Over the past few years, we have experienced a period of high inflation, leading to a rise in interest rates. Although it my sound complicated, having a basic understanding of how they relate to you and your business can help you make more informative decisions, when it comes to borrowing, hiring, spending, expanding, and much more.

The most common challenge small business owners face is the cost and quality of labor, which are directly impacted by inflation. After the pandemic, the labor market began to tighten, meaning that the number of available jobs increased more rapidly than the amount of available workers. When this happens, workers are able to demand higher wages because there is little competition for job openings.

Imagine you are a business owner needing to hire someone. When interest rates are low and the labor market is tight, you may start looking for a candidate and find that there are not many applicants to choose from. Let’s say you finally find someone with just enough qualifications, however, they are demanding a wage of $22/hour which is more than you have offered for a similar position in the past. Due to the lack of applicants, you decide to make the hire anyway. In order to pay your new employee, you go and borrow money from the bank until your sales are able to catch up with the new cost. The bank offers you a loan and charges a 3% interest rate. Now that you have an employee with a higher wage and a loan to pay back, you decide to raise your prices a bit. Inflation.

In order to combat inflation, the Federal Reserve raises interest rates. By doing so, they are essentially trying to slow down the economy by discouraging borrowing, and loosening the labor market, which would lead to a slow down in rising prices.

Let’s go back to your business. A year goes by and you want to hire more employees to keep expanding your business. The labor market has only gotten tighter, but the Fed has begun to raise interest rates. The new candidates are demanding a wage of $25/hour, so you go back to your bank and ask for a bigger loan. But now the bank is charging an 8% interest rate. You figure that it would be too costly between the higher wages and the interest, so you decide to hold off until the interest rates go back down.

Instead of borrowing more money, hiring more people, and selling more product, you are choosing to wait, which is what the Fed’s goal is when they decided to raise interest rates. Other business owner’s facing the same predicament as you also choose to hold off on borrowing and hiring. As less businesses create job openings, the labor market begins to loosen. With fewer openings, more people become unemployed for longer; the competition in the labor market increases.

The person you hired for $22/hour is not panning out, so you decide to replace them. You’re pleased to find that there are plenty of eager applicants and they are only demanding $19/hour. Since your labor cost just got lower, you want to gain an edge on your competition so you decide lower your prices back down. More and more businesses like yours cut their labor costs and lower their prices, while the interest rates are high. Inflation defeated.

Eventually the Fed is happy with the decrease in prices, and can gradually begin to lower their rates. Allowing you to reconsider borrowing money, hiring more people, and selling more product.

Back to reality. Interest rates are still high and the Fed is debating whether or not to raise them even more, as the labor market is still tight. However, It is likely that they will begin to lower them at some point next year.

As you navigate your business over the next couple of years, you’ll want to keep all of this in mind. By understanding economic factors like interest rates, and inflation, make better decisions for your business. It is important to pay attention to what the Fed is planning to do with interest rates in the near future, as you will understand how this will affect your cost of borrowing and labor. If you are planning to borrow money, you may want to consider whether or not you can hold off until interest rates ease up.

As I grind through my job, I often wonder how I could possibly make more money than my parents. After all, my parents made more money than their parents, who made more money than their parents.

Being the typical millennial I am, as I scroll through social media, I see plenty of memes and jokes about “boomers” telling their millennial children, that ‘at their age, they were able to afford a house and feed an entire family, all while saving for retirement.’ There is indeed actual data outside of memes that support this notion. So, it’s not just me, but millennials, on average, are less wealthy than their parents at the same stage in life, despite making more money and being more educated. Why?

There are a multitude of factors we can point to, and it’s not because millennials are dumb or lazy (okay some us are but not more so than other generations). Socioeconomic factors like cost of living, economic growth, and overall views on saving money are the real culprits for millennials finding themselves at a financial disadvantage compared to their parents.

Let’s start by taking a look at the cost of living. It costs way more to live as an adult now, that it did 30-50 years ago. Just think about all of the little things you need* to spend on that your parents and grandparents did not. Internet, cable, Wi-Fi, email, and most other tech-related “utilities”, that are so common now, did not exist as little as 25 years ago. In addition, many items that did exist have drastically increased in price, outpacing wages. Increases in college tuition, housing, healthcare, and child care have out paced wages. Simply put, it costs way more to live in this current society and wages have not compensated to the same extent.

Another huge factor is the differences in generation population and corresponding economic growth. Boomers are typically the children of the traditionalist/silent generation, those people born between 1928-1945. The traditionalist generation was one that grew up on the heels of the Great Depression and WWII, causing their parents to have less children, yielding a smaller demographic compared to other generations. Boomers get their name because their parents had far more children due to changing mindsets about war and family than their grandparents, thus leading to the “Baby Boom” in the 50s and 60s. Naturally, with more boomers entering a growing workforce, job opportunities were plentiful as they came of age because there were way more of them in a growing economy fill than there were incumbents to block them from filling such roles.

While boomers had more children, on average, than Millennials do now, they still did not have as many as their own parents. This would create less opportunities for millennials in the workforce to replace the boomer incumbents in higher paying jobs, not just because there were less of them to replace their predecessors, but also because the economy came to screeching halt in both 2008 and 2020.

Millennials came of age during The Great Recession of 2008, thus the economy ceased to create the same level of opportunities to out earn their parents. Prior to the financial collapse of 2008, many people were able to buy a house and reasonably expect that property to appreciate significantly over the course of their ownership. Once the housing market collapsed, this was no longer true for millennials, leading to far less of them becoming home owners than their parents were at the same age.

On top of these major factors, millennials have a much different mindset than their parents and grandparents when it comes to saving money. Boomers and their parents were taught to earn and save for retirement, climb corporate ladders, own a home and have children. Millennials on the other hand, are much more influenced by social media to spend, have more of a work life balance, travel, and delay having children. There fore millennials spend way more of their paychecks than their parents did at their age, leading to less investments in their retirement.

The point of all this is not to complain or blame the generations before us, but to understand the financial position we’re in so we can all prepare for our future. It is not impossible to get a mortgage and buy a house as a millennial, our parents faced very high interest rates as well. You can still travel and delay having children thanks to advances in medicine and fertility treatment. There are ways to budget for this and still save, so it is important to think about your retirement and how much you are actually spending, and focus on how you can adjust your budget to accomplish your desired lifestyle to a reasonable degree while also putting some money away for retirement.

While our parents were taught and conditioned to work and save, work and save, work and save, it is OKAY that our generation prefers to actually try and enjoy life to some degree while also trying to make a living wage. Just as every generation before us had jobs that did not exist when they were children, so do millennials and we will keep finding jobs tomorrow that do not exist today. Take me for example.

(Full disclosure: I am a white male raised by an upper-middle class family, so I do recognize that the odds are stacked in my favor, but I think my experience is still valuable.)

I graduated with a bachelor’s degree in finance, and went on to work traditional 9-5 jobs for big companies in my first few years out of college. During the pandemic, and more so the shift to a more virtual workforce, I found that I had a greater opportunity to offer my skills and services by freelancing. This allows me to serve multiple clients, and customize my workload to some degree. I am not relying on a single employer to fund my life, and I can adjust my work and amount of clients to fit my desired work/life balance. I find that an increasing amount of my peers are choosing a similar route, especially those who work in marketing, advertising, PR, and graphic design industries.

So if you are a millennial (or older Gen Zer) concerned with your future retirement and earning potential, the best thing you can do is strategically consider how you can leverage you’re knowledge, education and skills, in way that may be a tad less “traditional”, but one that can allow you to work in an environment that is more suited for your lifestyle and spending habits.

Today, Fox News and Dominion Voting Systems have reached a historic settlement in the defamation case stemming from Fox’s coverage of Dominion’s role in the outcome of the 2020 US Presidential election.

The case was originally filed by Dominion Voting Systems in March 2021 for $1.6 Billion. Dominion claimed that numerous Fox News personalities knowingly spread false statements that their voting machines were used to manipulate the 2020 election against former president Donald Trump.

Details of the settlement are still unknown to the public, but this serves as a historic precedent for news outlets and the potential repercussions they may face when it comes to journalistic integrity. While Fox tried to defend themselves by citing the first amendment, their words had a direct impact on Dominion’s business.

This is an important reminder that while our constitution does provide us with free speech, if you are going to knowingly spread false information about a person or entity that stands to suffer financial damages from such actions, there is a price to pay. In fact, the settlement amount is more than Dominion Voting Systems is even worth, but damages can be attributed to potential lost earnings.

If you are going to defame, diminish, or attack a person’s character, you better make sure there are facts to back it up.

On Sunday, The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) took control of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB), following bank’s historic collapse on Friday. This marks the 2nd largest bank collapse in U.S. history. Not long after, Signature Bank collapsed as well, making it the 3rd largest in U.S. history.

How did SVB Collapse?

SVB became one of the largest tech lenders in the nation, an industry that saw a massive boom since 2020, but has since regressed. Many venture capitalist firms and tech companies had been putting in massive amounts of deposits over the last few years. Just like any other business banks try to make money, and they do this by taking (some) of the money deposited with them, and generating a higher yield through lending and other investments.

In order to generate profit, SVB invested a large portion of their capital into bonds. Bonds are debt-securities, and are typically considered less risky compared to equity securities. Bond investors receive interest payments until the bond matures, when the principal of the bond is paid back. Typically, the interest payments are tied to the current interest rates.

Just like publicly traded stocks, bonds can be bought and sold on the open market. Therefore, when interest rates rise, the market price of bonds declines. Think about it… if I have a bond that pays a 4% interest rate, and someone can easily go and get a new bond at the current higher rate of, let’s say 6%, the market value of my bond will go down because it does not pay as much as the higher rate bonds available on the market.

In order to combat rising inflation, the Fed has been continuously raising interest rates, which lowered the value of the bonds SVB was invested in. Seeing the value of their investments plummet, SVB began to sell them at a huge loss in order to improve its liquidity and shore up its balance sheet, but instead it scared some of its larger investors and depositors, leading to a huge demand of withdrawals that the bank could not afford to pay back.

What Is The Government Doing?

The Biden Administration told the public that SVB depositors will receive all of their funds.

But how?

They are using FDIC funds, which is essentially an insurance program that banks pay in to cover accounts up to $250,000. Additional funds are being made available under the new Bank Term Funding Program (BFTB) which offers very low interest, short-term loans to banks. This allows the government to ensure depositors receive their money until the Fed can sell off SVB’s assets.

Is This a Bailout?

No. SVB is done. Out of business. All of their management has been fired. Investors in the bank’s stock or SOL as it is now worthless. According to the plan laid out by the Biden administration, they are not using taxpayer money to keep the bank in business, but instead keep public faith in the US banking system, and to ensure the deposit holders, and most importantly those small businesses who need their money to make payroll are made whole.

Why Didn’t Regulators Prevent This?

After the 2008 Financial Crisis, The Obama administration passed the Dodd-Frank act which enacted strict regulation in the banking industry. However, in 2018, the Trump Administration eased some of those regulations, most importantly the barometer of which banks would fall under this tight regulation. Under Dodd-Frank banks with assets under management of $50 billion or more were considered systematically important, but that was raised to $250 Billion in 2018. SVB had roughly $200 Billion in AUM, making it the country’s 16th largest bank.

Would the tighter regulation have prevented this? It’s hard to say for certain right now, before all the dust has settled, but one aspect of the act’s regulation was a stress test for banks in scenario’s where interest rates raise dramatically.

What Happens Now?

Hopefully, the actions taken by the government will ease concerns and prevent a ripple effect of depositors across the country withdrawing all of their funds from regional banks, which would be very very bad. But as for now, will have to wait and see. Biden has already asked congress to act quickly and pass a bill to enforce tighter regulation going forward.

Google is being sued by the Justice Department and eight states, accusing the company of using its dominance in the digital advertising market to crush competitors and force ad buyers and sellers to use its products unfavorable terms.

According to the DOJ, advertisers receive far less revenue from those ads than they otherwise would, this leads to money to fund their offerings. They ascertain that those advertisers are being forced to pay more than they should, and those costs get passed onto the customer.

The DOJ is seeking to force Google to sell or spin off parts of its digital ad arm so it will no longer have control over every side of the digital ad buying process: the buyer side, seller side, and the exchange.

The fed is also claiming to be a victim themselves too, asking for monetary damages for the government. They say that Google’s inflated ad prices cost the government money through ads it’s bought since 2019 to promote various agencies and services.

