ASN will be closed Monday, January 17, 2022, in support of the Martin Luther King Jr. Day mission of service.     Did you know that in 1994, Congress passed the King Holiday and Service Act, which transformed Martin Luther King Jr. Day into a day dedicated to volunteer service in honor of Dr. King's legacy?     We would like to inspire you to serve your community during this leg of the pandemic. Be safe, get vaccinated, wear a mask, and practice social distancing. These are ways we can all serve our local community; stay well and reduce the stress on our healthcare workers. Thank you. 

Why don't people want to work?   This is a question that business owners and economists have been asking for a while now. Starting in May of 2020, the Census Bureau has conducted a monthly Household Pulse Survey in which they ask that very question.   At first, the answers were on track with what was expected. A significant plurality of people cited layoffs and furloughs due to the pandemic. But then something unexpected occurred:. Societal forces previously unseen started to emerge.   The first unpredicted finding was a surge in retirements – many due to the very real threat of the coronavirus weighed against the...

Can You Monetize These Trends? A recent article in Small Business Solutions looked at some trends that were predominant in 2021 and seem likely to continue to prevail in 2022 and beyond. The question is, can your business afford not to consider them?   Remote work It's obvious to all that this trend will continue. The genie is out of the bottle and it's not going back in anytime soon. In fact, with technological advances being introduced everyday, it's just making it easier for a large segment of the workforce to provide their services remotely. This will be especially true in financial services and...

TO COPE WITH COVID RI ANNOUNCES NEW MASK MANDATES   Here we go again. Just like Michael Corleone in The Godfather, as soon as we think we may be in clear, we get pulled back in. Although we aren't dealing with New York City crime families, it certainly seems like we're back on familiar ground. The latest COVID 19 variant, Omicron, has been found to be exponentially more infectious, although preliminary data indicates it is less deadly. However, if the rate of infection is multiples higher, the numbers of serious illnesses and deaths will be higher due to the sheer number of infections....

All the data, facts, and figures in the world won't make the sale.   Everyone is always looking for ways to close the deal. To make the client sign on the bottom line.   Too often, we fall prey to the notion that the specifications, the facts and figures, the data we've compiled will seal the deal. So we do a data dump on the customer, thinking it will tell the story of our product or service. We think to ourselves "the data speaks for itself".   Although this sounds like a quite logical assessment, as explained by Karen Eber in her TedTalk “How your brain...