeed should be a top priority for the Ohio government, and providing them with resources and guidance can make a huge difference.

Read more about business in Ohio by following the links below.


Ohio Growth Summit seeks to unleash job-growing power of small businesses

Fully 99 percent of Ohio businesses have fewer than 100 employees – and though they’re small, they still provide 60 percent of the jobs.

The key to exponential job growth is for public-private partnerships to help micro-companies progress to the 10-99 employee stage, said Jerry Ross, executive director of the National Entrepreneur Center in Orlando, Florida.

“We are a small-business country,” said Ross, opening speaker of the Ohio Growth Summit entrepreneurial conference being held Wednesday and Thursday at Columbus State Community College.

“What we need to do as communities is say, ‘How do we get together to grow our small businesses?’ ” he said. “The leaders need to start talking to each other.”

Ross’s center combines the forces and expertise of 12 different economic development agencies under one roof, including the U.S. Commerce Department, the University of Central Florida’s Small Business Development Center and incubation program, the Orlando chapter of the Score business mentorship group and several minority business associations


SEA Change, a new Cleveland business accelerator, is looking for startups with heart: the Mix

CLEVELAND, Ohio–If you have an idea for a smartphone app or an Internet-based service that could conceivably scale to something big, and make people rich, there are several business groups in Northeast Ohio that might help you get started.

But what if your venture is intended mostly to solve a social problem or better the world? Good luck. There really has not been any place to take such a notion locally–until now.

This week, a group of entrepreneurship enthusiasts will introduce SEA Change, the region’s newest business accelerator and one that aims to add a new dimension to local innovation.

As a social enterprise accelerator, SEA Change will offer training, connections and capital to startups that have humanity at heart, organizers say. Noble ventures could partake of thousands in seed money.

More details will be revealed Friday, when SEA Change is launched at Shaker LaunchHouse, one of the collaborators behind it. And much will not be revealed because no one is quite sure how SEA Change will evolve.


Ohio Business Owner Sentenced For Lapsed Comp Coverage

Columbus, OH (WorkersCompensation.com) – A Ravenna (Portage County) business owner was ordered to pay $3,500 in connection with lapsed workers’ compensation coverage. Ronald G. Larlham pleaded guilty May 12 in Portage County Municipal Court to workers’ compensation fraud, a first-degree misdemeanor.

“Businesses in Ohio cannot operate with lapsed workers’ compensation coverage,” said Bureau of Workers’ Compensation Administrator/CEO Steve Buehrer. “The bureau makes good faith attempts to work with businesses to bring them into compliance, but if unsuccessful, we must take the issue to court to comply with state law and to protect the State Insurance Fund.”

The BWC’s compliance department referred the matter to the Special Investigations Department’s Employer Fraud Team (EFT) after Larlham continued to operate his business, RGS Automotive in Ravenna, with lapsed workers’ compensation coverage. He had failed to work with the compliance department to bring the company’s policy back into compliance. EFT agents then made numerous attempts to bring the company’s policy back into compliance. The case was referred to the Portage County Prosecutor’s Office.


 

Is your Business in a Tax Friendly State?

business (6)When you are a small business owner every penny counts. Every monetary decision you make affects the profitability of your business and the success of your company.  If you want to start a business or even thinking of relocating to a more business friendly state here are some options for you: South Dakota, Wyoming, Nevada, Texas, Florida, Montana, New Hampshire, Washington and Utah have no corporate taxes, individual taxes and/or sales tax.  For us in Ohio, the state is listed among one of the least tax friendly for businesses.

Read more news about this topic by following the links.


Big picture important in Kasich tax debate

As Ohio continues economic development efforts, a new study on John Kasich’s latest tax plan merits a close look.

In the economic development arms race among states, perception matters.

Right now, Texas is winning that battle. Toyota’s decision in April to relocate its North American headquarters to Plano and consolidate other operations – which will take roughly 1,600 jobs out of Erlanger – is only the most recent example.

Chevron and Apple also are putting more than 5,000 jobs in Texas, which has no personal or corporate income taxes. Goldman Sachs just hosted its annual meeting in Irving, where it employs 650 employees, and invited Texas Gov. Rick Perry to speak.

With that as a backdrop, a new study by Matrix Global Advisors on Ohio Gov. John Kasich’s latest tax plan merits a look – even as the legislature considers fast-tracking income tax cuts implemented in 2013. Kasich wants to reduce individual income tax rates by 8.5 percent over the next three years, expand Ohio’s earned income tax credit, and increase the personal exemption for low- and middle-income households.


