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President Obama told the Labor Department to come up with new overtime rules that would make more workers eligible for time and a half pay for their extra hours of work.

The rules are aimed at salaried workers who make more than $455 a week and are ineligible for overtime because they hold a manager or supervisor position.

Ty Spatta started his own painting business 20 years ago.  He enjoys being a small business owner, but gets frustrated when he hears the government wants to step in and make businesses pay employees more.

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The AFL-CIO is applauding the anticipated move, saying the proposal could help raise wages and create jobs. Business groups, however, say it would be a job killer.

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What is a small business?

It is getting harder and harder to tell. Last week, the SBA adjusted its size standards that determine if a company is a small business. The definition varies by industry and is derived by annual revenue or by number of employees.

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Todays business environment is moving at a faster pace than ever before. It’s imperative that organizations of all sizes be nimble enough to respond and pivot according to business and market demands at a moment’s notice, or risk falling behind their competition.

To this point, many small businesses often struggle when it comes to effectively scaling their operations. This process entails making hefty IT investments, and while necessary for continued growth, many entrepreneurs just can not afford to do so.

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For large brands with big marketing and advertising budgets, one or even several hundred dollars is just a drop in the monthly marketing budget. But for entrepreneurs and small business owners, every dollar counts – and investments need to pay off in real and immediate marketing ROI.

But could a marketing strategy be executed with as little as $100?

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Today, Alphabet, the parent company of Google, announces its fourth quarter 2015 earnings. But it is also going to do something different. The company plans to separately break out the results of its core businesses from its other bets. By doing this, the company opens itself up to some criticism about the investments that it makes in unproven, risky technologies – from driverless cars to Glass. But without those investments, Google would never be the kind of company that it is today.

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I work with a ton of small businesses, and I love it. I love seeing different business models, helping entrepreneurs with limited resources and experience, and getting unique perspectives that you just can not find in bigger, often more cookie-cutter business establishments. One-on-one, we can share information and insights, and build a strategy that is helpful for their business.

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With the ongoing move of smart phones towards near-ubiquity, much of society has come to take these do-all devices for granted. In overcoming the novelty of smart phones, many of us have lost our one-time sense of awe at this technology, and have ceased marveling at the effect it has had on the world around us. However, it is undeniable that smart phones have exerted a huge and multi-faceted impact on society, and continue to do so to this day.

The Advent of Access: How Smart Phones Have Changed the World

The founder of a multiracial beauty company shares how she coped after her “personal and professional victory” angered many fans.

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In the wake of new rules and new attitudes, HR departments changed the talk about equality in pay, hiring, promotions and retention.

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Are you starting a business for the first time? It can be challenging to step out of your comfort zone and go head to head with competitors, manage customer orders and deliver a desirable product. Putting in the right amount of market research goes without saying. But how do you increase your chances of success when starting a business? Check out these 6 ways here.

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The topic of emotional intelligence (EQ) continues to dominate leadership conversations. Rightly so. However, in a Harvard Business Review (HBR) article that highlighted research by Daniel Goleman and Richard Boyatzis (experts on the topic), EQ is only the beginning.

Whereas EQ has an emphasis on individual psychology, there is a more relationship-based version called social intelligence. Social Intelligence, as defined by Goleman and Boyatizis, is a set of interpersonal competencies built on specific neural circuits and responses that inspire others to be effective. In other words, based on neuroscience and biology, there are certain leadership behaviors that elicit positive emotional responses in your team members.

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The tools, platforms and methods you use to grow your business are constantly changing. So you need to keep up with all the latest updates and trends. Members of the online small business community have some great insights about these changing tools and trends, ranging from social media algorithms to augmented reality. Read on for some helpful tips.

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Whether you realize it or not, artificial intelligence has become a ubiquitous part of our lives. Companies large and small are embracing the opportunity to achieve more and set bigger goals by using AI. Solid proof of this embrace can be seen in CRM giant Salesforce, which embeds AI into its leading CRM platform. Driven by the idea of democratizing AI so companies of all sizes can deliver smarter, more personalized, and predictive customer experiences, Salesforce created Einstein, your personal AI data scientist to guide you through your day.

