Coverage As the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act continues to roll out, employers this year face a new accounting requirement in preparation for reports documenting their compliance that they will need to file starting in 2016. Everyone must have healthcare coverage, and responsibility for compliance rests on both the individual and the employer. Key terms are … [More]
Incubating Business: Are Startups Accelerating Our Economy?
Apple and Intel may capture the headlines, but entrepreneurs are the drivers of the economy. A focused effort to foster an entrepreneurial culture in Arizona, which has generated a tremendous number of business incubators and accelerators, has been building in just the past several years. “State development folks realized we were overly dependent on defense, construction and … [More]
Top 5 Marketing Strategies for Success
Marketing options are wide and varied, offering more opportunities than ever before for companies to connect with their customers. Everything is on the Internet, and this has dramatically changed the landscape for business. Even small companies in Arizona are selling internationally, observes Matt Silverman, vice president and managing director of R&R Partners’ Phoenix … [More]
Regulation: Is Government Building Business or Breaking It Down?
Government regulations can be a double-edged sword — either they cut off business from a lucrative market or they slice through red tape, enhancing the bottom line. Either way, the purported goal is to protect the public from less-than-honest merchants, but overzealous regulators can take a well-intentioned rule and use it to cause private-sector headaches. As we explore in … [More]
Regulation: Q&A with Glenn Hamer and Farrell Quinlan
Glenn Hamer, president and CEO of the Arizona Chamber of Commerce and Industry, and Farrell Quinlan, Arizona state director of the National Federation of Independent Business, were interviewed regarding the state of government regulations in general and specifically in Arizona. Here are their responses to a series of questions. How do government regulations help economic … [More]
The Immigration Effect: Boom or Bust for Business
Immigration is often discussed in moral terms of right and wrong. Is it right to exclude children born and raised in the U.S. from an opportunity to live legally in America because their parents entered illegally? Isn’t it wrong to give people who broke the law by smuggling themselves into our country a path to legal work status and even citizenship? These may be points for … [More]
Top 10 Best Strategies for Business Success
Among the “top 10 best strategies for business success” a business owner can follow is surrounding oneself with the right people to get the job done. But to do that requires, first, determining what those jobs are. We at In Business Magazine have identified the following 10 areas of action that are equally critical to the success of a commercial enterprise. No ranking of … [More]
Financial Health: Planning the Way to Success
Making a profit is the common goal for business owners. Determining how best to spend it is also a challenge. According to Bill Owens, principal of accounting firm Owens & Bondell, there are five main categories that business owners struggle with: funding their retirement plan, buying new assets for the business, paying down debt, paying taxes and personal spending. “The … [More]
Are We Winning the Economic Development Game?
“The state that made the most aggressive, best moves competitively is Arizona,” states Barry Broome, CEO of the Greater Phoenix Economic Council, singling out the tax and economic policies of the past five years. In his view, they comprise the single most positive impactful decisions the state has made in 30 years “because they were governed by what will grow the economy around … [More]
Seeking Opportunity in Our Multicultural Market
The multicultural marketplace in the Phoenix area is a rapidly growing one. Where once corporations focused almost entirely on connecting and serving the mainstream Anglo culture, and could afford only limited outreach to minorities, now dynamic organizations are finding they can’t afford not to engage effectively with minority communities. This is because minorities now … [More]
Staying Alive: What It Takes to Be a Thriving Neighborhood Business
“There’s almost nothing like the moment you’re able to take home your first paycheck from the store,” Amy Wulfert reminisces. She’s talking at the front desk in Hair of the Dog, a dog-grooming parlor in Scottsdale. “It took me about three years to get to that point. Three years of hard work, being there every day, and working with a good staff.” The neighborhood shopping … [More]
Arizona Manufacturing: Its Evolution is Economic Prosperity
Manufacturing is the underpinning of the economy, in many ways. Each manufacturing job supports three other jobs in the overall economy, according to the Economic Policy Institute, a nonprofit, nonpartisan think tank, and there is a broader supply chain impact as well. Researchers at the Arizona Commerce Authority report manufacturing jobs tend to be high-wage, which … [More]
Building & Development: Reinvigorating Our Cities
During the boom, cities went wild and planned as if the growth stage would never end. One result was an overbuilding of retail on virtually every corner. This was fine when homes were occupied, but when the Valley went bust, retail space became a different story. This was a huge mistake, according to Barry Broome, president and CEO of the Greater Phoenix Economic Council, … [More]
How Healthcare Strategies Impact the Employer’s Bottom Line
While debate swirls on healthcare as a political issue, companies must deal with it as an element of being in business. Decision makers factor in the different options available and how different choices affect the company’s profitability — making cost the central focus. This leads to the most commonly heard question, “How do we control it?” But to David Berg, M.D. — whose … [More]
Securing Our Energy Resources
It’s easy to take energy for granted. You hit the switch or plug into the outlet, and the power is there for you to run your business and live your life. We in the Phoenix Metropolitan Area experience only minimal disruptions to power and those come mainly from stormy monsoon weather rather than overloads on the grid. This is a testament to the power of planning by our energy … [More]
Entrepreneurs & Innovators
To recover from an injury, any boxer will credit being fit as critical to a speedy comeback. That’s not unlike an Arizona economy counting on being FIT to get it back to fighting form. Only this FIT stands for three pillars: franchise, invention and technology. Entrepreneurs and innovators from these three economic drivers are contributing to a new economy that is proving a … [More]
Are We Winning?
Arizona’s economic researchers say 2014 looks flat and steady. At least, say the optimists among them, we’re not going backward. The problem is jobs. One of every five Arizona workers has a job in two industry categories, either “retail” or “professional and business services.” Arizona’s 2013 job growth in these critical categories lagged behind national growth. Arizona … [More]
What Happened to Going Green? Are Companies Saving and Is the Industry Booming?
Green is good, we all agree. That is, it’s better as a business to be more resource efficient, less polluting, and generally more thoughtful about our impact on the environment. But how much is all this green goodwill really accomplishing when it comes to protecting our environment, combating global warming and, yes, producing profits? The Phoenix Suns have been fairly good … [More]
