03.19.07
Posted in Political, Small Business at 23:01 by lnxwalt
Are you a member of your local chamber of commerce?  Did you know that the chambers of commerce exist to represent your interests as a business owner or manager?  There are generally monthly speakers on various business-related topics, and occasionally visits by politicians–an opportunity to tell them face to face what your business needs from the agency they represent.
In many locations, there are not only chambers to represent the city’s businesses, but also chambers to represent minority businesses’ interests, which may not always be the same as yours.  Chambers tend to publish directories of their members and to promote the idea of members patronizing other members’ businesses when they can.  They often have mixers, where you can meet the local leaders who will play a role in making your business successful.
You should approach the chamber of commerce, not from a me-me-me attitude, but from a we-we-we attitude.  You may not immediately gain customers by being active within the chamber.  Yet, you will have the opportunity to participate in making your local community better through things like offering scholarships to local high school students, fundraising for community-based charities, and sponsoring local youth sporting teams.
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Posted in Small Business at 22:50 by lnxwalt
The last couple of weeks, the weather here in California’s High Desert has been quite a bit warmer. Â A few days have even exceeded 90 degrees Fahrenheit! Â It is time to clean out your home and pack away your Winter clothing, it seems.
This is also a good time to ask yourself about your seasonal marketing.  What is seasonal marketing?  It is the way you adapt your marketing efforts (in this case we mean advertising, promotional activities, and sales, as well as product selection) to the time of year and the things that the market is craving.
This is not the time to order thick ski parkas to put on your racks–you’d wind up holding them for six months, depending on your location, before you sold them.  Instead, seek out products that are going to sell well in the next month.  You will note that most retailers have all of their Easter-related goods on display.  It is not that they care all that much about the actual meaning of Easter (that is, ”Resurrection Day”, not the feast of Ishtar/Astarte/Ashorah).  They realize that consumers have Easter on their minds.
Consumers are more willing to buy Easter merchandise right now than they are to buy Thanksgiving products.
Your business needs to tailor its marketing efforts to the seasonal ebb and flow of customer desires and habits. Read the rest of this entry »
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03.18.07
Posted in Small Business at 22:44 by lnxwalt
When I was a child, I can recall occasional appearances of Rodney Dangerfield on variety shows that I watched. Mr. Dangerfield’s brand of humor was never insulting or dirty (at least not that I recognized at that age). His big thing was to be in a situation where he was treated as if he were unimportant. He would then remark, “I don’t get no respect.”
When you start and run your own business, you may expect to get respect from people in the world around you, but you probably will not. Whether it is the high school reunion, where the owner of a janitorial service is mocked for cleaning johns, or your own family, where your time entering data for invoices into the computer is interrupted because “you are not doing anything important right now,” a small business owner-manager is less likely to be respected than the CEO of a large corporation.
This is also true when you deal with larger suppliers. In my business, for example, I deal with information, and in particular I deal with management and technology issues in smaller businesses. That is my so-called target market: smaller businesses in the High Desert and Inland Empire areas of Southern California.
I applied for zero-price subscriptions to industry-related magazines, as is standard practice for those in my industry and was turned down. I checked my e-mail today and had six rejection messages from TradePub, which is a kind of clearing house for trade publications .
The odd thing about it is that they supposedly target leaders and influencers in industry-related organizations. A consulting organization is nothing if it is not a leader and influencer of other organizations. So you would think that it would be fairly easy for WebConnect Consulting to qualify. In fact, I and my co-workers in the FEMA IT department got some of these magazines despite the fact that we had zero influence on policy or purchasing. It seems that it is better to inflate subscription numbers with large numbers of people who can not utilize the information presented than it is to risk the chance that a small business is really just an excuse for a student to get a free magazine.
You will find this lack of respect for smaller businesses if you are a manufacturer, trying to get your products carried in the big chain stores as well. This is another reason that I say, If there is a local owner-managed business that provides the product or service you desire, it is better to patronize that business (even if it costs more to do so) than it is to patronize a large, out-of-the-area corporation.
If enough of us support local businesses, and especially owner-managed businesses, the big boys will have to treat smaller businesses (whether customers, suppliers, or competitors) and consumers better. As long as every spending decision is a trip to <insert large corporation name here>, they will have no reason or incentive to improve.
