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February 2008 Issue
Positively Pittsburgh
Wasn't it Anita Bryant who appeared on TV and told us that a day without orange juice was like a day without sunshine? I never bought her pitch. I could drink a gallon a day and it wouldn't satisfy my craving for sunshine in January, February and March. If I could change just one thing about my hometown, I would make the sun shine in these cruelest months of the year. Knowing that it will never happen, I do what many other northerners do: travel to Florida or some other sunny destination. And that's whe... |
The Power 100
Browsing through the top 25 of the 100 most powerful people in Northeast Ohio, you will see only two manufacturing titans, no labor leaders and no one affiliated with the auto industry. Who you will see are the innovators in health care and education, as well as community foundation and political visionaries who are helping our region transition from the old to the new. This is not the Power 100 list of 50, or even 20, years ago. Although developers like Sam Miller, Albert Ratner and Scott Wolstein cont... |
Growing Pains
Not too long ago, Howard Maier picked up a copy of the World Almanac and discovered something curious: Under the narrow definition of Cuyahoga, Geauga, Lake, Lorain, Medina, Portage and Summit counties, there are more independent territories in this part of the state (225) than countries in the rest of the world (202). This realization put Maier's job as the executive director of the Northeast Ohio Areawide Coordinating Agency (NOACA) into a new perspective. Since 1968, NOACA has been one of the few org... Old World Goes Global
Let's get the Amish questions out of the way. First, Ernie Hershberger does use electricity for his business. He will use a phone or fax machine, but so far doesn't need a computer to run his 30-employee furniture manufacturing facility and retail store, Homestead Furniture. He has a Web site (designed and maintained by a third party) from which you can order, but there's no phone in the showroom or warehouse. His furniture isn't delivered by horse and buggy, but by trucks and commercial shipping servic... |
Employee Incentives
What comes to mind when you think of insurance agents? Pioneers? Mavericks? Those are the words that ERC (Employers Resource Council) President Patrick Perry uses to describe Robert J. Klonk, executive vice president and director of group benefits for Oswald Companies, a Cleveland-based firm that specializes in customized insurance and risk-management solutions for businesses. The basis for Perry's accolades can be traced to 1998 and a cocktail napkin on which Klonk diagramed what he saw as the future d... |
How to apply for a SBA loan
Ever dream of being your own boss, hanging a shingle on Main Street or bringing a product to market? You're in good company. According to statistics from the Small Business Administration's (SBA) Office of Advocacy, there were 649,700 new businesses started in 2006. Many make their dream become a reality with the help of SBA loans for startup capital, to purchase real estate or to start new divisions within an existing company. But since the SBA doesn't make direct loans to consumers, one way to get suc... How to benfit from an electric co-op
Created more than half a century ago with the purpose to provide reliable power at a reasonable cost, electric cooperatives energized rural areas throughout the United States where for-profit utility providers would not serve. In Ohio and throughout the country, electric co-ops continue to provide at-cost electric service and are owned by the customers they serve. "An electric cooperative is a not-for-profit business that's locally owned and controlled," says Dennis Mingyar, director of economic develop... How to build morale in a growing company
Company morale can make or break the success of your company. If your employees aren't motivated, they're not likely to contribute to company growth. Eliza Wing, president and CEO of Cleveland.com, believes the groundwork for building a passionate staff should be laid during the hiring process. "Potential employees need to know what the company culture is and what exactly is expected of them," she says. "They need to hear, ‘This is a great place to work and we only hire the best.'" Since 1997, Win... How to ensure employee Internet usage isn't putting your network at risk
Security threats have changed dramatically over the past several years. Assuming every business has a firewall, hackers are capitalizing on their secret weapon — end users. The majority of threats that exist today are due to unsuspecting employees who are putting their business computers at risk. All it takes is a click on an e-mail attachment or a link to a Web site, and a computer can be instantly infected with malicious software — putting your sensitive and confidential information in the... How to implement a health and wellness plan into your organization