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Everyone says that starting a business is expensive and risky, but it doesn't have to be. One approach, which some consider safer, is owning a franchise. It has a proven business model, a brand built in and corporate support. And not every franchise will cost you millions. In fact, you can start some franchises for less than five figures -- and not just random, bargain-bin franchises, but companies that made our 2017 Franchise 500 List.

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Amazon Business Prime Shipping is a paid annual membership program, which enables registered multi-user business customers to take advantage of unlimited fast and free shipping. The program is currently available for Amazon Business customers in the United States and Germany.
Small businesses are often faced with the challenge of sharing passwords for authorizing procurement and shipping tasks. With Business Prime Shipping everyone in a business account automatically gets Business Prime Shipping.

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Recently, I was asked to take over an existing project. And, like most people, my first inclination was to feel completely intimidated and overwhelmed.

This assignment -- along with its longstanding processes and its related team members -- was all brand new to me. And, if that wasn't enough to have me breathing into a paper bag, managing this project also required me to branch out and exercise some skills that I had previously left untapped.

My chest gets tight at the very thought. Can you relate? Being asked to take on a new work endeavor is a great thing (hey, you must be doing something right!). But, it can also plant plenty of seeds of self-doubt.

Fortunately, this recent experience opened my eyes to some better, more productive things you can do when you're tasked with a new project -- aside from just panicking.

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Optimism appears to be rising among small business owners (SBOs): 53% of the SBOs who participated in TD Banks 2018 Small Business Survey said they expect their revenues will grow in 2018. That is an improvement over the 46% of respondents who said the same in 2017.

In addition, the number of small businesses -- defined for purposes of the survey as those with $5 million or less in annual revenues -- that plan to hire this year more than doubled. In 2017, only 9% of respondents said they expected to add staff. This year, 22% said they intend to.

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Amazon is often blamed for the demise of the Mom and Pop store and other local and cultural icons of Main Street USA. There may be some truth to this, but it is also just as important to say that the company has helped many small and midsize businesses to grow and thrive.

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The holidays puts everyone in a celebratory mood — or almost everyone. For small business owners, the celebration may be tempered by stress over unpaid invoices. My business is lucky: Lots of our clients are scrambling to issue payments before year-end to finish off their fiscal years. But for other small businesses, freelancers and entrepreneurs in the B2B world, getting paid this time of year is an ongoing struggle.

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The 2018 holiday season is in the books, and small to medium-size businesses (SMBs) sold big on Amazon. In fact, SMBs had their best holiday shopping season ever.

The e-tail giant itself had a record-setting holiday season as well: More items were ordered worldwide on Amazon than ever before.

But it was not just corporations like LEGO that benefitted from all this shopping. More than 50 percent of all items sold came from small and medium-sized businesses.

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The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) included a bevy of changes that will affect the 2018 federal income tax returns of many small and medium-sized businesses and their owners. As tax return time approaches, here are the 10 changes that are most likely to affect your business or you as an owner.

1. New flat 21% tax rate for corporations
Before the TCJA, C corporations paid graduated federal income tax rates of 15%, 25%, 34%, and 35%. Personal service corporations (PSCs) paid a flat 35% rate. For tax years beginning in 2018 and beyond, the TCJA establishes a flat 21% corporate rate, and that beneficial rate applies to PSCs too. So the tax cost of doing business as a profitable C corporation is greatly reduced, and this favorable development will show up on 2018 corporate returns. Enjoy.

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Small-business owners were victims in 43 percent of data breaches tracked between Nov. 1, 2017, and Oct. 31, 2018, according to a 2019 Verizon report. The report tracked security incidents across all industries, but the most vulnerable sectors this year were retail, accommodation and healthcare.

What does the issue look like on a national scale? If we take the sample size of infected sites SiteLock said they found in 2018 -- approximately 47,244 out of 6,056,969 checked -- and apply that percentage to the country’s estimated 30.2 million small-businesses websites, minus the estimated 36 percent that do not have one, then we can loosely estimate the amount of infected small-business websites to be around 150,757.

