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Business Strategy and Tactics: What We Can Learn From How We Raise our Kids

Our kids hate us…when we don’t give them money. Oh sure, we pay of their schooling, sports, and other school-related activities, but we are determined to require them to work for their recreation money. All three of my boys have worked for me from time to time.

So, when I came across Barbara Haislip’s article, How to Raise en Entrepreneur, it rang true with lessons with business strategy and tactics:

Encourage your kid to start a home spun business: For those of us that are fed up working for some else, why not think about starting a new business? Go through the steps and take a calculated risk. You may never be happy if you don’t try. Develop your business strategy, and then the tactics that you will need to achieve your goals. See https://www.ricknorriscpa.com/blog/business-finances/buiness-plans-and-strategy-living-on-a-hope-and-a-dream/
Don’t let kids get too comfortable: As a business person, if you are not growing, you are dying. Without a business strategy, you are going nowhere real fast. Likewise, without business tactics, you may know where you want to go, but may be “doing donuts” instead of getting there.
Help kid’s recognize the world is full of buisness opportunities: In your business, think creatively about your industry. Opportunities show themselves at some of the mots unusual places. The most basic business strategy has a SWOT analysis. Opportunities is the “O.”
Teach your kids in their sports to be a leader and team player: As an business leader, you must learn how to lead and encourage without intimidation. Good to Great by Jim Collins shows us that a screaming ego maniac CEO may create a successful company, but it does not usually survives the CEO’s departure because underlings are abused into acting. In your business strategy, you must share the vision. In your business tactics, you must adjust your course and measure your success in acheiving you objectives.

My message is obvious, your business strategy and tactics tools are things you may have learned since you were a kid. Tap into them and allow your creativity to

Cat Woman Beats IRS on her Charitable Tax Deduction, look out Batman

At the time you are reading this article, the IRS is still shaking the kitty litter from their feet. Earlier this month, Jan Van Dusen made them cough up a fur ball. The IRS painted her as a wacky cat lady trying to cheat the government out of its hard-earned taxes. As a Fix Our Feral’s volunteer, whose mission was to trap stray cats, Ms. Van Dusen would trap feral cats, neuter them, and care for them until they can be adopted by owners or released…70 cats to be exact. Ms. Dusen then deducted all expenses relating to the cats as a charitable tax deduction under section 170.

A few months ago, I wrote about this type of charitable tax deduction in Serving as a Vounteer? You Don’t Have To Wait for Heaven to Collect Your Reward. In order to take the deduction, you must have support for some unreimbured expense that you used to support a charitable organization. In addition, you need a letter from the organization acknowledging your expenditure as a gift.

This doesn’t mean that you can go out and plant 200 trees and get a charitable tax deduction unless some organization acknowledges that this is a gift to the organization and in furtherance of their charitable purpose.

In the previous article, I spoke of how my wife and me use our horses for such a purpose. We use them over 90% of the time to patrol for the National and State Park Services. Not only do the Services provide a letter to us, but they train us in CPR, first aid, and we log in with a radio when we patrol. We are in effect, the eyes and ears of the rangers. The program is very precise and requires 12 hours of horse training per year. We deduct 90% of our horse expenses as a charitable tax deduction because we use our horses almost exclusively as the mounted volunteer patrol.

The time to think about your charitable tax deduction is today. Don’t wait until April 14th. If you volunteer for an organization, determine what they need to further their charitable purpose and deduct whatever expenses you require to further it. Your burden is to substantiate it with receipts and a letter acknowledging it as a gift. Alway use a tax professional when making these kinds of decisions.

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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.

Business Plans and Strategy: Living on a Hope and a Dream

I once knew a guy who spent every last dime trying to get auto companies to buy his “hubcap” locks for expensive spoked wheels. They repeatedly turned him down. He took his idea to the insurance companies and…”poof!” He struck it big.

David Ronick’s article, 10 Steps from Idea to Business tries to lay out a path to success in 10 steps. I applaud David in trying to help all those who want to be entrepenuers, but the steps can lead one in a direction that may not bear fruit.

1. Come up with an idea-David basically says to brainstorm for a good idea. The problem with this is “what is a good idea?”

