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I have always had trouble delegating. Even as a manager in corporate America, I had a tendency to do all my work myself — everything from scheduling meetings, to reserving conference rooms, to ordering lunch for guests and sending faxes. I was convinced I was the best person to complete these tasks.

That tendency continued when I started my own marketing agency and hired a couple of interns. Rarely could they get the work done as quickly or as thoroughly as I could, so, too often, I kept it for myself.

As you might expect with only one person working at capacity — me — my firm quickly hit a revenue ceiling. Everything I was able to do myself, I did. It was only when I encountered a need for a website, which I had no idea how to design and create, that I was forced hand over a key task.

And after witnessing how much could be done by someone else, I did a complete about-face. I began looking for opportunities to delegate and outsource.

Buoyed by Tim Ferriss’ recommendation of low-cost help in his bestselling The 4-Hour Workweek, I turned to Brickwork India, in Bangalore, for some market research. I wanted to know how large a particular industry was to help me determine if it was worth targeting. But since this was a not yet a revenue-generating concern, I also wanted to keep my costs as low as possible. Hiring Bain or the Boston Consulting Group was not an option.

I have a virtual assistant in Texas (I’m in New York) who handles much of my Web work, at $50 an hour, but this project required a different skill-set. I had already spent a few hours of my time conducting my own top-line investigation and came up short. So when Ferriss indicated that Brickwork charges as little as $15 an hour, I decided to test them out.

I went to the company’s website and completed an initial Request for Information form identifying myself and the specific tasks I needed a Brickwork analyst to perform. Based on that input, I received a quote for a block of 10 hours of work in the next 30 days. The cost was $140. Total. I was more than willing to risk $14 an hour on this experiment.

The next step was setting up my Brickwork account, which took a matter of minutes, and paying the $140 via credit card. I received an introductory e-mail from my senior executive assistant the next afternoon, the start of their work day. I would have liked to have been able to request a particular worker, since a colleague had recommended a talented researcher there, but there was no opportunity to request anyone specific during the sign-up quick guaranteed personal loans.

Unsure of whether I should immediately hand off this important research project, I started with a softball task — compile a list of associations and organizations for writers in the U.S. Within a matter of hours, I had a spreadsheet listing 15 such organizations, their corresponding locations and number of members. Given that I could rattle off close to a dozen writers’ associations off the top of my head, I was a bit disappointed it took my executive assistant two hours to come up with 15. I was fairly certain there were more, but the information I received was well-organized.

So I forged ahead and with eight hours remaining on my credit I asked for help in finding the size of the ghostwriting industry. Mindful that more than eight hours could be spent with little to show for it, I set a cap of two hours. Those two hours were quickly gone and, in exchange, I received a list of four small companies that compete in that market. Not exactly what I was after. And then there were six hours left.

We spent some time going back and forth, as I tried to clarify exactly what I needed while also trying to assess whether there was any chance I would actually get it. Looking back, I should have picked up the phone and spent five minute making sure my assistant truly understood what I wanted, but e-mail was so much more convenient; I had her phone number but didn’t use it.

From the tasks I assigned and the deliverables I received, it slowly became clear that Brickwork was awesome at tracking down information with a single known value. For example, if you wanted to know how many babies were born last year worldwide, I’m sure my executive assistant could have found that fact. But ask for information that requires some primary research or deductive reasoning and you’ll burn through several hours just explaining what you’re after, information-wise. Alas, my industry research task falls into the latter category.

At such a low hourly rate and with the flexibility to hire a Brickworker on a whim, I may turn to them for administrative help in the future. But only when the data I need is well-defined and finite. 

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Exactly what happened behind the scenes at Hewlett-Packard Co. as the board of directors reached a deal for CEO Mark Hurd to resign after an ethics probe over sexual harassment allegations is still not known.

But the back-room dealing that led to one of America's top CEOs to resign with what could be up to a $40 million severance deal from HP (NYSE: HPQ) continues to be one of the most-talked about topics in the business world more than a week after his departure.

In a report this weekend, The Wall Street Journal cited a person it says was familiar with the HP board's thinking who said that the former CEO short-circuited an internal investigation by agreeing to a settlement with former actress Jodie Fisher on August 4, two days before his departure was announced.

The Journal reported that the settlement with the former marketing contractor came without the board's knowledge or input, a day before Fisher and her lawyer were supposed to meet with HP's outside counsel and Hurd's personal lawyer.

That story runs counter to another that the Journal attributes to an unnamed source it said is familiar with Hurd's thinking that HP had repeatedly instructed its CEO for three weeks before the settlement to come to an agreement with his accuser.

That source told the Journal that Hurd gave the board everything it asked for up to that point but the directors didn't let him address them or respond directly to questions.

The paper further said, however, that another unnamed source familiar with the board's thinking encouraged Hurd to speak with the board but he declined. It said, however, that the source on Hurd's side didn't agree with that version of the story.

Hurd led NCR Corp. (NYSE: NCR) in Dayton before going to HP, and had helped grow it's data warehouse division into what spun off as Teradata Corp. (NYSE: TDC) while at NCR.

The latest revelations about Hurd's departure come amid continuing scrutiny of the reasons for his sudden exit.

New York Times columnist Joe Nocera called it "one of the great head-scratchers in recent times" in a Saturday piece.

"The consensus in Silicon Valley is that Mr. Hurd was despised at HP, not just by the rank and file, but even by HP’s top executives," Nocera wrote.

The Times columnist suggests that the sexual harassment claim merely gave the board the pretext for doing what it wanted to do, get rid of Hurd without provoking an outcry on Wall Street where he was extremely popular for turning around the company's finances.

"In fact, the directors should be called out for acting like the cowards they are," the columnist wrote in a scathing piece. "Mr. Hurd’s supposed peccadilloes were a smoke screen for the real reason they got rid of an executive they didn’t trust and employees didn’t like."

Fisher, 50, was working as a contractor for HP when the alleged incidents that led to Hurd's resignation on August 6 occurred. She was reportedly paid to appear as a greeter at HP customer events where Hurd also appeared.

HP said an internal investigation didn't find evidence of sexual harassment but did find instances when Hurd's behavior didn't live up to the company's codes of conduct. This reportedly included alleged instances of expenses Fisher was paid that weren't properly reported.

For more on this story, including Hurd's full connections to Dayton through the years, click the following DBJ stories in our continuing coverage:

Mark Hurd - Rise and fall of a CEO

Poll: HP right to force Mark Hurd to resign

Report: Mark Hurd agrees to pay settlement

Hewlett-Packard stock plummets on CEO scandal

HP CEO Hurd to get $12M severance payout

Full text of Mark Hurd's separation agreement with HP

HP CEO Mark Hurd resigns amid sexual harassment scandal

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Universal Orlando announced Aug. 6 that it is raising its one-day, one-park admission to $82 from $79, just a day after theme park-competitor Walt Disney World raised its prices on Aug.5.

In addition, many of the park’s other ticket options have received a $5 increase, except for the two-day, park-to-park ticket, which remains unchanged at $145. The Florida resident online specials remain unchanged. All price changes are effective Aug. 7.

The company’s goal is to continue to deliver high-end entertainment at a great value, “while keeping an eye on the marketplace,” said Tom Schroder, a Universal Orlando spokesman.

This marks the fifth consecutive year Universal and Disney have bumped up ticket costs.

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Institutional Venture Partners is reportedly raising $600 million to invest in information technology companies.

Dow Jones VentureWire reported that a consultant's due diligence report on the Menlo Park firm revealed it is seeking the money for its 13th fund.

The report said that the fund will be invested throughout the United States, with a focus on Silicon Valley. It will be able to contribute up to 30 percent to investments in public companies.

The report said that IVP's last three funds have generated a 1.6-times investment multiple as of Dec. 31.

These included investments in ArcSight Inc., which went public in 2008 and MySQL AB, which was sold for $1 billion to Sun Microsystems Inc. in 2008. It also has invested in Twitter Inc. and Zynga Game Network Inc.

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The economy has made a sharp U-turn in the past couple of months, and better days for American businesses and workers are around the corner.

But don’t take my word for it. Take Warren Buffett’s. And Jamie Dimon’s. And Jack Welch’s. All three tell me that in the past four to eight weeks, they’ve seen a real change in their businesses, and that indicates better news for the nation’s economy. They should know.

