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9/09/2011-Are We on the Verge of a Small-Business Hiring Boom?- By Carol Tice http://www.entrepreneur.com/blog/220278
The unemployment picture has been unrelentingly gloomy for some time now. But one recent study shows that more than 40 percent of small businesses plan to hire in the next six months. Top jobs in demand? Sales and marketing -- nearly half of business owners making hires said they were looking for more staff in this category. Could this be the start of a turnaround in unemployment? We'll see. Beyond the glimmer of hope for jobs, the Pepperdine Private Capital Markets Project's fall 2011 study of more than 7,500 businesses with revenues of less than $5 million provides an interesting look at what's keeping other small businesses from bringing on more staff. It turns out that the list of initiatives for stimulating job creation being pitched by the White House, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and others only partly addresses entrepreneurs' most pressing problems. The business owners surveyed agreed that tax incentives would help -- 23 percent liked that idea. But the top response seems to be absent from many legislators' agendas. Nearly 35 percent of respondents said "increased access to capital" would be the change most likely to spur small-business job creation, with bank loans preferred by the vast majority. Loan stimulus and increased SBA guarantees intended to help small businesses tough out the recession expired more than a year ago -- likely far too soon. In the study, more than 1,600 business owners reported they sought a bank loan in the past year, but fewer than half were successful. The owners reported they contacted an average of 2.2 banks and spent between 16 and 24 hours of their time pursuing their loan, making borrowing fairly burdensome and a task with a dubious outcome. Many more owners have stopped trying to get a loan -- which is, in turn, stifling hiring. |
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9/21/2011-FED approves 400B QE-3…. ….Markets respond! By Alan Pikul Well…..many of us are not really surprised that today the FED chairman Ben Bernanke announced a 400 billion dollar QE-3 as a means of stimulating the economy. This simply means that the US government won’t be having a melt-down at the end of September. Simply put ….the Federal reserve Bank will purchase 400 billion dollars of US treasury bonds therefore giving the government a little bit of extra time to get unemployment under control and get their fiscal house in order. It sure is nice having that magical money tree in the back yard that keeps giving us green fruit whenever we want it. How long will the printing presses continue until there is too much money in the system? |
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9/05/2011 Six Ideas for Immediate Job Creation: Will They Work? By Carol Tice There's a critical missing ingredient that's put the brakes on economic recovery: new jobs. Here are six of the ideas for stimulating job growth being discussed right now:
1. Approve more free-trade agreements. The U.S. Chamber is bullish on this one, estimating 380,000 jobs could be saved and thousands more created if already pending trade agreements could just get officially signed into law. 2. Green light infrastructure projects. This is a time-honored way to get jobs humming, particularly in the hard-hit construction industry. Both the Chamber and President Barack Obama are on it -- the president has instructed the Departments of Agriculture, Commerce, Housing and Urban Development, Interior and Transportation to each identify and fast track up to three high-priority infrastructure projects that already have funding, and get them rolling within 18 months. 3. Go green. The president's Better Buildings Initiative aims to create jobs while upgrading buildings for energy efficiency, saving American businesses $40 billion in energy costs. 4. Tax credits. Yes, you've heard this one before, but the idea of extending previous tax credits for companies that add jobs (now expired) is reportedly back on Obama's list for consideration. 5. More internships in key fields. The President's Council on Jobs and Competitiveness has been out convincing big companies to hire more engineering interns, to create more opportunity and stimulate interest in science and technology fields, where the U.S. is forecast to have a shortfall of trained workers in future. Maybe this one's not so much about creating jobs as trying to fill science jobs with American workers rather than immigrants from India and China. 6. Remove regulatory barriers. Even though the Obama administration recently moved to trim much of the regulatory red-tape weighing businesses down, the Chamber and Republicans in general want to see even more action on this front. Though, for many businesses this is more of a state or local problem than a national one. Of course, a lot of these ideas are focused on bigger-picture changes rather than small ones that may deliver quicker results. Big programs tend to help big businesses, and then maybe those corporations or government agencies subcontract to some smaller businesses and the job creation trickles down to entrepreneurs. We'll see which of these ideas can get off the ground anyway, given the Democratic President/Republican House of Representatives divide. |
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10/04/2011-Who Needs College? 7 Core Success Skills of “Self-Educated” Billionaires By Aaron Task In The Education of Millionaires, author Michael Ellsberg details the successes of a number of "self-educated" billionaires, including hair-care magnate John Paul DeJoria, Facebook co-founders Dustin Moskovitz and Sean Parker, fashion designer Mark Ecko, Hip Hop and fashion mogul Russell Simmons, WordPress creator Matt Mullenweg. Like Steve Jobs and Bill Gates before them, these highly successful entrepreneurs either dropped out of college or never enrolled in the first place, once again raising questions about the value of a higher education. (See: James Altucher's 8 Alternatives to College) "If you want to be a doctor, lawyer, engineer [and] go into a traditional profession, [college] makes a lot of sense," Ellsberg says. "But for people who have no idea...$50,000 a year is an expensive way to figure out what you want to do with your life." In the accompanying video, the author and Forbes blogger discusses the common traits and the 7 Core Success Skills he gleaned from these titans of industry: · Learn How to Sell · Learn Marketing · The "Right" Way to Network with Big Wigs · Define Your Vision · Invest in Yourself · Build the Brand of "You" · Take an Entrepreneurial Mindset "These are the real world skills we don't learn in college," Ellsberg says, stressing, as the subtitle of his book indicates, "it's not too late" to learn these lessons, even if you did go to college. |
