Opinion

The value of mentoring

Over the years, I have had the privilege to speak to several groups and individuals about leadership, financial planning, sales, personal finance and other related topics. The most common question…

Arkansas taxpayers can direct their taxes specifically toward education

This year, hundreds of Arkansas children from income-eligible families received new education options because of generous contributions of business and individual taxpayers who directed their Arkansas state income tax to…

Preparing for compliance with the PUMP Act and Pregnant Workers Fairness Act

Pregnant workers are currently protected under various acts including Title VII, the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), the Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993 (FMLA), and the Providing Urgent…

Avenues to entrepreneurship

It’s always driven me a little bit batty that the business media and pop culture seem to think entrepreneurship is only about starting businesses. It seems like everyone forgets that…

Turning the corner

It is said that a first-time visitor to New York City from Arkansas, mouth agape as he stared skyward at a forest of construction cranes towering over a maze of…

Unfair competition? Level the playing field

Business clients tell me every day that employees are hard to hire and retain. By now almost everyone has read about or experienced the “great resignation” and its unprecedented levels…

Writing bold new story for Arkansas

It’s been true since the beginning of time: Through the stories we tell, the voices we uplift and the stories we collectively embrace, narrative has the extraordinary power to shape…

Conventional career path, interrupted? The case for workforce development

Traditionally, Arkansas students graduate high school and pursue higher education or get full-time jobs. These career paths have, for the most part, provided a steady stream of talent to keep…

15 questions to ponder

“The unexamined life is not worth living” is a famous saying supposedly uttered by Socrates. Socrates believed that philosophy — the study of wisdom — was the most important (life)…

The flip of a coin

What do you think? You need to fill an open position, and you’re given a choice: either follow your established methods for making a hiring decision or scrap it —…

Northwest Arkansas needs construction workers ASAP

Everywhere you look in Northwest Arkansas, road projects seem to drag on for years on end, and commercial construction projects sometimes sit half-finished, with some projects dragging on for months….

Riff Raff: Watch your step

An outline of planned pay raises for more than 1,100 teachers was presented during a Fort Smith Public Schools Board meeting in late April. There was little board discussion about…

Knowing your investment position is essential in real estate

Luck plays a more significant role in our lives than we like to admit. The world is not the predictable and understandable place we think it is. We place too…

All the buzz

Spring is heading straight into summer in our little corner of the earth. Even without a calendar telling us that spring arrived officially on March 20 and will last until…

Clean energy helps strengthen Arkansas’ economy

Arkansas must continue to foster a positive business environment that encourages economic development in order to create new jobs and support stronger, more resilient communities. We can achieve this by…

Pay attention to what may come

Beginning in March 2022, the Fed started raising interest rates. These rate increases ended a 14-year era of cheap money. But quickly raising interest rates from essentially zero to current…

Cybersecurity leadership can’t be delegated

Cybercrime is on the rise and bad actors are always looking for new targets. Your organization needs leadership who appreciates this new business risk and who understands that you are…

How ‘safe and sound’ banking practices empower the age of digital banking

The phrase “safe and sound” originates from Shakespeare’s play, “The Comedy of Errors.” In more recent times, it is a guiding principle of the federal regulatory bodies that oversee the…

Of disease and ‘dogs’

It has been a long time since I saw the words raccoon dog used in a headline. However, that term has surfaced again and in an unexpected connotation. We in…

Canoo and the perils of high-risk innovation

The future looked pretty bright for electric vehicle (EV) maker Canoo last July when it announced its big deal with Walmart (4,500 delivery vehicles, with an option to increase the…