2. Think through all angles- David has the right idea, but most people are not equipped to do this. Take for example, Jim Collins in Good to Great. He preaches his three concentric circles. Or, Kim and Mauborgne’s The Blue Ocean Strategy, where they lay out the idea of a product that renders competition virtually irrelevant. A “rough business plan” will not substitute for a well thoughtout strategic plan. Most people can’t do that, and have to hire a strategist to help them with it.

3. Get feedback–This is always good advice, but from who? If you are new to the market, you will most likely not be able to get to the right people. And what about them stealing your idea? This step is hard, so you will have to do your own research. The internet is a good place to start.

4. Respond to feedback–Again, I can’t see this step, or the other steps working because you would not get past step three. This is where so many businesses fail because they live off a dream and don’t do their basic research.

5. Build a basic product–Will you have an inventory? Read Chris Anderson’s The Long Tail. You might have second thoughts about your dream.

6. Open shop–As a newbee, can you manage your shop? Read Les McKeown’s Predictable Success. The book may paint an unflattering picture of where your company is in its life cycle.

7. Test what you’ve created–Have you developed a disruptive technology in your market? The Innovator’s Dilemma by Clayton Christensen explains what this means and how companies used it to become great.

8. Make adjustments

9. Get ready to grow–Collins and Porras’s book, Built to Last can open you eyes as to what makes a susainable business.

10. Stomp on the startup accelerator

My response is not meant to kill any good idea that you may have. Instead, I have listed major strategy books written by authors who have studied hundreds of successful and unsuccessful businesses. Read them, and others before entering step two, above. The more you know about a successful business, the more you will be able to leverage their experiences to make your dream a reality.

Social Marketing Cloud Computing: Ground Control to Major Tom

“Ground Control to Major Tom
Commencing countdown, engines on
Check ignition and may God’s love be with you”

When David Bowie sang these lyrics, the astonauts’s image touched us. We wondered what the astronaut was thinking, and why did he suffer a demise.

Cloud comuting is going private. Dan Rowinski came out with an article, The Personal Cloud will be a $12 Billion industry business by 2016. He claims that this will be the next horizon. In addition, an article by Jim Blasingame Social Media Builds Customer Communities touches on this new frontier combining cloud computing and social networking.

As business management strategists, we try to see the trends affecting each client. For example, a client who is considering the purchase of a large comuter server, may be betters served in a cloud computing environment.

Now, this may solve a lot of problems like data mangement, accessiblity, and such, but how does it integrate with the company’s social networking, search engine optomization, or other media platforms?

The social media community builder article touches on this. As business management strategists, we encourage clients to not just look at the immediate future, but the long-term in order to set their strategy.

I hear the “technology” changes every six months. You must strategize considering the possible technology changes. So, what do we as business management strategists recommend?

Pesonal computing will take a hit. Blasingame states that cloud and personal computing will come together. For example, you will log into a site in order to pay your bills, or do a business transation. The data stays offsite, not on your personal computer or business server.

If the experts are saying this is the next horizon, what are you doing about it. As business management strategists, we strongly reco

Mobile Payment Strategy: Is Your Small Business Developing One?

I remember around 1970 asking for a “stingray” type bicycle with a five speed stick shift and a slick tire. I was definitely leap-frogging my friends’ stingrays who lacked multiple gears. I nailed them on the hills. My bike was the early precursor of the multi-gear mountain bikes that cost up to $5,000 today. I was ahead of the pack, for a while anyway.

Last December, I wrote about the mobile payment strategy in Is Your Viral Strategy Becoming Obsolete? I asked the question of whether your strategy and tactics are being adjusted to accommodate the next horizon? If you were, you were ahead of the pack.

Well, I thought that the mobile payment strategy lead was getting smaller with Laurie Kulikowski’s article, Small Businesses Assess Mobile Payments. But then I read, “Intuit offers small businesses its GoPayment system, basically a credit card reader that attaches to a smartphone. The transaction can be downloaded into Intuit’s QuickBooks financial software for businesses.”

That was when I realized that she was speaking of old technology. She wasn’t offering the five speed bike, but the stingray with streamers. The new mobile payment strategy will not be the “clip on” payment device on your phone.