So I want to say thank you, TradePub. Thank you for helping me to see that this business does not need what you have to offer. You need bodies for your subscription numbers so you can get higher advertising rates and more advertisers to pay them. I provide solutions for smaller businesses, and I can get much of what I need from places like Apache.org and Sourceforge.net. It is likely that neither I, nor my clients, need the high-priced and proprietary non-solutions your advertisers offer.
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03.17.07
Posted in Small Business at 7:05 by lnxwalt
Our nation is dominated by large, faceless corporations. Â Driving across town or across the country, one sees the same signs everywhere. These companies are so large that they are not attached to any particular area.
Smaller businesses, on the other hand, generally have their owners and employees living in the same community that the business is in.  This is an advantage when it comes time for the local youth sports leagues to get someone to help pay for equipment and uniforms.  It is not the big companies that support local youth programs—it is the small businesses.
When a severe illness or tragic death strikes someone in the area, it is the small, locally-owned businesses that donate money or goods and place collection cans next to their cash registers. Â After all, there is some chance that the owner or employees know the victim.
When a small, locally-owned business has a fairly lucrative position opening, they are likely to hire someone locally. Â They can not ship someone in from another branch of the company the way large companies do. Â When your brother-in-law gets out of prison and needs a job, do not depend on “BigCorp, Inc” to take him, even if you already work there. Â But if you work for a smaller business, there is a chance that he might get hired there.
Tax-wise, smaller businesses usually pay local taxes, state taxes, and federal taxes. Â Larger businesses often have people on staff whose jobs exist to help find ways to avoid paying as much in taxes.
Smaller businesses often have all of their revenue coming from the local area. Â This makes them more likely to participate in community-building activities such as the “Valley Bucks” program which encouraged local residents to spend their money where they live. Â A larger company is less likely to care where you spend your money, as long as you spend it with them.
If you own or work for a small business, support your local economy by choosing smaller, locally-owned businesses for most of your purchases.  If you do not own or work for a small business, you should still seek out locally-owned small businesses for most of what you buy.  Think of it as an investment in your (and your children’s) future.
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03.15.07
Posted in Small Business at 19:50 by lnxwalt
I worked my way through college by working in fast food restaurants. I discovered that some of the largest and most profitable chains were the stingiest toward the very people who made them their money. One of our smaller competitors, which was only in California at the time, was a company called In-N-Out Burger. In-N-Out was starting its workers at $6.00 per hour at a time when long-time employees of the larger chains were lucky to get even $5.00 per hour. As a consequence, In-N-Out had the best, most enthusiastic, hard-working, and productive workforce of all.
In one city, In-N-Out opened two locations a few miles apart, with “the Golden Arches” having a location about midway between the two In-N-Outs. Within a couple of years, the restaurant in between shut down. (It has since been remodeled and reopened.) No one else that I have ever seen has been able to do this–but no one else seemed to realize that they could have better productivity if they shared the wealth with their employees.
One of my college instructors said (back when minimum wage was below $4.25 per hour) that an employee who is paid below $8.00 per hour is not being paid to think. He also said that paying minimum wage to someone is like saying to them, “I would pay you less, but the government will not let me.”
If you can not afford to pay someone at least $0.50 to $1.00 above minimum wage, you can not afford to hire that person. After the 30 to 90 days that it takes for an employee to reach expected productivity, a small business owner cannot afford to have this person leave for a nickel or dime more per hour somewhere else. Even in fast food, it takes that long for most employees to become fully productive. After the person has finally reached the point where their labor is bringing in money for the business, it is better to keep him or her there than to start the process all over.
Remember, your employees are the ones that make your product and serve your customers. Take care of your employees and let your employees take care of your customers.
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Posted in Legal Issues at 19:30 by lnxwalt
Here in California, we had a political campaign a few years back that would have implemented mandatory employer-paid health insurance. There were many commercials for each side, with one side featuring employees who were ill but were unable to obtain affordable health care, while the other featured small business owners that said they were just barely making ends meet already and would have to close if the law passed.
The measure did not pass, but it is a fascinating example of manipulation. The largest retailer in the world paid for most of the “No” ads. It seems that their low-wage employees are frequently uninsured or dependent upon state and county medical assistance. The founding family of said company were all in the billionaires lists of the financial magazines. The company manipulated smaller businesses for its own gain.
On the other side were all of the usual unions and political groups. They also were using low-wage workers who often are not members of unions anyway.
