Top 10 Reasons Why Businesses are Leaving California

I read a blog post at www.thebusinessrelocationcoach.blogspot.com. The article was a little long, but relevant to what's happening here, so I'll summarize it for you and just jump into the top ten: The italicized excerpt below is a quote from the article:

#10 -- Unfair Taxes: The Tax Foundation in their newest report lists California at No. 48 for tax fairness – ahead of only New York and New Jersey.

#9 -- Most Expensive Business Locations: The Rose Institute of State and Local Government reported in the latest "Cost of Doing Business Survey" that California cities continue to be some of the most expensive locations to do business in the United States.

#8 -- Worst Performing Labor: The Pacific Research Institute found that California’s labor performance in a recent five-year period is among the worst performing in the nation.

#7 -- Dreadful Legal Treatment: The Civil Justice Association of California said the state ranks 44th in legal fairness to business. Los Angeles was again named the least fair and reasonable litigation environment in the entire country.

#6 -- Worst Regulatory Burden: A study by the consulting firm Bain & Co. measured the cost, uncertainty and complexity of regulations and in constructing a “regulatory hassle index” found that "California is farworse than any other state by a very significant margin."

#5 -- Harsh Treatment Motivates Exists: Again Bain & Co. (they’re a busy group) found that more than half of California business leaders – an astonishing 60 percent – said they have policies in place to restrict job growth in the state or move jobs to other U.S. locations.

#4 -- Downright Unfriendliness:: The Small Business & Entrepreneurship Council in Virginia found that California ranked 49th overall in terms of business friendliness.

#3 -- High Misery Index: The Associated Press calculates what it calls a monthly "misery index" – California is close to the bottom of the list.

#2 -- Uncontrollable Spending: Extravagant state spending continues and pollsters have found people are much angrier about California government – more than they've ever been in recorded polling history.

#1 Chief Executive magazine recently found California to be the worst state in the nation in which to do business. Texas was found to be the best.

In the worst recession that we've had in decades our legislature is busy trying to pass a global warming bill that will cost businesses plenty. Our businesses already have enough to worry about, which is why I started working with them selling PEO (Professional Employer Organization) services three years ago. It helps lift some of the burden of having employees. But even after they hire me for this service, they still have to pay plenty. The headaches are still there.

When will our legislature wake up and see that we cannot survive without business here?

What do you think?

Google to add Internet to it's list of services

All I can say is, Wow!

Google announced that they are going to start rolling out 1GB internet over fiber to select communities. Sounds expensive, you say? well, they said that they are going to offer competitive pricing and allow open access to the fiber networks to allow multiple service providers to access the network.

According to the their Blog post "Our goal is to experiment with new ways to help make Internet access better and faster for everyone."

How will your life change with this announcement? Think of how your life would look if you could do everything over the internet instead of on your own computer. Your applications could run with blazing speed. No more waiting. You can run multiple applications and use your computer like a work station.

Why are they doing this? Google makes money when you use the internet. Their goal with YouTube, Gmail, and their new application, Buzz, is to get you to spend as much time on the internet so that they can make money by selling ads.

Because they make their money via ad revenue, their main concern is to get people on the internet. This is why you keep seeing Google come up with new applications to get you to stay on the internet as long as possible.

Google is going to offer blazing fast internet, allow multiple service providers, and keep the network open. In addition, they won't prohibit you from doing things you want to do, like watching TV on the web or talking on your VOIP phone.

Google keeps offering more and more services that are free or very low cost. This is great for consumers, but also bad in a way. After all, Google is quickly becoming the "Big Brother" that many of us worry about our Governments to be.

That being said, if you want to get involved and submit your community for consideration for this new fiber network visit www.google.com/appserve/fiberrfi

Blackberry offering Free Workshops for Entreprenuers....

Great News! The people at Blackberry have organized a series of FOUR webinars to help small business owners with some of the issues we are having in today's marketplace.

Below is a description of each of them:

1. Tools and Tactics for Connecting with Today's Customers:

Time: 10:00 am (PST)

Date: Tuesday, February 16, 2010

Presenter: Brent Leary, Partner – CRM Essentials

2. Building a “Customer-First” Company

Time: 10:00 am (PST)

Date: Thursday, February 18, 2010

Presenter: Rick Spence – President, Canadian Entrepreneur Communications

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3. How to Get Found Online in Your Town

Time: 1:00 PM (EST)

Date: Tuesday, February 23, 2010

Presenter: John Jantsch – Author of Duct Tape Marketing

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4. Moving Your Business Forward Even When the Economy Won’t Cooperate

Time: 1:00 PM (EST)

Date: Thursday, February 25, 2010

Presenter: Anita Campbell – CEO and Editor-in-Chief of Small Business Trends

Go here to register for the workshops that you would like to attend:


For more information on CBR, go here: