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As Homer Simpson says,”Doe!” 6 Mistakes to Avoid in a Recovering Economy after Noah’s Ark

I came across this an article by Katie Morell regarding 6 Mistakes to Avoid During a Recovery. The article offered some good advice, but it reminded me of playing golf as a teenager at Valencia Golf Course, California. The course was famous for its lakes. Almost every difficult hole had a large lake in it, the most troubling was a large par 3 that was surrounded by sand traps and then by a lake. I imagined that it would have been the site that Noah saw after stepping off the ark with his 1 iron–lots of water, little green. In the same way, this article focuses on the “Thou Shall Not…” and not “Thou Should…”

Marking up merchandise: The article cautions about over-charging or even charging retail during these times. I look at that as a fall back position. The most important concept is whether clients understand the value you are bringing to the table. Usually I am successful at that, but sometimes I have not conveyed that to a client. I fault myself for that.
Hiring like crazy: Jim Collins, in his book Good to Great , states that great companies build their team first, and then decided where to go with them. This may sound like a contradiction to the Morell article, but there is a reconciliation. Morell isn’t saying not to hire people, but do it wisely. I know of too many businesses (restaurants in particular) that have built an unnecessary entourage of people because they will expect to need them in six months. The problem, is that they end up laying people off in three months expending the capital in the short run that they needed. This is usually an ego problem. Always start with a skeleton crew. The stress you will feel being understaffed pales by comparison to being overstaffed and stressing about who to lay-off next. Outsourcing can bridge the gap.
Jumping into advertising: This is an easy one. Look at our article in social networking. There has been no better time in history to getting the word out, at an insanely cheap cost.
Flying solo: Alliances are always a good tactic. But, a problem that may arise is relying too much on one client or alliance. Start with one, but immediately look for others.
Cutting out customer service: Invest in your most valuable asset, the people themselves.
Staying heads down: Joining professional groups is a good thing, but make sure they benefit you, your employees, or your company. Trade groups may be good in keeping up with your industry trends, but do nothing in meeting potential alliances or customers.

So, keep a positive attitude, be creative, and spend wisely.

Time: Using Every Grain of Sand to Its Fullest

I guess I accomplish quite a bit every week in several areas of my life. People keep asking me how I can get so much done, and all I ever reply is, “I hate television.” However, I did find an interesting article that business persons, and non-business persons can use to become more productive. It is entitled, A Simple Way to Manage Your Time by Dr. Susan Reid. She came up with a nice 5 step Time Management System that you can incorporate into your routine:

‘At the very top of the page put tomorrow’s date. Then, draw four columns. Label the first column, “I Must Do”; The second, “I Next Do”; the third, “I Could Do”; and the fourth, “Not Mine to Do”. ‘ I already make a list the night before and prioritize it. Then , during the day, I cross out what I have done and prove to myself that I actually accomplished something.
“Give this column your all and don’t allow any distraction or unrelated interest to supersede this list. Check or cross off items as they are completed.” Her step two is ingrained into my procedures, as stated above. As a business man, it is easy to get distracted. There are so many things I can be doing other than what my core competencies are. I just have to remain disciplined.
‘Once you complete the “I Must Do” column, move steadily on to the “I Next Do” column. But first, ask yourself, “What on this list can be moved to another day?”‘ I would suppliment this sentence with, “Don’t put off to tomorrow, something that can be done today.” I always try to live by the “one touch paper rule.” In other words, if you touch a piece of paper, you have to complete that project. This is a difficult rule to abide by since there are so many times when projects get interrupted.
Look over the list and decide what, if anything, you want to complete today. Want is the operative word.
“At the end of the day, take out a new piece of paper or open up a blank document page and fill-in the next day’s columns with your new to do list.” I usually do this, but it is important that you are honest with yourself. If you cheat on this, you will only pay for your lack of discipline later.

If discipline is not your strong point, you might want to look at The Secret to Doing Things More, Fasterby Mike Michalowicz. He claims the biggest drain of productivity is the Internet and e-mails. He recommends you turn them off while you engage a project.

Your result will be more money and more time to do other things like grow your business.

The IRS Helping Small Business People?

People usually deal with the IRS as they would their proctologist, they avoid both so not to take it in the end. What many don’t know is that the IRS actually has a good website that helps small business among other taxpayers. Unlike IRS telephone advice, you can depend on the information you learn from their website. They are designed to make the tax code simpler(well, not really, but I live in a fantasy world.)

