“Stocks buckled Thursday under the growing belief that the global economy is weaker…the Dow Jones industrials briefly traded below 10,000 for the first time in three months.”

Granted, it all sounds very scary and dramatic but what does it mean?

The Dow Jones is an economic indicator.  A fairly complex index of 30 publicly traded companies based in the U.S. that measures their trades in the stock market during a single session.  Self explanatory right?

As business owners, it’s not the value of this economic indicator that is so important but the cause of the over all change.  It’s sometimes hard to read between the lines of these financial reports but that is exactly what needs to happen in order to judge the effects this may have on our business and view that information objectively.

The report continues as follows:

“A flood of bad news, including rising debt levels in European nations and an unexpected jump in the number of Americans filing for unemployment benefits, had investors pulling money out of assets like stocks and commodities that look increasingly risky. Fears of more disappointing news Friday, when the government issues its January employment report, contributed to the slide.”

While the Dow is based on U.S. companies, it is known to be influenced by foreign politics and events which accounts for the mention of European debt, but as business owners, our focus should lay on the second subject of unemployment.  We’ve all seen the reports about the decrease in new jobs and the increase in unemployment. This has an adverse effect on our current economy, but what does it mean for our businesses?

It means that the market is inundated with skilled and experienced people eager to put their best attributes to work for your business.  We all know the difficulties that come with hiring the right people to work in our business and yet, even in these times when companies are receiving hundreds of applications for a single open position, they’re still finding it hard to find the right people. 

As business owners, we need to take advantage of this unique climate to better ourselves and our position in this market.  Many times we find ourselves so wrapped up in day to day operations that it’s hard to step back and take an objective look at our business to see how we can make it more efficient and profitable.  Right now I think one of the most effective things we can do is to develop the policies and procedures of our human resources to maximize the efficiency of our workforce. 

Often times wages are a companies largest expense.  What are you doing in order to get the most from your employees?

Credit for the quotes and information go to Associated Press Business and Yahoo Finance.

The poll of entrepreneurs states that:

• 61% say the economy is on the wrong track
• Over 70% do not expect to create new jobs in 2010
• 85% think the U.S. is a great country in which to start a business

Right away they discuss the obvious contradiction made by these statistics that even though entrepreneurs believe the economy is on the wrong track and do not expect to create new jobs that it is a great country in which to start a business.  I find this to be very interesting due to the nature of the questions themselves.  When reading a poll like this, you have to ask yourself why.  Why is it that these entrepreneurs answered the way they did?

Let’s look at the subject matter.  The first two questions are about the economy and creating new jobs. What is the guiding force that drives the answers to these questions?  The answer is money.  More specifically, growth and income.  Now that we’ve revealed the basis of these answers, not only does the media remind us daily of the poor state of the economy, but more importantly, it is reflected in our cash flow reports and profit and loss statements.  Also, when growth is rare and flat or falling sales is reported as the status quo, it’s no wonder over 70% of entrepreneurs polled are not planning on creating new jobs. 

But we have to remember that we, as entrepreneurs of small and new businesses are the life blood of our economy. It is up to us to raise the bar and bring growth back into the market. We’ve realized our potential, it’s right there in the poll, “85% of entrepreneurs think that the United States is a great country in which to start a business”.

There you have it.  A large majority of entrepreneurs have their heads in the right place, we believe this market can provide the growth and profitability needed by new companies.  We, as business owners, need to be diligent and stay informed so that we can learn from the failed businesses across the U.S. and use proven business practices, solid business planning, refined financial management, marketing development and strategic planning mixed with our knowledge and unique outlook to grow and strengthen our businesses and the economy as a whole along with it.

Carl Schramm says during this interview that, “Overall…we’re not seeing robust recovery [but] entrepreneurs are the key to [recovery] they are the people who create the jobs”.  He also states that, “In the past seven recessions and recoveries that we’ve seen, it has been … the expansion of employment in brand new businesses. Businesses that are less than five years old, that have been critical in the recovery and the expansion [of the economy]“.

Remember looking at the facts can remind us of the huge potential for your business:

• Up to 80% of new hires come from small and new businesses
• Nearly all net job creation in the U.S. comes from firms less than 5 years old
• 50% of Fortune 500 companies were founded in a recession or bear market
• 600,00 new firms form in the U.S. every year; even during recessions

Read Carl Schramm’s entire State of the Entrepreneur Address and poll results here.

