Monday, May 18, 2009
Event reminder 5/19 @ 6:30pm: Bill Tandy of Pueblo Bank & Trust
A discussion about the U.S. economy by Bill Tandy, President, Pueblo Bank & Trust. Free and open to the public
Thursday, May 14, 2009
National Small Business Week begins May 17th
The nation's top entrepreneurs will be hailed at the U.S. Small Business Administration's National Small Business Week events May 17-19, in Washington, D.C., marking the 56th anniversary of the agency, and the 46th annual proclamation of National Small Business Week. More than 100 small business owners from across the country will gather for three days of events to be honored for their accomplishments as the nation's leading small businesses. The highlight of events will be the announcement of the National Small Business Person of the Year. Men and women also will be recognized their involvement in disaster recovery, government contracting, and their support for small businesses. Awards also will be presented to SBA partners in financial and entrepreneurial development, including SCORE Chapter, Small Business Development Center and Women's Business Center of the year.
Events will be Webcast on May 18th & 19th. For more information go to http://www.nationalsmallbusinessweek.com/
Events will be Webcast on May 18th & 19th. For more information go to http://www.nationalsmallbusinessweek.com/
Thursday, May 7, 2009
The economy and you - a presentation by Bill Tandy, President of Pueblo Bank & Trust
The R. M. Watts Vocational and Business Center of the Pueblo City-County Library District is hosting its inaugural event on Tuesday May 19th at 6:30 p.m. at Pueblo West Library, 298 S. Joe Martinez Blvd. Pueblo Bank and Trust President Bill Tandy, who recently gained national attention for rejecting federal bailout funding, will present on the current economic state and its impact on small businesses and individuals. This event is free and open to the public. Please call 562-5667 for more information.
Tuesday, May 5, 2009
First in a Three-Part Series: Trust and the 21st Century Workplace
The increased flexibility and productivity enabled by today's virtual office tools benefit employees and businesses alike. Unfortunately, many managers still find it difficult to trust that their employees will achieve results when working outside the company's bricks and mortar. The challenge, then, is how do you build an organization of trust?
Join this live BNET Webcast to hear Stephen M. R. Covey, author of The Speed of Trust, demonstrate trust as an economic driver and share tips on how to profoundly impact the level of trust in your relationships, your team and your organization.
Attendees will learn:
Join this live BNET Webcast to hear Stephen M. R. Covey, author of The Speed of Trust, demonstrate trust as an economic driver and share tips on how to profoundly impact the level of trust in your relationships, your team and your organization.
Attendees will learn:
- The business and economic case for trust
- Why trust is the critical leadership competency in this new global economy
- How to become a more effective leader and build an organization of trust
Saturday, May 2, 2009
SBA Expands Eligibility for 7(a) LoansTo Spur Recovery Opportunities for Small Businesses
More small businesses will be eligible for U.S. Small Business Administration-backed loans, meaning greater access to much-needed capitalin this tough economy, as a result of a temporary alternate size standard for the agency's largest lending program. SBA’s alternate size standard for its 7(a) loan program will go into effect early next week through Sept. 30, 2010. As a result of the temporary change, more than 70,000 additional small businesses – including auto and RV dealerships, auto industry suppliers and others – could be eligible to apply for SBA 7(a)loan.
The temporary 7(a) loan size standard will parallel the standard for the agency’s 504 Certified Development Company loan, and will allow businesses to qualify based on net worth and average income. The net worth for the company and its affiliates can’t be in excess of $8.5 million and average net income after federal income taxes (excluding any carry-over losses) for the preceding two completed fiscal years can’t be more than $3 million.
The temporary change to the 7(a) loan size standard is not unprecedented. SBA took similar actions in 1993, as a result of the recession of the early 1990s, and again in 2005 as part of a program aimed at helping small businesses in the wake of hurricanes Katrina and Rita. This change also means more small businesses can take advantage of benefits made possible through the Recovery Act. On March 16, the SBA implemented two key provisions of the Recovery Act that raised the guarantee on 7(a) loans to 90 percent and reduced fees for borrowers. Since then, the agency has seen average weekly 7(a) loan volume increase by more than 25 percent and new SBA loans made by nearly 450 lenders who had not made loans since October 2008. For more information about SBA’s revisions to its small business size standards,visit http://mail.pueblolibrary.org/exchweb/bin/redir.asp?URL=http://www.sba.gov/size/indexwhatsnew.html and click on “What’s New about Small Business Size Standards.”