Google’s Defense

Dan Taylor, Global ads vice president for Google, claimed the lawsuit would harm the advertising industry and innovation, not help it. “Today’s lawsuit from the DOJ attempts to pick winners and losers in the highly competitive advertising technology sector,” Google said in a statement. Taylor furthered his point by warning that the government should not be able to force companies to unwind 15-year-old acquisitions that were once approved by regulators.

Google also pointed out that the digital ad market is a crowded and competitive space, as Facebook (Meta), and  Amazon also have huge shares of the digital advertising market in the US, (Google has the largest). The other antitrust enforcement agency, the Federal Trade Commission, has sued Meta and Microsoft for acquisitions that they claim to be anticompetitive.

My Thoughts

As a strong advocate for small business, its safe to say that I’m not a big fan of big tech companies crushing competition with monopolization. However, I (not a lawyer) am failing to see this as a strong case for the DOJ. Google is certainty not the only place to place digital advertisements, with Meta and Amazon on their heels.

Also, you do not have to use Google to promote your business. If you are an advertiser nothing is stopping you from going directly to where you want your ads displayed. I’m not talking about the search ads that comes up when you “google” something. To me, that would fall under their monopilzation as a search engine, which I think the DOJ has a much stronger case for (I havent heard the word Bing in a while.)

If they want to claim that the Google has monopolized the search engine industry that makes sense but to claim that they control the entire digital ad industry seems like a stretch.

What do you think?

P.S. when i was researching this article I googled “Google”. That’s pretty Meta. Okay I’ll stop.

On August 16, 2022, The Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 (IRA) was signed into law. The IRA was created to direct new federal spending toward reducing carbon emissions, lowering healthcare costs, funding the Internal Revenue Service, and improving taxpayer compliance, all in an effort to help curb the rising inflation.

However, the House GOP is sending a message by passing a partisan bill yesterday (that WON’T make it through the Senate) that would cut that IRS funding.

So, what does this all mean?

Why is inflation so high? What is the purpose of the new IRS funding from the IRA? What message is the GOP sending by passing this bill?

Why Inflation is High

Inflation is reaching historically high levels due in large part to lingering effects from the pandemic. At the start of the Covid-19 outbreak, consumers began spending less because of lockdowns, and in turn, started saving more. Then, when Covid-19 restrictions eased, people started spending more again. Companies, however, couldn’t keep up with this increased consumer demand. 

Just as there are many causes of broad-based inflation, there are many factors that have given way to higher energy prices. Large in part, due to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the resulting Western countries’ sanctions which put severe limits on the import of Russian oil. Both events played a significant role in rising energy prices and supply-chain issues.

The result of all these things? Higher prices for most goods and services.

Corporations and wealthy individuals have been getting away with not paying taxes. Ergo, most people can’t afford to buy things while those who can do not fund the government with their taxes, which is contributing to inflation and leaving the economy in a very shaky state.

IRA Funding From The IRS

Excerpts from the nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT) indicated that the legislation might lead to increased payments on personal taxes for Americans of all incomes. However, this calculation was based on an assumption that companies would pass on parts of the minimum corporate tax to employees, which was criticized by Steven M. Rosenthal, a senior fellow at the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center (TPC). The TPC estimated that the bottom 80% tax filers by income would actually receive a net benefit. The 80th-99th percentile would incur a small cost (0-0.1% increase in average federal tax rate) while the top 1% would incur a 0.2% increase. The costs mainly are imposed indirectly as corporations facing higher taxes, which may end up reducing the wage increases for workers; individual tax rates were not changed.

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen directed IRS Commissioner Charles Rettig to NOT use the new funding to increase the rate of audits of those making less than $400,000 a year above historical levels, but to instead focus on “high-end noncompliance.”

The GOP Response

“Our first bill will repeal funding for 87,000 new IRS agents, because the government should be here to help you, not go after you,” declared the very newl House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, who was barely able to get elected by his own party.

Republicans claimed throughout the midterm campaign that Democrats were sending “an army of IRS agents” to go after middle and lower-class taxpayers with the new agency funding in the IRA. A tad misleading. 

Republicans also say they are not buying the assertions from administration officials stated above and have vowed to keep up scrutiny of the IRS.

The Democrat Response to the GOP Response

“They don’t want a fairer tax administration, they think it’s bad for some of their supporters,” Rep Richard Neal, the top Democrat on the Ways and Means Committee, said in debate with Republicans. “What they’re attempting to do tonight is bad for middle-class families. It’s bad for small businesses.”

