Neil A. Carousso produces NewsNation original “Kurt’s Country” – a celebration of country music and a slice of Americana with host Kurt Bardella.
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Month In Sound: October 2020
NEW YORK (WCBS 880) – October 2020 included a surge in COVID-19 cases in the Tri-State, President Trump’s COVID diagnosis, the presidential debates, early voting, and MLB owners and New York City approving the sale of the New York Mets to billionaire hedge fund manager Steve Cohen.
https://omny.fm/shows/880-weekly-rewind/month-in-sound-october-2020
Neil A. Carousso produced the Month In Sound as heard it on WCBS Newsradio 880 in October 2020. Hear it on the media player above.
You can listen to The 880 Weekly Rewind with Lynda Lopez Friday nights at 7 PM ET for a deeper dive into the top local, national and international stories of the week, featuring interviews with newsmakers and the Week/Month In Sound audio file.
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What employers and employees can do to advance in the pandemic economy
By Neil A. Carousso
NEW YORK (WCBS 880) — Now may be a good time to take steps to advance your career or grow your business.
With millions out of work and traditional jobs disrupted by the pandemic, there are new jobs and skills in demand, which Joe Connolly and Neil A. Carousso explore with former U.S. Department of Labor official Jane Oates on this week’s WCBS Small Business Spotlight, sponsored by BNB Bank.
Oates served as assistant secretary for the Employment and Training Administration from 2009 to 2013 and was executive director for the New Jersey Commission on Higher Education and Senior Advisor to former Gov. Jon Corzine from 2006-2009.
She is currently the president of WorkingNation – a non-profit that examines the changing workforce and offers solutions for adapting to challenges such as those brought on by the coronavirus pandemic.
“You have to know what your skills are. It’s no longer just doing job title to job title,” she explained.
Oates told WCBS 880 those out of work and/or looking to change careers should try to use their existing skills that can apply to parallel industries that may value them more.
“So, can I go from being, you know, a banker to a middle school math teacher? It’s not going to be a straight line. It’s going to be a rich pathway that has lots of circles,” she said, adding, “So, you have to make sure you can articulate to yourself and others what your skills are.”
Technology and digital skills are in high demand right now and new jobs are being created in the pandemic.
Indeed lists numerous software development and information services jobs on its site.
There were 1.5 million new applications for Employer Tax Identification Numbers in the third quarter of 2020, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. That’s a 77.4 percent increase of new business applications from the second quarter.
“I think what we’re seeing is a lot of innovators and that’s what we’re known for, right, that’s what the United States is: we’re a nation of innovators,” Oates said.
As a mentor for emerging technology startups in education, she told Connolly and Carousso that she has learned of an influx of investments in the space over the summer.
Meantime, operating businesses are preparing for their future. Oates said many companies have started using staffing agencies to train young workers – many recent college graduates – to develop their talent pools.
One staffing agency she mentioned on the WCBS Small Business Spotlight is Houston-based Talent Path; they provide career development for recent graduates so they are “work-ready.” On its website, Talent Path writes, “colleges and universities don’t always know the pressing technology needs of employers.” The firm aims to bridge that “disconnect.”
“We’ve seen a lot of it all over the country and New York always has been a place where staffing agencies have been a vibrant source where employers can kind of see before they buy,” Oates said.
The former Labor Department official named Revature, Genuent and Optimum Healthcare IT as other qualified staffing agencies.
“I also think (employers are) waiting to see what the longer term trends are going to be,” said Oates, continuing, “I mention healthcare, what’s going to happen permanently with telemedicine, and quite frankly, what’s going to happen permanently in terms of people working full-time remotely?”
She pointed to her own experience working longer hours at home and worries about family relationships being harmed because people cannot physically get away from their jobs. She also expressed her concern about adverse unintended consequences surrounding career advancement of which, she said, employees and employers should be aware.
“If you can’t impress somebody on the work site, if they can’t walk past you or have you come into a meeting – a meeting that you might not have been invited to originally – and have you really impress them with your knowledge and skills, I think that will be bad for the upward mobility, professionally, for so many people,” Oates said.
Hear ideas on how to combat these challenges and the steps you can take now to advance your career or business on the WCBS Small Business Spotlight Podcast on the RADIO.COM app or the media player above.
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The 880 Weekly Rewind: Congressional Elections and Whether ‘Microclusters” Will Soften the Economic Devastation
NEW YORK (WCBS 880) — We dig into the final presidential debate and the local congressional elections on November 3 plus a Bronx mom shows us the economic devastation of the pandemic in places hit hardest. And, we bid farewell to WCBS 880 anchor Vickie Allen who retired after 29 years at the station.
https://omny.fm/shows/880-weekly-rewind/congressional-elections-and-whether-microclusters
You can listen to The 880 Weekly Rewind with Lynda Lopez Friday nights at 7 PM ET for a deeper dive into the top local, national and international stories of the week, featuring interviews with newsmakers and the Week/Month In Sound audio file.