The temporary 7(a) loan size standard will parallel the standard for the agency’s 504 Certified Development Company loan, and will allow businesses to qualify based on net worth and average income. The net worth for the company and its affiliates can’t be in excess of $8.5 million and average net income after federal income taxes (excluding any carry-over losses) for the preceding two completed fiscal years can’t be more than $3 million.
The temporary change to the 7(a) loan size standard is not unprecedented. SBA took similar actions in 1993, as a result of the recession of the early 1990s, and again in 2005 as part of a program aimed at helping small businesses in the wake of hurricanes Katrina and Rita. This change also means more small businesses can take advantage of benefits made possible through the Recovery Act. On March 16, the SBA implemented two key provisions of the Recovery Act that raised the guarantee on 7(a) loans to 90 percent and reduced fees for borrowers. Since then, the agency has seen average weekly 7(a) loan volume increase by more than 25 percent and new SBA loans made by nearly 450 lenders who had not made loans since October 2008. For more information about SBA’s revisions to its small business size standards,visit http://mail.pueblolibrary.org/exchweb/bin/redir.asp?URL=http://www.sba.gov/size/indexwhatsnew.html and click on “What’s New about Small Business Size Standards.”
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
Monday, April 13, 2009
New business books at Pueblo West Library
Your call is (not that) important to us, customer service and what it reveals about our world and our lives, by Emily Yellin
If youve ever been mildly frustrated, extremely irritated or driven just plain mad by automated customer service lines, rude telephone service representatives or agents who cant speak intelligible English, this book is for you. Yellin (Our Mothers War) dives into the often dysfunctional world of customer service, exploring the multimillion-dollar industry from various points of view, interviewing exasperated consumers, displeased CEOs and infuriated customer service reps themselves. She includes transcripts of agonizing telephone exchanges, such as one where an AOL rep tries to thwart a customers cancellation of his account, blog excerpts from reps who feel abused and as if they are being treated as machines and countless stories from irritated and confused managers. While Yellins study offers more industry anecdotes than concrete solutions, readers will likely look at the industry differently and with more empathy for those who participate in it. (Mar.) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Companies we keep, employee ownership and the business of community and place, by John Abrams
Abrams presents a chapter on each of the eight "cornerstone principles" of sustainable businesses, including sharing ownership, cultivating workplace democracy, and celebrating the spirit of craft. In the new edition, he expands his vision beyond his own company (with its somewhat unusual Martha's Vineyard location) to companies across the United States. His conversational style and instructive anecdotes paint a rosy picture of employee ownership, but he also cautions that a company's transition away from reliance on a single leader can take many years. The overall message is positive, emphasizing local development and "challenging the gospel of growth." Appendixes provide South Mountain's employee-ownership contract, tips and resources to support a company's transition to employee ownership, and a guide to mediation and discussion; a reading list suggests books that Abrams says "changed the way [he] think[s]."
End of the line, the rise and coming fall of the global corporation, by Barry C. Lynn
The problem with globalized outsourcing, former Global Business executive editor Lynn warns, is that "a breakdown anywhere increasingly means a breakdown everywhere," as when a 2003 earthquake in Taiwan halted semiconductor manufacturing for a week, negatively affecting American electronics firms. National security, he argues, is jeopardized by this "hyperspecialized and hyper-rigid production system" as well; for Lynn, until the NAFTA-izing Bill Clinton came along, our trade policy had been for two centuries designed to prevent such potential catastrophes. Lynn has a knack for finding attractive, easy-to-grasp models from the contemporary business scene—such as using Dell's rise in the 1990s to explain the triumph of logistics management—but readers sometimes have to wade through heavy doses of economic theory to get to the livelier sections. Though some might view his concerns as excessively alarmist, Lynn delivers a welcome new facet to the antiglobalization debate, moving well beyond the stale "corporations are evil" argument to lay out a worrying economic overview. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Ethical markets, growing the green economy, by Hazel Henderson