This new House Republican measure would increase the budget deficit by more than $114 billion through 2032, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

My Interpretation

Inflation is high. Corporations haven’t been paying the limited taxes they owe. Lawmakers are trying to curb rising inflation by funding various programs, including the IRS so that it can collect from the top 1% more efficiently. The GOP is trying to appeal to their supporters and say that Democrats are spending money and use it to come after poor people to force them to pay more taxes with guns. The Democrats are saying, “false”.

Will any of this actually reduce inflation? We’ll just have to wait and see.

Speaking of tax… If you need help getting your businesses’ 2022 financial statements ready you should hire an outsourced CFO or bookkeeper from Skyview! For more info email me at brandon@skyviewcfo.com!

I miss the old Kanye…

No but really, I remember the first time I listened to The College Dropout. I was spoiled. As a rap/hip-hop fan, I thought that every album should be that great. Kanye followed it up with hit after hit, cementing himself, not just as one of the most talented rappers, but as one of the most talented musicians of our generation. While this is my opinion, it is hard to argue that his historic rise wasn’t due to incredible talent as he followed up his 2004 debut album with now-classics like Late Registration, Graduation, 808s & a Heartbreak and My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, all of which peaked at #1 and went at least triple platinum. (I even liked Yeezus and The Life of Pablo which both went double platinum).

Everyone handles success differently. We’ve seen many young stars fall off early and others able to handle the limelight. As for Ye, it has become increasingly evident that his stardom, combined with mental illness, has turned him into a man who now believes he is untouchable, or as he would probably put it: God-like.

In addition to being a historically great musician, Kanye has supplemented his success with other ventures, especially as a fashion designer. His shoes still sell for thousands of dollars on the secondary market even though they’re pretty hideous.

Kanye, like any successful artist, has developed a devout following. I was definitely a big fan but never considered myself to be a Kanye “Stan”. In case you don’t know what a Stan is, it is a slang term that means die-hard fan. It is a reference to the song Stan by Eminem, in which he raps from the point of view of a crazy fan who murders his pregnant girlfriend because the fictional version of Eminem had not been responding to his fan mail. Kanye’s “Stans” love him and will go to bat for him, probably due to all of the great memories his music has provided them over the years.

Stans will buy his shoes and clothing, go to all of his concerts, and often defend his racist remarks. Ye still has many Stans, even though his last four albums were borderline unlistenable (yes, that’s my opinion but look me in the eye and tell me you like Jesus is King).

It’s hard to admit your childhood idols aren’t who they once were. Usually, that happens to us in sports, as I’m sure most Tom Brady and Aaron Rodgers fans could probably relate to right now. (I’m sort of kidding I think Brady will still somehow win another Superbowl). Nonetheless, it is hard to admit the talent has faded from those we once thought to be indestructible.

Over the last few years, however, Kanye has made it quite hard on his Stans to remain on his side as he continues to go on these despicable tirades, support white fascists, run for president, and in his latest work, SAYS HE WANTS TO KILL JEWS.

As a Jewish person whose great-grandparents hid in haystacks in 1940s Poland to avoid the Nazi’s, it’s not a difficult decision for me to say, “yeah, I don’t like this guy anymore”. Not to mention that his music is essentially just Church Choir music these days. I do find it perplexing for anyone to still be defending this man. Unless, of course, you yourself are a white male fascist.

In case you are unaware of his anti-Semitic remarks let me break it down for you: On October 8th, he tweeted that he is “going death con 3 On JEWISH PEOPLE”. Not leaving much up for interpretation here, but Kanye goes on (in the same tweet) to claim that he “can’t be Anti-Semitic because black people are actually Jew[ish] too”. If your confused it’s okay, I had to look this one up. What he is trying to reference here is a theory that black people are decedents of Israelites. In fact, Kanye clarified by saying, “When I say Jew, I mean the 12 lost tribes of Judah, the blood of Christ, who the people known as the race Black really are.” (The tribe of Judah was one of the 12 tribes of Israel.) Kanye is not the only famous person to support this theory.

He also went on to say that he thinks George Floyd died from a drug overdose, and not from the knee of Derrick Chauvin being pinned on his neck for nine minutes. So if you don’t feel bad for Jews being slammed by Kanye, at least (hopefully) you’d find it rather despicable for him to mitigate the death of Floyd. Right? RIGHT?!?!?!?

