Carolina del Norte Small Business Owner Highlight
Once an entrepreneur, always an entrepreneur, right?
John Martin, the CEO and founder of the North Carolina-based consultancy group Martin-Sloane International and Martin & Company, is on his second-time around as an entrepreneur.
He originally started a small IT consulting firm in 1994, which he eventually sold in 1997.
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Small businesses in North Carolina are still struggling to hire and retain a ready workforce, persistent challenges in the wake of the pandemic.
While small businesses employ nearly half (46.4%) of the private workforce in the United States, many are struggling to hire and retain a ready workforce. One viable solution to their persistent workforce challenges is the passing of Clean Slate policies, which seal and expunge certain criminal records and allow justice-impacted individuals to seek employment opportunities and entrepreneurship. Individual state analyses of small business responses in Georgia, Illinois, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Texas found widespread support for Clean Slate policies at the state and federal level.
Small Business Majority released a national scientific opinion poll—including oversamples in five states—that found small business owners oppose denying services to LGBT customers based on religious beliefs, rights to free speech or freedom of artistic expression. Further, the poll showed that a majority of small businesses support enacting federal and state laws to protect LGBT individuals from discrimination in places of public accommodation. Small business owners feel that nondiscrimination policies are good for their state’s business climate and their own business’s bottom line.