While change is a scary monster to some, it is unavoidable and must be faced or you may risk falling behind; and playing catch up isn’t a fun game to play in the business world. 

Ok, let’s do it, let’s change!  Right?  But the key to making the right change lies within the minds of one group of people: Your Customers!

-What do they want?  Why do they want it?
-What do they need?  Why do they need it?
-How do they perceive your company?
-What do they think of your products and services?
-What do they think of your competition?
-How do they distinguish between you and your competition?

All of these things and more need to be considered when making the right changes in your company.  In business, the need for change is controlled by the customer.  In fact, it is demanded by the customer because they will take their business and money elsewhere if their needs can’t be met.

So, how do we tell our customers that we’ve heard their voices? Through advertising!  You must promote your business in a way that highlights the best and brightest aspects of your company in order to keep customers coming back and bring new customers in.

There are many ways to advertise and multiple mediums through which to do so.  You must research to figure out which form of advertising is best for your company; that will reach your customers, highlight your qualities and express your unique selling advantage in an efficient and effective way.

Click Here, Magazines Turn to New Strategies for Revenue, to read about advertising companies making changes in order to fit an always changing market.

At this point, no one knows. The intricacies of this legislation are being changed and tweaked as needed and the details are ambiguous at best.  But, this in no way alleviates the need to know how this will effect businesses and one business owner got the opportunity to seek answers.

Patty Brigulio and President Obama courtesy of Stephen Crowley/NYTimes

Above is a shot of business owner Patty Brigulio and President Obama sharing words over the question she was able to ask at one of the many open forum town hall style meetings that President Obama is holding across the United States to talk about health insurance reform.

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Obama Meets the Businesswoman: The Story Behind the Photo

It turns out The Agenda is not alone in thinking President Obama may have a public relations problem with small business. Patty Briguglio, who can be seen above, and on the front page of today’s Times, exchanging a wagging finger with the President, agrees and she should know: She runs a public relations firm, MMI Associates, in Raleigh, N.C. She’s also a small-business owner.

Ms. Briguglio pays for much of her 19 employees’ health insurance, though she doesn’t offer a group plan. Because her staff is so young, it is cheaper to simply provide an allowance for them to purchase individual policies. The President was in town to talk up health care, and earlier at the town hall event, he called on Ms. Briguglio. She asked, “What current long-term social program created and run by the government should we look to as a model of success and one that we as taxpayers should be confident that a new government-run health care system would be better than the current system in place?”

The President suggested both Medicare and V.A. hospitals, which, he said, “have very high satisfaction rates.” Further, he added, “Medicare costs have gone up more slowly than private sector health care costs.” The answer didn’t fully satisfy Ms. Briguglio. “I’ve never associated any government program with ‘cost-effective’ or ‘efficient,’” she said in an interview today. “I don’t believe that the government will be a better steward of the money that I set aside for health care for my employees than I will be.”

This was only one of several questions she hoped to ask the President. Of even greater concern, she says, is the tax hit she will take. And that’s the story behind the photo. At that moment, as the President made his exit, Ms. Briguglio pressed him on the issue and got a response: “He said to me, ‘The tax credits would more than offset any tax increases,’ ” she recounted. “And I said, ‘I’m holding you to that.’ And he laughed and said, ‘O.K.’ And I said, ‘No, I mean it — I expect you to keep your word on this.’”

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Read the full article by Robb Mandelbaum at NYTimes.com

While their methods might not be what works for businesses on a smaller scale the driving question behind it stays relevant; what is it our customers respond and react to, in forms of advertising, in today’s market?

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Lab Watches Web Surfers to See Which Ads Work

Like other television companies, Disney Media Networks — which includes ABC, ESPN, ABC Family and Disney XD — has long conducted intense consumer research about its programming. But now, as the Web and DVRs uproot the way people consume television, and thus rip apart the industry’s business model, the unit is adding advertiser research as a fresh focus of intense inquiry.

Disney will unveil some of the lab’s early findings, including some surprises about new forms of online ads, on Tuesday in a presentation to about 200 advertisers in New York.

It is relatively easy for Internet companies and their advertisers to measure precisely how often Web site visitors click on advertisements, and which kinds of ads draw the most clicks. But what about those who do not click, the many millions of others whose eyes merely flit across the screen? Disney and other companies say they believe that not nearly enough is known about them — what kinds of ads in which configurations are likeliest to draw them, and hold them?