Small business in mountain states leads nation for job gains, says IHS-Paychex report

For a third straight month, the Rocky Mountain states in May topped the nation for small-business job growth over the previous year, according to a monthly report from Colorado’s IHS Inc. and Paychex Inc.

Small-business jobs in the mountain states grew by 1.41 percent in May from a year earlier, following April’s 1.75 percent year-over-year increase and March’s 1.62 percent gain, according to the latest Paychex-IHS Small Business Jobs Index, issued Tuesday.

The region includes Colorado as well as Arizona, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming.

The mountain region’s growth far outstripped the “East North Central” states (Illinois, Wisconsin, Michigan, Indiana and Ohio), which came in at No. 2 with 0.59 percent small-business job growth, the report said.

On the other hand, the “Middle Atlantic” states of New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania saw small-business jobs drop 0.69 percent over the one-year period, the greatest decline of any U.S. region.


Seattle raises minimum wage; will others follow?

Seattle activists celebrated a successful campaign to gradually increase the city’s minimum wage to $15 by calling for a national movement to close the income and opportunity gaps between rich and poor.

The Seattle City Council unanimously passed an ordinance Monday that would give the city the highest minimum wage in the nation.

Socialist City Council Member Kshama Sawant, who after the council meeting called on the people of America to elect more independent and socialist candidates, said the push for a higher minimum wage is spreading across the nation.

“Seattle may be a hippie city. We may wear socks with our sandals,” but it’s also a city where different progressive groups can work together to bring about change, Sawant said.

The minimum wage issue has dominated politics in the liberal municipality for months, and a boisterous crowd of mostly labor activists packed the council chambers for the vote. They held signs that said “15 Now,” chanted, cheered and occasionally jeered when amendments they favored were voted down.


How the Ohio BWC is Hurting Small Businesses

business (3)News about the Bureau of Workers Compensation and the illegal practices against small business, the cost to Ohio workers and the state as a whole is nothing short of abhorrent.  How many small businesses have scraped by or gone under because of the high rates imposed by the BWC? Small business with less capital are  at the mercy of these institutions, and the rates that have been historically and inexplicably high have certainly put a burden to the small business owner. Read more about this topic by following the links below.


BWC is hurting small businesses

The Ohio Bureau of Workers’ Compensation is hurting the majority of job creators in Ohio — the small business owner, like me. It overcharged me and Ohio’s other small business owner so it could give a few businesses, usually the larger companies, huge price breaks on their worker’s compensation coverage premiums. A court has ruled that the BWC overcharged me — to the tune of several hundred dollars a year, and the majority of other small business owners illegally. It is sitting on an $8 billion (that’s right billion with a “b”), but refuses to pay the judgment against it; even after losing the frivolous appeal it filed to try to overtune the judgment against it in favor of the small business owners it overcharged.

It’s time for the BWC to do the right thing, take responsibility, and pay the judgment against it in favor of the small business owners it overcharged. And every day the BWC refuses to honor its obligation, it is costing Ohio $2.3 million dollars a month. It’s time for the BWC to meet its responsibility to pay its obligation to the roughly 270,000 employers who struggled to pay the Bureau’s illegally inflated premiums when paid and who continue to thwart the same roughly 270,000 employers from investing on the future of Ohio’s economic comeback.


Ohio Senate approves bill to expand income, business tax cuts

COLUMBUS, Ohio — The Ohio Senate on Wednesday approved one-year expansions of state income and small-business tax cuts, as well as raising tax credits and exemptions for poorer Ohioans.

The Republican-sponsored measures in House Bill 483, which passed the Senate, 24-8, come as a result of higher revenues and lower state spending than expected.

Under the revised budget review bill, a 9-percent income tax cut previously approved for this year would be increased to a 10-percent cut. The move would save taxpayers an additional $94 million this year, according to state Sen. Scott Oelslager, a North Canton Republican.

Another change would give businesses making $250,000 or less a 75-percent business tax deduction for 2014, up from a 50-percent deduction in current law. That would mean $225 million in savings, Oelslager said.


System works against small businesses

For many years, the Ohio Bureau of Workers’ Compensation has favored some businesses and charged more for others (“Appeals court: Ohio businesses were overbilled,” Dispatch article, May 17). This ends up making the small mom-and-pop shops that employ many Ohioans the bearers of undue burdens.
Many of us go out of business due to these unfair practices.

The Bureau of Workers’ Compensation has lost its case in court, and again lost its appeal. It’s time for Ohio small businesses to get what is lawfully theirs.

We are Ohio. The bureau is here to serve us, not themselves.

