Monday August 19,  2013


It’s finally here! An L.A. company has introduced PayPal for the braces set.

Virtual Piggy, Inc. has announced that it will provide what it calls a “youth-friendly” payment system to video game maker MarvelousAQL.

Piggy says it promotes financial literacy for kids by empowering them to buy, save and manage their money. It calls the Virtual Piggy a “family wallet.” Presumably this means mom or dad pays the money into the wallet and Junior spends the money out of the wallet.

Anyone who’s ever had a teenager at home knows the pleasure of opening a bill and finding unknown PayPal, iTunes, or pay-per-view charges that have mysteriously appeared—without  the under-18 set in the house having the slightest clue as to how they got there.

Call me old fashioned, but I think the way to promote financial literacyin kids is to boot their butts off the couch when they’re 16 and make them get a job if they want to buy music, video games or movies. Junior will learn a lot faster about managing money when it’s his hard-earned cash, than when it’s yours and Mr. Piggy is managing it for him.

There are any number of debit card programs that will let him learn how electronic payments work while letting you monitor what goes in and out of the account.

The next time Junior wants the hottest music or newest video game, and tries to dip into the family wallet—meaning yours—tell him to get outside and cut the grass or wash the windows and you’ll pay him. That’s how to teach real financial literacy.

Welcome to my world, Junior. 

Constant Contactpioneered marketing research for Main Street with do-it-yourself services like online surveying and email marketing. In May of this year the company published “Small Businesses Then & Now,” a survey on the state of health of American small business, five years after the beginning of the so-called Great Recession.

The survey results don’t paint a pretty picture of small business over the last five years.  Nearly two-thirds of all small businesses say running a business is harder today than ever. How hard? Fifty-five percent of respondents say that the economy’s delivered a gut kick to their businesses. 

Nearly 50 percent say that the trying to keep up with technology has made business difficult. Floral wire service company Teleflora may be able to afford state-of-the-art websites, but Flowers by Florence down on the corner may have to rely on someone’s nephew to design its site.

Small business operators also say that they’re getting rocked by competition, including large companies. I think there are a few things that come into play here. 

First, recessions mean pink slips. A lot of them. Laid-off professionals, finding it hard to hook up another job, often hang out a shingle or take their 401(k) money and start that business they’ve always wanted to have. A fast-food franchise.  A consulting business. A landscaping service. Businesses that don’t require any professional certification and are relatively easy to launch.

Second, as the recession and the slow recovery have dragged on earnings, employees of large corporations got the word—if you want to keep your job, get out there and open up new lines of business.

But this blog wouldn’t be the Lobster Shift if we didn’t take a lobster’s contrarian view of an issue. Take if from the owner of one, a well-established small business has a lot of advantages over large businesses and Johnny-come-lately competitors.

According to the survey more than 50 percent of small businesses say that as a small business they benefit from the loyalty of customers who want to shop locally. Whether it’s a farmers market, hardware store, or community bank, a small business has an advantage when it comes to customer loyalty.

Small business owners also live and work in the community. The barber who cuts my hair works out at my gym, another local business. Somebody referred me to his barber shop and I referred Dave to the local gym.

   

Sure, local businesses may charge more. But, in my business time is money. If I can get in and out of the hardware store, the barber, the gym or the bank in a minimum amount of time and get back to work, I’m happy.

Perhaps small businesses have one advantage they don’t even know they have. It’s marketing. Large corporations have to go to New York or Chicago to hire a branch of a global advertising and PR firm to tell them how to sell to you. 

Small business operators don’t have the money to do that and probably wouldn’t know where to start if they did. But they do have the barber shop, the bank, the gym and other places where people in a community get to know each other. And that’s a huge advantage in business.

And when that fails there’s always Constant Contact.