Soooo Kanye thinks that Black people are Jewish, but that Jewish people are manipulating and controlling Black people. “Milking them for everything they’re worth” he often says. He blames every person who does not want to do business with him on the “Jewish Media”. He specifically called out Ari Emmanuel, CEO of Endeavor and who the Entourage character, Ari Gold, was loosely based on (fun fact), as another powerful Jew doing anything to mute him at all costs.

In an interview last week with Piers Morgan, when asked if he would walk back the ‘Def Con 3’ remark, Kanye laughed it off, admitted it was racist, and said he needs to “fight fire with fire”. So he is blaming Jewish people for everything going wrong in his life, thinks he is actually Jewish, but that Jews are manipulating everyone to “cancel” him. It probably doesn’t help the fact that Pete Davidson (a Jew) was dating his ex-wife and rubbing it in his face.

How are Kanye’s corporate partners/collaborators dealing with the backlash? Well, Adidas finally announced that it is cutting ties with him following the likes of Balenciaga, and various media platforms, including Lebron James’ show, The Shop, that have Kanye content in production. His agency, CAA, dropped him, and it looks like pretty much every partner associated with Ye has finally had it with him.

Adidas said they expect to take a $250 Million dollar hit by dropping Ye, which is kind of an annoying thing for them to point out. Essentially, they are whining, “hey look at us giving up all this money because his STANS still buy his ugly sneakers no matter what he does or say.” Good for you Adidas, so noble of you to give up all that money your making off of a self-proclaimed racist. MAZEL TOV.

Now let me say this: nothing will stop you (or me) from listening to The College Dropout occasionally and reminiscing on the good memories that the “Old Kanye” brought us as a talented musician, and yes, he may still get some royalties from that, but we all need to STOP SUPPORTING THIS MAN. Stop buying his stupid sneakers, stop listening to his terrible music, stop defending him because he’s bipolar. I empathize with mental illness but being bipolar IS NOT an excuse to incite fascism and to blame everything that goes wrong for you on a specific culture or race. This man has consistently showed us that he is a menace, and a threat to the Jewish people by calling on his Stans to share his belief that the Jews “control everything” and are responsible for everything bad that happens in this world. Sounds exactly like something Hitler would say.

Let me spoil something for you. Jews do not control everything. I mean if they are, I guess my secret Jewish Illuminati meeting invitations are getting lost in the mail. But seriously, if Jews DID control everything, I’m sure there would be a lot less people getting away with blatant Anti-Semitism. If we controlled everything, Donald Trump probably wouldn’t have been president (don’t give me that Jared Kushner is a Jew crap). If we did control everything I WOULD HAVE WAY MORE CLIENTS.

Are there a lot of Jews in Hollywood? Absolutely. Are there a lot of Jews in the media? Sure. Are there a lot of Jewish lawyers? Plenty. That does NOT mean every Hollywood exec, media personality, or lawyer is Jewish. In fact, it’s pretty racist to assume that if I say so. If the powerful Jews in those industries go after you for making anti-Semitic remarks… it’s probably because we fear anti-Semitism.

Here’s one thing I do want you to take away from this long winded rant. The reason so many Jews have gravitated to those professions and are indeed considered “powerful” is because 6 MILLION OF US WERE KILLED IN THE HAULACAUST SO WE HAVE DEVELOPED A TIGHT KNIT COMMUNITIES THAT FOCUS ON FAMILY, AND APPRECIATING WHAT OUR ANCESTORS WENT THROUGH TO ENSURE OUR SURVIVAL. WE MAKE SURE TO RAISE OUR CHILDREN TO BE KIND, EDUCATED AND SUCCESSFUL SO THAT WE CAN PUT OURSELVES IN THESE POWERFUL POSITIONS TO ENSURE THAT PEOPLE LIKE KANYE DON’T KEEP GETTING AWAY WITH THIS AND TO DAMN WELL MAKE SURE THAT ANOTHER GENOCIDE NEVER HAPPENS AGAIN.

Anyways, although it was a little late, good for Adidas and all of the other companies and people denouncing Kanye West over this. It should not have come to this point, but I’m sure Adidas and Balenciaga will survive without Ye just as they did long before him.

