First things first

Think Globally Hire Locally
What employees with long commutes could be costing your business

For many small business owners, the amount of time it takes their employees to get to work is of little concern—just having them show up on time and get the job done is already enough to worry about. But if you’ve never given any thought to the (increasingly) long commutes of your staff, you’re ignoring a situation that may be draining thousands of dollars from your bottom line.

The statistics are staggering. As more and more Americans move deeper into the suburbs to buy that “dream home,” more and more of us are driving longer and longer to get from there to work. According to the Transportation Research Board, the average round-trip commute currently lasts 51 minutes, and nearly 10 million Americans now drive more than an hour to work, a 50 percent increase over the past ten years. Since 1990, the number of workers traveling more than ninety minutes each way—what the Census Bureau calls “extreme commuters”—has nearly doubled, to 3.5 million. Couple the recent rising gas prices with that “dream home” mortgage, and it’s not surprising that a strong link between long commutes and the push for higher salaries to justify them has been found among workers.

But it’s not just bloated payrolls that small business owners should fret over. Hours sitting behind the wheel take a physical toll on their employees too, and a number of studies have linked long commutes with higher incidences of stress and high-blood pressure as well as heart attacks, strokes, and ulcers. Recently, Georgia Tech researchers even found a direct correlation between commuting time and obesity (for every 30 minutes of your commute, your risk for becoming obese increases 3 percent). For small businesses that can ill afford an employee to miss just a day or two of work, let alone weeks or months, thelong-term costs of commuting on your workforce’s availability and productivity could be devastating, to say nothing of its corresponding impact on your health care premiums.

Finally, there’s the mental and societal price to be paid for fighting through hours of traffic each day. Robert Putnam, a Harvard political scientist and author of Bowling Alone, which examined the steady decay of American civic life, says that every 10 minutes of commuting results in 10 percent fewer social connections. And he notes that the more isolated someone becomes, the more unhappy they are. Eventually, this unhappiness can wear down even the most dedicated of workers, resulting in higher costs to your small business as a result of the inevitable staff turnover. And don’t underestimate the impact that grumpy workers can likely have on your company’s customer service.

So, when you do go to hire that next employee, be sure to take a close look at their address before you offer them a job. You might just save yourself (and them) a lot of heartache.

WEB PRESENCE: Sorry to Savvy
Business networking profiles and cellfriendly web pages
can help your business

Thanks to popular websites like MySpace and Facebook, online networking has become a full-fledged phenomenon. But because of their origins (MySpace began as an alternate platform for bands to promote their music and Facebook started as a way for incoming college freshmen to make new friends), these social networking sites have suffered from one major stigma: They’re only beginning to be considered serious enough for the business world.

But recently, new networking sites like Xing.com and LinkedIn.com, have appeared, billing themselves as a sort of MySpace for grownups. Both sites let users post free profiles and build groups and contact lists and, to date, millions of business professionals from around the world have joined. (Xing profiles are based mainly in Europe, however, while LinkedIn has a much more American flavor.) Think of these sites as a more cost-efficient way for your small business to network, one that can transcend industries while avoiding the high costs associated with attending trade shows or conventions.

Additionally, both sites offer premium accounts, which can either funnel you sales leads and job candidates (LinkedIn) or let you search contact names outside your group and track visitors to your company home page (Xing). Costs vary from roughly $5 to $10 a month for the basic upgrade to $200 a month for LinkedIn’s Pro account.

As more and more consumers use their cellphone’s Internet connection to find business products and services, an increasing number of companies are building additional Web pages specifically tailored to this new platform in order to stay competitive.

Until recently, the complexity and high cost of setting up a mobile-specific
website has been too great an obstacle for most small businesses.
But with the recent advent of a new “.mobi” web suffix and low-cost registration and hosting services from companies like Network Solutions and GoDaddy.com, small business owners can set up a bare bones mobile website for between roughly $75 and $150 a year. (One caveat: You must build your own web pages.)

If you don’t want to turn away potential customers who can’t navigate your regular .com website on their tiny cellphone screens, it might be an
investment well worth the money.

For more on mobile web sites, finding and registering a domain name, building mobile Web pages, and information about hosting services, check out pc.mtld.mobi.

Legislative Update
Proposed tax credit bill might entice more angel
investing in small businesses

Thanks to a rare bipartisan effort, Congress could significantly increase the tax incentives available for angel investors this year, making it easier for small start-ups to find desperately needed capital. The bill, which is before both the House and Senate, would create a new 25-percent tax credit, offsetting up to $500,000 in investments each year.

