Wednesday Linkblogging

• This New York Times article about Latino microbusiness in the States offers some interesting statistics from a new study from the Census Bureau:

From 1997 to 2002, there was a 31 percent increase in the number of businesses in the 50 states and the District of Columbia owned by people of Hispanic origin. That was triple the 10 percent gain in the number of all businesses in the country during that period, the most recent for which the Census Bureau has issued such data. In 2002, nearly 200,000 of the 1.6 million Hispanic-owned businesses had at least one paid worker other than the owner.

Hispanic-owned businesses accounted for 7 percent of the 23 million businesses in the country in 2002 — a percentage likely to have risen since then, given population shifts. The Census Bureau has estimated that as of last year, the Hispanic population was 44.3 million, or 15 percent of the nation’s total, making it the country’s largest ethnic or racial minority.

New York led the states in growth of Hispanic-owned businesses in the 1997-2002 period, with a 57 percent increase. It had a total of 164,000 such businesses in 2002 — not as high as California, with 428,000; Texas, with 319,000; and Florida, with 267,000, the Census Bureau reported.

• The Jamaica Observer has an interview with Gladys Famoriyo, who just won an award from the European Federation of Women Business Owners

for her contributions in developing and training women over the past decade through seminars, programmes, articles, organisations and humanitarian work. She was also the recipient of the International Women's Day Award (2007) in recognition of her work as a business owner, author, speaker and coach.

Check out her book Overcoming Emotional Baggage: A Woman's Guide to Living the Abundant Life.

• The Indianapolis Star has an article about Lorraine Ball's third book Business Map: A Guide to Business Success for Small Business Owners.

• Kathy Marshack at American Chronicle has some opinions about why women business owners are not always taken seriously:

I don't think that people are discriminating because of gender necessarily. It's probably more because they don't know how to relate to women business owners. Women have different values and these values are showing up in how women design their businesses.

... This blending of family and work roles is commonly seen in couple-owned and family-owned enterprises. Yet women who attempt to blend both roles must fight invisibility. ... Sometimes women reinforce this invisibility themselves. In an effort to maintain her role as wife and her role as business owner a woman may feel she has to take a "backseat" to her husband.

• Trading Markets thinks that banks will tighten already restrictive loan policies for startups and small businesses.

• Denise at biztipsblog.com talks about how women business owners can help save the environment:

Women spend $.85 of every dollar in the marketplace, which is a lot of spending power. The goal is for every woman to convert $1,000 of their regular spending to green spending...buying environmentally friendly products and services. A million women can shift $1 billion dollars and make a huge impact on how big and small businesses view and respond to their own environmental impact.

What does this mean for you as a business owner? Well, you're a consumer too, right?

• Loho 10002 has a sharp opinion about the SBA delaying implementing 2000 regulations awarding 5% of federal contracts to women. (scroll all the way down)