It will be your phone.

The new frontier will be the app that works instead of a credit card, not in addition to. Are you looking to be in the business front where a customer punches numbers on his/her phone to buy your item? In that case, mobile payment strategy takes on a whole new name.

Design a research strategy to keep a head of the pack. A mobile payment strategy may be that little tactic that pushes your business in the lead, for a while anyway.

Business Cloud Ideas: Have You Looked at Clouds From Both Sides Now?

“I’ve looked at clouds from both sides now
From up and down, and still somehow
It’s cloud illusions I recall
I really don’t know clouds at all” –Joni Mitchell

If you are a small business that has not taken the time to consider cloud applications, you are doing yourself a disservice. The article, 6 Cloud Tools For Small Business by Heather Allard exposes on some cloudy facts that you should already know. As business managers, we not only manage the business affairs of those in the entertainment industry, but also help small businesses manage their businesses. These applications can help you run your business without employing extra people or costly software implementations. However, unlike Heather, I will not focus on pushing any one brand, but what the benefits would be to you.

Accounting: As a business manager, I find that most companies use QuickBooks. That software is inexpensive and adequate until you get to many users and inventory. There are a number of good cloud accounting systems that offer a good accounting package. But, I caution you to not buy any modules unless you absolutely need them. Also, look at three companies and play them against each other in attributes and price. You will be happy with your choice.

File Storage: Protect your data. As business managers, we deal with so much of our client’s information, we use an off site application to protect their data. We not only use them to digitally support our transactions, but to store documents for our clients’ retrieval.

Timetracking:I really don’t recommend this automatic time-tracking. It seems to impede too much “Big Brother” influence on your employees. But, if you see a need in your business management, test some of the applications.

Scheduling: Normally, I can handle my own schedule with an I-phone, but there are applications that can organize and publish your schedule to your clients.

Information organization: Always look for a way to reduce your paper to digital where legally feasible. There are organizations out there that help you manage your business information.

E-mail Signature: Now here is a new one. Our business management firm constantly markets. I created a quick e-mail signature, but Heather offered a product named WISESTAMP to customize your e-mail signature.

In any event, small businesses should consider cloud applications in an attempt to compete more efficiently.

Business Strategic Thinking: How to Prevent the Three Most Common Mistakes or Drop Your Scag

There we were, 2 twelve year olds blowing sideways in an 18-foot sailboat towards the concrete wall of the Marina del Rey, CA channel. We tried everything, pulling on the main, the jib, and even the rudder. The wind blew our boat without heeding our commands into the wall, sails flailing. Luckily, it was high tide and my cousin climbed onto the wall to get his dad.

Upon arriving, his dad jumped into the boat and pulled a lever which lowered the keel underneath the hull. His disgusted look emptied our pride. We didn’t go through the proper thinking before setting off on our little journey. We planned poorly.

I came across this article by Dylan Love, What to do when your business starts to fail. It reminded me of that sailboat ride. Dylan’s article tries to help those who run into business trouble. I find the attempt admirable, but the real advice is in the business strategic thinking before you set sail.

I will take Dylan’s three points and apply some business strategic thinking to the mix.

You started your business for the wrong reasons: Dylan’s article states that you can do an immediate fix or adjust your attitude. From a business strategic thinking point of view, I wrote an article that dealt with the mental framework before the business is started. My article, Making a Living as a Musician: Do You Have the Right Frame of Mind to Break New Ground? spoke directly to the business owner’s strategic thinking. I tried to use two excellent strategic planning books in dealing with the midset of the soon-to-be owner.
You’re running out of capital: Dylan proposes the obvious, increase revenue, decrease expenses, or ask for more money from investors. The later, which I have seen too many times, is the most troubling. My article, Venture Capital Risks: As a Business Owner, Don’t Give Them Your First Born discussed how to set the role of your investor, and expectations in your business strategic thinking to minimize the chance of getting in trouble.
You didn’t plan properly: This is everything. Please don’t paint a rosey picture to your investors, only to scramble to stay in business for the first twelve months. There are many aspects to business strategic thinking. For example, my article, Small Business People Need is a Strategist, Not a Marketer and That Person is You details the small business owner’s role in strategic planning and tactics. When I look at a new business plan, I instinctively say, “You need 2-3 times more money than what you are asking, and you must streamline your expenses to their bare minimum.” Clients pay me to play the bad guy, the pessimest, and the “rain on your parade guy.” That is not to say that I don’t design a business strategy to help them, but I have to get them out of that fairytale thinking that they will make millions out of the shoot. If I don’t, they would not accept my proposed plan.

