200 S.C. Students to Attend Business Week

Two hundred of South Carolina’s brightest high school students will descend upon Presbyterian College in Clinton, S.C., July 12-17, for South Carolina Business Week, presented by the South Carolina Cable Television Association (SCCTA). Each year, Business Week offers bright young minds the unique opportunity to interact with business leaders and student peers to learn more about the ins and outs of the business world and a successful career.

In addition, students will have the opportunity to live on the campus of Presbyterian College, the host of South Carolina Business Week. Presbyterian College boasts a 240-acre campus, which includes five buildings that are on the National Register of Historic Places.

Highlights of the 26th Annual Week Include:
• Sunday, July 12, 1:00 p.m.: Opening Assembly featuring Otis B. Rawl, Jr., president and CEO of the South Carolina Chamber of Commerce
• Wednesday, July 15: Students will tour Fuji Film in Greenwood.
• Thursday, July 16, 10:30 a.m.: South Carolina Superintendent of Education Dr. Jim Rex will address students.
• Thursday, July 16, 6:30 p.m.: Annual Banquet featuring Steve Benjamin of McAngus Goudelock & Courie, LLC, who is also a member of the South Carolina Chamber of Commerce Board of Directors.
• Friday, July 17, 1:00 p.m.: Graduation Ceremony featuring Jim Reynolds, president of Total Comfort Service Center Inc. and a member of the Board of Directors of the South Carolina Chamber.

During the week, teams of students will develop mock companies, led by company advisors loaned from some of South Carolina’s most prestigious businesses. Students will attend workshops to learn about all aspects of business and test newly acquired knowledge in a computer business simulation designed to achieve a real company feel with challenging, real-world situations. Along with an emphasis on teamwork and leadership skills, Business Week includes programs on the stock market, ethics in business, personal finance, resume writing, leadership profiling, the significance of diversity in business and entrepreneurship. The Business Week faculty is made of South Carolina professionals and CEOs in business, education and government who share their specialized knowledge and skills with students.

2009 Business Week sponsors include:

Presenting Sponsor: South Carolina Cable Television Association

Co-Sponsors: AlliedBarton Protective Services, S.C. Association of School Administrators, S.C. Commission on Higher Education- S.C. GEAR UP, S.C. Council on Economic Education, S.C. Department of Education, S.C. Manufacturing Extension Partnership.

Business Week Scholarship Donors: ALCOA Mt. Holly, Ann Marie Stieritz, Ashland Performance Material, AstenJohnson Inc., AT&T, AVX Corporation, B.P. Barber & Associates Inc., BlueCross BlueShield of South Carolina, Business Vitals LLC, Carolina First Bank, CMC Steel South Carolina, Columbia Urban League Inc., Cynthia M. Bennett, Darlington Raceway, Delta Dental, Dillon Provision Company Inc., Duke Energy – Carolinas, Eastman Chemical Foundation, First Citizens, FN Manufacturing LLC, Glen Dwinnells Memorial Fund, Grainger, Gregory Electric Company Inc., Haynsworth Sinkler Boyd PA, Holcim (US) Inc., Kathy Shaffer Olson, Kohler Company, Louis Rich/Kraft Foods, Martek Biosciences Kingstree Corporation, McNair Law Firm Foundation, McNair Law Firm PA, Metglas Inc., Metromont Corporation, Michelin North America, Milliken & Company, Nan Ya Plastics Corporation America, National Bank of South Carolina, Nestlé Prepared Foods Company, North American Rescue Inc., Ogletree, Deakins, Nash, Smoak & Stewart P.C., Phil Waddell, Presbyterian College, Progress Energy, Publix Super Markets Inc., R.L. Bryan Company, RBC Insurance, Robert E. Barnett , Roche Carolina Inc., Security Finance Corporation of Spartanburg, Select Health of South Carolina, SEW-Eurodrive Inc., Shaw Industries, Snelling Staffing Services, Sonoco Products Company, South Carolina Bankers Association, South Carolina GEAR UP, Southeastern Freight Lines Inc., South Carolina Ports Authority, Springs Creative Products Group LLC, Terry & Katherine Huggins, The Bank of America Foundation, The Bank of South Carolina, The Intertech Group Foundation, Time Warner Cable, Total Comfort Services, UNUM, Warehouse Services Inc., Wilson Senior Care, and Windsor Aughtry Company.

