SAVE THE DATE: NJSBDC at Ramapo to Hold Procurement Expo for Veterans

This procurement expo in New Jersey is a noteworthy and valuable event for veterans. Plan to attend if you have the time. It’s free.

The New Jersey Small Business Development Center serving Bergen County at Ramapo College will hold a Veterans Procurement Resource Expo at the college on Tuesday, February 19.

“Get your business exposed to government agencies looking for your products and services, learn the ropes of government contracting, meet and network with resources that can take your business to a higher level,” observed Vincent Vicari, regional director of the center.

The expo is a networking and educational event that will focus on veteran-owned businesses. The exhibitors will be government agencies, prime contractors, banks and other firms.

USAF Brigadier-General (Ret.) Harris Jay Klein will be the keynote speaker. Paula Miller of the General Services Administration (GSA) and Van Thompson from Skanska, a multinational construction and development company, are also slated to address the audience along with prime contractors and government agencies.

The expo will be held in partnership with the Small Business Administration and in collaboration with the Procurement Technical Assistance Center of the New Jersey Institute of Technology, Rockland Economic Development Corp., and the Procurement Technical Assistance Centers (PTAC). Representatives from Skanska, the New York State Office of General Services and a host of others are expected to be in attendance.

The event is sponsored in part by the New York Giants and others.

The expo will be held The Atrium Building, Ramapo College, Mahwah, NJ, 10:00 a.m. – 4:00 p.m. on Tuesday, February 19. Admission is free.

Register at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/ramapo-college-veterans-resource-2019-expo-54030909906.

Social Media is not like Vegas

As I have written on many occasions, Twitter and other social media are too powerful tools to be left to kids for merely sharing gossip and music. Used properly and strategically, it is an awesome medium for establishing your organization and yourself, the chief executive, as global leaders in your field of choice.

Used regularly and purposefully, Twitter et al can dramatically help your company’s leadership or NGO to evolve into thought leaders – those who are trailblazers in the marketplace or humanitarian affairs.

However, if today’s news can be a teacher, you have to be careful about the content of your tweets.

You may wax poetic or spout a philosophy, ideology or critique without bringing humiliation or scorn upon yourself. You may choose to tweet about your company or non-profit, your product, service, mission or ideas, and you will not scandalize yourself and your organization.

But if you wander beyond those markers and launch or share rumors or hearsay, then be ready to be vilified or ridiculed. After all, social media is not like Vegas and what is tweeted or posted is shared with the world.

According to published reports, Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos learned this lesson the hard way.

The New York Post’s Page Six reported that texts from Bezos to his lover Lauren Sanchez were leaked by her friend. That triggered the avalanche of true, half true or untrue tweets and posts about Bezos’ intentions.

Understandably, there’s no technical way to recall a Tweet or stop anyone from spreading a text that you’ve shared with another person. You can’t put tooth paste back in the tube. This unfortunate incident is a grim reminder that anything you tweet or post on the Internet can easily be disseminated or reshared by someone who may have less than honorable objectives.

Juda Engelmayer, president of HeraldPR, a New York public relations firm and a crisis management expert, was quoted as saying “Anything you do and anyone you speak to can have repercussions. The only secret is the one inside your head. The minute you share it, it has the potential to get out.”

Many Twitter gurus have noted that Twitter made history with its social networking service. It was the first social network to spread news – or fake news – faster than any other medium, and it still stands as a record holder when it comes to that.

Twitter is great when it comes to speed because we can choose the speed ourselves. You never have to get your message approved on Twitter because you control it. That is, you control the message until you press “tweet” or “post.” Then your message is up for grabs by anyone, anywhere.

On social media, you can instantly start picking up on not only what people are producing or offering but also what they’re doing, saying and sharing. Also they can offer, say and share quickly what you are doing – or thinking – or proposing – or building – or organizing. It’s not all about celebrity power and their influence on our lives. It’s also about common or uncommon people like you.

We’ve already seen some pretty historical tweets in the past decade. News events, President Trump’s tweets and those by the Pope, Oscar or Emmy awards, sports, wars, local and faraway events are followed immediately by everyone before the broadcast media and newspapers report them. Tweets can be about historical events such as those happening all around the world. When we learn about other people’s thoughts and activities, we share them. Twitter has become the world’s press room.

People everywhere are using Twitter to share events in their towns and countries, spark a new idea, request help, denounce a tyrant, announce a helpful discovery, or plant a new thought.

Those on Twitter also use the network heavily. About two-thirds of Twitter users, 71%, say they use the network several times a day, another 12% daily and 12% several times a week.

You too should regularly promote your issues, causes and solutions many times a day to attract the attention of as many people as possible in all global time zones. This will build your reputation as well as your business or publicize your NGO.

Just one caveat: stay away from rumors, hearsay and half-truths. If you’re not sure, don’t endorse it by sharing. There is enough true information that you can share that will bring you fame.