JOHN ANDERSON
President/CEO
Anderson Computer Consulting
Marion


Regulators close small lender in Ohio

WASHINGTON — Regulators have closed a small lender in Ohio, marking the eighth U.S. bank failure of 2014 after 24 closures last year.
The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. said Friday that it has taken over Cincinnati-based Columbia Savings Bank.
The lender, which operated a single branch, had about $36.5 million in assets and $29.5 million in deposits as of March 31.
United Fidelity Bank, based in Evansville, Indiana, has agreed to assume Columbia Savings’ deposits and to buy essentially all of the failed bank’s assets. Columbia Savings’ failure is expected to cost the deposit insurance fund $5.3 million.
U.S. bank failures have been declining since they peaked in 2010 in the wake of the financial crisis and the Great Recession.
Only three banks went under in 2007. That jumped to 25 in 2008, after the financial meltdown, and ballooned to 140 in 2009.
In 2010, regulators seized 157 banks, the most in any year since the savings and loan crisis two decades ago. The FDIC has said 2010 likely was the high-water mark for bank failures from the recession. They declined to 92 in 2011 and fell to 51 in 2012.


Are You In The Right State To Start A Business?

business (8)The small business sector has been for many years an employment power in the United States, it accounts for more than half the jobs generated in this country since 1995. There are approximately more than half a million businesses generated each month and although of those businesses only 7 out 10 will make it past the 2 year mark, the entrepreneurial spirit of Americans is well deserved. The question now to ask is whether you are in the right state to start a business, or you need to think about the pros and cons of starting your business where you are.
Read more about this topic by following the links above.


Here’s where Ohio ranks on small business friendliness

A national small business advocacy group says Ohio ranks among the top 10 for its tax code’s friendliness toward business.

The anti-tax Small Business & Entrepreneurship Council ranks Ohio No. 8 for its tax system’s overall friendliness toward small business. Ohio’s neighbors, Indiana and Kentucky, ranked 11 and 32, respectively.

The “Small Business Tax Index 2014” looked at 21 different measures to determine a state’s tax friendliness. Those include the top personal and corporate income tax rates, top capital gains and dividends tax rates, property taxes, additional taxes on S-Corporations, unemployment taxes, and whether a state has a death tax.

“When it comes to state and local taxes – as well as levies at the federal level – the direction that policy should be pointed is clear. Keep the overall tax burden low. Preferably, do no [sic] tax income at all,” the group writes in its report.


Dayton No. 66 among best cities for small business

Dayton trumps Detroit, Las Vegas, Birmingham and many others when it comes to the best city to work for a small business.

The Miami Valley ranks No. 66 in the U.S. for small businesses, according to a new ranking from Wallethub.

Cities were evaluated by several metrics, including the number of businesses with fewer than 250 employees per 1,000 inhabitants, industry variety, net small business job growth, average monthly earnings for new hires and average number of hours worked.

Columbus was the top-ranked Ohio city at No. 23.

The top city on the list was Minneapolis, followed by Salt Lake City and Miami.

Stockton, Calif. ranked last.


NBC4 Investigates: Why Does Ohio Owe Businesses $1 Billion?

COLUMBUS, Ohio – As Ohio’s economy begins to recover, the state is clearly focused on jobs, and numbers show some growth, but did the state actually harm more businesses in the past?
An NBC4 investigation reveals how one state agency allegedly crushed thousands of small businesses.

While the jobs picture in Ohio is rebounding, a huge shadow is being cast by the past – and the bureaucracy in the Bureau of Workers’ Compensation (BWC).

Small businesses can’t operate without worker’s comp insurance, and in Ohio, they can only get that from BWC.

Unlike other states that carry private insurance, Ohio’s BWC is a monopoly.

In 2006, Ron Foreman owned a successful contracting company, which used to be located near downtown Ashville, and employed 40 people.

Freeman’s family, including his two sons at West Point, was prospering. His small business was a model of what state leaders say they want in Ohio.


The Benefits Of Having A Virtual Team

business (2)The integrated workforce experience page at Cisco tells us that the company sales force consists of 20,000 people in 87 countries, and keeping abreast of the new products, solutions and architectures is a critical task.  Although your company may have a smaller workforce than Cisco, the challenges and rewards of having a virtual workforce is indubitable.  Keeping your team engaged and collaborating with other team members may not be as easy as you would think.  The challenges of keeping your team members offering great customer service (if you are a service company) may not be easy to track if you do not have a good system in place. Training and engaging your virtual team is a must for your business and the rewards you can achieve with them can be beneficial for all parties.