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The 880 Weekly Rewind: How Amy Coney Barrett Would Reshape the Supreme Court, Trump and Biden Dig in their Heels and New Jersey’s Mail-In Election
NEW YORK (WCBS 880) — Judge Amy Coney Barrett faced questioning from the Senate Judiciary Committee ahead of their scheduled vote Thursday to send her Supreme Court nomination to the full Senate. WCBS anchor Lynda Lopez examines her judicial record with Bloomberg News Supreme Court reporter Greg Stohr. 18 days from the election, President Donald J. Trump and Democratic nominee Joe Biden hold competing town hall events and we check in on New Jersey, which is holding its first-ever primarily mail-in election. Plus, listen to our Week In Sound audio file, produced by Neil A. Carousso.
https://omny.fm/shows/880-weekly-rewind/how-amy-coney-barrett-would-reshape-scotus
You can listen to The 880 Weekly Rewind with Lynda Lopez Friday nights at 7 PM ET for a deeper dive into the top local, national and international stories of the week, featuring interviews with newsmakers and the Week/Month In Sound audio file.
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WCBS BNB Bank Virtual Business Breakfast: Growth opportunities in the COVID crisis
By Joe Connolly and Neil A. Carousso
NEW YORK (WCBS 880) — Successful entrepreneurs will often say they find opportunities amid challenges, but the coronavirus pandemic has thrown a curveball at a formerly booming economy that has disrupted industries. Some resilient businesses are now growing after making key adjustments to how they sell.
Three local entrepreneurs who have pivoted, recovered and increased revenue in the last seven months share how sales has changed in the pandemic economy on the WCBS BNB Bank Virtual Business Breakfast, hosted by Joe Connolly.
“We started to see a lot of consumption late at night, which just spoke to the fact that people were home more, they were social distancing,” said NTWRK president Moksha Fitzgibbons.
He told the panel he was nervous in March when they were forced to shutter production. NTWRK originally was a platform that hosted highly produced and high-quality video content for businesses. Now, it is part of a hot trend of livestreaming e-commerce in which the NTWRK application hosts vertical live video for retailers that sell their products directly on the app to prospective customers that the startup finds for business owners.
“The more content consumption equated to more product sales,” said Fitzgibbons whose revenue doubled from March to April after the quick pivot. NTWRK is projecting a 500-600 percent increase year-over-year.
He explained on the Virtual Business Breakfast how he helps traditional retailers, such as Mr. Flower Fantastic, based in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan, make creative content that translates to sales since brick and mortar and experiential businesses are suffering amid the pandemic.
“In short order, by end of year, we’ll drive seven figures plus revenue for (Mr.
Flower Fantastic) around exclusive product drops in our livestreaming e-commerce application,” Fitzgibbons said.Don White, co-founder and chief executive officer of Manhattan artificial intelligence firm Satisfi Labs, saw revenue plummet to zero when all of his retail and entertainment clients – including Macy’s, Major League Baseball, Universal Orlando Resort and the Georgia Aquarium – were shut down in March. He credits their recovery to a shift of their sales operations from location to industry specialization by his staff since business travel was halted.
“Moving to a vertical sales team meant that someone who covered all the other aquariums could speak more intelligently about what aquariums are doing or need to get their customers back,” White explained.
“That verticalization and expertise goes a long way in terms of understanding of the category and truly being a partner with the client to give them the success that they need on the platform,” Fitzgibbons added.
Jennifer Decker, co-owner 3 Moms Organics, is up more than 1,000 percent this year, which she attributes to creative and educational content they use in targeted Facebook advertisements. Their most effective advertisement was what they call the “pink paper ad” in which Decker’s partner Lisa-Jae Eggert, who studied entomology and earth science, collected ticks in the high grass on the East End and demonstrates how they stay away from the border of a pink sheet of paper that she sprayed with their product TickWise – a DEET-free tick and insect repellant.
“She blew dry it to show even when it dries on your clothing that the ticks don’t want to go near it and that ad has definitely given us the most website sales,” Decker told Connolly and the panel.
White said when he made a “reopening roadmap” for the hospitality industry over the summer, he discovered one piece of content can be used in email newsletters, Facebook posts and advertisements, and other social media campaigns to acquire new customers within a limited marketing budget.
“I think it’s just very strategic, quality, small investments that can be transferred (across) a lot of channels,” he said.
Selling direct-to-consumer on their website is now 3 Moms Organics’ focus as opposed to traditional retail. TickWise is on the shelves of about 80 stores – many of which are seasonal on Long Island and closed in March. They are registered through the Environmental Protection Agency to sell in 48 states and Washington, D.C. 3 Moms Organics was recently approved by the EPA to sell in California and are pending approvals for Maine and South Dakota.
Decker and Eggert used their time wisely in the first three months of the pandemic to apply and receive the Minority and Women Owned Business Enterprise Certification (MWBE), which has opened new doors for additional revenue streams.
“(We’ve) networked within them to learn a little bit more about what we should be doing and what we should be targeting,” Decker said of recent certifications.
White, in an answer to an audience question from debt settlement attorney Leslie Tayne, Esq. of Tayne Law Group in Melville, Long Island, said he has made connections on LinkedIn that has replaced in-person networking during the pandemic.
“I have been open to helping people that were unemployed as a result of the pandemic, and honestly, some of those relationships have really benefited our company,” he said, stressing his personal conviction in members of the business community helping each other through crises.
Learn sales advice, growth strategies and ideas on pivoting and starting a new business to fill a need in the pandemic economy on the WCBS BNB Bank Virtual Business Breakfast with Joe Connolly. Watch the program above.
