Team Hammock is lacing up its shoes once again to participate in the Country Music Marathon and Half Marathon on Saturday, April 25, in Nashville.
It’s one of the biggest races in the country, bringing together more than 40,000 runners and walkers—and among those will be at least two of us here from Hammock. That’s right, Jamie Roberts and I have already committed—and started training. (For anyone keeping count, the score is Editorial Department: 2, Art Department: 0).
Jamie and I both participated in the race last year, and if you’re on the fence about joining us, we can honestly say the cotton candy-flavored Go-Gurt at the finish line makes it worth every step.
We’re so excited about the prospect of eating cotton candy-flavored Go-Gurt again, that we’ve already started training for the race. For those of you who plan to be at the start line on April 25, we’re sharing a few of our favorite tips for the first month of training for a half or full marathon.
In an effort to get more of my fellow workers to sign up for the race, I’m going to be using forceful intimidation, bribery, blackmail and good old fashioned guilt trips. Check back in a few weeks to see if it worked.
Longtime readers of MyBusiness are familiar with the topic that dominates the cover of the February/March 09 issue of MyBusiness—how Big Labor is trying to make it easier to unionize workplaces. The issue has always been there, but it’s always taken a backseat to all of the other issues that affect our readers’ ability to own, operate and grow their businesses. That’s because despite Big Labor’s efforts, they never could have convinced a majority of lawmakers—or the president—to pass their proposed card-check system. Until now.
The new Congress and president are focused on the economy and how to pull America out of a recession now, but NFIB expects them to turn their attention to card checks soon. Thus, our cover story—“Face Off: NFIB challenges Big Labor.”
“Are you here for the exclusive, online-only content? Right this way. Hey, by the way, how did you find out about us? Oh, the magazine directed you here? Wow, that’s great! It worked!”
30 minutes later: “Wow, you’re still here! You’re right, there is so much information on this site. Well, thanks for coming. Don’t be a stranger. Come back, we’ll have new content tomorrow!”
At least, that’s how I envision a conversation I’d have with a MyBusiness reader who I bumped into online.
With MyBusiness, the magazine we publish for the National Federation of Independent Business, the way we drive readers online is to offer them additional information about a topic that appeared in the magazine.
Take one look at the cover December/January 2009 issue of MyBusiness and you just might not recognize it.
The bold illustration of Uncle Sam using Main Street as his crutch is a definite deviation from the typical cover of MyBusiness, the magazine we publish for members of the National Federation of Independent Business. But the message it sends is the same one we send in every issue: Small business is the heart and soul of America, representing 80 percent of total employment in the United States and producing roughly half of the country’s annual GDP—and if anyone is going to get the nation through a downturn, it’s small business.
In fact, the entire December/January 2009 issue is dedicated to the economy. You’ll find recession-busting tips from cover to cover. That’s why a typical cover just wouldn’t work this time.
I’m using a new writer for one of the articles in the next issue of MyBusiness, and the article is due today. I’m always anxious the day the article is due—probably because part of me is worried that the article isn’t going to be very good. That doesn’t happen a lot, but trust me, it happens, and when it does you’ll tell yourself that you’ll never use a new writer again.
But it can’t work that way. If it did, you’d only be selling yourself—and your readers—short.
I’m going to brag for a few seconds and mention how good I am at finding sources for articles. Looking for a small business that practices open-book management? Give me 30 seconds. Looking for a female small business owner in Arizona that hires veterans? OK, I’ll need about 10 minutes for that one.
But my skill at finding sources is as obsolete as a typesetter’s now. And it’s all Peter Shankmann’s (and his Help a Reporter Out Web site). Let me rephrase: Thank you, Peter Shankmann
Our client, NFIB, believes strongly that the decisions voters make on Election Day at the polls will have profound effects on their lives—and that the effect is even stronger for those who own or work for a small business. That’s why we dedicated more than half of the pages of the October/November 2008 issue of MyBusiness, the magazine we publish for NFIB, to the election—specifically to the information small business voters should be armed with before making those important decisions on Nov. 4.
For those still trying to make sense of the issues and where the candidates stand, we compiled the reader-friendly Voting for Small Business feature, which outlines the issues (think healthcare, taxes, energy and labor) affecting small business and both Sens. John McCain’s and Barack Obama’s positions on them.
It’s the beginning of September and we already have one of the features (edit, photography and layout) ready for the December/January issue of MyBusiness. How’s that for working ahead?
Are we studious? Umm, yes, but that’s not exactly why the story’s ready to go. You see, that feature was slated for October/November up until pretty much the last minute, but we ended up not having room for it, so we’re putting it in the next issue. You didn’t think we were just going to throw it away, did you?
When we started researching the cover feature for the August/September issue of MyBusiness—”The New Frontier: Top technologies to plan for in the coming years”—we weren’t really sure what to include. What’s cutting edge to some people might be old hat to others. That’s how we picked the tech concepts we did: Each of them could speak to someone who’s new to technology and the Internet (hard to believe that’s possible, huh?) as well as to those people who have been online and plugged in for years.
Through the small business owners who have embraced these technologies, we show how these various tools—from social networking to mobile technology—can help transform the way you run your business.
This issue (like all issues of MyBusiness) is filled with ways to transform the way you do small business—from improving loyalty by keeping an open-door policy with clients to choosing the right direction in the midst of a turning point to keeping key employees from being wooed by your competition.
I didn’t count them, but I bet the June/July issue of MyBusiness, the member magazine we publish for the National Federation of Independent Business, has more than 100 tips on how to protect your business from, well, anything and everything.
From a natural disaster to employee theft to bad-for-business regulations, the threats facing the small business owners we interviewed for this issue are real and could happen to any business any day. Just ask Nichole Yarbrough, owner of Shepherd, Texas-based Shepherd Auto Sales, whom we talked to for the Crisis Averted feature. In one day, everything she worked to create was taken from her when a thief stole her purse, which contained credit cards, checks, $5,000 in cash and more than 40 car titles. It was a rough two months putting the pieces back together, but she survived and has since learned the important lesson of protecting her business from theft by backing up data (and not keeping car titles in her purse, of course!).
Turn a few pages past Yarbough’s story and you’ll meet Michael Nevins, who is fighting a much different kind of threat—a challenging small business climate in Michigan, where his business, Full Spectrum Solutions, is located. Nevins uses his involvement in NFIB as a shield to combat onerous regulations. In this article, he explains why his commitment to NFIB is so important.
Also check out the MyBusiness Manual: the Essential Guide to Safeguarding Your Business, where you’ll find tips on assessing your insurance needs, how to prepare for an OSHA inspection and protecting your business against hackers and scammers.
For this and more, check out the “Current Issue” section of www.mybusinessmag.com.