Business Strategic Thinking is a praxis (combination of theory and practice, Karl Marx definition) of your strategy,tactics, and implementation. Don’t get caught in the position of trying to save your business when you could have planned for its success instead.

You can be a Simon Cowell. Welcome to the World of Crowdsourcing

I think it all started with American Idol, or not. Bruce Houghton’s article, A Graphic Look At Crowdsourcing, labelled a movement that I have been watching for a while. I have watched companies tap into the masses to develop a product, or judge which product is best. Either way, the company is not employing inside employees or independent contractors to make the decision.

American Idol outsourced their final judging. Oh yes, Simon used to get his licks in when he was judge, but ultimately, the viewers determined who their favorite idol was going to be. The best part was the viewer (or the outsourced judge) was also the consumer of the music product.

Crowdsourcing, ( as in “Crowd Outsourcing”) has been around for a while. Such companies as Amazon.com (mechanical turk competition) and Netflix (algorithm competition) have used it successfully. These companies launched a proposal to the world to develop something for them in a contest manner. The winner was significantly compensated.

The article speaks of the objective benefits and deteriments. But, can the average business person use it, even if the outsourcing is a success? Take a look at these factors?

Does your business lack the resources and/or talent to develop a major new concept or product?
Do you have a strategy that is within your budget to solicit “the crowd” through such means as social networking?
Can you offer something of value to the winner of your outsource?
Do you have a close horizon so that your winning solution will not be old technology, or old fashion by time it is released?
Do you have the internal infrastructure to launch this new product or service?

Let’s take an example. Let’s say you are a tile manufacturer and you want to create an app that Ipad users can design their own tile within your factory. You want the app to tie into your production and distribution processes, and be delivered anywhere in the world within 7-14 business days. You offer all sorts of tools and colors and the option to make only one sample for early approval. Let’s go through the questions:

Does your business lack the resources and/or talent to develop a major new concept or product? YES. YOU ARE A MANUFACTURER, NOT A PROGRAMMER AND ENGINEER.
Do you have a strategy that is within your budget to solicit “the crowd” through such means as social networking? WELL, YOU CAN EXPAND YOUR REACH, BUT RIGHT NOW IT IS WORD OF MOUTH AND SALESREP. THIS STRATEGY MUST BE OPERATIONAL PRIOR TO THE OUTSOURCING.
Can you offer something of value to the winner of your outsource? FREE TILE WON’T WORK. IT HAS TO BE CASH, OR MAYBE A COMBINATION.
Do you have a close horizon so that your winning solution will not be old technology, or old fashion by time it is released? IF TECHOLOLGY CHANGES EVERY EIGHT MONTHS, YOU MUST DO YOUR DUE DILIGENCE TO MAKE SURE NOTHING IS BEING DEVELOPED BY ANOTHER.
Do you have the internal infrastructure to launch this new product or service? BIG QUESTION. IF YOU DON’T HAVE THE RESOURCES TO TIE YOUR WHOLE SUPPLY CHAIN TOGETHER TO MEET THE 7-14 BUSINESS DAY TURNAROUND, THEN YOU HAVE TO DEVELOP THAT FIRST AND TEST IT ON A SMALLER, LESS COSTLY PROJECT.

So, you can see, Crowdsourcing may lure you into, what seems like, an easy solution, but if the other aspects are not in place, it can ruin your core company processes.

Making a Living as a Musician: Do You Have the Right Frame of Mind to Break New Ground?

As an amateur musician CPA, I marvel at the musician who can not only make a decent living, but break new ground. Take Jazz for instance. I have learned a lot about jazz from my son, a UCI jazz piano freshman. He’s picked up that jazz attitude that jazz guys write and perform really technically advanced music, and should be placed on a level above R&B, and Blues. Now, before writing hate mail, remember, he is 19.

