Victor Vilchez, wearing a suit on the right, tours the Bendix facility in Avon with his fellow high school students. Prior to the pandemic, Cleveland educational nonprofit Effective Leadership Academy (ELA) served as “the cherry on top” in polishing off student workforce and entrepreneurial development. But after a year of virus-spurred remote learning, ELA’s mission of social and emotional development is no longer seen as a luxury. Instead, it is now deemed by educators as essential, said organization founder and executive director Flo Brett. The nonprofit teams with schools and Northeast Ohio companies to develop a curriculum of leadership, communication and additional “soft skills” needed in the workforce. Ideally, participants will be prepared for job opportunities around STEAM – which is STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) with arts included. “What we do as an organization is development self-understanding,” said Brett, whose Warrensville Heights enterprise partners with 230 schools and 120 businesses in Cuyahoga and Lorain counties. “You never know when you will be in that moment when you have an opportunity. If you haven’t got the right mindset or the right tools in your backpack, (that opportunity) will never come through.” Successful people understand the value of self-determination, […]

Click here to view original web page at www.ideastream.org

President Biden will head to Capitol Hill on Tuesday to deliver the State of the Union , and while the economy is showing some positive signs with continued job growth and inflation starting to dissipate, small businesses are facing hurdles. For them, the state of the union may be heading in the right direction – but the state of their relationship with the government is not, and they want action. Seventy percent of small businesses gave the federal government a C grade or below according to the latest Goldman Sachs small businesses survey. The survey comes on the heels of the news that the unemployment rate in January ticked down to 3.4% , the lowest level seen since 1969. It shows the federal government is coming up short when it comes to the effectiveness of programs, services and tax credits for small businesses. Part of the problem is awareness; the survey found 85% of businesses gave the federal government a C grade or below for marketing and communicating about what’s available to them. "Business owners don’t feel like the programs are all that effective, and they also don’t even feel like they have a sense of what’s available, some […]

Click here to view original web page at www.cbsnews.com

BERLIN, GERMANY – MARCH 25: Peloton logo sign is displayed at the entrance on March 25, 2021 in … [+] Peloton stock posted a better-than-expected set of Q2 FY’23 results, giving investors some confidence that the turnaround plan unveiled last year is working. Peloton stock was up by 26% in Thursday’s trading following the report. While revenues fell by 30% compared with the year-ago period to $792.7 million, they came in ahead of estimates. Peloton’s net losses narrowed versus last year to $0.98 per share. Sales of connected fitness products, such as treadmills and exercise bikes, fell by about 52% versus last year to $381.4 million as the work out from home trend seen through Covid-19 continued to ease. On the other hand, the sale of subscriptions – which includes workout content plans that sync up with Peloton’s connected equipment, or work as a standalone smartphone app – rose by 22% versus last year to $411.3 million, coming in ahead of the equipment business. Apart from weakening demand in recent quarters, Peloton was weighed down by a host of other issues including bad inventory planning, and poorly timed investments into production. However, the company has been overhauling its business […]

Click here to view original web page at www.forbes.com

Shutterstock Corporate welfare projects do not correlate with employment recovery Lawmakers portray themselves as being in a high-stakes war with other states over jobs, thus needing to offer select businesses more subsidies in order to grow the economy. “For too long, we were fighting with a hand tied behind our back. Now we’ve got the upper hand,” Gov. Gretchen Whitmer said in her State of the State address . The governor is mistaken. The way to increase jobs is not to write checks to a handful of big companies. It’s to improve the state’s business climate. The state of Michigan already has a program that allows administrators to give whoever they want however much money they’d like, subject only to limits on how much money legislators put in the fund. That’s different from and more generous than programs in most other states . But being a leader in subsidies doesn’t translate into job creation. Half the states have fully recovered from the job losses they endured during the pandemic. Michigan hasn’t. It’s down 71,400 jobs, a 1.6% decrease that is the 13th-worst among the 50 states. Lawmakers can use subsidies to get headlines about companies locating or expanding in […]

Click here to view original web page at www.mackinac.org

FedEx launched its 11th annual Small Business Grant Contest on Jan. 31 , which will award $330,000 in grants and services to 10 U.S.-based small businesses. Here are three things to know about FedEx’s Small Business Grant Contest. When is the FedEx Small Business Grant Contest? The entry period for the contest began Jan. 31 and runs until Feb. 21. The 2022 contest attracted nearly 18,000 entrants. Over the past 10 years, more than 68,000 businesses have entered the contest and a total of more than $1.6 million in cash and prizes has been distributed to more than 111 businesses. How do I enter the FedEx Small Business Grant Contest? To be eligible, a participant has to be a U.S.-based, for-profit small business with one to 99 employees, been in operations selling a product or service for six months or more as of Jan. 31 and have a shipping and printing need. To enter, participants can visit smallbusinessgrant.fedex.com and enter their business information including a FedEx shipping account number, write a short profile about their business and upload up to four photos of their business or product, including their logo. Participants also can submit a short “elevator pitch” video […]