Read the entire article @ NYTimes.com

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Last Man Standing

With the closure of Circuit City earlier this year — and Comp USA before that — Best Buy is the only remaining national electronics chain. On its face, that would seem like a good thing for the company. But analysts argue that Best Buy has inherited a lump of coal.

Even in good times, electronics retailing can be a brutally tough business, littered with failures that were unable to survive thin profit margins, ever-falling prices, feast-and-famine product cycles and, more recently, major price pressure from Internet retailers.

Best Buy is “the last man standing, and it’s a good company,” said Andy Hargreaves, an analyst with Pacific Crest Securities. But “consumer electronics is one of the worst businesses in the world to be in.”  Brian J. Dunn, Best Buy’s new chief executive, disputed that characterization.

At the same time, Mr. Dunn, who started as a store salesman at Best Buy in 1985, plans to keep renovating. He acknowledges that being the last remaining chain won’t ensure success.

Mr. Dunn said that Best Buy must account for changing tastes, like the shift away from CDs and DVDs, which have for years been a crucial generator of foot traffic in Best Buy stores. To cope, Mr. Dunn said, Best Buy was in the process of moving those products out of the center of its stores and focusing eyes and attention on fast-growing product areas, like mobile phones and low-cost laptops.

And Mr. Dunn said he wanted to create an atmosphere where consumers were attracted not just to products but also to services that help them master fast-changing technology and configure and connect devices.

“The center of the store will become an expression of the way people connect — connect with movies, music, pictures, to each other — all the things that matter,” he said.

Read the entire story @ NYTimes.com/business

Mom-and-Pop Operators Turn to Social Media

SAN FRANCISCO — Three weeks after Curtis Kimball opened his crème brûlée cart in San Francisco, he noticed a stranger among the friends in line for his desserts. How had the man discovered the cart? He had read about it on Twitter.

For Mr. Kimball, who conceded that he “hadn’t really understood the purpose of Twitter,” the beauty of digital word-of-mouth marketing was immediately clear. He signed up for an accountand has more than 5,400 followers who wait for him to post the current location of his itinerant cart and list the flavors of the day, like lavender and orange creamsicle.

“I would love to say that I just had a really good idea and strategy, but Twitter has been pretty essential to my success,” he said. He has quit his day job as a carpenter to keep up with the demand.

Much has been made of how big companies like Dell, Starbucks and Comcastuse Twitter to promote their products and answer customers’ questions. But today, small businesses outnumber the big ones on the free microblogging service, and in many ways, Twitter is an even more useful tool for them.

For many mom-and-pop shops with no ad budget, Twitter has become their sole means of marketing. It is far easier to set up and update a Twitter account than to maintain a Web page. And because small-business owners tend to work at the cash register, not in a cubicle in the marketing department, Twitter’s intimacy suits them well.

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To Read the Entire Article visit NYTimes.com/business

There are many ways to get that answer whether it be with sales reports from like businesses, surveys and my personal favorite, good old fashioned research.

The following article  follows a large company with wide customer base: Netflix.  They need to accomplish a goal that will help them to sell more products and gain revenue by taking advantage of their own resources (sales reports, in this case customer viewing habits) and employing the help of experts to apply the needed change.

The Crowd Is Wise (When It’s Focused)

A look at recent cases and new research suggests that open-innovation models succeed only when carefully designed for a particular task and when the incentives are tailored to attract the most effective collaborators. “There is this misconception that you can sprinkle crowd wisdom on something and things will turn out for the best,” said Thomas W. Malone, director of the Center for Collective Intelligence at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “That’s not true. It’s not magic.”

“It starts out as crowdsourcing and it is culled to a set of action items,” said Jeffrey T. Kreulen, a researcher at the I.B.M. Almaden Research Center in San Jose, Calif.

Open-innovation models are adopted to overcome the constraints of corporate hierarchies. But successful projects are typically hybrids of ideas flowing from a decentralized crowd and a hierarchy winnowing and making decisions.

OPENING the corporate doors to ideas and inspiration from the collective crowd holds great potential, but there are pitfalls, warns Henry Chesbrough, executive director of the Center for Open Innovation at the University of California, Berkeley. To succeed, Mr. Chesbrough said, a company must have a culture open to outside ideas and a system for vetting and acting on them.

“In business, it’s not how many ideas you have,” he observed. “What matters is how many ideas you translate into products and services.”

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The last quote here is my favorite because it’s true!  Owners, employees and collaborators can talk about new changes, procedures or products forever; but until they take action, all of the discussion and discovery is wasted.