Audience provides tips at business forum

The "No Panel Panel" was held at the Marriott in Melville Thursday.

In case you missed it, there was no panel at the event sponsored by the Long Island chapter of The Alternative Board, an organization that provides advisory boards and coaching services to small businesses.

But there was an event. In a twist, TAB made the audience the panel. John Kominicki, publisher of Ronkonkoma-based Long Island Business News, was the moderator. Questions about how to run a business were sent in ahead of time, and answers came from the floor.

The questions dealt with what Kominicki called "the Pillars of Pain," such as the complexities of hiring good employees. One suggestion was to check applicants' backgrounds through various software programs. Rob Basso, owner of Advantage Payroll Services in Freeport, said job descriptions must be very precise. "If you don't tell them what the responsibilities are, how can you expect them to perform?" he said.

Debbie Bedell, owner of Debbie's Creative Childcare Centers in Plainview, said a business must be monitored constantly. "You need to walk the business," she said. "You need to be in the cubicles."

For those who wanted to know about the banking environment, Michael Spolarich, a senior vice president at Empire National Bank in Islandia, described it as "cool, with a chance of showers." Lending is not as tight as it had been, Spolarich said, but, "Right now there's not a lot of loan demand. The business is as competitive as I've ever seen it."