Monthly Archives: January 2014

Easy Money in Camel City

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Earlier this week the Winston-Salem City Council approved a $100,000 loan for the Winston-Salem Chronicle newspaper. The loan raises all kinds of ethical questions for the newspaper and it also calls attention to a small business loan program administered by the city and is likely not well-known to most people.  That makes for an interesting item on Yes! Weekly's blog:

The city has approved $6.1 million to 142 businesses over the past 28 years, according to information provided by Assistant City Manager Derwick Paige. Of those, 21 businesses withdrew, two are under legal action and two are pending. Alarming perhaps, only 48 remain open, while 69 are closed. The city estimates that about 491 jobs were created through the loans, which equates to about $12,398 per job…

Camino Bakery, owned by Cary Clifford, received a $24,845 loan in FY 2011-2012 and currently owes $24,384.

The city loaned Ziggy's (partially owned by YES! Weekly publisher Charles Womack) $50,000 in FY 2010-2011. The borrower currently owes $49,923.

What this piece doesn't reflect is how much interest has been paid on the loans mentioned, but if the terms are similar to the terms the Chronicle received - the newspaper would not have to begin making repayments for the first 36 months after receiving the loan. At the end of the deferment period, the Chronicle would have to make monthly payments with a 2 percent interest rate (source Winston-Salem Journal) – then it can't be much and you have to look at these and think, "Man, what a SWEET deal!"

Seriously, Ziggy's got $50,000 in 2010-11 and still owes $49,923 which means they've repaid $77 in four years. Let's hope they got the same deal as the Chronicle and have just now started to make payments and not that they're stiffing the city because they're struggling financially. Either way though, the real point here is that these loan terms appear to be amazingly generous and it's going to be interesting to see if the publicity this story has generated will prompt a flood of loan requests. 

Anyone want to partner with me on my dream coffee shop-book shop-beer garden business somewhere downtown? I hear there's money to be had! 

New Etiquette for the Always On Observers

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Two recent articles highlight the side effect of "wearable computing" – personal cameras that automatically capture the world around us. First is this piece from a Wired writer describing his year as a Google Glass user:

My Glass experiences have left me a little wary of wearables because I’m never sure where they’re welcome. I’m not wearing my $1,500 face computer on public transit where there’s a good chance it might be yanked from my face. I won’t wear it out to dinner, because it seems as rude as holding a phone in my hand during a meal. I won’t wear it to a bar. I won’t wear it to a movie. I can’t wear it to the playground or my kid’s school because sometimes it scares children.

Next up is a piece in The Wall Street Journal about cameras you can clip to your shirt so they can take pictures automatically throughout the day:

But there's a cost to amassing so much photographic evidence. The tiny cameras made others uncomfortable when they found out they were being recorded. Some friends wouldn't hug me; gossiping colleagues kept asking, "Is that thing on?" These devices upset a fundamental (though arguably flawed) assumption that even in public, you aren't being recorded.

Makes you squirm, doesn't it? One reason I wanted to review these cameras is that this kind of technology isn't going away. "Always on" cameras are becoming popular in home electronics like the Xbox One and a new wave of streaming video security systems. Now you can buy cameras that attach to your wrist, ear, bike helmet and eyeglasses. They're also fast becoming part of the uniforms of cops, soldiers and doctors.

Both articles explore the positive utilities of these devices, but the authors also highlighted the discomfort that these things caused in people around them. It's not surprising when you think about how uncomfortable you'd be if someone were to just start snapping pictures of you with a traditional camera while you're out and about, but it's even more discomfiting when you realize that people can do it without you even knowing it. What this means is that in the very near future we're going to go through a societal learning stage about what will be the appropriate (polite?) way to use these new devices.

What's scary is that we still haven't mastered the etiquette for proper mobile phone usage and those things have been with us for 20 years! Hell, someone was shot and killed in Tampa this month because of dispute over texting in a movie theater, so it's a bit scary to think what we'll be seeing with these always-on cameras. Of course we'll figure it out eventually but there are going to be many uncomfortable moments until we do.

The Week That Spanned a Year: 12/29/13 – 1/4/14

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Current Events – Everything you need to know about Obamacare in one place – Probably the best, most easily understood piece about Obamacare and what it means for you…with video!

Oh Shit! Issue of the Week – Retirement crisis being brought on by aging boomers who didn’t save squat and fewer young workers to fund the retirement system.

Cutest Video of the Week – A dad, his daughter and a pink plastic ukulele.

Stupid Person of the Week – The man who didn’t bring home the beer.

Technology – Year of the Glasshole – Excerpt – “An anecdote: I wanted to wear Google Glass during the birth of our second child. My wife was extremely unreceptive to this idea when I suggested it. Angry, even. But as we got a bit closer to the date, she began to warm to it and eventually landed somewhere in the neighborhood of bemused hostility.”

History – Nattering Nabobs of Negativism Through the Ages – From the printing press to the internet and how pundits of their times thought they’d ruin society.

Marketing – How to make things go viral – A must read for anyone in the business of getting attention, whether for themselves or their business.

Small Business – 10 Bold Predictions for 2014 – #9, that Obamacare will be very popular with super-small businesses, is spot on.

Oy of the Week – Meet the people who think the US is 2014 years old

Quote of the Week – “Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.” – Albert Einstein

Ripple Effect

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Rex Hammock has 10 Bold Small Business Predictions for 2014 and #9 is dead on:

This is a non-partisan prediction. If you love Obamacare, or hate Obamacare, this prediction doesn’t care. With the bungled launch of the Healthcare.gov online insurance market and the non-stop accusations slinging back and forth between the political parties, it’s been hard for small busines owners to separate fact from vitriol. But here’s one fact: millions of “nonemployee businesses” (a census bureau segment that are independent free lancers, developers, consultants, authors, artisans, etc., who, collectively, account for 4% of all U.S. sales and receipts, but represent the largest number business entities) are now able to obtain healthcare insurance at a competitive price, even if they have pre-existing health condition. Not having access to such insurance has held back lots of employees of lots of big companies from setting up their own shop. Here’s another fact: If a small business has less than 50 employees, the only requirement they have under the Affordable Care Act is to inform employees of the availability of private healthcare insurance sold through marketplaces administered through (depending on the option of a state) federal or state healthcare insurance marketplaces. As Mark Cuban recently told the Wall Street Journal, “As someone who owns chunks of small businesses, the one thing all those companies have in common is [that] buying and providing health care is not a core competency,” he says. “It’s expensive.” By removing the responsibility to provide coverage from these firms and giving it to the government, he says, “You’ve freed up money and time.”

My long-besieged wife has heard me say this for years – if the health care system in the US was fixed there would be an explosion of entrepreneurialism. It's hard to overstate how many people have been tethered to a deadend job because they needed the benefits. Imagine what they would do if that wasn't hanging over their heads and I'm sure that thought is a big motivator in the fight against health care reform.