Business

Sandy Allison is the executive director at the Marshall-Saline Development Corporation. The corporation’s goal is to recruit new industries and businesses into the counties and strengthen existing business. As part of Missouri Business Alert’s Outstate project, KBIA's Seth Bodine spoke with Allison about her ideas on how to revitalize small towns like Marshall, Missouri. 

Like many small towns, the heart of Marshall, Missouri is the town square -- home to several long-time and new businesses. But as urbanization to larger cities increases, small town businesses have had to find new ways to stay relevant. This week of Business Beat looks at the businesses in Marshall, Missouri. It’s part of a Missouri Business Alert special project called Outstate, a project that looks at entrepreneurship in small towns in missouri. 

Karen Miller woke up and saw a flashing lights out the window of her home in Arrow Rock, Missouri. Miller works as the general manager of the J. Huston Tavern, which is the oldest continuously serving restaurant west of the Mississippi River. This wasn’t something someone would typically see in the small town of Arrow Rock, which has a population of 56, Miller said. So, she decided to investigate. Initially, she said she thought the lights were from the highway patrol. As she walked down the street, she ran into another resident who told her what was going on. 

Ever since the first goat yoga class opened in 2016, the experience has become a national business trend for goat and yoga enthusiasts alike. The idea is simple: It’s a yoga class, except there are miniature goats roaming around that people can interact with.

Braid artists in Missouri used to have to obtain a cosmetology license to practice legally — but cosmetology training didn’t include instruction on hair braiding.

Kristen Williams, CEO and creative director of Hempsley, achieved what she considers a big accomplishment — she convinced her grandparents in Alabama to try CBD oil. They’re even recommending her business to their friends.

Williams’ ever-evolving company sells CBD and aims to educate the public about cannabinoids like CBD. And for her, getting her reluctant grandparents to try CBD was a big deal.

After more than 40 years with the same company, Rick Means will retire from his position as president and chief executive officer of Shelter Insurance in August.

Matt Moore, currently executive vice president, will be the company’s next CEO.

Means has spent nearly all of his adult life with Shelter, starting as a claims adjuster and working his way up the corporate ladder to claims supervisor, manager, vice president and eventually to his role as the leader of a nearly 2,000-employee insurance company that wrote about $2 billion worth of premiums last year.

In the visitors room of the Women’s Eastern Reception, Diagnostic & Correctional Center in Vandalia, nine women stand dressed in bright blue caps and gowns. They’re the first to graduate from ASPIRE MO, a program designed to teach inmates the entrepreneurial skills to start a business once they leave prison.

The 20-week program teaches them various skills like market projections, advertising and feasibility studies. By the end of the course, they make a comprehensive business plan.

While you’re reading this, Winston Kliethermes is probably thinking about batteries.

He owns B & W Battery & Auto Repair in Jefferson City, and he says he’s been working with car batteries since 1974.

There are a lot more kinds of car batteries around now, but almost all of them have one element in common: lead. Lead-based batteries have long been the standard for transportation like cars or boats, and companies across the globe also use lead-based batteries to power their servers in case of emergency.

It’s a well proven system.

Beth Snyder turned her hobby of printmaking into a career when she started 1canoe2, a print and illustration studio. Her passion for creating prints began when her husband, then-fiancé, bought her a press for about $700 on eBay, for Christmas in 2007. She had wanted to print her wedding invitations using a traditional method.

Strikes and protests are starting up in more than 300 cities around the country today as part of the Fight for $15, the national push to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour. The demonstrations started in New York four years ago, and have since expanded to many cities and sectors. Today airport workers like janitors and baggage handlers, as well as Uber drivers, will join the protests for higher wages and better working conditions. President-elect Donald Trump’s opinions on the minimum wage are unclear, but the movement has also condemned his views on immigration and policing. 

For the past few days, millions of consumers have been in spending overdrive.  Storming stores on Black Friday. Working the web on Cyber Monday. And nonprofits that do good works like feeding the homeless and exposing corruption have a message for all of us: don’t stop now.  

Click the above audio player to hear the full story. 

The Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) has revised its global economic forecast, and things are looking up. It’s predicting 3.3 percent global growth in 2017, up from 2.9 this year and 0.1 percent higher than the prediction it issued in September. The organization is anticipating some stimulus to the U.S. economy under President-elect Donald Trump, who has promised $1 trillion in infrastructure investments, although the details of that idea are sketchy and subject to a political battle. 

With Fidel Castro's death, what might have been a low priority in the Trump administration is jumping up the agenda: what to do about business deals between the U.S. and Cuba.

John Kavulich, president of the nonpartisan U.S. Cuba Trade and Economic Council, joined us to talk about Cuba's future and what Castro's death means for the country's relationship with the U.S. 

On what's next for Cuba: 

As shoppers hit the stores this Black Friday, many will be paying with the chip cards introduced in the  U.S. about a year ago. Those cards were meant to make in-store purchases more secure. But some cybersecurity experts say chip cards may just push cyber criminals to online or “card not present” transactions.

Americans import about 90 percent of the seafood consumed in the U.S., and about half comes from fish farms or aquaculture.

The Obama Administration wants to decrease our reliance on imported seafood with efforts to allow fish farming in some federal waters — which begin 3 miles off states' shorelines.

Farmed fish create pollution with their waste. But experts say in federal waters — the open ocean — the waste can be diffused more easily than near coastlines.

Click the above audio player to hear the full story. 

On today's show, we'll talk to Business Insider's Ben Gilbert about the market for virtual reality, and play this week's Silicon Tally with with Geoffrey Fowler, personal technology columnist for the Wall Street Journal.