Sullivan County Grants for Workforce Training and Development

Sullivan County Community College (SCCC) has access to training funds to support the start of a new business, expansion of an existing business, or increased productivity. If you think skill development can help enhance your company’s performance, you owe it to yourself to find out if these grants can help your company.

Here are some points to keep in mind:

SCCC will work with you to prepare and submit proposals for training.
The maximum award is for is $ 50,000.
· The employer must contribute at least 25% (of the total project cost) in matching funds. At least 10% must be in the form of cash. The remaining 15% may be comprised of in-kind commitments such as training materials and trainee release time.

· Employers must be able to document the benefits and impact of training upon completion of the project

· Projects may be scheduled to begin on September 1, 2009 and continue until August 20, 2010. All proposals must be postmarked by the deadline of Friday, July 31.

If you are interested attached is a list of guidelines.

For more information, please contact Stephen Mitchell, Dean of Workforce Development at 434-5750 x4337 or smitchell@sullivan.suny.edu.

Join us as we Bike for Cancer

September 20th marks the 6th anniversary of the Rosemary D. Gruner Memorial Fund’s Bike for Cancer. The Rosemary D. Gruner Memorial Cancer Fund, in partnership with the Thomas A. Dee Cancer Center at Benedictine Hospital and the Benedictine Health Foundation, provides direct financial assistance to cancer patients seeking treatment in Ulster County who are in financial need, and frequently have no place else to turn. The fund provides for products and services not covered by medical insurance- nutritional products, prostheses, and gift cards to purchase groceries and gas just to name a few. The event honors Rosemary Gruner, who passed away from lung cancer in 2002.

In the first half of this year, the demand for financial assistance increased by a staggering 400% compared to last year. In 2009 alone, they anticipate distributing $75,000 in direct financial support to over 150 cancer patients and their families. Every $500 provides assistance to one cancer patient and their family for a year.

The event has three courses, 5, 25 and 50 miles. Martine Brown and I will be riding the 50-mile course that day. We are looking for more team members, and also your support. If you have a family member that has succumbed to cancer and would like to honor their memory, we will place their name on our ride shirts for a $10 donation to the fund. We anticipate placing 20 names on each jersey. To find out more about the Rosemary D. Gruner Fund, click on the link. To donate to the fund click here.

If you would like to have your family member ride with us, please email me, JKlassen@MTB.com  their name and make a $10 donation on line to the fund. Specify that the donation is for John and Martine’s ride and we will help you honor them. If you would prefer, you can mail a check payable to the The Rosemary D. Gruner Fund to The Benedictine Health Foundation, Rosemary Gruner Fund, 105 Mary’s Avenue, Kingston, NY 12401.

We are looking forward to your support.

Champion Business Alliance

Do you have a Championship Business Alliance? A small group of fellow professionals helping you to build your and their business together? Do you meet with them regularly to discuss strategies or to call on prospects together?

Thanks to Skip Weisman and the Champion Business Alliance program, I do. My Alliance teammates are Karen Mackey of Paychex, Gary Gogerty of Drake, Loeb, Heller Kennedy, Gogerty, Gaba and Rodd, PLLC, Jill Varrichio of Concept Promotions and Larry Johnson of William A Smith and Sons Insurance. Together we are building relationships with each other, our clients and ensuring our clients get to meet each other’s clients. We are building multiple relationships that will build value to all we meet.

How does it work? Every two months we set up a seminar and networking opportunity for our clients. Each of us invites 5 to 10 clients per session. On a rotational basis we pay for a small amount of food and coffee for the networking portion of the meeting.. Skip Weisman of Weisman Success Resources facilitates the program. He provides a program that engages the group in a discussion of business building through the basics. These basics are marketing, networking, advertising, and follow up. We discuss workplace dynamics including external and internal customer service. It winds up in a discussion that hits on many of the challenges faced by all businesses.