Warren Buffett has been focusing on the data from BNSF Railway, which he recently acquired. At the start of the recession three years ago, Burlington Northern felt the pain early when retailers stopped ordering goods, automakers stopped shipping cars, and homebuilders stopped needing so much lumber. The railroad started storing thousands of idle railcars; now those cars are being called back into service. And that’s an incredibly important sign.

But that’s not his only hint.

Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway (BRKA, Fortune 500) conglomerate encompasses some 80 different businesses, and he’s seeing strength everywhere: from the number of hours customers fly at NetJets to the amount (and cost) of jewelry they buy at Borsheim’s.

But the most important place he’s seeing it is at Iscar, an Israeli-based manufacturer of metalworking tools he bought in May 2006. Iscar’s cutting tools are used on aircraft, auto, and other assembly lines, and the company’s sales volume is popping. "You can just feel the pulse of industry quickening," Buffett says.

Jamie Dimon, whose J.P. Morgan Chase (JPM, Fortune 500) was the fortress that withstood the great financial disaster, counts millions of Americans as customers. And he’s seeing a turn in the very recent data as well. After soaring to a record high of 9.3%, credit card charge-offs for the industry are dropping to more normal levels of 5% to 6%.

But his most important indicator may be the anecdotal evidence that a hiring boom is on the horizon. Dimon travels the country constantly for lunches or dinners with business leaders, meeting with groups of 20 to 250 people at a time. They may be people who run small or large businesses, they may be venture capital investors, they may be clients of the firm’s massive private banking group.

But everywhere lately, the reaction is the same. When he asks how many of them are going to be hiring in the next 12 months, a third of the hands in the room go up. That’s from virtually none a year ago. "The strength and resilience of the American economy may surprise people," Dimon says. "The odds of a potential upturn are stronger than people think."

And then there’s Jack Welch, who spent 20 years at the helm of the nation’s largest industrial conglomerate, General Electric (GE, Fortune 500). These days Welch is a special partner at private equity firm Clayton Dubilier & Rice, which has investments in everything from Hertz rental cars to TruGreen, a lawn service company.

He told Squawk Box recently that customers across the board are flooding back. "People who have jobs are now feeling more secure about keeping them and are therefore spending," Welch says. "And people who don’t have jobs are becoming more hopeful as they see glimmers of hiring."

So if these business leaders are that confident, why are there still so many doubters out there? Americans are still reeling from the economic collapse, and some fret that another crisis is lurking. Call it a case of post-traumatic financial crisis syndrome.

"When fireworks go off now, people are expecting that it’s a nuclear bomb," Buffett says. It’s a natural reaction, but a dangerous one. That mentality exacted a painful cost for investors who followed their gut and got out of stocks as the Dow fell below 9000, then 8000, then 7000. Since then stocks have rebounded 65% off their lows. And if you were waiting on the sidelines until things looked more stable, then you missed the party.

It’s a lesson to us all. While there are still plenty of concerns out there — from a stubbornly high unemployment rate to continuing commercial real estate land mines — I’ll follow the lead of those on the economic frontlines. And I can’t think of three better generals than Buffett, Dimon, and Welch.  

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Arts and crafts retailer Hobby Lobby Stores Inc. has increased the minimum wage for full-time hourly employees to $11 per hour. The employees affected previously made $10 per hour.

The change in pay will effect 9,600 Hobby Lobby employees nationwide.

The company also raised its part-time hourly wage to $8 per hour.

There are 22 Hobby Lobby stores in North Texas.

The minimum wage increase also will benefit the company’s affiliated businesses – Hemispheres and Crafts Etc cheap pay day loans.

The Oklahoma City-based company said its minimum wage is now 52 percent above the national minimum of $7.25 per hour.

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Maricopa County Attorney Andrew Thomas is stepping down to run for Arizona attorney general.

Thomas spokesman Jason Rose said the Republican prosecutor's last day in office will be April 6.

Thomas is a close ally of Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, backing Arpaio's immigration raids and crime sweeps. The two also have battled with the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors and U.S. Circuit Court judges over immigration issues, county budgets and the construction of new court tower in downtown Phoenix.