And as for Kanye, I know you had a dream you could buy your way to heaven but too bad you woke up and spent it on a necklace.

When Charles Duhigg published The Power of Habit in 2012, it was an instant best seller and became widely regarded in the psychology and business reading communities. As the title suggests, the book focuses on the science of habits and how we can utilize them to our advantage. I know I’m about 10 years late here, but the book still holds up today as the lessons can be applied to multiple aspects of life and business.

I often find self-help books to jump all over the place, often failing to focus on one main message. Duhigg, on the other hand, does an excellent job of creating a linear flow, as each chapter builds upon each other, allowing the reader to follow along and learn as the book progresses. Below I will outline the major points Duhigg brings up, but I do strongly recommend giving this book a full read. You can order it on Amazon with this link.

How Habits Work

The first part of the book discusses how habits are formed, and how the brain uses a system to create them, for better or worse. He describes “The habit loop”, which is essentialy a cue which triggers an action that is followed by a reward. For instance an alarm clock cues someone to wake up and go to shoer, brush their teeth, and have a coffee without butch though which they are then rewarded by feeling ready to start their day. He uses many different examples of habit loops, and how the brain can turn tasks that can be at first complex to the brain, but get turned into habits as the brain gets more accustomed to the loop.

Changing Habits

After educating the reader on how Habits work. Duhigg goes on to demonstrate how people can effectively change habits if they so desire. The main point is that habits can be changed if you keep the cue and reward the same but change the habit. For instance someone who is trying to stop smoking may be cued by seeing someone else light up a cigarette, they then light and smoke one themselves, and are rewarded from the feeling of destressing from smoking. If someone wanted to change that habit instead of smoking a cigarette they could have a few cups of coffee or a piece of nicotine gum. The cue and rewards are the same, but the action is different. Habits are tough to change at first but the more you get your brin accustomed to the new loop, the change becomes possible.

Keystone Habits

The next lawyer, Duhigg introduces is Keystone Habits. These are the important habits that when changed can have a domino effect on other habits. The example he uses is someone that starts an exercising habit can see other habits begin to form as a result. They might start to eat healthier, do drugs less, and so on. When it comes to business, identifying keystone habits within and organization that can have a major ripple effect on other habits the organization has fallen into is how successful CEOs make change.

Takeaways

This book does an excellent job of explaining how habits can be used effectively, by using tremendous examples from both life experiences and real-world business examples including a dysfunctional hospital, the King’s Cross fire of 1987, and how CEO Paul O’Neil transformed the aluminum producing conglomerate, Alcoa.

Don’t panic! While there is strong evidence that says yes, you can die early due to stress on the job, there are very different kinds of job “stress”. The point of this post is to help identify what causes you the most stress at work and understand what type of stress is the most dangerous.

Stop me if you’ve had this conversation before… you’re meeting up with your old college buddy at happy hour and they ask, “so, how’s work?” You scoff, do a little shrug, and robotically respond “It’s work.”

After a brief awkward pause you remember you should probably ask them the same thing so you return the favor, “What about you?” Your friend let’s out an identical scoff to yours and agrees with your assessment, “It’s work.”

You both then stand their awkwardly and sip your $5 beers in the sticky midtown pub.

No? Just me? Well anyways, I’m sure you’ve complained once or twice to your friends and coworkers about your job. Don’t worry, you’re not going to die because your boss wears too much perfume, or because you office is in Dumbo and you thought it was going to be a remote role, but now it’s “hybrid” and you wouldn’t have crammed into the Upper East Side if you had known that.

Most people do not like their job in this country – it’s a fact. According to a 2018 study, conducted by Morning Consult, just 33% of U.S. employees said they were “very satisfied” with their current job. I’ve had jobs I’ve hated, and I’ve had jobs I’ve hated slightly less. As a business owner I have by far the most stressful decisions to make than I did in any of prior roles. I have days where I love it, and I days where I want to throw my computer out the window. Upon reflection I realized my frustration at former jobs all came down to lack of control.

The jobs I had shortly after graduating Syracuse University with a degree in both Finance & Entrepreneurship, I sat in a cubicle and was monitored constantly for 8 hours per day. I was docked pay if I was late, and may have been scorned once or twice for taking too much time on a lunch break. However, the jobs were quite simple. Add up a few numbers in excel. Copy and paste a few paragraphs. File documents into another file. REAL GROUNBREAKING STUFF. But the job itself was not stressful. Nobody was going home hungry if I missed an email.

