Shoes Made From Plastic Waste | CoolBusinessIdeas.com

July 8, 2014July 7, 2014 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

With so many products being made out of plastic, it seems inevitable that when us humans are done with said products, we toss them. They, in turn, end up in the landfill or washed ashore on some poor, polluted beach. Three friends, Charles Duffy, William Gubbins, and Billy Turvey, got together to come up with a way of communicating the link between waste and consumerism, “and the disposability of contemporary products” in a project they call “Everything You Buy Is Rubbish”.After collecting plastic waste along the UK shores, including the Thames, the trio made a pair of shoes completely out of the rubbish they found.Shoes Made From Plastic Waste Found on UK Shores

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Will You Have the Retirement you Dreamed Of? | Peter Mehit

July 7, 2014January 22, 2015 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

No doubt many baby boomer business owners are looking forward to exiting their businesses and enjoying retirement. Yet many of them will find that what they can make from selling their business will not be what they need to retire comfortably. This can be true even if the business is profitable and has many customers. The five questions discussed briefly below are not all the things that an owner should look at, but they are the some of the major ones. An owner looking to maximize the sale price of their business needs to have a solid answer for each of these questions.

How much do I want (or need) my business to sell for? – Start with this question first. In answering this question, remember that you’ll have lots of time on your hands and will probably want to travel or engage in activities that will take some cash. Add in all your living expenses and you will have a number that is appropriate for the lifestyle you want to live. Add 100% to the number for inflation, changes and emergencies. Now you have a target. Working with a financial planner can help you determine this number with greater accuracy.

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Transfer Scam Targets Businesses | Business News Daily

July 7, 2014July 7, 2014 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

Businesses should be on the lookout for fraudulent emails that appear to be from vendors but are actually sent by scammers.

The Internet Crime Complaint Center IC3 — a partnership between the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the National White Collar Crime Center tasked with receiving Internet-related criminal complaints and further researching these criminal complaints — is warning businesses that scammers are sending companies emails via legitimate suppliers’ email accounts, asking for unauthorized wire transfers. The scam is being dubbed the “business email compromise.

“Businesses realize they’ve been duped only after making the wire transfer and then getting another request for a payment from their supplier or vendor after they deliver their merchandise.

Just Say No to Writing Checks | AllBusiness.com

July 7, 2014 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

If you still use paper checks to handle your small business’s expenses, such as paying your suppliers or your staff, writing checks could be costing your company money, a new survey by Dwolla reveals.

The study reports that the 67 percent of U.S. small businesses that still use paper checks, spend an average of nearly $900 a year doing so. That includes time spent on writing checks, maintaining paper check operations, labor and buying the actual checks and supplies. But that’s not the only way that using checks to pay your bills—and not offering your customers other payment options—can cost your business money.

3 Ways to Make Sure Your Next Virtual Meeting Runs Smoothly| Mashable

July 3, 2014 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

When done right, virtual video meetings — specifically Google Hangouts — can bring distant teams together, make sure everyone is on the same page, and allow everyone to be involved without the dim conference room atmosphere (who doesn’t love chilling out on the couch for a meeting?).

But when done wrong? Google Hangouts can be a huge waste of time, not to mention extremely distracting and awkward 15-second pauses are never fun.

Want to have an efficient and successful Google Hangout that doesn’t drive everyone crazy? Here are a couple of key things to keep in mind.

Goodwill is a Good Thing | Business-Valuation.biz

July 3, 2014 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

As suggested earlier, there are multiple interpretations of goodwill which extend beyond the SBA’s formulaic definition of “Selling Price Less Book Value of Acquired TangibleAssets”. Although there is some consistency between new GAAP rules on goodwill accounting, the IRS’ “residual method” and this “formula” method, the general shortcoming with the line of thinking put forth by the SBA to restrict or monitor goodwill-based lending is that goodwill should NOT be considered a negative feature or outcome or the reason why businesses default on their loans To the contrary, only successful firms will generate the profits needed to foster the presence of substantial goodwill however defined. In fact, the more profitable successful a firm becomes, the greater the firm’s goodwill value becomes all other things equal. The more profitable an asset-heavy manufacturing firm becomes, the greater the portion of value that is attributed to goodwill – is this a bad thing? In short, “goodwill” is a “good thing”.

Coinbase Launches A More Secure Bitcoin Storage Option Called ‘Vault’ | TechCrunch

July 2, 2014 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

One of the amusing things about the fast-maturing Bitcoin ecosystem is how the better-funded start-ups in the space are offering products that increasingly resemble services proffered by banks, the very entities they arguably are trying to disrupt.

With Bitcoin, transactions can be handled anonymously and irreversibly without the need for a third-party mediator. Yet that ability also has made Bitcoin historically prone to theft.

So many bigger Bitcoin start-ups have stepped up to offer different tiers of security. Today, Andreessen Horowitz-backed Coinbase jumps into the ring with a new product called Vault. It is complementary to Coinbase’s wallet, which is intended for day-to-day spending like a checking account.

The SBA Does Not Loan Money | Peter Mehit

July 2, 2014January 22, 2015 ~ knjohn ~ 1 Comment

The SBA Does Not Loan Money

Q. Should I get a loan from the SBA?

A. You can’t get a loan from the SBA, but you can get a SBA loan guarantee.

Come again?

Well, first off, the SBA does not loan money, so you can’t get a loan from the SBA. Only banks loan money. The SBA writes guarantees to limit the losses a bank will experience if your loan goes bad. This is important to know, because it means you will have to qualify under the bank’s rules.

These can be very different from the SBA’s. For example, it is not a requirement for you to collateralize the full loan amount to get an SBA guarantee. Under SBA rules if you run out of assets, but have pledged what you have available, you can be approved. Right now, we know of no bank that will make a loan without collateral equal to our greater than the amount you’re borrowing.

Each bank’s rules are slightly different, with the large banks having the most restrictive and the local and regional banks being the most liberal.

Continue reading “The SBA Does Not Loan Money | Peter Mehit” →

Weekly Business Update | LAEDC

July 1, 2014 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

THIS WEEK’S HEADLINES:

Personal Income Up in May; Consumption Falters
California State Tax Revenues Decline by 1.1% in 1Q14
U.S. Travel and Tourism Spending Declines in 1Q14
Events of Interest
- August 7, 2014: How to Do Business with the Asian Development Bank Forum