Attendees register online prior to the event and complete a questionnaire that asks if there are particular challenges or tolerances they are dealing with. These are posted anonymously at the meeting and become part of the discussion. As the discussion grows relationships begin to form. We all walked away from the event feeling our time had been well spent. Our clients all thanked us and enjoyed meeting each other.

We are having our next event on August 5th at the Paychex Office in the Westage Business Park in Fishkill, New York. Follow this Champions Link to register to attend.

What are Loan Covenants?

With greater attention being paid to the details of commercial lending, we get asked more and more about loan covenants. Loan covenants are conditions a borrower agrees to comply with when accepting a loan from a bank. Loan covenants are put in place to ensure the bank has a continual understanding and report of business condition and actions. It is important for a business to comply with loan covenants as failure to comply can put the loan into default.

Banks usually put loan covenants in place to accomplish the following:

Maintain Loan Quality,
Keep adequate cash flow,
Preserve equity,
Maintain an updated picture of the borrowers financial condition.

Some common loan covenants are:

Maintenance of adequate Hazard and Content Insurance coverage,
Key Main Life Insurance,
Payment of income and property taxes, fees and licenses.

In addition to these types of covenants, lenders also add covenants that ensure borrowers maintain certain key financial ratios.

These include:

Minimum Quick and Current ratios, which demonstrate liquidity,
Minimum Return of Assets and Equity, which demonstrate profitability,
Minimum Working Capital, Equity and Maximum Debt to Net Worth, which demonstrate leverage.

These financial indicators and ratios are checked annually when a lender reviews financial statements and tax returns.

Lenders will also have loan covenants that restrict borrowers from doing things that may be detrimental to the condition of the business.

These may include:

No change in management or merger without prior approval,
No additional loans without prior approval,
Limited dividends and owner withdrawals.

The more mature the relationship between the lender and the borrower, the less need there may be for loan covenants. The covenants are listed in the loan agreements between the business and the bank. A business should review these covenants with their banker and their legal counsel prior to moving forward with a loan agreement. It is important that the business owner is aware of these covenants, as they must be complied with. Banks use the loan covenant to ensure the original conditions they provided financing under are maintained and that any negative changes to these conditions are uncovered before it is too late.

What the Stimulus Package Means to Your Business

This posting has been published to this blog with the permission of Woody Levitan, CPA and Tracy Badgley, CPA of Levitan, Yegidis & Associates, CPAs.  It was a featured article in “Profit Margins”, written by Tracy Badgley, CPA. It is the client newsletter for their firm. I greatly appreciate their permission to use this information to help the friends and client who are looking for information to help their business. You can find out more about Levitan, Yegidis & Associates by clicking on their name and going to their web site.

What the Stimulus Package Means to Your Business

In February of this year, President Obama signed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. The Act, designed to stimulate the economy, contains many provisions that may apply to your business as well as to your individual tax planning. You may find it useful to consult with a financials professional to ensure that your tax planning strategies take this new act into account.

The Act has many tax provisions. The ones that are detailed are most likely to have an impact on your business.

Extension of Bonus Depreciation

Last year, Congress temporarily allowed businesses to recover the costs of capital expenditures made in 2008 faster than the ordinary depreciation schedule would allow. Businesses are permitted to write off immediately 50 percent of the cost of depreciable property acquired in 2008 for use in the United States. This temporary benefit has been extended through 2009.

Election to Accelerate Recognition of Historic AMT/R&D Credits

Last year, Congress temporarily allowed businesses to accelerate the recognition of a portion of their historic AMT or research and development (R&D) credits in lieu of bonus depreciation. The amount that taxpayers may accelerate is calculated based on the amount that each taxpayer invests in property that would otherwise qualify for bonus depreciation. This amount is capped at the lesser of six percent (6%) of historic AMT and R&D credits or $30 million. The bill also extends this temporary benefit through 2009.

Extension of Enhanced Small Business Expensing

In order to help small businesses quickly recover the cost of certain capital expenses, small business taxpayers may elect to write-off the cost of these expenses in the year of acquisition in lieu of recovering these costs over time through depreciation. Last year, Congress temporarily increased the amount that small businesses could write-off for capital expenditures incurred in 2008 to $250,000 and increased the phase-out threshold for 2008 to $800,000. These temporary increases have been expanded to capital expenditures incurred in 2009.