“For the entrepreneur, [this bill] increases the potential for securing seed capital,” said Dr. Jeffrey Sohl, in his Congressional testimony last year. Sohl, who is director of the University of New Hampshire’s Center for Venture Research, explained that the bill could encourage an expansion of the $25.6-billion angel investing market by shifting tax breaks forward to the same tax year as the investment.

“The proper tax incentive program is one that is targeted at the ‘front end’ during the start-up stage, when the risk of failure is the greatest and the capital gap is the most severe,” Sohl said. In the current tax structure, angel investors only receive a capital gains tax reduction when they cash out of a start-up. “In essence, the venture needs to survive the critical seed stage and expand into a viable business” before an angel investor can see any return, he noted.

“The number one concern for every equity-stage investor is losing every dime of their investment,” said Dan Loague, executive director of the Capital Formation Institute. “This bill would incentivize investors into doing more deals by reducing that risk.” Plus, Loague reckons that this measure could change the geography of angel investing, as well. “I think this bill is also targeted at those parts of the United States that don’t have huge reservoirs of capital floating around, like they do in New York City and Silicon Valley,” Loague said. “This could work in North Dakota, too.”

Dr. Ian Sobieski, managing director of the Silicon Valley investment group Band of Angels, agreed, telling Congress in 2006 that the bill’s biggest impact would be to “essentially lower the investment hurdle for angels to invest in start-up companies.” And because this tax incentive program is more straightforward, Sobieski says it would be easier to entice more first-time investors into the angel market. It’s pretty simple, he explains, “if you invest four dollars in a high-risk start-up, the government will cut your taxes one dollar.”

According to both outside advocates and Congressional staffers of the bill’s co-sponsors, the initial signs of the bill’s passage are encouraging. Barbara Kossoff, president of the nonprofit Women Impacting Public Policy, is leading a broad coalition of business groups to ensure the bill’s passage and says she has yet to encounter any opposition to it on Capitol Hill. “There’s really nothing not to like about it,” she said. “This is a really great opportunity to get much needed funding for women in small business, and all small businesses in general,” she noted. “I think it will eventually pass with flying colors.”

Masters of the Mailstream
An Atlanta PR firm boosts its clients through clever,
quirky direct mail campaigns

Shira Miller knows that generating media buzz for her company’s clients requires taking a novel approach. So, when kicking around ideas about how to get the word out about Flexible Executives, an Atlanta-based company that places corporate-level talent in small and mid-sized businesses, she honed her message down to just one phrase: blue chips.

“I always start out with the view from 30,000 feet when working with a new client,” says Miller, who has been running her own public relations firm, Shira Miller Communications, since 2001. “Then, I work on ‘How can I convey this broad concept in a memorable way?’”

For Flexible Executives, Miller’s marketing concept centered around the company’s high-quality “blue chip” personnel, leading her to drive that point home by including blue corn chips, blue poker chips, and, yes, blue paint chips in the same big blue box that carried Flexible Executive’s company information.

Miller’s direct mail campaign, however, was no mass mailing. This isn’t surprising, considering she estimates that each mailing costs more than $15 with postage. Instead, she specifically focused on 20 media outlets that fit Flexible Executives target demographic. She expanded her campaign to a second list of 20 a couple of months later. And so far, she says she’s had “very good” feedback.

Sometimes, Miller even takes a chance on sending out just a long-shot direct mail piece if she thinks it might make a big splash, like the time she sent David Letterman an already inflated blowup doll wearing Spanx pantyhose, one of her clients. (The product didn’t get on the air, however.)

Just as with any direct mail campaign, Miller knows the importance of measuring their effectiveness. She points to a 25-piece mailing she did for All-In Chips, a poker-chip manufacturer, where she contrasted its product—the ultimate “guy gift”—with a “Bad Gift Hall of Fame” that featured ugly ties and soapon- a-rope. After getting the poker chips placed in five different publications, Miller explains that she worked with All-In to set up unique urls to track the return on investment of each media mention. “The company sold 700 sets off a placement in InStyle magazine alone,” she notes with pride.

But whether it’s cheeky humor or canny logic, Miller says successful direct mail marketing still comes down to one thing: “whatever captures your attention.”

Company Time=Personal Time?
Survey shows that men, younger workers spend
the most time on personal tasks at work.

ALL EMPLOYEES
Average amount of time spent on
personal tasks at work each day: 36 minutes

BY GENDER
Men: 44 mins.
Women: 29 mins.

BY AGE
18-34: 45 mins.
35-64: 32 mins.
65 and over: 17 mins.

Nationwide results of two February 2007 Office Team surveys of 559 full- or part-time workers. For the full survey, go to officeteam.com/pressroom.