Health Insurance Deduction Reduces Self Employment Tax — If you are self-employed and have a qualified health insurance plan, now not only can you deduct the premiums from income tax, but also self-employment tax.
Small Business Health Care Tax Credit — Small qualified small businesses can claim a health care insurance credit from 2010-2013.
General Business Credit for Employers — The new law allows this credit to be offset against both regular and alternative taxes.
Small Businesses Can Benefit from Higher Expensing / Depreciation Limits –Consider accelerating your depreciation deduction of your asset purchases.

As you approach your tax filing deadline, keep these in mind when you visit your CPA. The IRS, though, is not the place to go to get tax advice. They are good at helping you with tax problems, but not tax law. Studies have shown that your answers vary depending on who you speak with at the IRS.

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IRS CIRCULAR 230 NOTICE: To ensure compliance with requirements imposed by the U.S. Department of the Treasury and Internal Revenue Service, we inform you that any tax advice contained in this e-mail (including any attachments) is not intended or written to be used, and may not be used, for the purpose of (a) avoiding penalties under the Internal Revenue Code or state tax authority, or (b) promoting, marketing, or recommending to another party any transaction or matter addressed herein.

Empower Your List(Or How to keep the mud out of your face when you’re spinning your wheels)

Have you ever asked, “What did I accomplished today?”

I came across an article, How to do more in less time. The article had some good advice for small business owners on how to be productive. These tips could be valuable, but the starting point, like in all projects is to have an attainable goal. I have found that a small business owner can accomplish a lot if he/she just make a list the night before of what they want to accomplish. Now, in some small businesses, that may not be too easy if the business is ver volital. For example, if you provide a service, your client’s schedules can alter your own schedule. That is ok, you are the business owner, remember? Put it on the list. Are you going to do some social networking pushing your small business? Put it on the list? Are you cutting payroll? Put it on the list. Then, reorganize your list by priority.

The secret is to create a list of attainable goals and cross them out as you do them. At the end of the day, you will feel more like a small business owner, and not a small business slave, because you will have taken charge of your own time.

Don’t waste time on a business social network, but enter it on the list. Choose something concise that you would like to do on your social network(like write an article). In doing this, you have a deliverable that will benefit your small business down the line.

In my small business (CPA firm), I have been writing these articles for about nine months. I list this chore twice a week, no excuses, no inefficiencies. I just get it done. I don’t have an ROI because that is irrelevant. I provide information and build relationships. That is all part of being in a small business. If I did not list it, then the relationships would never be built or nourished. Small businesses, even e-businesses are built on relationships, and we all know that if you don’t have time for your relationships(even the important ones), you will not have any relationships.

Lastly, as a small business owner, you must know that your list must progress to higher levels. For example, later this month, we will be launching our monthly blog videos under our new banner THE LA CPA. It will be similar to these articles, but will have a visual and audio component. The result will be to more information, better information, in less time for our readers.

So, as a small business owner, or any kind of business person, create your list, execute your list, and then evolve your list. You will find more control of your time and life.

The Road to Bankruptcy Court is Paved with Good Ideas…Don’t Be on That Bus

How many times have you heard, “Hey, I got a great business idea?” American ingenuity is the pulse of our economy, but so many great business ideas are anything but great. I have spent a lot of time not only strategizing with new business owners, but executing their business vision.

But, like in building a house, the planning stage is the most important. This business concept came across in a good, though complex article Managing Innovation Complexity by Braden Kelly. Kelly uses a six part framework in analyzing a business innovation concept. Actually, I have discussed some of these concepts in prior articles. Here are the concepts using my house-building scenario:

Changes for Customers: You have to listen to the marketplace. Like in building a house, if you build a futuristic house for a person who likes Tudor style designs, you missed your mark. The Blue Ocean Strategy addresses some ideas on this business outlook.
Changes for Employees: The usual term for these changes are the business environment. If you want to build your Tudor house, you need craftsmen, not all concrete contractors. The training and mindset of your employees have to buy into the vision, or get new employees.
Changes for Suppliers: Your supply chain is essential. In a business sense, a supply chain is the chain of events from your vendor to your customer. This business treadmill has to run seamless. You can’t build a house waiting for materials once a month.
Changes in Distribution: The caboose of the supply chain is the distribution point. Do you have a long tail? Are you restricting your growth to a brick and motar concept, or can you leverage e-commerce? In our house building, how are you going to sell it to someone?
Changes in marketing: This is where so many fall short. The Internet has immense capacity for small businesses. Use Internet marketing to list your built home.
Changes in Operations: Here is the glue that holds the whole operations together. Building a business, or a house, requires hard, coordinated work. But, if the other business elements are not present, the foundation collapses.

Bring an idea to fruition requires a consistent effort and vision. But, the business idea is not stagnant. The business idea is an ever changing picture altering tactics along the way.