Thomas' entry sets up a GOP primary race for attorney general against Tom Horne, the state's superintendent of public instruction.

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President Obama’s foreclosure prevention program will likely fall far short of its goal and may even do more harm than good, a government watchdog said Tuesday.

The Special Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief Program said the Treasury Department set targets that weren’t "meaningful," mismanaged the implementation of the program, and now risks a substantial number of "re-defaults," with many participants ultimately losing their homes anyway.

The administration’s $75 billion loan modification program may help as little as 1.5 to 2 million people, about half the number Obama said it would when he first unveiled the program in February 2009, the inspector general, Neil Barofsky, wrote in a report.

Recently, Treasury Department officials have come under fire for saying the initial goal applied only to offering trial modifications, as opposed to permanent help.

"Continuing to frame HAMP’s success around the number of "offers" extended is simply not sufficient," Barofsky wrote, referring to the Home Affordable Modification Program.

Under HAMP, eligible troubled borrowers can have their monthly mortgage payments reduced to 31% of their pre-tax income. But first, homeowners are put into trial modifications to determine whether they can keep up with the lowered payments and to give loan servicers time to verify income and hardship.

Homeowners, servicers and mortgage investors are eligible for incentives, paid for with TARP funds, when the trial adjustments are converted to long-term modifications.

About 170,000 borrowers have received permanent modifications through February, according to the Treasury Department. Treasury officials, however, have emphasized that more than 1.3 million homeowners have received trial modification offers.

Responding to the report, Assistant Treasury Secretary Herbert Allison disputed many of Barofsky’s findings, saying the program’s success should not be based only on permanent modifications.

Poor implementation

Barofsky also said administration officials did a poor job of rolling out the program. They launched the effort before fully developing it and the subsequent revisions caused confusion and delays. They also have failed to market the program properly, Barofsky said.

But one of the biggest implementation mistakes was allowing servicers to put homeowners into trial modifications before collecting the required documentation. This has created a large backlog of trial modifications, many of which will never become permanent, Barofsky said faxless cash advance.

After the program got off to a slow start, administration officials came under intense pressure to speed assistance to troubled borrowers. So, the Treasury Department permitted servicers to enroll people in trial modifications without verifying income.

When the number of borrowers receiving permanent assistance lagged, the administration pressed servicers to convert more trial modifications to long-term help. But banks said they were having trouble collecting the needed paperwork from homeowners.

Officials in January changed the program’s guidelines, requiring servicers to gather the paperwork before placing people into trial modifications.

Re-default concerns

The Treasury Department anticipates that 40% of homeowners in the program will ultimately re-default, prompting Barofsky to question the initiative’s worth. The program is vulnerable to re-defaults because it does not take into account how much total debt borrowers have, including credit card and student loan debt, among other factors.

Barofsky urged administration officials to review the program and its goals, and offered several recommendations. These include: clarifying expectations for the program; reconsidering allowing servicers to use alternate forms of income verification, and working to minimize the risk of re-default.

"Absent a thorough review of HAMP and its goals, the program risks helping few, and for the rest, merely spreading out the foreclosure crisis over the course of several years, at significant taxpayer expense," Barofsky said.

In his response, Allison said the Treasury Department would try to be more precise in its objectives for the program and said that officials are continuously monitoring its operations and effectiveness.

But he stressed that permanent modifications are but one way to help struggling homeowners, noting servicers’ own foreclosure prevention initiatives and alternatives such as short sales, where the servicer agrees to sell the home for less than the loan amount.

"The success of HAMP should be measured by how many eligible homeowners are able to avoid the pain and stigma of foreclosure by reducing their mortgage payments to affordable levels while either remaining in their homes or transitioning with dignity to more suitable housing," Allison said. 

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St. Louis Mayor Francis Slay presented the Mayor’s Spirit of St. Louis Award Thursday to AgraForm, a chemical processing plant and packaging company.

The Mayor’s Spirit of St. Louis Award recognizes businesses that make major expansions or improvements to their existing locations, open or relocate to the city.