5-Year Carryback of Net Operating Losses from Small Businesses

Under current law, net operating losses, or NOL’s may be carried back to the two taxable years before the year in which the loss arises (the NOL carryback period) and carried forward to each of the succeeding twenty taxable years after the year in which the loss arises. For 2008, the bill extends the maximum NOL carryback period form two years to five years for small businesses with gross receipts of $15 million or less.

Incentives to Hire Unemployed Veterans and Disconnected Youth

Under current law, businesses are allowed to claim a work opportunity tax credit equal to 40 percent of the first $6,000 of wages paid to employees of one of nine targeted groups. The Recovery Act creates two new-targeted groups of prospective employees: unemployed veterans and disconnected youth. An individual qualifies as an unemployed veteran if he or she was discharged or released from active duty from the Armed Forces during the five-year period prior to hiring and received unemployment compensation for more than four weeks during the year before being hired. An individual qualifies as a disconnected youth if he or she is between the ages of 16 and 25 and has not been regularly employed or attended school in the last six months.

These are a just a few of the provisions of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 that may impact your business’s tax planning. To determine how these best apply to you, please consult your tax professional.

Thank again to the Tracy Badgley, CPA of Levitan, Yegidis & Associates, CPAs for their permission to provide this article for you.

Meet my new friend James

Sorry for the long gap between posts. I am looking forward to getting back into the swing by providing great tips and resources to help your business.

I have been taking my own advice and having some excellent business lunch dates with local business people and members of my BNI chapter. Yesterday I went to lunch with James Danella of Media Vison Advertising.

It was a great opportunity to learn a little about each others businesses. You can look forward to hearing more from James in coming posts on this site. I will alos share the link to his blog as well.

James has been in the advertising production and agency for 25 years. Even shocked himself. He specializes in providing high quality and impactful advertising solutions to small businesses. He takes the time to learn the needs of the business and then provide solutions that can be monitored for effectiveness in driving sales.

There was more to our lunch, but as we both talked and talked I will need time to process what we discussed and I’ll gladly share this information when I better undestand it.

You can look forward to more information from James regarding marketing and advertising. If you need this information sooner email him from here.

James can be reached on line at jamesd@mediavisionadvertising.com

What about Lunch?

As bad business news continues to build it is important to take a good look at your most valuable relationships. A great way to do this is over a cup of coffee or over lunch. Many business professionals and organizations are taking a hard look at expenses and want to make sure they are getting the best value for each dollar spent. As budgets are cut for advertising and entertainment, how do you market your services most effectively?

How about lunch?

 Yes lunch. We all eat it and it is a welcome break in the middle of a hard day. Why eat alone. Find a good referrals source or former client to break bread with. Remember they are hurting too. Take the time to find out about their business and how to refer them. They will look to do the same with you. The relaxed atmosphere will enable you to tell stores about your business that will help you to be able to better refer each other. Here is a key to make your lunch more cost effective. Brown bag it and meet at the office. This will make your meal more affordable and allow you to see each other’s business from the inside. You will each be a little more relaxed as well. You will also get the opportunity to see the inner working of their business and show the inside of your business. You will also get to meet support staff and other key people who interact with their client. If they understand your business, they may see a referral for you before your friend does. The more people you meet the better off you are. In Business Network International this is called a dance card. Too keep it simple, call it a lunch and learn. Once you have had a couple of these lunches, invite a third person to join. This will help you to expand each other’s network of contacts. I had the opportunity to do this today. Gary Gogerty is a partner at Drake, Loeb, Heller, Kennedy, Gogerty, Gaba and Rodd, PLLC. Skip Weisman is a Peak Performance coach with Weisman Success Resources. They are each well-respected members of the community and intelligent business people with many contacts. The worst thing that could come out of this meeting would be that we had a nice lunch. We had an excellent meeting and shared many stories and ideas and agreed to get together again to pursue a possible joint venture. In the exchange I learned many things about each of them that may not have come up in a normal meeting.

