Category: Series & Specials

Julie and Edward Smolyansky have come a long way since that July day I interviewed them back in 2002. It was less than a month after their 55-year-old father, Michael, died suddenly of a heart attack. The siblings were left to run the company he founded, Lifeway Foods.

At that time Julie was 26, Edward was 22. Both looked their age, but they also had a maturity well beyond their years. That maturity served them well. In the 7 years since Michael Smolyansky died, sales at Lifeway Foods have grown from $12 million a year to nearly $60 million. The sister and brother also expanded the company's plant, and moved the executive offices to another facility.

Career counselors are often quick to recommend fields where a personnel shortage currently exists. That seems logical...after all, shouldn't you train for positions where the jobs are?

Perhaps not. Take the teaching profession. For years, it was chronically understaffed--so thousands of students and mid-life career changers decided to train to become teachers. But just as they got their certification, the economy went into recession. With declining tax revenues, school districts began laying off teachers. Now there are now too many qualified teachers and not enough openings. The shortage of teachers has turned into a glut.

To help you avoid falling into that trap, we're profiling four up-and-coming careers in our Thanksgiving Day program. Our consultant, Dr. Marty Nemko, says each meets two criteria: 1) it should grow in demand in the coming years 2) it is still largely undiscovered. One is "Patient Advocate." Never heard of it? That's the idea. As Marty put it: "Everyone knows there's going to be a great need for physicians' assistants and nurse practitioners. But most people have never read about a patient advocate. It's under the radar--so the competition may be less rigorous." And a bonus is that becoming a patient advocate requires far less training than most other medical specialties.

We live in a world today where technology, trade, and travel bring the world to our front doors. But, most of us are still more interested in what's going on in our back yards. That idea is what has made Shaw Newspapers so successful.

For 158 years the Shaw family has been reporting the news of the day in small communities like Dixon, Illinois and Osceola, Iowa. Those papers carry national wire stories about the effort in Washington to pass health care legislation. But, they also carry stories about local festivals, city council meetings, and local crime.

The Shaws have a keen sense of the communities they serve and what their readers crave. Tom Shaw runs the family firm out of a converted home in Dixon, Illinois. It's not far from the offices of the Dixon Evening Telegraph which his great-great grandfather bought in 1851. Shaw frequently visits his numerous publications. His staff knows him, and he knows his staff.

I must confess that I have never purchased anything from a home shopping network. But, I can see how addictive channels like HSN can be. The merchandise seems to be priced fairly, the on-air talent is very persuasive, and the countdown creates the perception of the need to act immediately--or lose out.

I selected HSN for the debut of ShopTalk because the network is known for having its finger on the pulse of consumers. Its business strategy depends on selling what people want to buy now. If bracelets are hot, extra time is devoted to that item. HSN has unique insight into what customers are watching, buying, and returning.

That's not the only competitive advantage. Because television shopping networks don't have dedicated floor space to fill, they can adjust their inventory easily and quickly. They buy their merchandise in relatively small increments to ensure they are not stuck with a lot of undesirable items. And Marshal Cohen at The NPD Group also says home shopping has the added allure of "stealth shopping." In other words, in the current economic environment, many people are uncomfortable telling family and friends they are heading to the mall. It's much easier for them to buy things on the sly, in the comfort of their home.

As someone who covers health care a lot, I've wondered whether it might be easier to write my stories if I could have the phrase "rapidly rising cost of health insurance" assigned to the F-1 or F-2 button at the top of my computer keyboard. After experiencing several decades in which the cost of health insurance rose faster than the rate of inflation, Americans have come to grudgingly expect that health insurance (if you're lucky enough to have it) will be significantly more expensive each year.

But is the "rapidly rising cost of health insurance" (there it is again!) truly a fait accompli? There's some evidence that it is possible to buck the trend. How? Well, in the past, companies typically looked at managing the cost of health benefits. Fair enough. But the companies which "buck the trend" take a different approach: instead of focusing on the health plan, they focus on the health of their workforce, and how to improve it.

Tonight's "Bill of Health" story on company health plans developed from a simple question: Why do companies offer health benefits at all? The average price of a company-provided health plan will rise by more than 10 percent in 2010 (according to the The Segal Company consulting firm), and when you consider companies pay somewhere between 75% to 85% of a plan's cost -- why do they even bother? After all, only two states (Massachusetts and Hawaii) mandate some form of coverage. For companies elsewhere, it's a voluntary effort.

The answer to the "why bother?" question is a bit of a history lesson. During World War 2, the nation's domestic war-related industries (building bombers, ships, and the like) needed lots of workers. But with so many men and women serving in uniform overseas, companies were competing for a limited supply of labor. In an ordinary world, companies might have been able to offer higher wages to attract workers, but US authorities froze wages by federal order (because of concerns about inflation).

The focus of healthcare stories these days is on the action (or inaction, depending on your viewpoint) in Washington and Congress. Yet the challenges companies face as the actually try to provide health care plan benefits to their employees is an issue that, in many ways, has been "under-reported" by those of us in the media. So that's what we were trying to focus on in tonight's Bill of Health. This report is the first of a 3-part series developed by photographer/editor Michael Malanga and myself.

Our idea was to focus on one company, preferably a small one (only a slim majority of companies with 9 workers or less still offer health benefits at all, compared to 99 percent of corporations with 200 or more workers), and to tell THAT company's health-insurance story. We wound up being put in touch with Kathy and Bob Latham, the owners of Latham Marine, in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

I'm not sure if it was destiny or DNA that led me to our new series "All in the Family." Like millions of Americans, I come from a family of entrepreneurs. In 1894, my great grandfather opened a general store and post office near Dixon, Illinois that remained in my family for nearly a century. My parents and grandparents owned a laundry and dry cleaners near Peoria, Illinois for forty years. Unfortunately, that dream died when it came time to pass the torch to my sister and me. She headed into the insurance industry, and I headed into journalism. The business was sold.

Still, I'm fascinated with family firms. They form the backbone of American business. Think Ford Motor Company, Walmart, Nordstrom, and Meijer. Ira Bryck, Director of the University of Massachusetts Amherst Family Business Center, estimates that 85% of all U.S. companies are family-owned. He says in parts of Europe and Asia it's as high as 100%.

If you had to identify the biggest business development of the year's first half, what would you choose? GM declaring bankruptcy? Bernie Madoff being sentenced to 150 years? The Obama financial regulation proposal? Ken Lewis's demotion (to mere CEO, rather than Chairman and CEO) at Bank of America?

It's a tough decision...but I would vote for none of the above. Rather, I would go with the U-Turn in the Stock Market that began in early March.

Why? Until March 9, stock prices were still in free-fall, continuing the crash of 2008. That reflected a continuing stream of bad news on the economy and serious concerns that the financial system might collapse. But then the Stock Market began to turn round and headed in the other direction--rallying some 40 percent over the next four months. (Even that move only brought prices back to where they started the year, but who's complaining?)

In evaluating whether President Obama's stimulus plan is working, a number of economists I spoke to for my report in NBR's "Signs of Stimulus" Memorial Day program pointed to the intangible effect of "optimism." The theory is that because the government is taking decisive action to fix the economy, people are already feeling more confident and secure. While that may be true, whether that newfound cheeriness will result in spending is less clear.

Economic theorists have debated for some time whether there is a correlation between consumer sentiment and optimism. For myself, I know there is a strong connection: the happier I am, the more I shop, and vice versa. But, happiness is an elusive quality and we all know that emotions can change very quickly. Is an upbeat American enough to bank on when looking for a way out of this monstrous recession? Probably not...but I guess it's a good place to start.