How To Weather A Stormy Recession

Author Suzanne Caplan, chief blogger and founder of www.womenetcetera.com, an Internet business portal and social networking site for women over 50. Caplan believes that there are ways people can limit the damage of the recession and come out on top.

In the storm of a recession, Caplan believes higher ground does exist. You just need to know where to look for it. She offers the following tips:

• If you are doing nothing because you think it can’t get any worse; be assured that it will. Now is the time for action. Action is always preferable to inaction, because inaction spawns a pattern of victimization, and pins us down into a habit of only reacting to the bad, instead of planning for the better.

• The unknown is likely to be less threatening than you expect. This is particularly true about creditors; they have far less power than you may think. Tune out the noise until you are ready to work on a plan. Decisions made out of fear and anxiety are almost always the wrong ones, so take a breath and a blank piece of paper and write down a list of your liabilities and your assets and take stock of everything you can do to get the two lists to cancel each other out.

• Being Proactive is far better than being reactive. Once you know what you need to do with regard to any of your challenges, you should be the one to take the first action. Make it bold and with confidence. The more you play on your side of the field, the better off you are. Offense is easier to play than defense in this situation; you get to set the pace.

• If you are working in an industry at risk or for a company that seems vulnerable, now may be the time to move out on you own. Great fortunes are started in down times. Remember that most everyone shares one common trait with every successful entrepreneur – at one point or another; they’ve all worked for someone else, too.

• Think about taking over an existing business; there are owners who will finance the cost, particularly if they are close to retirement. Assets are very cheap at this point. Many business owners own more than one, and sometimes they are willing to sell off a profit-generating business in order to cover the losses of another. Take advantage of that condition to find an opportunity that matches your education, background and talents.

• The more diverse your clientele, the less likely you will be without sufficient income. Remember to market for growth. Don’t simply cater to your existing customer base, but rather, open your business aperture to include non-traditional potential clients. Those customers represent growth and prosperity. Do not put all your eggs in one basket.

• If you are living in or driving an asset which is overleveraged (you owe more than it is worth), give serious thought to getting out from under it. Like many large concerns, it is better to take a one-time hit to dump an upside-down asset than it is to continuing to allow it to pull revenue away from you a little at a time.

“In a storm, people can either be victims, or they can take positive steps to rescue themselves,” Caplan said. “The idea of mastering your destiny instead of letting circumstances master you is not a platitude or a bumper sticker. It is very real, and many of the most successful entrepreneurs discovered this reality at a time when they were at their lowest ebb.”

Go Online for Social Security Help

By Chris Jenkins, Public Affairs Specialist, Social Security Administration

There is an old business rule that says “No job is finished until the paperwork is done.” If you are one of the millions of small business owners in this country, you undoubtedly know the truth of this statement. But did you know that Social Security can lighten your paperwork filing burden with free, fast and secure online business services?

For example, you can stop doing all your wage reports on paper and start doing them online. That includes Forms W-2 for your employees and Forms W-2 and W-3 for Uncle Sam. All you need are two things you probably already have: a computer and an Internet connection.

From our employer homepage, www.socialsecurity.gov/employer, simply visit the “Business Services Online” link, and then select the “Register” option. You register for a User ID Number only once, not every year. You can register at any time, with the best time being now, before the tax-filing season.

When you’re ready to prepare your W-2s, go back to www.socialsecurity.gov/employer and log in with the User ID Number you received at registration and the password you chose. After you log in, select the option for creating wage reports online. The first form you will be asked to fill out tells Social Security who the employer is. Just follow the simple instructions on the screen.

Another big advantage to electronic wage reporting is the ease of making corrections. If you find a mistake before you have actually submitted your report, you simply log in and make the changes, then print new W-2s for the employees involved. And even if you need to make corrections after you have submitted your wage reports to Social Security you can file the correction forms (W-2c and W-3c) online, too.

So save yourself some time and effort. And save a few trees in the process. Turn your entire wage reporting paperwork into just a few key strokes.

If you are still skeptical, just ask some fellow small business owners who have already made the switch to the online wage-reporting world. They will undoubtedly tell you that they would never go back to paper again.

Visit Social Security’s Business Services Online at www.socialsecurity.gov/employer.