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The World Economic Forum recently uncovered something that would not have registered on the radar screen of most HR leaders even ten years ago.

One of the top 10 job skills required for workers to thrive--a skill projected to trend in the year 2022--is emotional intelligence.

Emotional intelligence (EQ) has embedded itself in the business lexicon as a force to be reckoned with; it is by far one of the most desired qualities for personal and professional development.

Managers are hiring workers with more right-brained skills like EQ because they know these people contribute to the workplace on a relational and interpersonal level that is unmatched.

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If you run a small business for a long time, you will probably need to navigate through a lot of major changes. Members of the online small business community are very familiar with these shifts. From getting started to deciding when to retire, here are some valuable insights for making big changes in your business.

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It is hard to believe that six weeks ago we were all living life as we previously knew it and making plans for the life we thought was ahead.

It has been an exhausting six weeks. It has been a frustrating and angering six weeks.  It has been a scary and anxiety-inducing six weeks. It has been a life- and business-altering six weeks.

And yet, every day — over and over and over again — I have seen small-business owners around the world step up, persist and display the type of character that I am inspired by.

I saw an amazing quote last week. It reminded that character is not built during crisis, but that character is revealed during crisis. How true is that? I look around and I see people who have been revealed as power hungry and self-centered, but I have also seen people who are kind, generous and committed to the greater good. And so many small business owners fit into that category.

As the Covid-19 outbreak wreaks havoc on the retail industry, some are asking a curious question, namely: will companies boost their spending on branding in the aftermath the crisis?

What I find strange about this question is the assumption that branding is something you turn on and off, like a light switch; that it is somehow a conscious decision or undertaking that brands embark on as necessary or when it best serves them. I suspect this is because we’ve long confused the concepts of branding and advertising. They are not the same.

Advertising is what a brand says about itself to consumers. Advertising is a conscious effort on the part of a brand to promote itself, its products and its services. Advertising can be bought and sold. Advertising is transactional.

Branding, on the other hand, is a very different thing. Branding is what others think and say about you. And it’s informed by a wide range of inputs, far beyond what a brand says about itself. More critical is what a brand actually does or doesn’t do. Branding reflects the sum total of every organisational action, set against the backdrop of culture, all of which reveals the true character of a company. Branding cannot be bought or sold. Branding is transformational.

Small businesses could soon see a rollback of several universally loathed measures attached to the original Paycheck Protection Program, the $669 billion loan and grant initiative aimed at helping small businesses keep employees on the payroll.

When the House convenes next Wednesday, it is expected to vote on the Paycheck Protection Flexibility Act, a standalone bill that would, among other things, lengthen the time businesses may spend the funds from their PPP loans. The bill would also eliminate the requirement that 75 percent of a loan's proceeds must be spent on employee pay and benefits. The measure was originally proposed on May 15 in the House by representatives Dean Phillips (D., Minn.) and Chip Roy (R., Texas).  

One of the primary appeals of the contemporary small business, in my opinion, is the family-centric culture that comes from a close-knit team. While in modern America, many may feel swallowed by corporations, the notoriety of the small business proves that people still find value in the intimate workplace.

Every industry across the globe has felt the staggering impacts of Covid-19, but small businesses were put under specific strain. Based on what I've seen, however, they have proved their undeniable resilience.

As a proud member of a small business myself, I have felt the social deprivation of working from home firsthand. Similar to my own experience, members of thousands of other small businesses who have worked alongside each other for lifetimes have had to adjust to maintaining an office culture from the comfort (or discomfort) of their home. While online interactions can never compare to the in-person experience, many small businesses, like my own, found that being apart actually meant working closer together than ever before.

With the ongoing move of smart phones towards near-ubiquity, much of society has come to take these do-all devices for granted. In overcoming the novelty of smart phones, many of us have lost our one-time sense of awe at this technology, and have ceased marveling at the effect it has had on the world around us. However, it is undeniable that smart phones have exerted a huge and multi-faceted impact on society, and continue to do so to this day.