So join the conversation or start one. You may be surprised by the number of people you will quickly attract as followers.

I’d also like to invite you to visit my Thought Leadership website:

http://thoughtleadership.yolasite.com/              

If you’re looking for advice on recruiting, company handbooks, immigration policies and other human resources topics, I’d like to suggest to you this interesting website:

http://hrtiebreaker.yolasite.com/

Scroll through my blog to read about more ways to promote yourselves and boost your outreach.

Government Shutdown, Loans Frozen – What’s a Small Business to Do?

Not only is it ironic but it’s also painful.

Small businesses have expressed hopeful anticipation about business growth in 2019 only to find that their plans for boosting sales have been stymied by the government shutdown that is entering its third week.

The problem for entrepreneurs, start-ups and existing businesses is that the Small Business Administration (SBA) stopped processing new loans on December 22, 2018. Thousands of small businesses can’t get their SBA loans approved, meaning they can’t get money they need to start or expand their companies.

The SBA is a key funding source for small and midsize business. It guarantees about 5,000 loans a month worth $25 billion a year so small businesses can get affordable interest rates. This amounts to a significant stimulus for the country’s economy.

The Washington Post on January 10 cited President Trump as saying the shutdown could last “months or even years,” which is alarming banks and business owners. Consequently, scores of businesses are becoming collateral damage, triggering a domino effect as the shutdown continues and companies that aren’t getting loans or payments are unable to maintain their obligations.

All of this is a major hit to commerce in America that comes on top of the 800,000 federal employees who won’t get paid this week and are struggling to pay their bills.

Economists have usually ignored shutdowns, but there’s concern that the length of this one is starting to hurt business confidence. Fitch Ratings also warned this week that an extended shutdown might damage the country’s Triple-A credit.

So what can small businesses and wannabe business owners to do in this unfavorable business climate?

One hopeful solution is for them to contact their state’s chapter of the American Small Business Development Center (ASBDC) for no-cost consultation and information. In New Jersey, this helpful network is called the New Jersey Small Businesses Development Center (NJSBDC), with headquarters at Rutgers University School of Business in Newark, NJ, and 12 regional centers across the state.

The NJSBDC was one of the first national SBDC pilot projects resulting from the enactment of a congressional law in 1977 and has served small businesses for 40 years. The federal Small Business Administration (SBA) and the State’s Business Action Center (BAC) are key funding partners and higher educational institutions around the state host the regional centers.

According to Vincent Vicari, regional director of the NJSBDC at the Anisfield School of Business at Ramapo College of New Jersey in Mahwah, the center is a valuable resource that small businesses should connect with regularly and especially when times are tough.

“Business owners and entrepreneurs can get expert no-cost advice from expert consultants and attend training to help them better understand how to grow your business. The NJSBDC helps established small business owners and aspiring entrepreneurs to create and expand their business enterprises which will, in turn, result in sustainable growth, job creation and statewide economic development and prosperity,” Vicari observed. “Utilizing this resource empowers entrepreneurs to make better short-term decisions for resource allocation, as well as to develop strategic plans that are aligned to their particular business realities.”

With the government shutdown turning off the funding spigot, small business owners must prepare now for recovering from this calamity.

“Handling a government shutdown, although rare, should be like any other business disruption such as weather, supply interruption and infrastructure cracks. What we work on is what we can control, knowing that prior shutdowns are temporary occurrences. Then we begin a process to serve companies’ customers’ orders for products or services to avoid delivery delays that may not be recoverable if the business fails to deliver on its commitments,” he said.

Vicari is a widely regarded as a hands-on small business advocate. He is known for personally guiding entrepreneurs in acquiring financing for launching their businesses, growing sales and overcoming calamities.

“Small businesses across the United States have an opportunity to respond with deliberate speed, focus, local market sensitivity, passion and drive to embrace market needs and overcome calamities,” he said.

In addition to providing useful advice on financing, the NJSBDC also helps small businesses with these topics:

• Starting a small business
• Buying a business or franchise
• Marketing
• Financing
• Accounting fundamentals
• Developing a business plan
• Website management, e-commerce
• Social media

“We create grassroots economic impact, and help small business secure financing by clarifying the realities of business and banking, assisting them in loan packaging by working directly with SBA lenders, banks, and sources of capital essential for business development, personal growth and economic sustainability with a wide scope of business services,” Vicari pointed out. “The Bergen Country NJSBDC can help small business owners develop a plan that they can take advantage of in a crisis. All you have to do is to register as a client with the NJSBDC to receive all of the no-cost assistance that is available. I have a team of people that can help you and your company wherever in the lifecycle your business happens to be during a crisis.”

In Bergen County, NJ, small businesses can visit this webpage to register as a client: https://clients.njsbdc.com/reg.aspx?mode=counsel&center=21025&subloc=0