Key to Success.

 The key to success in these meetings is to limit your expectation to getting to know the other person and their organization. Bring a list of questions and make sure you ask them. You can email these questions in advance to make sure they understand you are there to learn. Business will certainly follow, but only after you sincerely take the time to learn about them. How do I get started? Look at the business you have closed in the last 34 to 6 months. How did they get referred to you? Why? What service did they purchase? Who else could they have purchased this service from? Were you chosen based on price or quality?

Involve your staff.

They will have insights that you are not aware of. They also interact with your referral sources. They may hear things about your performance that your friend won’t want to mention. When? How about now? Start small and build to big. Keep it simple. Don’t get involved in a lot of fanfare. You are there to learn. Be organized and keep it simple and fun. It keeps the pressure off and will lead to sincere, profitable results. Once you try this let me know how it works. I’d love to share your success stories here.

Should I join an on-line group?

Networking on line is not new folks. It is time to join the wave or get swept away. Joining an on-line group can help you increase exposure, business and traffic to your web site. It allows people to view your profile and answer questions about you without asking. It is their turn to shop while you sleep.

Everyone understands that a sales person and business owner needs to grow their network. Let’s face it business is a contact sport. Why not increase your exposure by developing a better on-line presence?

Now don’t rush and put just anything on line. This is an opportunity for you to develop an image that has staying power. Think about how others will read your site and what you want them to take away from it.

Take a good clean professional looking photo. Clean up your resume to make sure you highlight your strengths. Add items that will create a common bond. For example, make sure your high school and college information are there. Many people use these as ways to search for old friends.  This is especially true if you went to a small college. There are fewer of you out there. This common bond will move you closer to a professional relationship.

Take a look at the features that are offer with the network. Take the time to read about them and add as appropriate. Make sure items you are pertinent and timely. If the information expires, take it off and add something new.

Join common groups. These can relate to schooling, industry groups and other professional organizations. If one does not exist, start one. It will give you the chance to start discussions and get traffic to your profile.

Make sure you check your profile at least once per day. Make sure you update information about yourself and participate in discussions. It will help to make you a player in these groups.

Finally, invite your clients and prospects to join. They may gain value from the membership and you will be seen as being innovative.

Here is my site on Linked In. Tell me what you think.

http://www.linkedin.com/in/johnklassen

Retirement and Succession Planning…Get them in order

As a small business owner the thought of a 9 to 5 workday seems ridiculous. Working for yourself means you have to have a greater level of commitment to achieve your dreams. Often this extra work to increase sales and productivity is successful, but retirement and succession planning for the business is put off until later. This can put your future and the future of your business at risk. Failure to make these plans can be  “Business Killers.”

We’ll look at retirement plans first. There are many different plans available to small business owners. Depending on the size of your business different opportunities are available. If you are the only members of your business A SEP-IRA or Simple IRA may be the best choice. If you have a number of employees a Simple IRA or a Safe Harbor 401K plan may make more sense. These plans offer you and your employees the opportunity to put income aside to grow tax deferred. They also offer a number of investment vehicles to match your tolerance for risk and time horizon to retirement. IT also offers a benefit to employees seeking plan for their future. You should speak with an investment advisor and your CPA to determine the right programs for the size and needs of your business.

Succession plans are also important to determine what will happen to your business in the event of an untimely death or to plan for the future of your business and employees upon your retirement. These plans will protect your family and enable them to benefit from your years of hard work.

