Credit Crunch for Small Business?

We’ve all been bombarded by news reports of the world-wide credit crunch. Rather than focus on the doom and gloom articles, I wanted to share a recent article in the Wall Street Journal that piqued my interest. The article profiles a company called On Deck that processes loans for the small business world, with a few twists.

First, On Deck has created an algorithm that allows them to assess the overall health of a company instead of merely taking a snapshot like most lenders do. They look at a company’s daily business activity including number of customers, sags and surges, and (get this) number of complaints a company has. Compare this to the average lender which basically looks at last year’s tax returns.

Second, instead of sending an invoice out every month (like my mortgage statement) saying that Joe’s Pizza owes $300 this month and has an outstanding balance of $40,000 and is paying an interest rate of 30%, On Deck basically takes $100 out of your bank account EVERY DAY. That is pretty out of the box. I think everyone could take this as a lesson in life. If Morgan Stanley would just take $10 out of my checking account every day, I’d probably save a lot more money than I do now when I have to scratch a $300 check every month. This approach means that On Deck’s loans will be paid back in about a year.

Third, the interest rate of 18% to 36% got an initial reaction from me of “wow, my credit card interest rate is less than that.” As I progressed in my research however, I found the article saying that the interest rate for small businesses can be up to 200%. So 18% to 36% looks pretty good. It must be…so far On deck has lent out over $10 Million since it began in May and is growing at a 35% clip.

Also of note….in the article, some of the ‘big name players’ voice that this takes away from the experience of loans because you miss out on the ‘personal banking experience.’ I’m thinking that most people I know don’t have much good to say regarding that experience of loans and they are fine interfacing with a computer who will at least evaluate them fairly.

Anybody that tries to make my life easier deserves a blog post don’t you think? Enter Google’s Sketch-up- app. It is increasingly becoming a tool of choice for architects and designers due to its intuitive features. And, it can be used by people who don’t have a lot of skill in the design area but like to act like he does, like myself. So what is Sketch-up? It is basically a 3-D sketching/modeling/drawing application that lets you design anything from a box to furniture to a house. You can even create your own collections and share them with the world or only with certain people. They offer some great tutorials that are very easy to follow AND intuitive….thank you Google. We even created our own collection in Google’s 3D Warehouse so you can basically dump this right into Sketch-up and play with it.

Well, I was reading in Business Week about $700B bailout (thank you government?) and in between all the doom and gloom was this article about how Sketch-up is helping Design go Green. The article talks about how Sketch-up works with Google Earth and other programs; this can lead to crazy things such as figuring out the optimal spot to put solar panels. That sounds way smarter than guessing.

Oh, the best part about Sketch-up. Its free. Well, the basic version is, but you only drop like $500 for the Pro Version, which allows you to dump you models into Photoshop and other programs.

Dress up a phone book with contact paper to lift your monitor to help fend off back pain.

Yet another DIY tip from our friends at Apartment Therapy. This one has special relevance to us as it directly relates to your comfort at the workplace. How many of you end up with tense shoulders and a cramp in your neck by the end of the day (or if you’re like me, by lunch)?

It goes without saying that reducing your stress levels will help reduce neck and back pain (easier said than done, eh?,), but a great ergonomic office chair will help too (don’t worry, we can help with that). If that still does not work, you must make sure that you are not slouching too much. A chair with a pneumatic height adjustment will help, but it may not do the trick entirely. You must also ensure that your computer monitor is the proper height and is not causing you to slump.

A quick easy fix to raise your computer monitor can be accomplished with a phone book (yep, that’s right…a phone book), craft paper, scissors and tape. That’s it! Check out the article for complete step-by-step instructions, but it’s pretty self explanatory.

I’m going to try it out. I’ll let you know if it helps cut down on the number of neck rolls I do in a day.

Blog author contemplating how good he looks....

I am not sure about how people dress where you work, but I have seen a marked change over the last 3-5 years from an environment where jeans were unacceptable to one where people wear pajamas to work to be cool. Now, I’m pretty old school and would prefer we have uniforms at work, but that is largely due to the fact that I am a middle-aged male with zero fashion sense and no ability to pull off what the world says is cool (as an example, a lot of the younger men I see have white belts and shoes). Now comes an article on Career Builder that exposes some of the issues with the casual dress movement. The article even gives some tips to your co-workers who are making you uncomfortable by wearing their underwear on the outside, etc.

My point of view on this is that I can’t get too casual because I usually work according to how I dress. If I’m at home in my PJ’s and bunny slippers (no picture – sorry) sitting on my bed, I find that I’m not very professional and am easily distracted. When I am dressed more professionally, I usually have more confidence and often am more productive.

Not to toot our own horn, but furniture can play a big part in this too. I was at a car dealer yesterday and the gentleman working there had a ripped $49 office chair, a very messy desk and had jeans on. His attitude was very unprofessional (similar to his furniture and dress). He was very casual in his conversation and didn’t even look at me when he was talking to me about my purchasing something from him.

So at Steelcase Store we might not be able to have any impact on the clothes you wear, but we can help in the area of making you feel more professional by helping you with your office surroundings. Check out our gear.

So gear up, dress up, and get working…..