Health and wellness aren't just New Year's resolution buzzwords, they're becoming crucial to business owners as health-care costs continue to climb. The solution for many organizations is to implement wellness programs, which not only improve employees' health but can also result in a more productive work force. Offering a program that improves your employees' waistlines as well as your organization's bottom line isn't as daunting as it may seem, says Paula Sauer, vice president of Care Management for M... How to plan the design and production of an event
Whether it's an event for 50 or 5,000, quality sound, staging, video and lighting can make a huge impact and add to the success of your event. But where do you start? How do you know what equipment you'll need? Brian Lackritz, director of business development for Hughie's Audio Visual & Staging, says creating a budget should always be one of the first steps in planning your event. "Often clients will have a concept in mind they may have seen at another convention, display booth or someone's wedding, and... |
Reviewing the Process
Sitting here in the dead of winter with the hustle and bustle of the holidays behind us, I hope all those New Year's resolutions are being kept, both personally and professionally. As organizations closed out 2007 and began a fresh start in 2008, presumably you were involved in the employee performance review process, in one way or another. If you're like so many other professionals I have talked with over the years, the process was not an enjoyable one. These days, it seems to be a rarity where a manag... |
A Touch of Hollywood
In 2004, Brian Glazen moved back to Cleveland after an 11-year stint in Los Angeles, where he worked with some of the biggest names in Hollywood on films, commercials and videos. His plan? To bring a touch of Hollywood to Northeast Ohio by opening his own production studio, then called BGMedia. What started as just one guy and a dream has turned into the now 10-employee strong Think Media Studios, a full-service video production company providing a wide variety of video and interactive media, as well as... |
Dream Team
With a subprime mortgage lending crisis in full swing, Martha Stewart fresh from the slammer and Enron a not-so-distant memory, you might start to think we're in the middle of the white-collar crime era. Cleveland-based law firm McDonald Hopkins agrees. This fall, the firm launched its new White Collar Crime, Antitrust and Securities Litigation Practice Group, a dream team of top talent with an incredible range of legal expertise and trial experience. "What separates our group is the breadth of our expe... Rolling the Dice
They tried it in 1996, but it was too early. Twelve years later, Rick Lertzman and Dr. Bradford Pressman are confident about their chances to cash in on a $600 million casino resort project in rural Southwest Ohio. But they need more than 400,000 signatures to help them sell it to voters. Lertzman, a business restructuring specialist who lives in Moreland Hills, and Dr. Pressman, a retired podiatrist who lives in Chagrin Falls, met in the fourth grade in Beachwood Elementary School and have been friends... Shopping the World
As Developers Diversified's executive vice president of international, Richard Brown has overseen the Beachwood-based shopping-center developer's recent forays into foreign markets such as Canada, Brazil and Russia. In this excerpted interview with IB, Brown warns that American companies need to be aware of the cultural differences when expanding overseas. What do U.S. developers have to keep in mind when entering foreign markets? The old adage says real estate is a local business, and it's important to... Speed of the Web
It was half technology speech, half Broadway show as David Pogue appeared at the City Club of Cleveland. Pogue is the Personal Technology columnist for The New York Times and son of Cleveland powerhouse attorney Richard Pogue, who introduced him at the event. Pogue's topic, "Blogging vs. Journalism: Is The Line Blurring?" is increasingly relevant as Web 2.0 platforms such as YouTube, Flickr and Facebook attract millions of contributors and, as Pogue estimated, 75 new blogs are being created every minute... Street Beets
The vegetable you hated as a kid may keep your car from sliding off icy roads this winter. Akron is experimenting with a de-sugared beet solution to deice roadways. According to Akron Public Works Bureau Manager Paul Barnett, when beet juice is mixed with calcium chloride and rock salt brine, the beet enhances their properties, lowering the temperature at which salt is effective from about 17 degrees Fahrenheit to 60 degrees below zero. What's more, the beets in the concoction (known commercially as Geo... |
Two's Company
