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Anita Ron, President of BriteWorks, joins the show to talk about how her companyhas been affected by being a certified women-owned business and the the increase in minimum wage. She also provides her input on the question, "I allow my employees to BYOD for their jobs. What should be my biggest concerns, or should I scrap the idea altogether?" Full Podcast Transcript NASIR: All right. Welcome to our business legal podcast where we cover business in the news and also answer some of your business legal questions that you, the listener, can send in to ask@legallysoundsmartbusiness.com. And my name is Nasir Pasha. MATT: And my name is Matt Staub, and that sounded like you were just reading a script right there almost. That was so fast and it was like a disclaimer at the end of commercials and things like that. NASIR: Well, I wanted to rush through it because we have a guest today so I had to get through it fast. MATT: Yeah, we didn’t have a guest for a few weeks. Getting back into the second week in a row, we have a guest and, today, we have Anita Ron with BriteWorks. Welcome to the show, Anita! ANITA: Thank you for having me! I’m really excited to be able to let you know a little bit of an insight about the small business world. NASIR: Sure. You know, Anita has been somebody that we’ve been looking for for a while and we’ve been looking for a business owner that she’s a woman-owned business and it has certain certifications for that so we definitely wanted to touch that and then, also, in California, we just had a minimum wage increase back in – was it June or July? ANITA: July. NASIR: Yeah, July, and so we wanted to talk to somebody that has been affected by that minimum wage increase. And so, what’s the idiom? Two birds with one stone? I’m so terrible with that. MATT: Yeah, you’re terrible with those but it’s fine. NASIR: Well, anyway, Anita, first, please let us know kind of a little bit about what you guys do and how maybe the women-owned certifications that you’ve gone through, how that’s kind of helped your business out. ANITA: Well, I started a company about 18 years ago which was called BriteWorks Inc. We started the company with $700, three vacuum cleaners, and a lot of determination not to fail. Fast forward to now, we are at 70 employees and we’re right in that situation where we’re over 50 employees and now we’re going to have to provide health coverage and that’s kind of like a big hurdle that we’re going to have to go through but we provide high-end quality janitorial services for commercial, industrial, and government organizations throughout the Southern California area and we’re hoping to extend that in 2015 into other areas and regions. NASIR: Very cool. MATT: Anita, we actually get this question a lot when people call in to us and they ask – not the podcast, I’m talking more on… NASIR: Yeah, I was going to say, we don’t have live callers. MATT: Because we’ve written a couple of things about certifications for women on businesses and they can read through it and see the process that you have to go through, but the question that usually comes up at some point is, “Is this worth it?” and “How is it going to benefit my business?” We were hoping, if you had some insight on just how exactly your business has been affected once you’ve gotten that women-owned small business certification? ANITA: Well, one of the things is, if you qualify for business small certification, if you qualify for being a woman doing business, or if you’re a minority owned business, then you have some opportunities out there because, as you know, the government is trying to assist other individuals to go up on the scale as far as being able to be successful in their businesses or what they’re trying to start up and provide jobs in our communities. And so, there is some certification, one is for women and it is an extensive process. You actually should be in business for about three years because you’ll have to provide your tax ...