How Smart Phones Have Changed the World

The Great War is a channel on YouTube that covers the 1914-18 conflict that engulfed a large part of the planet.  A unique documentary with a massive scale that is filled with video clips and still images taken at the...

Many thanks g to Cristina in Greece for her report on this - originally published on her justiceforgreece blog as A seed For Change a documentary project by Alex Ikonomidis and the declaration on seed freedom Alex Ikonomidis is a Greek film maker who lived, studied and worked in Lebanon. After returning to his native Greece and serving his time in the military, he took up his profession there and was happily going along, producing in the world of media and advertising when, suddenly, the economic crisis hit. Through the crisis, Ikonomidis recognized that when money becomes more and more scarce, it is important to be where food is grown. This brought him to embark on a documentary project. A Seed for Change is his soon-to-be-released feature length film documenting why agriculture must start with seed freedom. Chemical inputs are often toxic and are disruptive to human health and the environment. "Standardized" seeds, as imposed by the agro-chemical conglomerates through legislation pushed through in much of the civilized world, are destroying our heritage of biological diversity, created by nature and harnessed by farmers for producing our food over thousands of years....

1. Open a new file and set your font; Verdana; 18pt
2. File > Templates > Save as Template
3. Select > My Templates then tick the "Set as default template" box
4. Enter a name at the top then save and close the file.

The next time you open Writer, the settings should be in place.

When Amazon announced the Echo, I immediately requested access to purchase one. I read some skeptical blog posts about it, but had high hopes. We received ours back in December and since then it has become increasingly useful.

I will not list out everything we love about "Alexa", but I wanted to highlight one thing we do that has proven helpful. We have one iPad to share among the entire family and that can be problematic with 7 children. My wife came up with the idea of having the kids set a 20 minute timer on Alexa each time they begin using the ipad. It is simple and has changed our lives. The constant questions, "Mommy, can I have the ipad now," stopped immediately. And the amount of time on the iPad for each child was reduced without parental intervention.

Children are happier when they know their boundaries. This makes parents happier too. Alexa was just the tool we needed to reduce the amount of time kids were spending on the ipad and to ensure everyone has a turn.

The kids have also had their eyes opened to how easy it is to stay on the ipad for a really long time without noticing. It's a win all across the board. Thanks to Amazon and "Alexa". And thanks to my wife for the ingenious idea.

Les personnes de tous horizons engag�es en faveur de l'amiti� sino-br�silienne au Br�sil se r�jouissent de la visite du pr�sident Xi Jinping dans le pays et restent pr�tes � contribuer davantage � l'approfondissement de l'amiti� entre le Br�sil et...

Fu Cong, repr�sentant permanent de la Chine aupr�s des Nations Unies, a exhort� mardi Isra�l � lever les restrictions sur l'acc�s humanitaire � Gaza et � cesser d'utiliser l'aide humanitaire comme monnaie d'�change, alors que la situation...

La partie continentale de la Chine a r�affirm� son engagement � promouvoir les �changes entre les jeunes � travers le d�troit de Taiwan et a demand� aux autorit�s du Parti d�mocrate progressiste (PDP) de lever les restrictions sur les voyages �...

Une porte-parole de la partie continentale de la Chine a condamn� mercredi les politiciens du Parti d�mocrate progressiste (PDP) dans la r�gion de Taiwan, qui tentent de faire obstacle aux �changes normaux entre les deux rives du d�troit de Taiwan...

Hania was interviewed for regional radio and ended up with a nice, cute story on their website.

