The Center of Excellence for International Trade, Transportation, and Logistics and the Highline Community College Continuing Education department are introducing a new course for individuals who plan to sit for the U.S. Customs Broker’s License Examination next fall.

The ten week course, one of the first in-class Customs Broker’s Examination prep course options available in the region, will occur from July 18 – September 19, 2012, and will feature a high-profile facilitator, Microsoft’s Director of International Trade, John Soares. A leading trade expert with more than twenty years of experience in the industry and a licensed Customs Broker himself, John possesses an in-depth knowledge of regulatory compliance, customs procedures, and trade management. The Customs Broker Exam Prep Course at Highline offers students a unique opportunity to learn from one of the best in the business.

Click here for the brochure with more information.

Whether you’re a company searching for your next great employee or an individual desiring exposure for your resume, the Transportation Club of Tacoma is here to support your networking needs.

In addition to in-person social networking opportunities at our luncheons and fundraising events, TCT also has a page on our website listing job opportunities as well as member resumes.

Take a look at TCT’s Networking page on our website for the latest in job postings and resumes from our members.

When you sit down with a financial institution, here are some of the things banks are looking for and questions they will ask.

Financial presentation: Be prepared to provide three years of business and personal tax returns as well as a most recent personal financial statement, and up to date balance sheet and income statement

Line of credit: If you are looking for a line of credit, plan on providing accounts receivable, account payable agings, and an inventory listing.
Side note – A lot of customers immediately think of a line of credit when looking to grow or expand. Take a few moments to decide if a line of credit is right for you and what you are going to do with it. A good banker will encourage you to use your line for working capital and short term purchases. They are not designed as a long term tool to buy a piece of equipment, which is what loans are for. This is a common mistake that businesses make and can cause financial issues when it comes to renewal since most lines of credit have a short “resting” period that makes sure you are not “living” on your line of credit.

Cash Flow: Banks get paid from your cash flow, not from collateral (and remember cash flow and profits are not the same thing). You must have a clear and demonstrated source of cash flow repayment from your primary operations to apply for a traditional bank loan.  The bottom line is that the financial institution just wants to be paid back.

Collateral: This is required as a secondary source of repayment in the event your primary operation (creating cash flow) fails. If you are weak in collateral, there are government guaranteed programs that may assist in providing a bank sufficient collateral to support your loan request, such as the Small Business Administration, and there is money out there to lend.

Capital: You need to have sufficient equity in your company. The capital level required differs from industry to industry and according to your size. You should know how leveraged you are in relation to your peers and what sufficient capital levels should be.

Character: Banks need to understand you and the story of the business. Has your company been profitable or have fallen on hard times? (…who hasn’t!) What is important for banks to see is what you did during those hard times? Other things banks look for is your 5 year plan and what your credit looks like.

Some say they hear that banks are not lending money. That is true and false. There are some banks that are going through hard times (like all businesses) and are not able to lend. However, the mass majority of institutions do have good capital levels and are able to lend at favorable rates.

This overview is provided by TCT Education Committee member Paul Long, Vice President, AmericanWest Bank (paul.long @ awbank.net).

*Some information was obtained from Puget Sound Business Journal February 2012. Every bank is different in their lending approach; make sure you talk to your banker for more information.

Have you been wondering what the traffic looks like on the TCT website since it was launched eight months ago? Through the magic of Google Analytics, we’re able to give you an idea of some cool stats.

Since May 26, 2011 (the official launch) to January 22, 2012 (8 months) there have been:

• 3,520 visits by 2,212 visitors
• 1,286 (37%) were direct (they had transportationcluboftacoma.com bookmarked)
• 1,247 (35%) from search engines (e.g. Google, Bing, Yahoo)
• 987 (28%) from referring sites (e.g. TCSeattle, email, Facebook, member websites with a TCT link)
• 17,895 pages have been viewed
• An average of 5 pages per visit
• Spending an average of 3.5 minutes each visit

That’s an average of 440 visits per month!

The large majority of these visitors are from the US. The next five are Canada, Brazil, Indonesia, United Kingdom and Panama.

Other than the Home page, the next most frequently visited pages are: Next Meeting; Networking; Join; Hi-Jinks; Events; Contact; Officers & Board; Hot Topics; TCT Scholarship; Spring Open; Just For Fun; and Newsletter. Views of these pages were from 250 views for the Newsletter, up to 1,857 for Next Meeting.

Sponsors of our golf tournaments are listed on the tournament’s website page, along with a link to their website. Over the past 8 months, the Hi-Jinks and Spring Open pages had a total of 958 views! Another great reason to become a Sponsor for these fundraising events!

Many people have found our website via a Google search of terms like “transportation club Tacoma” or “transportation Tacoma.” People have gone to our site via searches of people who are TCT members, as well as their companies. There are also people that get to TCT’s website via searches for information contained in our articles, the charities we support, and other phrases that are on our website pages.

The analytics program even lets us know that our website has been accessed by iPads 25 times, iPhones 21 times, and one time someone with a RIM BlackBerry 8530 Curve took a look at two pages!

We like to change things up periodically, so if you would like to give a member testimonial, have a fun YouTube video of your company, or have other information that other TCT members would want to know, please send it to TCT Board Member Norma Dompier, norma @ RedBikeInternational.com.

[Update since this article was supplied for TCT's newsletter: There have been 1,008 visitors over the past two months with a total of 6,196 pageviews! WOW!]

This information provided by TCT Education Committee Member & Board Member, Norma Dompier of RedBike International.