Tag: business issues

How to Show Your Customers That Small Business Saturday Isn’t the Only Time to Shop Local

Who has time to shop small?

I’m the president of a company, a wife, a mother, and an active member of my community. I get stressed out just thinking about the commitment it takes to go to stores in my small town and shop. Truth be told, I don’t have time to do much purchasing that can’t happen on a flight or after I’ve put the kids to bed — even for groceries. If that’s the case for me, I know that it’s the same deal for your potential customers. That’s why, as business owners, it’s important to educate the community about shopping local.

I live in Sonoma County, where the Kincade fire recently devastated the region. Local businesses have been hit especially hard by the fires themselves and by PG&E power outages. The last time I was at the grocery store, it occurred to me that I shouldn’t be buying strawberries from seven states away or a different country. I need to put my money where my mouth is and shop local businesses. I love farmers’ markets, but struggle to make time to get there. I still have to buy groceries, so I’ve switched from my nearby Safeway to a store that sources food only from within Sonoma County called Oliver’s Market.

That’s just one way that I’ve found that I can give a boost to small businesses without going out of my way. In honor of Small Business Saturday, here are others ideas for how to help your area entrepreneurs this holiday season.

Challenge customers to eat local for Thanksgiving and other meals.

I already talked about how I’m doing this every day, but even confirmed local diners sometimes find it challenging for the big events.Your job is to convince your customers that it’s worth the effort.

Do you have a cracker company that would be perfect for a celebratory cheese plate? Consider partnering with a local dairy to get the word out. Whether you’re a turkey farm, are smoking up the best hams in town, or have a small business selling tamales to add variety to shoppers’ holiday tables, your community needs your flavors right now.

Dessert is easy. There are plenty of people looking for local bakeries ready to fill up a flaky crust with pecans or chocolate cream. Being mindful of where your food comes from isn’t just good for local business people, either. It’s better for the environment (bye-bye food miles) and is likely to be healthier, too.

Buy from small businesses on Amazon.

Most of us think of Amazon as the big, bad brother. I mean, it’s been accused of being a monopoly. You can’t get any further away from being a small business. But in reality, there’s more to it than that.

Amazon Sellers are small-business people. They are just using the biggest platform they can to get their products to the masses and I respect that. One user I know is Crystal Swain-Bates, whose excellent line of children’s books ensure black children are highlighted throughout stories. Goldest Karat Publishing made her an Amazon featured seller. For the holidays, I especially love Amazon Handmade, a community just for artisans to sell their handcrafted wares.

But I promise this isn’t just an ad for Amazon. I also love Etsy. You can search it by location so you can specifically choose gifts made by someone in your community. I’m always surprised by all the cool handiwork my neighbors are presenting.

Make time to go analog.

Yes, I know I said I’m too busy to shop downtown, but I can make an exception a few times a year. Heading to Main Street has many advantages. If your business is brick-and-mortar, congratulations. If not, it might be high time to get involved in a holiday market or two.

Connect with real, live people with whom you can have lasting relationships for years to come. As you get to know their likes and dislikes, you’ll help them learn to shop smarter — and with you.

Look at your own company.

OK, you’re not buying your business a Christmas present, but when it comes to shopping for yourself and your team’s daily needs, you can keep small and local in mind. For example, at my company, we use a local business for many of our printing needs. It’s harder than going to Office Depot, but well worth it. In our Houston division, we just moved offices, and we’ve made it a point to work with local designers to get everything on point.

Whether it’s candies or technology, we try to shop among the people who need us most. In my experience, that’s how you find the best gifts of all, just shop small.

By Elizabeth GorePresident and chairwoman, HelloAlice.com

@ElizabethGore

Source: How to Show Your Customers That Small Business Saturday Isn’t the Only Time to Shop Local

Script: “Small businesses are the lifeblood of our communities. Absolutely crucial. Vital. They make it unique and they make you happy to live where you live. It brings a little flair to the towns that we have. On November 26th, you can make a huge impact by shopping small on Small Business Saturday. One purchase. One purchase is all it takes. Pledge to shop small on Small Business Saturday. It will help support your community. And that is a big deal. It’s pretty big. So, pick your favorite local business and join the movement. I pledge to shop small: at Big Top Candy Shop; at Juno Baby Store; Allen’s Boots; Sammy’s Camera. You don’t have to buy the whole store. Make the pledge to shop small. Pleeeease. On Small Business Saturday. [SHOP SMALL] [SMALL BUSINESS SATURDAY – NOV. 26] [American Express – founding partner]

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People & Blogs

It’s August, and All of Europe Is on Vacation. How Do You Run Your Global Business?