Click here to view original web page at www.commercialappeal.com

LEGO’s existing education office in Back Bay, Boston. As Connecticut continues to lick its wounds following LEGO’s announced plans to relocate from its longtime U.S. headquarters in Enfield to Boston, there will be plenty of debate about what drove yet another major employer to flee the state. Not helping is the fact that just one week earlier, Campbell Soup Co. announced it was closing subsidiary Pepperidge Farm’s Norwalk headquarters as the processed food and snack maker consolidates operations in New Jersey. Some will blame Connecticut’s usual weaknesses — high costs of living and doing business and over-regulation. Greg Bordonaro While those remain significant challenges that policymakers should address, they apparently weren’t the driving factors behind LEGO’s decision to abandon its Enfield home of nearly 50 years and move 740 employees 100 miles northeast to Boston. In an announcement about the pending move — to be completed in 2026 — Skip Kodak, LEGO Group’s Americas president, described Boston as “one of the best cities in the world to attract and retain talent,” and that the city’s “world-class academic institutions, skilled workforce and great quality of life makes it an ideal location for our U.S. head office.” It’s the same message […]

Click here to view original web page at www.hartfordbusiness.com

LadderUp launches for local retailers in Atlanta, Birmingham, Detroit, Houston and Washington, D.C. providing business owners with capital, e-commerce-focused technical assistance, and education from industry leaders BIRMINGHAM, Ala., Feb. 6, 2023 /PRNewswire/ — Applications opened today for LadderUp, an innovative new accelerator program from retail technology company Shipt that will equip local retailers with tools needed to thrive in an ever-evolving marketplace. The program builds upon a set of commitments announced at the White House Conference on Hunger, Nutrition, and Health to expand access to food in underserved communities, particularly for those with mobility or transportation barriers. LadderUp will support local economies by helping local small businesses, especially ones owned by LGBTQ+ people and people of color, grow and compete by providing capital, e-commerce-focused technical assistance, and education from industry leaders to businesses around the country. In line with their commitment to level the economic playing field for Black and other underrepresented populations, Shipt aims to have at least 50% of the businesses in LadderUp to be LGBTQ+ and BIPOC-owned. "As a growing tech company that is putting food insecurity and equity at the forefront of its work, Shipt is proud to announce the launch of LadderUp," said Kamau […]

Click here to view original web page at www.prnewswire.com

Illustration: Brendan Lynch/Axios Richmond has one of the highest rates of Black-owned businesses in the nation. What’s happening: Roughly 6.7% of businesses in the Richmond area are Black-owned, tying it with Atlanta for third-highest percentage of Black-owned businesses in the country, according to Lending Tree , which analyzed data from 2019. Fayetteville, North Carolina, comes in first with more than 11%, followed by D.C. Nationwide, the rate is 2% for companies that have employees, according to a 2022 Alliance for Entrepreneurial Equity study . Yes, but: Neither rate is proportional to the Black population, which is 13% nationwide and 28% in metro Richmond . Why it matters: 80% of Black-owned businesses fail within the first 18 months, per the Alliance , so we want to give them some attention in honor of Black History Month. What are your favorite Black-owned businesses in town? Let us know so we can feature some this month — and all year.

Click here to view original web page at www.axios.com

Pierre Laboisse, Executive Vice President of Global Sales and Marketing, member of the Executive Management Team at ams OSRAM. getty Entrepreneurs are intimately familiar with all aspects of their business. They know where the revenue is coming from at all times, they understand the health of their business, they see the big picture and how it fits with their overall business strategy and they have deep insights to their customers . To best manage and lead, salespeople need to think of the company they work for the same way. They need to see it as their own business and know the details inside and out. When customers ask a question, you should be quick with an answer. Like an entrepreneur, you should be able to anticipate the changing needs of your customers and be able to discuss the crucial points quickly. This shows you care and are engaged in your customers’ success. Once you dive deep into all aspects of the business and make your customers’ success your top priority, you’re no longer simply selling products. You’re doing more. You’re solving problems. And when you do this—when you make decisions based on solving customer needs rather than selling a […]

Click here to view original web page at www.forbes.com

getty By now you would think death by PowerPoint was a forgotten phenomenon, but you would be wrong. Remarkably, business people continue to waste their audience’s time with boring, redundant and uninteresting presentations, filled with bullet points, charts and graphs, and information that is not important to the listener. In my work with business teams, especially sales teams, it amazes me that so many are so dysfunctional in the way they tell their story. I believe we (the business community at large) are still less-than-compelling presenters for four primary reasons. I will share them with you here. 1. Laziness Rather than take the time to be prepared to carry the conversation and know the subject matter adequately, it is much easier to simply put it on the slides. Have several bullet points per slide, and now you can simply look at the information and talk from there. This places the emphasis on the slides and not on you, with the result being your audience is reading the slides and not listening to you. It also hinders any conversational approach, which is what people tend to prefer. Almost all charts and graphs are confusing, and the sight of a spreadsheet […]

Click here to view original web page at www.forbes.com