Conferences can help you meet people in your industry, find new leads, learn about new trends and more. Finding the right conferences, though, is somewhat of a challenge. Lanyrd can help you sort conferences by interest and location, plus find out what conferences your friends and colleagues are attending. What’s more, you can track what’s going on at the conference even if you can’t attend. Once the conference is over, Lanyrd can help you find slides, video and podcasts from the conference. If you spoke at the conference, this tool is a great way to help build up your speaker portfolio.
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Small Business News
Employees Are Feeling Confident. Will It Help or Hurt Your Business?
May 25th, 2012 :: Rieva LesonskyBy Rieva Lesonsky
Employees are feeling better about themselves, their workplaces and the job market in general, according to a recent study by HR and staffing firm Randstad, reported in BenefitsPro. Will their happier outlook mean good news—or bad—for your business?
The survey found 75 percent of U.S. workers feel greater job security, which is a positive sign for small businesses. Also positive: 74 percent say they are proud to work for their current companies, 78 percent feel inspired to do their best work every day, and 68 percent enjoy going to work—up 3 percent from the prior survey in March.
However, these positive attitudes could have negative fallout for employers, as 54 percent of employees believe the job market will turn around this year. While they’re not quite ready to jump ship—58 percent say they don’t think they could find a better job right away—45 percent of U.S. workers say they plan to consider their options once the employment picture improves.
The survey concludes that increased confidence means employers have a chance to re-engage and energize their employees. But it’s also important to treat them right, as newly confident employees are seeking more rewards in order to stay in their current jobs. For example, just 20 percent say they would accept reduced benefits in order to keep their jobs, and only 10 percent say they would accept a demotion.
What does it all mean to you? If you’ve been expecting employees to do more for less since the recession began, now may be the time to ease up so you don’t lose their goodwill. If you still can’t quite afford to offer monetary rewards such as bonuses or raises, figure out other ways you can reward employees that don’t require an outlay of cash. Extra time off, flexible hours, fun activities or other unpaid benefits can keep your team energized and happy to be working for you–even as the economy improves.
Image by Flickr user enokson (Creative Commons)
The Best (and Worst) States for Small Business
May 24th, 2012 :: Maria Valdez HaubrichBy Maria Valdez Haubrich
Are you considering moving or expanding your business? Then you might want to get out your ten-gallon hat. A recent survey to uncover the most small-business-friendly states, conducted by Thumbtack and The Kauffman Foundation, found Texas and Idaho ranked highest overall.
The 2012 Thumbtack Small Business Survey polled 6,000 small business owners nationwide about conditions in their states including:
- Ease of starting a business
- Hiring costs
- Regulations
- Training and networking programs available
- The region’s current economic health
You might be surprised to find that taxes weren’t the only—or even the most important—factor small business owners cared about. Easy-to-understand licensing regulations and helpful training programs were also seen as critical in creating a small-business-friendly environment. In fact, Small businesses said licensing requirements were nearly twice as important as tax-related regulations in determining their state or city government’s overall business-friendliness.
Here are some of the findings:
- Texas had three of the top five cities (Dallas, San Antonio and Austin), while California was home to the bottom three (Los Angeles, San Diego and Sacramento).
- Colorado Springs and Washington, DC, had the nation’s healthiest small businesses.
- Idaho, Nevada and Delaware had the most small business-friendly tax codes; California and New Mexico had the least-friendly tax codes.
- Nebraska small business owners were the most optimistic about their business improving during 2012, while Iowans were the least optimistic.
- The South was the most small-business-friendly region of the country, while New England was rated the most hostile.
View the full survey results, including state-by-state breakdowns, here.
