Two new writers are joining our lineup of business page columnists. They are Kim Bowsher and Gordon Putnam.
Kim will write about business and business management. Gordon is a credit specialist and will write about how people can deal with credit problems and issues.
Kim and her husband and two kids moved to Utah last year from the Seattle area.
She worked for Starbucks and went through that company’s management traininig program.
“Part of my time with Starbucks was spent working at the original Starbucks in Pike Place Market,” she said. “I have actually made lattes with (Starbucks CEO) Howard Schultz on an occasion or two when he came in for various publicity things.”
She majored in history at the University of Washington, but at Starbucks she got into the numbers of managing.
“I loved that — profit, inventory, the bottom line, brainstorming with the district manager on how to make it better.”
She left Starbucks after about four years and went to work for an architectural firm in marketing. She found there were problems at the firm — bills not paid on time, work not done on time, overdue accounts payable not being addressed.
“I took advantage of the opportunity and created a job for myself. One thing rolled into another and it snowballed.”
Company owners, she observes, sometimes don’t want to deal with business matters, even though they have to.
“They think of it as complicated and pass it off to someone else. As an owner, you have to be involved, no matter who you have on your team.”
With her column, she hopes to show that “it’s not as hard or as complicated as people think it is” by sharing ideas and advice.
“You don’t need an MBA to run a business.”
Gordon is the director of the Utah Credit Alliance, a non-profit that helps people deal with their credit issues.
He has a background in both the insurance and mortgage industries, where “I worked with people who had to work with credit.”
A lot of his time and effort is spent in educating people on how they got into problems, how to resolve them and how to stay away from them in the future.
“We work with people to help them legally and ethically get their credit issues cleaned up,” he said. “We teach them how to establish new credit and not get in that trouble again. Sometimes they made bad decisions simply because they didn’t have correct information.”
Kim’s column will appear every other Thursday, alternating with current columnist Brad Larsen. Gordon’s column will run on Fridays, alternating with the City Biz column written by Layton Mayor Steve Curtis.
By alternating the new columns with Larsen and Curtis, we’re able to keep our current group of writers intact, while at the same time adding these new voices.
The two columnists both debut next week. We think they bring a different perspective to our coverage of business and business issues.
Dave Greiling is managing editor of the Standard-Examiner. He may be reached at (801) 625-4224 or via email at dgreiling@standard.net.
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