In the early 1990s, Mario F.X. Salwan struggled to stay awake during his pre-med classes at The Ohio State University. He was tired from painting the town red — and yellow and blue and green. Salwan wasn't hitting the bars on High Street nightly: He was painting houses during the evening and on weekends to pay for college. After three years at Ohio State, Salwan decided to quit school and return to his native Cleveland to run Buckeye Painting & Decks full time. The company, which he started at age... |
A Touch of Hollywood
In 2004, Brian Glazen moved back to Cleveland after an 11-year stint in Los Angeles, where he worked with some of the biggest names in Hollywood on films, commercials and videos. His plan? To bring a touch of Hollywood to Northeast Ohio by opening his own production studio, then called BGMedia. What started as just one guy and a dream has turned into the now 10-employee strong Think Media Studios, a full-service video production company providing a wide variety of video and interactive media, as well as... Employee Incentives
What comes to mind when you think of insurance agents? Pioneers? Mavericks? Those are the words that ERC (Employers Resource Council) President Patrick Perry uses to describe Robert J. Klonk, executive vice president and director of group benefits for Oswald Companies, a Cleveland-based firm that specializes in customized insurance and risk-management solutions for businesses. The basis for Perry's accolades can be traced to 1998 and a cocktail napkin on which Klonk diagramed what he saw as the future d... How to apply for a SBA loan
Ever dream of being your own boss, hanging a shingle on Main Street or bringing a product to market? You're in good company. According to statistics from the Small Business Administration's (SBA) Office of Advocacy, there were 649,700 new businesses started in 2006. Many make their dream become a reality with the help of SBA loans for startup capital, to purchase real estate or to start new divisions within an existing company. But since the SBA doesn't make direct loans to consumers, one way to get suc... How to benfit from an electric co-op
Created more than half a century ago with the purpose to provide reliable power at a reasonable cost, electric cooperatives energized rural areas throughout the United States where for-profit utility providers would not serve. In Ohio and throughout the country, electric co-ops continue to provide at-cost electric service and are owned by the customers they serve. "An electric cooperative is a not-for-profit business that's locally owned and controlled," says Dennis Mingyar, director of economic develop... How to build morale in a growing company
Company morale can make or break the success of your company. If your employees aren't motivated, they're not likely to contribute to company growth. Eliza Wing, president and CEO of Cleveland.com, believes the groundwork for building a passionate staff should be laid during the hiring process. "Potential employees need to know what the company culture is and what exactly is expected of them," she says. "They need to hear, ‘This is a great place to work and we only hire the best.'" Since 1997, Win... How to ensure employee Internet usage isn't putting your network at risk
Security threats have changed dramatically over the past several years. Assuming every business has a firewall, hackers are capitalizing on their secret weapon — end users. The majority of threats that exist today are due to unsuspecting employees who are putting their business computers at risk. All it takes is a click on an e-mail attachment or a link to a Web site, and a computer can be instantly infected with malicious software — putting your sensitive and confidential information in the... How to implement a health and wellness plan into your organization
Health and wellness aren't just New Year's resolution buzzwords, they're becoming crucial to business owners as health-care costs continue to climb. The solution for many organizations is to implement wellness programs, which not only improve employees' health but can also result in a more productive work force. Offering a program that improves your employees' waistlines as well as your organization's bottom line isn't as daunting as it may seem, says Paula Sauer, vice president of Care Management for M... How to plan the design and production of an event
Whether it's an event for 50 or 5,000, quality sound, staging, video and lighting can make a huge impact and add to the success of your event. But where do you start? How do you know what equipment you'll need? Brian Lackritz, director of business development for Hughie's Audio Visual & Staging, says creating a budget should always be one of the first steps in planning your event. "Often clients will have a concept in mind they may have seen at another convention, display booth or someone's wedding, and... |
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