Image by Flickr user cote (Creative Commons)
Project Eve: Social Network for Female Entrepreneurship: Small Business Resource
May 23rd, 2012 :: Maria Valdez HaubrichStarted by two entrepreneurial women looking to promote, support and celebrate women business owners, Project Eve is a platform for female entrepreneurs to communicate and collaborate (minus the sharp elbows). The site is hoping to connect women across all industries and geographies looking to share their expertise and experiences, ask questions and help each other out. The mission: to create a trusted community of women who want to see each other succeed. Sign up and find out about events, join a local Project Eve group, get feedback on an idea, receive an e-newsletter and more.
How to Treat Your Interns Right
May 23rd, 2012 :: Rieva LesonskyBy Rieva Lesonsky
The end of the school year is here, and that means it’s time for many small businesses to turn to a valuable labor source: interns. Hiring college students to work in your business, learning the ropes, is a rite of passage for students and small business owners alike, and can give you access to the energy, enthusiasm and tech skills of young people who can contribute a lot to your business.
But a growing number of companies, emboldened by the recession, are taking more than they’re giving from their interns. The New York Times recently reported on the growing practice of companies offering unpaid internships, having interns work 12 hours or more and using them solely for “grunt work” like fetching lunch and filing.
These aren’t just college students, either. The Times reports a growing number of college graduates are clamoring for internships in a tough labor market where the jobless rate for college grads age 24 and under is now 9.4 percent.
Are you exploiting your interns? Yes, entry-level work has always involved some degree of fetching and carrying, but if your internships aren’t offering anything of value, you could be running afoul of the law.
The major area to consider is whether your internships are paid or unpaid. State labor laws regulate this, so you first need to determine whether your state requires paying interns. If your state does allow unpaid internships, you also need to comply with federal Labor Department regulations.
In general, this means that:
- Unpaid interns must gain some type of vocational education from the internship.
- The internship is for the benefit of the interns.
- Interns can’t be used as substitutes for regular employees; instead, they have to be supervised by employees.
- The employer cannot derive immediate benefit from the intern’s work.
An unpaid internship may seem like a lot of trouble for you in the beginning, but if you handle it right, you can end up training someone who could become a valuable employee in the future. Stay on the right side of the law, and your company will be a desirable place for interns. Run afoul of the law, and you could ruin more than your business’s reputation.
Image by Flickr user Jessica Mullens (Creative Commons)
Small Business Owners Hopeful About Access to Credit
May 22nd, 2012 :: Karen AxeltonBy Karen Axelton
Small business owners are becoming more optimistic about the availability of credit, a new survey by Gallup shows. The Wells Fargo/Gallup Small Business Index poll conducted last month shows that small business owners’ perception of the ease of obtaining credit is the most positive it has been in three years.
The poll found a net difference of -7 percentage points between the 2 percent of small-business owners who say credit will be easy to get in the next 12 months and the 32 percent who say it will be difficult. Of course, that’s nowhere near the +45 of June 2007, before the recession began. The measure hasn’t been positive since a +14 reading in September 2008.
The poll also reflects a continuing trend, as the 32 percent who expect credit to be somewhat or very difficult to get in the next 12 months is down from 38 percent in January and 43 percent in November 2011.
That’s perception, but what about reality? Asked to look back over the past 12 months, 30 percent of small-business owners said that credit was somewhat or very difficult for their companies to get; 22 percent said it was somewhat or very easy to get. Thirty-four percent were either extremely or very confident they could get credit if needed; 39 percent were “somewhat” confident about this.
Small business owners are no strangers to borrowing: Three in four have previously borrowed money or used credit for their businesses. About half (47 percent) use just a little of the credit available to them, while 20 percent use most or all of it.
What does credit enable small business owners to do?
- 76 percent of owners say it has made it easier for them to run their businesses on a daily basis;
- 63 percent say it has helped them keep their businesses open;
- 50 percent say it has helped them expand their products and services, take more risks, and be more profitable;
- 33 percent say it helped their businesses with payroll; and
- 20 percent say it allowed them to hire.
Image by Flickr user Robert Scoble (Creative Commons)






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