Twenty-eight states are headed for budget trouble, which could mean higher taxes for businesses, Laura Cohn writes in
States Eye New Taxes. "What makes
entrepreneurs really anxious is the uncertainty," she
says. That's especially true because some states can raise taxes without warning. Cohn, who was a staff writer for BusinessWeek for seven years, also writes for the
Financial Times.
Few family-owned businesses make it to the second generation, let alone the fifth or sixth. Rachel Watson got a hint as
to why when she shot the
photographs for
The Success Gene. During one photo shoot, a company
leader rolled his eyes while his parents discussed how they managed him. "It's almost
like not moving out of your parents' house," Watson
says. She's no stranger to
photographing families. In 2006, in a project she called Family Farm, Watson followed a Brooklyn family that moved to upstate New York to start
an organic farm. Watson's
work has appeared in Time, Fortune, and People.
If you want to sponsor
an event, Lauren Cooper has a good lead: The
Midwestern Lumberjack Championships is looking for a sponsor for its 2008 women's sawing competition. Cooper, a former
Inc. intern, tracked down 10 oddball opportunities for our story on event sponsorships. Her last piece for Inc. was about the lives of current and former Inc. 500 CEOs. "I was surprised that so many of them weren't college graduates," she says. "And that Bill Gates likes spray cheese out of a can."
Mark Mason wouldn't tell us how he kept his sand sculpture of the Leaning Tower of Pisa from falling down. He created a replica of the tower, along with several other world wonders, as a backdrop to our travel gear guide. Mason carried the sand from his Florida home base in a suitcase, then built the sculptures in a New York City studio. For the South Carolina presidential primaries, Mason's
company, Team Sandtastic, used 1,600 pounds of sand to build 9-foot-high busts of the candidates. Stephen Colbert was so jealous, he commissioned one of himself and featured it on The Colbert Report.
For
Things I Can't Live
Without, Athena Schindelheim interviewed Elijah Shaw, CEO of Icon Services, a company that provides security for artists such as Usher and 50 Cent. Shaw's list of must-haves wasn't all about Kevlar
vests and bulletproof
attaché cases; he also
can't live without artesian water from Norway and
designer shoes from Japan. "I love a businessman with style and a sense of humor," says Schindelheim, who
recently moved from the
editorial staff at Inc. to the event-planning team.