What’s in a Business Name? I Bet You Remember ACME from the Roadrunner Cartoons?

Business names can play a role in your strategy. I bet you remember the Wile E. Coyote’s supplier, ACME. The name said EVERYTHING, because they sold everything. What a great strategy that would have been for a product placement. What would have been the result if the cartoon’s producer’s created a mail order ACME with a Home Depot strategy back in 1960?

So, brand names and strategy should be inseparable.

I came across the article Capitalizing on a Business Name which expressed some valuable tips. The article displayed five different branding strategies: Familial, logical, thematic, localized, and random. I will not reiterate the strategies, or definitions of each; You can read that for yourself. Instead, I suggest you expand to other areas than branding.

First: When thinking of your name, go to your tag-line. “Nike” the strategy doesn’t say very much until it is joined with “Just do it.”

Second: Focus on your audience on what they want. If you are just another novelty store, a lousy name and tagline would be Odds and Ends, Just another novelty store. The name and tag-line reduces you to a commodity. From a business strategy point of view, a commodity is a service, or product, that is distinguished from other similar services or goods by price only. In other words, the only thing you can do with a commodity is lower your price. You don’t want your business strategy to be there. It is no wonder that commodity comes from the same root as commode(should I say more.)

Third: After distinguishing yourself in name, tag-line, and product (or service), use the available web resources to get these out. Your strategy should be consistent, deliberate, and within your budget.

Fourth: Establish a growth strategy. For many, that is a death trap. So many entrepreneurs know how to produce their product or service, but not how to grow the company and manage the production. A lack of strategy, here, will cripple all of the work you did in steps one through three.

Fifth: Create benchmarks and metrics that track your strategy. Each step I mentioned above should be able to be measured in some way. Otherwise, your business name strategy, tag line strategy, production strategy, and growth strategy will be ideas that don’t speak to you.

Strategy: Local Connections? Then Why Do We Need The Web?

Just as Dorothy said, “There is no place like home.” But Dorothy didn’t have a facebook account. So, is that still true? Do we have to nurture local relationships in order to conduct our personal and business strategies, or can we just “talk” on the social networks?

I came across this local arts article that argued that every part of the world, and in our cities, have their own art personality. The article pointed out that with cover bands and reality TV, we can pretty much watch and hear the same thing regardless of which part of the country we are in.

The article makes a point, but only on the surface. For example, I co-founded a local non-profit in Manhattan Beach, CA, that promotes local arts, music, dance, and literature back in 2009. The strategy is showing promise as we exhibit local artists and their wares. But, the interesting thing is the local connections have been made both on the web, and the old fashioned way. Patch.com has promoted our events, in addition to the local newspaper, The Beach Reporter. Our organization is using the web as a new way to connect with the locals, yet it is nourished through personal contact. The resulting strategy has been a technology handshake. Businesses, especially businesses located in the cities, need this combination strategy if you plan to pursue something other that e-commerce.

For example, if you do not use the web, you will lose the ability to capture clients in the the long tail (see my previous article). I landed a Los Angeles client because her mother in Canada found me through Google. Our relationship has developed to where I am her business confidant in a new business venture. Likewise, if you just take in clients off the web and do not meet anyone, you will not nurture relationships and strategic alliances in your own neighborhood. I am in daily contact with business strategic alliances that I know from different areas of my life. When people know you, they have a better chance of trusting you.

With all of this said, though, you must strategize. Where are you now, where do you want to be, and how are you going to get there? Then do it. Strategy that is just academic, does nothing but kill time. You must put shoe leather on it, but use both conventional and web-based connections in order to have two shoes.

The strategy has to be a two-pronged approach in the current age.

Healthcare Reform: If It Walks Like a Duck and Quacks Like a Duck…We’ll Call it a Toad

I just returned from a great informative panel on healthcare reform presented the by the LA chapter of the Association of Strategic Planning. I was surprised to learn that many large and smaller companies are trying to use the independent contractor designation to reduce healthcare benefits for employees. I wrote about a similar topic in the National Healthcare Reform Magazine back in August. My article warned employers about the misclassification of an employee, and how it could sabotage their tax credit.

What I didn’t think of, were companies intentionally trying to circumvent the tax laws in order to save healthcare insurance. This can be very risky. The IRS is no stranger to businesses trying to reclassify employees as independent contractors in order to save payroll taxes. The rules are complex and employee definitions differ from state to state. However, I tell clients that if you tell your “contractor” how to do his/her job, you run the risk of the person being classified as an employee(thunbnail definition.)

Now, I can imagine these companies trying to align themselves with the Fedex case where the U S District Court ruled the drivers as independent contractors instead of employees. But now the risks involved in this aggressive stance is not only healthcare insurance penalties, but payroll taxes, and workers’ compensation issues(not to mention labor law issues.)