Today I am faced with many more difficult and stressful decisions than I was in the cubes. Like, whether or not it’s a good use of my time to keep writing this article. As a business owner, a consultant, and an employer, my decisions don’t just affect my paycheck and life, they affect my clients, my team, and if I had kids probably them too. But I am way happier than I was when I lacked control.

This isn’t a pitch to leave corporate America and start your own business. Just because you’re not a CEO or a manager doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have control over how you do your job. As long as your are completing the duties asked of you professionally, you should be treated like the adult you are. On the other hand, if you are a manager you might want to think about how much you tend to micromanage and the damage it can do to your business in the long run, because there has been statistical evidence that one’s degree of control in their job has a correlation with an increase in chances of getting a heart attack, or dying due to other early onset health conditions.

In his book Naked Statistics, Charles Wheelan cites a famous British study known as the Whitehall Studies that followed 17,530 civil servants over the course of 7.5 years. They were able to make a distinction of those with “low job control” by asking questions like “can you decide when to take a break?” or “Do you have a choice in deciding how to do your job?”. After years of research and subsequent studies, they were able to find a strong correlation between having a low degree of control in your job and dying from coronary heart disease.

While the Whitehall studies were conducted more than 50 years ago, the underlying message has been supported by subsequent studies. The bottom line is that while all types of job can be stressful in their own regard what really eats at peoples psyche is not feeling like they have any control or say in how they lived their life.

Therefore, I find it very important whether you are an entry level worker or a CEO, giving people as much flexibility as you can when it comes to getting the job done is how successful companies operate. What do you think?

I often see business blogs that recommend “top banks” and other financial products for small businesses. Having worked at a bank, and now being a a small business owner, I have come to notice that most of these blogs either fail to recognize which factors are most important to small business owners, or they’re simply paid by sponsors. I mean, they can’t possibly believe that Axos is the best bank for small business owners. But not to worry I am here to the rescue! This post is an unbiased, unsponsored account of which factors you should consider when selecting the right bank for your small business. Hopefully you can take some ideas away, make your own decision and not fall victim to targeted ads that don’t actually have your best interests in mind. Also, you don’t have to be limited to just one bank! It is good to utilize multiple banks so that all of your precious eggs are not in one basket.

1. Accessibility

Even in today’s day and age with virtual banking, it is important to do business with a bank that has real people and has plenty of accessible branches and ATMs in the area where you conduct business. For instance, I work in NYC where there is a Chase on every corner. That makes it convenient for me to pop in to see a banker, or utilize an ATM without having to pay a fee. However, there are plenty of states where Chase does not operate in. Of course, even if I am in NYC but I do a lot of business in Pennsylvania where Chase does not operate, it might not be my best option.

2. Fees/Balance Requirements

Many banks will advertise that they don’t charge any “common banking” fees such as monthly service, checks, wires, and so on. However, for most banks these fees ARE free ONLY IF you maintain a certain minimum balance. Be wary of advertisements from banks that claim to not charge any fees, when they might require you to retain a balance that is beyond your capacity and you’ll wind up paying them.

3. Saving Options

Depending on your business’ cash flow you may be sitting on a idle cash for short periods of time that you can’t put into investments, so it just sits in your bank account. Banks offer different interest rates and some are much more competitive. CDs are a thing of the past as I have yet to see one in the last decade to offer a sensible rate worth locking up your money. Today, there are some banks that offer over 1% APY, which is well higher than most big banks offer (usually in the ball park of 0.4%).

4. Borrowing Options

Whether it’s a Credit Card, a Line of Credit, or a Small Business Loan, it’s easier to borrow if you have a relationship and banking history from the lender. For instance if I have a my checking and savings at Local Bank. They will see how much money I bring in over the course of the time I do business with them. If I talk to my bankers there about my business and they get to know how it functions, when it comes time to borrow money, it is easier to articulate and prove why the bank should loan money to my business at a reasonable rate. It would be much more difficult to walk into a bank without any knowledge of me or my business and ask for a sizeable loan. When considering a bank you want to make sure they have multiple products with real people behind them.