Building an All-Star Virtual Team

Employers and managers are often skeptical when it comes to hiring virtual workers.

To build a virtual team of employees, trust and confidence factor into the hiring process. Indeed, some employers never meet candidates in person. Yet that employee is involved with building a company’s success; no wonder some managers are nervous when it comes to hiring virtual workers.

Apprehensive about hiring telecommuters? Consider current trends about virtual work environments: According to Forrester, nearly 34 million Americans are working from home and telecommuting is expected to rise 43 percent in the United States by 2016.

Virtual teams allow an employer to tap into some of the best talent available because recruiting is not restricted by geography. By opening up positions to candidates across the world, companies such as Upworthy, Buffer and Mozilla have experienced success with virtual teams, finding individuals who are truly passionate about what they do.


Smells like team spirit

A virtual workforce opens up access to a global talent pool, but needs special attention and a personal touch to build trust among members spread across geographies

The website that you use for online shopping or the aircraft that takes you places have most likely been built through the collaborative effort of teams dispersed across continents. Organizations are increasingly turning global to take advantage of diverse talent, achieve operational and cost effectiveness, and inculcate the ability to respond to market demands with swiftness to be able to thrive in a highly competitive environment.

Virtual teams are the order of the day and, this, of course, has been facilitated by the rapid advancement of technology which has helped transcend distance, time zones, cultures and organizational boundaries. Virtual teams embody a distinctive shade of group dynamics, along with their concomitant set of unique challenges. There are umpteen examples of teams that have outshone their collocated counterparts in terms of productivity and effectiveness, but there are plenty that have shrivelled and fallen apart. So what makes a virtual team tick?


Managing & Achieving Goals with a Virtual Team

Managing one or two remote workers can be difficult enough–never mind an entire team of virtual employees! Whether it’s for a short period of time or a long-term work situation, virtual teams are becoming a more common occurrence in the modern workplace. There are many benefits for both the team members and the employer, such as less time spent traveling to meetings and a reduced commute for employees. However, virtual work needs to be monitored closely to ensure quality and productivity. There are a number of available tools that make this task much easier.

1.  UberConference: UberConference is a hit among virtual workers and those who manage them. The rich interface is actually quite easy to use, and provides virtual workers with a number of tools and resources they need to easily complete a remote work assignment. This is a good option for those who need to participate in remote conference calls, as it allows workers to easily connect to and chat with others.


Is Small Business Hiring Slowing Down?

business (10)A Washington Post article by J.D Harrison dated April 30th. talks about  how small business hiring has remain flat in April, and the belief that the projections of greater figures in the small business sector has fallen short. The news can lead one to wonder whether the rising costs of health care and the minimum wage increase has led small business owners to think about those issues first before hiring.

Read more about this topic by following the links below.


Small business weekly: Minimum wage, maximizing loans and expensive limes

A review of the biggest small business and startup stories from the past week, with a special focus on Washington.

SBA slammed: During a hearing last week, Democrats and Republicans on the House Small Business Committee ripped into the Small Business Administration for creating several new entre pre neur ship training programs that have not been approved by Congress while pulling back on some of its long-standing counseling programs. (OSB)

Nation’s job engine? While employers as a whole posted strong job gains last month, small businesses are still struggling to pick up the pace. Hiring by small companies was flat in April, according to the latest readings by ADP, while their share of the nation’s total job gains declined for the fourth consecutive month. (OSB)

Mimimum wage splits businesses: Senate Republicans last week blocked legislation from moving forward that would raise the federal minimum wage to $10.00 per hour. Some small business owners say the legislation would cripple their companies by driving up labor costs, while others strongly favor raising the floor on wages. (OSB)


Many Small Employers Face Rising Insurance Costs Under ACA

Size matters – when it comes to the impact of the Affordable Care Act on employers. For the next three days ideastream health reporter Sarah Jane Tribble will walk us through the differences. She starts the series today by going to a bar.

Paul Siperke is the co-owner of Fat Heads – a popular brew pub in North Olmstead. He has fewer than 50 full-time employees, so he’s classified under the Affordable Care Act as a small business.

He doesn’t have to provide health insurance to his employees. But that’s what he’s been doing despite some pretty crazy volatility in rates.

“They just seemed to keep going up every year.  One year we got a 38 percent increase, another year we got 11. One year we got 3,” Siperke says.”

This year, under the Affordable Care Act, he saw another hike – this one for about 20 percent.

“It just seems odd that we get such a drastic price increase when nothing has really changed with us as far as our employees and health issues,” he says.