When someone comes to you claiming to have your interests at heart, ask yourself what benefit that person gets from pursuing your interests. You may decide that having something in your interest is worth allowing the other person to benefit also. After all, this is what business is all about: an exchange of value. On the other hand, you may decide that supporting interests is not worth what the other person stands to gain.
There is always someone who is prepared to tell you what will be best for you. Be sure to ask if what is best for you is also best for them.
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Posted in Political, Small Business at 3:41 by lnxwalt
No, this is not a post about employees with junker vehicles. That will come later.
Here in Southern California, a major issue that affects everyone is the transportation situation. Simply put, there are so many people, scattered over such a large area, who have to travel to get to work and to school, that our current reliance on individual transportation is choking us to death.
During a period of employment at a certain federal agency, I had to drive more than 90 miles to work every morning, and the same distance back each evening. Starting time was 7:00 AM, so I needed to leave at 4:30 AM, which put me arriving in the parking structure around 6:00 AM. Why did I leave so early? Because there was a place 17 miles from my destination where another freeway met the one I was on. If I did not pass that point before 5:50 AM, it would take over an hour to travel the remaining distance to work.
In the evening, at 6:00 PM, when I left to return home, the freeways were congested all the way home. It frequently took three hours to drive home. On Friday evenings, when many people were heading for Las Vegas, it often took four hours.
The thing about this is that it does not have to be this way. If California and the counties in the vicinity of Los Angeles (Los Angeles, Orange, San Bernardino, Riverside, San Diego, and Ventura counties) could agree on it, it would take only a few years to put high-speed underground rail transportation connecting regional hubs (with associated “park and ride” lots) throughout the area. Read the rest of this entry »
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03.14.07
Posted in Political, Small Business at 23:05 by lnxwalt
Have you ever wondered why it is that your town, city, or county will spend large sums of money to attract one of those mega-retailers which mostly take sales away from existing businesses (often locally-owned, smaller businesses) and which ship a substantial part of that revenue to other areas?
I have observed our local town and cities spending thousands of dollars every year on programs to attract large companies from other Southern California cities. I cannot see the attraction. With tax discounts for the first few years, those large companies are shifting their burdens onto your local employees and small businesses.
I believe that one local city had even offered at one time to sell land to a large employer for around $1 per acre. Yet, the smaller businesses which were likely to stay and be long-term contributors to the local economy had to pay full price for any land they got.
It has been said that the “top 500″ companies have been cutting jobs overall since the 1970s. This means that nearly all of the job growth in our country has been from smaller businesses. We need to track down the source of this information. (I have been looking, but have not yet found it.) Once we have the source, we need to find out just how accurate the claim is–if it is verifiable, we need to put it on billboards along major highways, put it in drive-time commercials on major radio stations, and take out half-page ads in local newspapers. Policy-makers need to know that the best way to strengthen the local economy is to build up the local small businesses.
Instead of spending thousands or even millions of dollars each year to attract out-of-area corporations, our local governments need to use that money to help start and build up locally-owned businesses. In doing so, they will reap a harvest.
Remember that nearly every large business started out as a small business. By taking care of smaller businesses, we will be “seeding” future large businesses in our local areas.
In these policy perspectives, it is my hope to spur debate and to encourage some members of the public to begin to advocate for these issues with their local, state/province/regional, and national governments. The big boys have their lobbyists. We have to depend upon active and interested participation by people like ourselves in order to counter the special preferences that these larger companies seek.
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Posted in Political, Small Business at 22:09 by lnxwalt
Many of us that are pro-business feel that government regulations are the problem. Some even go so far as to favor nearly removing nearly all power from government, so that businesses will be free to act in the manner that they see fit. In part, these ideas are based on classical economic theory, such as that espoused by Adam Smith in his classic 1776 work, The Wealth of Nations.
I am currently reading Smith’s book. I can tell you that he did not espouse many of the things that are promoted in his name. But that, perhaps, is for another posting.
It is interesting, however, that our society is pretty deeply divided between those who feel that government in any area is a problem and those who feel that a problem in any area is merely awaiting a governmental solution. The Reagan revolution was not truly smaller government, but removal of some of the restraints that were choking the efficient conduct of business while simultaneously making targeted investments in key industries.
There is no question that some “safety net” features, including some that I consider necessary, were removed by or during the Reagan administration and the following Bush administration. The big shift in power from big labor to big business, for example, left workers without effective advocacy.