Paid vacation time is mandatory in the European Union–four weeks is a minimum. That number can seem crazy to people in the United States, where it takes 20 years of service to reach an average of 20 vacation days a year–and even when we have it, we don’t use it all.

But, in my experience, Europe embraces vacation–sometimes in ways that make no sense. I’ve frequently found restaurants that close for two weeks during peak tourist season–because the owners want to take their own vacation time. I’d think they would close in the offseason and make money while they could, but the vacation culture is strong.

This summer, my family is basically staying put, for a variety of reasons. We’re making a couple of short trips, but otherwise staying in our home in Switzerland (which, admittedly, is a prime vacation spot in and of itself). And it’s impossible to get anything done.

My lawyer has been on vacation for the past three weeks and will be back next week. I have some things I need her to look at, and they have to wait.

Getting a doctor’s appointment? Good luck! At least the walk-in clinic runs year-round.

While this affects my day-to-day life because I’m physically here, it can also affect your business, even if you’re based in the United States. When someone says, “The Geneva office is closed for three weeks,” they aren’t joking, and no one around here even bats an eyelash. So, how do you do the international part of your business when everyone else is at the beach? Here are some ideas:

Plan ahead

This is going to happen every year. Some countries are worse than others, with everyone going at the same time. One of the problems is that European schoolchildren tend to have shorter summer vacations–six weeks is common–compared with the 10 to 12 weeks American schoolchildren get. Don’t cry for the poor, suffering schoolchildren here–they get an additional eight weeks throughout the school year.

But those six weeks are going to vary from country to country. German and British schools tend to get out at the end of July, while Swiss schools close the last week in June. So, you’ll have better luck with your London office in July than you will with your Swiss office. Go ahead and ask when peak vacation season is and plan accordingly.

Partner with larger companies

While small businesses can be excellent partners, if you will need people year-round, without fail, a large company will be a better bet than a small one. The multinational corporation isn’t going to shut down its Paris office for the summer, but the small business might close its doors for the entire month of August. Ask when you are building relationships. They won’t think to bring it up, because it’s often a normal part of doing business here.

Embrace vacation yourself

Go. Take a vacation. Step away from the office and your phone and your laptop. Europeans have proved that the world doesn’t end if you go on a vacation. If you’re good at what you do, people will be waiting for you when you get back. It’s OK to take some downtime.

Just make sure that if you do come to Europe for your vacation that the restaurants will be open in the small village you thought looked charming. Otherwise, you may be miserable during your vacation.

By: Suzanne Lucas, Freelance writer @RealEvilHRLady

Source: It’s August, and All of Europe Is on Vacation. How Do You Run Your Global Business? | Inc.com

This Hedge Fund Superstar Thinks Climate Change Will Impact All Your Investments—And Soon

Robert-Gibbins-by-Levon-Biss-for-Forbes

Since November, Robert Gibbins has crisscrossed the globe attending scientific conferences, traveling from his home in Geneva, Switzerland, to Arizona, Spain and Austria. The events had a common theme—climate change—and were well attended by academics, bureaucrats and politicians. One group was conspicuously absent. “I didn’t see any other investors there,” he says.

That boggles his mind. “Climate change is something we have to include in every single analysis, every investment,” he says. Most people think—or hope—that global warming is something their children or grandchildren will have to reckon with. Gibbins disagrees. The 49-year-old founder of Autonomy Capital ($5.5 billion in assets) thinks that climate change is happening suddenly and soon.

He structures every bet his hedge fund makes around his belief that the world is skidding toward a future that’s overheated and underwater—and that carbon will be treated as a costly waste product that needs to be captured and stored. Gibbins has already made good money betting on European carbon-futures contracts and expects richer plays to come.

Gibbins has an impressive track record making big calls. His fund, which places large bets on sweeping economic and political trends, is an industry standout, returning an annualized 12.85% net of fees since its November 2003 inception, compared to 8.9% for the S&P 500 index.

The ski-happy, outdoors-loving son of a Vancouver real estate agent, Gibbins made stops at the University of Pennsylvania and the trading desks of JPMorgan and Lehman Brothers before starting Autonomy. For many countries, he believes, climate change will be a major stress on economic stability. If a country is a basket case now, it’s only going to get worse as the seas keep rising and other fast-paced changes hit. “It’s not enough anymore to create a cheap T-shirt, car or semiconductor,” he says. To that end, Gibbins recently shorted the debt and currencies of Turkey and South Africa. He views both countries’ governments—led by Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Turkey and the ANC party in South Africa—as totally inept. “You can choose to be ruled by the ANC or Erdogan, or you can be a modern industrial economy,” he says. “You can’t have both.”