Until now, if employees were healthy and claims were few, premium prices were relatively good. But, for a small business, if even one employee was in a car accident or was diagnosed with cancer, insurance costs could skyrocket the next year.


Advice for small businesses navigating Obamacare

Serving as a partner in a health care staffing and consulting firm, health insurance costs were the second largest expense only to employee salaries.

We maintained a commitment to providing health benefits to our team, but each year the cost would climb often by double digits, forcing tough decisions on whether to reduce benefits, increase employee shares or take a bite out of the bottom line.

As a business owner, the decision to offer health benefits is critically important particularly in light of the roll out of the Affordable Care Act.

Health benefits help companies recruit and retain talent in their workforce. A recent survey by Towers and Watson found that more than half of employees surveyed identified the health plan offered as a major reason to stay with their current employer.

Small business has traditionally been at a disadvantage providing these benefits facing higher premiums and administrative costs than large employers.

Much attention on the Affordable Care Act has been on the individual health care coverage options and the technical challenges with the exchange website. Depending on where you stand on the issue, the act has been a great success at enrolling millions of uninsured into coverage, or complete failure in both concept and implementation.


What Does Your Small Business Need?

business (8)It takes a different kind of person than the average Joe to start a business.  The demands and challenges a small business or a startup have are numerous, and the rewards sometimes are not as glorious as one imagined.  Small businesses in the state of Ohio in 2008 totaled 902,369 according to the SBA, and although there has been a shift in employment by the small business sector, the improvement in the economy will surely have a good impact in job creation in the state of Ohio.

Read more business news by following the links below.


Legal-Ease: Small business needs team of advisers

An owner’s intelligence or work ethic is not always dispositive of a small business’s (including a farm’s) success.

In fact, the “advisory team” for a small business can disproportionately affect that business’s success or failure. That advisory team consists of more than the attorney. There are five crucial “partners” for each entrepreneur: attorney, accountant, insurance agent, lender and financial adviser.

A good attorney will help a small business owner minimize liability and make the business practically workable. Very few attorneys can lawfully claim they are specialists because there are limited subject matters for which there is lawful certification as a legal “specialist.” However, some attorneys limit their practices to specified aspects of the law or have deeper passions for certain subject matters over others.


Ignore that Accounting Problem — At Your Own Risk

Show me an entrepreneur who says they’ve never encountered an accounting problem and I’ll show you a liar. That may sound a bit extreme, but the point is simple: from a lost invoice to overlooked write-offs to something perhaps more nerve-wracking (audit, anyone?), perfection in accounting is pretty much a myth. And that’s OK.

But just because perfection is a myth, it doesn’t mean that as you discover an accounting issue, you can shrug it off and chalk it up to the imperfect nature of the universe. Why not, you ask? Because accounting issues are like wounds: untreated, they fester. And they can get nasty — quickly.

Let’s say you do some car detailing and repair out of your garage. It’s a side gig — sort of. You quote jobs verbally and “invoice” the same. After all, you’ve only done work for friends and neighbors, although you have started gaining a few referrals to folks you didn’t previously know. When you collect payment, you prefer cash, but will take a check and deposit it into your personal checking account. You’re now pulling in a nice chunk of change each month from your “side gig.”


The 6 People Every Startup Needs

There’s no magic bullet for startup success, but your team can often make-or-break it, says entrepreneur Bernd Schoner.

Schoner, who has a Ph.D. from MIT and was co-founder of RFID technologies startup ThingMagic, sold his company to Trimble Navigation in 2010 for an undisclosed sum.

ThingMagic had an original team of five co-founders. But by the time the company was acquired, Schoner says only two were remaining – leading him to think more closely about team dynamics.

“There are certain roles that people assume in a typical tech company or startup that make sense and I think if you are careful about that, then your odds of success go up,” says Schoner. He is author of the upcoming book: ‘The Tech Entrepreneur’s Survival Guide.”

While some companies start out with just one or two employees, Schoner says there are six key personality types he believes make for a great team. Here is the recipe for his dream lineup:

No. 1: The prima donna genius
“I think it’s commonly accepted in a tech startup that you better have someone with technical knowledge,” says Schoner. “You want to have someone be able to lead the technical agenda of the team.”

No. 2: The leader
Typically the CEO, Schoner says it’s important to have one person calling the shots.

“For larger founder teams … It can get very tricky if there are five opinions and all have equal weight. Democracy is great, but not in a startup,” says Choner. “The leader or CEO doesn’t always need to be right, but if [he or she] is a leader figure that others can look up to, then that’s a good thing.”