This is an example of an area where government policies caused the problems. With the preference set toward large corporations, smaller businesses and individuals lost most of the little bit of power and influence which they had left.
This entry from James Robertson tells how a big cable company’s decisions are hurting its best customers. The problem here is not that the company has limits on bandwidth consumption, but rather the fact that it will not admit this fact and give customers a firm limit. The ones who are using a lot of bandwidth are generally either infected with some spambot or are happy users of the service. Comcast would do well to contact such users and offer them a dedicated connection instead of the neighborhood pool. This would give them additional revenue to cover any costs they may have, but it would also give them positive publicity.
The real problem with cable is the fact that each cable company gets an exclusive connection to homes in a certain area. I realize that there is a “natural monopoly,” which makes it more costly to have a second and a third company come and lay cables to everyone’s homes. However, cable companies get a “franchise,” which is a usually-exclusive contract with the local government (town, city, county). Consumers do not have a choice of cable providers.
If Joe’s cable is your local provider, you rarely have a second cable operator that you can use if Joe’s service is bad or Joe’s prices are too high. Joe has little incentive to improve (satellite, over-the-air, and “wireless cable” each have their own issues). The fact is, consumers can either pay for cable or do without.
The point is, government decisions such as the area of exclusivity are the real cause of the problem. Any solution will necessarily involve government decisions also.
In the case of cable and DSL Internet, we need to separate the ownership and maintenance of the wires and cables (including fiber optics, satellite systems, and other carrying infrastructure) from the actual retail delivery of service to customers. If Comcast owns the physical connection into your home, they should not be allowed to provide the service that flows across that connection.
We have dozens of small, locally-owned Internet service providers that are being slowly squeezed out by expanding DSL and cable Internet usage, but which are not able to get the infrastructure owners to allow them to offer service using the high speed infrastructure.
Back in my dial-up days, I found that the best service available was generally some guy with thirty servers in his garage or perhaps a tiny office somewhere. The big national providers were never responsive to any requests from consumers.
Smaller businesses can compete, and do very well at it, if government agencies will stop bending over backwards to promote the interests of big corporations instead of the interests of individual consumers. Smaller businesses generally give better service and are more willing to make concessions to the needs of the individual.
Government got us into this situation. Government will have to get us out.
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03.13.07
Posted in Legal Issues at 22:58 by lnxwalt
A federal district court judge ruled yesterday that a retailer may be sued if its website is inaccessible to the blind. The ruling was issued in a case brought by the National Federation of the Blind against Target Corp. (Northern District of California Case No. C 06-01802 MHP). The suit charges that Target’s website (www.target.com) is inaccessible to the blind, and therefore violates the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), the California Unruh Civil Rights Act, and the California Disabled Persons Act. Target asked the court to dismiss the action by arguing that no law requires Target to make its website accessible. The Court denied Target’s motion to dismiss and held that the federal and state civil rights laws do apply to a website such as target.com.
This information comes from Disability Rights Advocates, dated 2006-09-07. DMNews, a direct marketers’ information site, has coverage from 2006-09-20. It is also covered in the San Francisco Chronicle, on 2006-02-08.
Looking at their site, I noted that it doesn’t even declare a DOCTYPE. A browser or screen reader is supposed to just figure out how to render the site without something to tell it which variant of HTML or XHTML is being used? Now, Target is a huge corporation and able to take care of itself. However, if your small business uses some guy who just throws something together with one of those GUI-based site design tools, you could be the next business to be sued over an inaccessible site.
Here’s another clue: If your site is entirely done in Flash, Java applets, or similar technologies, it is probably not accessible. When your site designer / developer shows you the almost-completed site, be sure to view it in Firefox and other Mozilla-based browsers, Opera, IE 6, IE 7 and in text-based browsers such as Lynx. If you can, you should also view it in Camino (a Mozilla-based Mac browser) and Safari on the Mac platform, and Konqueror (based on KHTML, related to Apple’s Safari and Syllable’s ABrowse) on the Linux platform.
My way of looking at it is that I want (1) to serve as many customers as I can without turning them away for minor reasons like not using IE as a browser; and (2) I do not want to attract lawyers. For those reasons, I always try to use valid XHTML 1.0 or higher on any site. I discussed this on Opportunity Knocks a few months back.
If you own or manage a small business, you cannot afford to be wrong on this one.
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