Be very careful when classifying those who work for you. A tax professional may be your best friend in keeping you out of “fowl” play.

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Business Plans: Some Tips to Financing Your Own Business (or How to Waterski)

When I was nine years old, I learned to water ski. My uncle and aunt (Jim and Eva Smith) owned a boat. My cousins were already skiing on two skis, so in Lake Isabella, California, my time had come. My uncle did some “dry runs” on the sand (in order for me to experience the “feel”) by pulling me up, by hand, with a ski rope. Then came time for the boat. Nothing could have prepared me for a high horse power outboard motor. My first half dozen attempts were “face-plants.” The next half dozen were “butt-plants.” I was getting discouraged and embarrassed. But my uncle didn’t flinch. He said he had all day and would stick with me until I got up. And finally, around the fifteenth attempt, I made it. Oh, not for long, for at least 50 yards. What a feeling. After that, I moved into the groove over the years, and eventually graduated to one ski, carving my temporary signature outside the boat’s wake like the others.

The AMEX forum article How to Raise Capital For Your Business reminded me of this experience. Our firm is frequently approached by entrepreneurs to prepare a business plan for their investors. The article breaks out the type of investors for a business plan and at what stage they may enter into your future.

Friends, families, and fools: The initial idea stage, the label says the rest.
Vendor financing: Acquire the product, sell it, then pay for it. You’ll need to create a strategic relationship with vendors who believe in you, and sell on consignment. This is done in the art world
Bootstrap: Well, if you have the money to risk, but it is always better to risk other’s money.
Venture capitalists: For others to invest, you have to show, in your business plan, that you have risked your own resources. Also, you will impress them if you manage some level of success on such meager self-financing. Never present a business plan that pays yourself back before the investors.
Partner: If there is another business who could be a stakeholder, they may want to risk a little with you.

In order to develop a credible business plan, you must be conservative and have some foundation for your numbers. One such idea is to use another business (or business plan) that is similar, and mirror its sales and profit. Usually, that is hard to come by, so you would have to make some assumptions in your business plan notes. Tell investors what your break-even point is, show them your first year’s monthly cash flow, and most of all, show them when and how much they will get paid.

In my water skiing overature, I had all the components of a new business plan:

I invested my own time and humility.
I was determined to succeed.
My uncle believed in me and invested his time and boat in my dream.
I didn’t have unreasonable expectations.
My uncle understood his investment in me, and the time needed to reach success.

Business plans are just a start, not a finished product. But, if you have all the business plan components, your credibility and investor comfort level rise.

Business Security Leaks: Here’s Another Hole in the Dam to Plug

We only have ten fingers, so how can we keep plugging potential security leaks in business and personal information? See the Phone security article that speaks about the police’s right to search your phone. That doesn’t bother me, as a CPA, unless it is illegal to write business articles. What bothers me is first, we had the lost laptop scare, then the forgotten thumb-drive, now the lost phone. All of which can compromise proprietary and personal information.

But let me tell you how carelessness can make you lose your lunch. 25 years ago, I was assigned as the business manager to a top entertainment executive. He was a volitle man and told me why he left one of the big CPA firms for us. His story started with an IRS audit in which a CPA of the big accounting firm representing him. The night of the audit, the client received a phone call from a stranger saying that the stranger had found some tax files in a phone booth. As you might have guessed, the big firm CPA stopped to make a phone call (before cell phones) after meeting with the IRS, and left his client’s tax files in the phone booth.

“Slip of mind” stories are somewhat common in the business world, but the gravity of the situation depends on the quantity and access to the information.

Now here is a 21st century FICTIONAL story on how something like this could have serious consequences. Let’s say a person uses their Ipad to conduct business that deals with personal financial information. The Ipad, the apps, all are used in this person’s business. That day, he leaves the Ipadat a restaurant. The Ipad is never to be seen again. All of the information will be at risk of being compromised.

And what about the text messages? The police, and anyone else, can read your undeleted text messages that may contain financial information.

One thing that I do with my clients is use multiple platforms. For example, if I open up an online bank account, I e-mail them the link to the bank. I do not include the email or user number. Next, I text message the user and password without any indication what they are for. I ask them to erase everything they receive from me as an extra precaution.

Another strategy our CPA firm practices is to process information in a paperless environment. This way, there is no loss of paper. Your paperless files must be secure, though. In regards to your business, you may consider going the “paperless route.” It could save you a lot of problems.

So security breaches can be made by your CPA, attorney, doctor, bookkeeper, financial advisor. Be aware of that when you look to engage one of these professionals.