When Bayer CropScience decided to close its south St. Louis insecticide processing plant last year, a former Bayer employee and his business partners bought out the operations and started a new company, AgraForm.

AgraForm now counts Bayer as its largest customer and retained 12 jobs, along with seven contract positions at the plant, located at 133 E. Krauss St. in the Carondelet neighborhood. The company hopes to add employees as the business grows with new clients and additional products, the mayor’s office said.

The company’s owners are Doug Baskett, a former mechanical and process controls engineer with Bayer’s Kansas City plant; Ron Cunningham, who spent 18 years with Procter & Gamble in process controls and automation; and Bill McVeagh, an engineer and principal with Flourtown, Pa low interest rate personal loans.-based Engineering Support Systems.

The owners obtained at least $2.35 million in financing.

The company’s public/private financing package included assistance from the St. Louis Development Corp., the city’s economic development agency, in the forms of revolving loan funds and a Small Business Association 504 loan for start-up costs, inventory, equipment, working capital and other needs.

Southern Commercial, a local community bank, secured $1.1 million in private financing. Additional working capital assistance came from the St. Louis Minority Business Council.

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Manufacturing in the Philadelphia region expanded in February for a sixth straight month as orders surged to the highest level in more than five years, another sign that factories are leading the economic recovery.

The Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia’s general economic index rose to 17.6 from 15.2. Readings greater than zero signal growth. Measures of employment and shipments accelerated, and inventories expanded for the first time since September 2007.

Surging exports, inventory replenishment and corporate spending on new equipment are fueling a factory-led recovery from the worst recession in seven decades. The manufacturing expansion may spur the labor market recovery needed to boost consumer spending and keep the economy expanding.

“The inventory cycle will continue to add to production levels well into 2010,” said Robert Stein, a senior economist at First Trust Portfolios LP in Wheaton, Illinois. “Manufacturing is doing well pretty much across the board.”

A separate report from the Conference Board today showed the index of U.S. leading indicators rose in January for a 10th straight month, pointing to an economy that will keep expanding through the first half of this year.

The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index increased 0.2 percent to 1,101.53 at 11:11 a.m. in New York. The 10-year Treasury note fell, pushing up the yield five basis points to 3.78 percent.

Other reports from the government showed jobless claims rose by 31,000 to 473,000 last week, while wholesale prices increased 1.4 percent in January after a 0.4 percent gain in December.

Economists’ Forecasts

Economists forecast the Philadelphia Fed’s factory gauge would rise to 17, according to the median of 58 projections in a Bloomberg News survey. Estimates ranged from zero to 23.

The Philadelphia Fed’s employment index rose to 7.4, the highest level since October 2007, from 6.1 the prior month.

The new orders measure rose to 22.7 from 3.2, and shipments climbed to 19.7 from 11.

The index of prices paid fell to 32.4 from 33.2 in January. Prices received increased to 3.7 from 2.7.

The gauge of expectations for the next six months decreased to 35.8 from 43.3 while remaining positive for a 14th straight month.

The overall index number isn’t composed of the individual measures, so some economists consider it a gauge of sentiment among manufacturers.

Two days ago, figures from the New York Fed showed business activity in that region expanded in February at the fastest pace in four months.

Industrial Production

Another Fed report yesterday showed industrial production nationwide rose in January for a seventh straight month. The plant-use rate increased to 72.6 percent, the highest level in more than a year.

The U.S. economy is forecast to grow 3 percent this year, according to the median estimate of economists surveyed by Bloomberg in the first week of February. That follows a 2.4 percent contraction last year as the economy sank into its worst recession in seven decades.

Manufacturers, particularly of exported goods, are seeing a pickup in demand, fueled in part by a 10.7 percent rate of economic growth in China in the fourth quarter.

Latrobe, Pennsylvania-based Kennametal Inc., a maker and distributor of mining, metal-working and energy tools, last month reported an 8 percent increase in fiscal second quarter sales from the prior quarter as the world economy recovers.

“We are continuing to see signs of a slow, but steady global economic recovery,” Chief Executive Officer Carlos Cardoso said on a conference call Jan. 28. “Industrial production activity is higher in most geographical regions, with emerging markets leading the way and mature markets beginning to recover.”

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