By contrast, he’s going long on Argentina. On recent trips there, Gibbins found people were exhausted after a decade of economic hardship and failed policies, convincing him the country won’t return populist Cristina Fernández de Kirchner to power (she last held the presidency in December 2015). The country’s debt is priced for disaster. “My view is, in Argentina, the society has had enough. It doesn’t want policies that are designed for the next three days,” Gibbins says.

As he sees it, all sophisticated investors these days have access to the best government and economic data. He travels 150 days a year in the pursuit of an edge and expects the 24 investment pros and economists working for him to do the same. He meets with local bureaucrats, journalists and business executives to gauge how decisions are made and how well local institutions function—and whether they can handle chal­lenges like climate change.

What about individual stocks? One obvious thought is to avoid property insurers like AllState and Travelers, which seem likely to get clobbered by rising costs, paying out more as weather-related damage piles up. Gibbins doesn’t buy it. He thinks insurers could fare just fine because much of their business is writing coverage for short periods, giving them the chance to reprice their products. Gibbins says REITs have a lot more risk.

You want even more against-the-grain thinking? Despite President Trump’s decision to pull out of the Paris climate accord, Gibbins anticipates the U.S. will eventually take the lead with Europe on a global deal to limit carbon emissions and penalize countries that don’t comply. So Gibbins thinks big oil stocks, like Exxon, or the currencies of oil-addicted nations, like Nigeria, are vulnerable.

Nathan Vardi

Forbes Staff

I am a senior editor at Forbes who likes digging into Wall Street, hedge funds and private equity firms, looking for both the good and the bad.

Source: This Hedge Fund Superstar Thinks Climate Change Will Impact All Your Investments—And Soon

Why You Should Not Risk Your Personal & Financial Data For Attractive Deals Online – zoaib Saleem

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A recent WhatsApp forward claimed that a popular e-commerce website is offering 99% discount on popular gadgets. The message included a link to the website that looks similar to the original e-commerce website. It could be an attempt to steal your personal information by tricking you into believing that you are getting a great deal. This type of fraud is called phishing. This can also happen over emails, where you get an email that seems to be from an authentic source, but in reality it is not.

A recent survey by cyber security firm McAfee India has revealed that a majority of consumers are willing to take risk while shopping online. The survey had 72% respondents (including 44% who said, “Yes, I would” and 28% who said “probably”) admitting they would purchase the same item from one online retailer over another if the item’s price was significantly cheaper, even if they weren’t 100% confident the website was genuine or secure. At the same time, 74% of the respondents said they consider clicking on unfamiliar websites or emails as dangerous, but do their research before making a purchase.

The study that was commissioned by McAfee India in October 2018 surveyed 1,017 adults between the ages of 18 and 55, in India.

Online risks

The survey has highlighted that a big percentage of those buying products online, particularly during festive sales, do not mind if their details like mobile number, email, residential address and bank account details fall in the wrong hands.

Cyber criminals can exploit any information, so users should be cautious about what they share on social media platforms, online forums, on websites or via email. Jens Monrad, senior intelligence analyst at FireEye, a cyber security firm, said, “As we rely more on digital communication, our digital footprint has dramatically expanded during the last five years. From a cyber criminal perspective this means that the information can be used in cyber attacks or to appear more trustworthy (by social engineering) or even exploited in extortion attacks.”

A recent example of how this information can be used, Monrad said, is that unsolicited emails are being sent to users, where the sender claims to have explicit content, stolen from the victim’s computer. In order not to submit the “embarrassing material” to co-workers, family and friends, the victims are being told to pay a fee via cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin.

The survey also found that many users face financial stress due to the purchases they make during the festive season; 77% of the respondents said they feel some stress about spending during online sales. This could further lead these people towards risky behaviour like using shortcuts to get a good deal. In fact, 55% of the respondents said they check their bank or card statements frequently during the festive sales period.

What you should do

You do not need to be a cyber security expert to protect yourself while being online. A lot can be dealt with by just being alert. “Today, using the Internet, either for shopping, for work or browsing, requires that the user employs a degree of scepticism and tries to judge if the content they are viewing or receiving via email is legitimate, coming from a trusted source and potentially can be verified in other places or sources,” Monrad said.

It also involves updating softwares on your devices. Having a cyber security product on your devices that offers malware scanning and protection also helps, he said.

So do not fall for emails and forwards that promise you steep discounts that sound unbelievable. Also, make it a point to report such messages as spam. This could help prevent the spread of such information and keep you and others safe online.

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