Here are a few things you need to keep in mind:

1. Know what your business is worth. A succession plan will involve either selling the business or passing it on to your heirs. This means you need to know a sale price or inheritance value. Once a value is determined, plans for selling the business can be made as can plans to provide funds for estate taxes that will be due.
2. Make sure your succession plans work with your estate plans. Leaving the business to your spouse can cut off other heirs from and inheritance. Don’t have all of your net worth tied up in a business. They are harder to sell and once you are gone, may not be worth as much as when you were alive and working in the business. Having outside investments and a retirement plan can provide liquidity, while the business is prepared for sale or until the heirs are able to run the business.
3. You need to include key employees in the succession plan. Often key employees are critical to the success of the business. They are often the best people to sell the business to. Discuss your plans with them. You will want to keep them involved. They are important to your success and if you are selling to a third party, they will add value to the sale.
4. Keep your plans up to date. There are many things that can cause tour plans to change. Tax laws, family changes and the size of your business are factors that may cause you to change your plan. Reviewing your plan will ensure it works when you need it to.

Your CPA, Banker, Investment Advisor and Attorney can all help you get the right plan in place. They will also have experience with plans that have worked for other business. These professionals have a vested interest in the continued success of your business. Keep them involved.

I have had help from a number of professional in putting this information together. Robert Centrello a CPA in Fishkill New York, Robert Priore and Investment Advisor from Edward Jones, and Gary Gogerty a partner with the law firm of Drake, Loeb, Heller, Kennedy, Gogerty, Gaba and Rodd, PLLC. You can click on their names to send them any questions you may have. Feel free to contact me at 845-562-8554 if I can be of help.

Being a Winner Is No Longer Enough, , Business Professionals Must Focus On Becoming a Champion

I was working with a business coach a few years ago who would challenge me to keep at the forefront of my mind a focus question. The question was “what would a winner do?”

When I get up in the morning, when I get to the office, when I was faced with a challenge this question would drive my behavior focusing attention on the thoughts, feelings and actions of a “winner.” That was five years ago.

I realized on Monday, December 29, 2008 that being a being a winner is no longer enough, in sports, business and in life. The firing of the National Football League’s New York Jets’ Head Coach Eric Mangini opened my eyes to this phenomenon. Mangini, having just completed his third season with the Jets with a winning record of 9-7, just one year removed from a 10-6 season and a berth in the playoffs, lost his job.

I did some research and found that of the five other NFL head coaches given pink slips immediately after the completion of the most recent season, fifty percent of them had won at least as many as they lost. Two of those three had winning records and had won at least one Super Bowl during their overall tenure with those teams. Interesting.

I decided to look deeper. In 2008 four Major League Baseball Managers were fired, all during the season. Only one of those four had a winning record at the time of their firing. But two of the four were just a few games shy of a winning record and were released before the season reached the half-way point.

Now, for the really absurd. In the National Hockey League (the sport I follow most closely) three coaches were fired in the fall of 2008, less than one-third of the way through the current season. One of those won a Stanley Cup Championship just three years ago and one of those three came off a winning season last year. And then there is the story of Claude Julien, former head coach of the New Jersey Devils in 2005. After winning the division championship with a 49-24-9 record and qualifying as the top seed for the playoff tournament, he was fired between the end of the regular season and the first game of the playoffs (this year Julien’s Boston Bruins lead the league with a 33-8-4 record, look out Claude!).

What this means for those in the business world is that it is time to think about how performance is managed. Is mediocrity accepted in your organization?

Not one business leader I’ve spoken to regarding the personnel changes they have had to make during their career expressed regret that they pulled the trigger too early. Every one lamented they waited too long to make the change.

It’s time to move beyond hoping to hire winners for your organization. It’s time focus on hiring and developing Champions. As you can see from the recent examples of professional sports franchises, being a winner is no longer enough.

 Striving to be a winner puts the focus on just winning more than losing. A winner needs to win one more game than they lose and that is mediocrity. In sports that is never enough to get a team into the playoff tournament for a chance to win the Championship.

There are five personality traits of a Champion in Business. I will be sharing those in a workshop on Tuesday, January 27th at the Orange County Chamber of Commerce from 8am – 10:30am. Tuition is only $20 and all proceeds benefit The Community Foundation of Orange & Sullivan. To register please visit:

http://www.weismansuccessresources.com/championworkshop.