7V VERWARMDE HANDSCHOENEN Of je nu gaat skiën, paardrijden, hond uitlaten, fietsen of wat dan ook, het is nooit leuk als je het koud hebt. De handen zullen het eerste koud worden. Hiervoor hebben wij verschillende 7 volt verwarmde handschoenen ontwikkeld waardoor je met plezier de dingen doet die je leuk vindt. Ook mensen met een minder goede doorbloeding zullen merken dat onze verwarmde handschoenen een uitkomst zijn. Alle Gerbing 7 volt verwarmde handschoenen en andere kledingstukken uit het 7 volt assortiment worden standaard geleverd met 2 oplaadbare batterijen. Dat wil zeggen dat in tegenstelling tot onze 12 volt elektrisch verwarmde handschoenen, die standaard aangesloten worden op een motorvoertuigaccu, de 7 volt handschoenen alleen maar autonoom gedragen kunnen worden. Net als onze 12 volt verwarmde handschoenen zijn de 7 volt verwarmde handschoenen voorzien van het gepatenteerde micro wire (staaldraad). Dit draad is heel sterk en erg flexibel. Voor alle doeleinden heeft Gerbing handschoenen: S-7 verwarmde textiel handschoenen zijn te gebruiken voor o.a.skiën en fietsen vanwege de extra verstevigingen aan de binnenkant van de hand. De lederen O-7 verwarmde handschoenen en de H-7 verwarmde handschoenen zijn weer te gebruiken voor diverse outdoor activiteiten. Zo is de H-7 handschoenen speciaal gemaakt voor paardrijden en jagen. Maar vanwege zijn sjieke uiterlijk kan men ook leeker verwarmt rijden in een cabrio. De M-7 verwarmde wanten maken de collectie compleet. Deze textiele wanten zijn verkrijgbaar in drie maten en zijn voor heel veel activiteiten geschikt. Al deze 7 volt verwarmde handschoenen worden geleverd met een 7 volt batterij kitje (B7V-2500 KIT). Deze batterijen worden ook voor de 7 volt verwarmde jassen, 7 volt verwarmde sokken en alle overige 7 volt producten. De batterijen zijn eenvoudig te bedienen en zorgen voor uren plezier met warme handen.

Gerbing biedt een breed scala aan 12 volt verwarmde handschoenen aan. Deze zijn eenvoudig aan te sluiten op een 12 volt accu van een voertuig door middel van de accu-aansluitkabel. Ook zijn ze aan te sluiten op onze 12 volt draagbare batterijen waardoor onze verwarmde handschoenen ook gebruikt kunnen worden voor willekeurige outdoor activiteiten. Wij gebruiken de beste verwarmingstechnologie die er is en daardoor kunnen wij ook een levenslange garantie geven op de verwarming. Door middel van het hoogwaardige Microwire ® verwarmingssysteem, waarop patent is aangevraagd, zijn het de warmste handschoenen die ooit ontwikkeld zijn. Alle 12 volt verwarmde handschoenen worden geleverd met een accu-aansluitkabel en een in-line junior controller om de warmte van de handschoenen te regelen. Gerbing heeft de volgende typen 12 volt handschoenen in het assortiment: T-12 verwarmde handschoen: Een leren, waterdichte motorhandschoen met bescherming en een mogelijkheid om kleine batterijen te plaatsen (B12V-1400). G-12 verwarmde handschoen: Een basic leren, waterdichte motorhandschoen met een kortere schacht die. De G-12 heeft niet de mogelijkheid om gebruikt te worden in combinatie met kleine batterijen die in de schacht geplaatst kunnen worden. XR-12 verwarmde handschoen: Een leren waterdichte handschoen met extra knokkelbescherming. Net als de T-12 is deze handschoen ook te gebruiken met kleine batterijen. L-12 verwarmde handschoen. Een dunne lycra handschoen die veel gebruikt wordt bij het ultra light vliegen. Deze kan aangesloten worden op de accu van een voertuig maar kan ook aangesloten worden op een draagbare 12 volt batterij zoals de B12V-5200 of de B12V-8000. TEX-12 vewarmde handschoen: Een iets dikkere textiele handschoenen met wat extra gripprotectie aan de binnenkant van de handschoen. Deze kan net als de L-12 aangesloten worden op de accu van een voertuig of op de B12V-5200 of de B12V-8000. De TEX-12 is niet geschikt voor op de motor maar is geweldig voor de brommer, scooter of op de fiets. Al onze 12 volt verwarmde handschoenen zijn te combineren met met al onze andere 12 volt producten zoals de 12 volt verwarmde jas, 12 volt verwarmde broek en 12 volt verwarmde sokken

The NFL adopted seven of the rules changes proposed at the NFL owners meetings, with more possibly coming on Wednesday.