In this companion to the television series of the same name, economist Henderson delivers an optimistic overview of socially responsible, environmentally sensitive businesses, investors and visionaries. Keeping an eye on the "triple bottom line" that adds "people" and "planet" to the usual focus on "profits," the book divides "cleaner, greener, more ethical and more female sectors of our U.S. economy" into three areas: lifestyles of health and sustainability, socially responsible investing and corporate social responsibility. An economist with a long history of activism in "redefining success" (for example, revamping the GDP to include environmental capital and unpaid labor such as child-rearing), Henderson adeptly packs large amounts of information into chapters within her expertise. Discussion of topics that are further from her experience, such as green building and the health care system, tends to careen from problems to solutions so quickly that a reader can become confused. The interviews after each chapter, meant to show how CEOs are "walking the talk," seem to be taken unedited from the TV show, coming across as incoherent and shallow. Fortunately, the book is crammed with Web references that can offer a fuller picture to readers tantalized by this glimpse of the economic revolution thriving below the radar of mainstream media. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
If youve ever been mildly frustrated, extremely irritated or driven just plain mad by automated customer service lines, rude telephone service representatives or agents who cant speak intelligible English, this book is for you. Yellin (Our Mothers War) dives into the often dysfunctional world of customer service, exploring the multimillion-dollar industry from various points of view, interviewing exasperated consumers, displeased CEOs and infuriated customer service reps themselves. She includes transcripts of agonizing telephone exchanges, such as one where an AOL rep tries to thwart a customers cancellation of his account, blog excerpts from reps who feel abused and as if they are being treated as machines and countless stories from irritated and confused managers. While Yellins study offers more industry anecdotes than concrete solutions, readers will likely look at the industry differently and with more empathy for those who participate in it. (Mar.) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Companies we keep, employee ownership and the business of community and place, by John Abrams
Abrams presents a chapter on each of the eight "cornerstone principles" of sustainable businesses, including sharing ownership, cultivating workplace democracy, and celebrating the spirit of craft. In the new edition, he expands his vision beyond his own company (with its somewhat unusual Martha's Vineyard location) to companies across the United States. His conversational style and instructive anecdotes paint a rosy picture of employee ownership, but he also cautions that a company's transition away from reliance on a single leader can take many years. The overall message is positive, emphasizing local development and "challenging the gospel of growth." Appendixes provide South Mountain's employee-ownership contract, tips and resources to support a company's transition to employee ownership, and a guide to mediation and discussion; a reading list suggests books that Abrams says "changed the way [he] think[s]."
End of the line, the rise and coming fall of the global corporation, by Barry C. Lynn
The problem with globalized outsourcing, former Global Business executive editor Lynn warns, is that "a breakdown anywhere increasingly means a breakdown everywhere," as when a 2003 earthquake in Taiwan halted semiconductor manufacturing for a week, negatively affecting American electronics firms. National security, he argues, is jeopardized by this "hyperspecialized and hyper-rigid production system" as well; for Lynn, until the NAFTA-izing Bill Clinton came along, our trade policy had been for two centuries designed to prevent such potential catastrophes. Lynn has a knack for finding attractive, easy-to-grasp models from the contemporary business scene—such as using Dell's rise in the 1990s to explain the triumph of logistics management—but readers sometimes have to wade through heavy doses of economic theory to get to the livelier sections. Though some might view his concerns as excessively alarmist, Lynn delivers a welcome new facet to the antiglobalization debate, moving well beyond the stale "corporations are evil" argument to lay out a worrying economic overview. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Ethical markets, growing the green economy, by Hazel Henderson
In this companion to the television series of the same name, economist Henderson delivers an optimistic overview of socially responsible, environmentally sensitive businesses, investors and visionaries. Keeping an eye on the "triple bottom line" that adds "people" and "planet" to the usual focus on "profits," the book divides "cleaner, greener, more ethical and more female sectors of our U.S. economy" into three areas: lifestyles of health and sustainability, socially responsible investing and corporate social responsibility. An economist with a long history of activism in "redefining success" (for example, revamping the GDP to include environmental capital and unpaid labor such as child-rearing), Henderson adeptly packs large amounts of information into chapters within her expertise. Discussion of topics that are further from her experience, such as green building and the health care system, tends to careen from problems to solutions so quickly that a reader can become confused. The interviews after each chapter, meant to show how CEOs are "walking the talk," seem to be taken unedited from the TV show, coming across as incoherent and shallow. Fortunately, the book is crammed with Web references that can offer a fuller picture to readers tantalized by this glimpse of the economic revolution thriving below the radar of mainstream media. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
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