My response to him is that as an artist, you may be right from an technical point of view, but art needs to be appreciated by society in order to be woven into the culture. Otherwise, your “high-brow” music is just academic.

This is why I am blown away by those who broke new ground in their genres: The Beatles, Elvis, Miles Davis, Charlie Parker, George Gershwin, and many more. Not all of them became rich, but they enriched our culture for generations to come.

But there is a money problem. How does a musician break new ground, and make it big? Bruce Houghton tried to quanitify this in his article A Musician’s Minimum Sustainable Scale. I commend him for trying to help the musician quantify “success,” but the article begs the biggest question: How does a musician make it big in this new industry.

If you are a reader, I will recommend two books. If you are not a reader, I will explain their main points, and maybe you’ll become a reader.

Good to Great by Jim Collins explains how a company can be the world’s greatest at if they develop three things: a) A passion, b) Something that can make money, c) Something that you can do which will make you the world’s best at it.
Blue Ocean Strategy by Kim and Mauborgne outlines the attributes you need to work in an industry where the competition becomes irrelevant. In a nutshell, focus on what your customer wants and is not getting, and eliminate what you are giving the customer that is not wanted.

What does this mean to a musician who wants to make a great living? Good question. I can’t tell you the answer because you’ll have to develop that. But I can point you in a good direction using the principles outline in the books:

Play your passion. If you are a jazz artist, don’t write hip hop because it is selling. If you are going to be the greatest in the world, it will have to be within your passion.
Listen to your audience within your passion. Dylan said that he was not leading the 60’s revolution, but just reflecting what was happening. Of course, this resonated with the 60’s youth, and fed more into his art to be the best.
In order to make a great living, you have to expand your passion’s reaches to a bigger audience. Let’s take Arnold Schoenberg and his 12-tone music system. Some say it was the most influential music of the 20th century, but if you play it for the masses, most will plug their ears.
Now, let’s compare that to Paul Desmond’s Take 5 with the Dave Brubeck Quartet. Now, here was a 5/4 time signature that was not common in pop music, but Desmond was able to take his passion, of which he was one of the best, and write it to where the album Time Out became the top jazz album and a top pop album. The Dave Brubeck Quartet, partially under the writing of Desmond, unknowingly fulfilled of the Good to Great and Blue Ocean Strategy theories of business. They hit all of the points mentioned above.

The question is, what is your artistic-business strategy? You can sit there and moan about piracy, bad record deals, and shallow listeners, or you can be the greatest at what your passion is and make a lot of money.

Web-centricity: An Opportunity for Business Technology Management

Have you ever built a toy race car? I remember the first little pocket wooden race car I built for my son’s Cub Scout race. I did it once when I was a Cub Scout, so we worked on it together. We made a reasonably good-looking car, and got it rolling nice and straight. I thought we did a pretty good job…

…until we arrived at the race. Some of the fathers were engineers and very versitile in wood carving and aerodynamics. Our car looked like a shoe box racing against formula one cars.

We were outgunned, and so will you if your small business doesn’t try to stay abreast of the new technology. The April 2011 McKinsey Quarterly article, How new Internet standards will finally deliver a mobile revolution by Bengi Korkmaz, Richard Lee, and Ickjin Park, tells of such a game-changer. A new word, web-centricity. The article tells of the next generation of HTML, called HTML5. The article claims, “The next generation of the Internet standard essentially will allow programs to run through a Web browser rather than a specific operating system. That means consumers will be able to access the same programs and cloud-based content from any device—personal computer, laptop, smartphone, or tablet—because the browser is the common platform.”

What this means is your phone becomes as powerful as your desktop because it will have the capability of running tasks, not as apps, but as cloud computing software stored on remote servers.

As an entertainment business manager, this has implications to my clients who are artists. Sometimes, the only thing limiting their creativity are the tools they have to work with. As a CPA business consultant, I struggle to teach my small-medium business clients to adjust their strategies in lieu of the horizon the lays ahead of them. You “skate to where the puck will be,” not to where your competition has already ventured.

So, what does this mean? Do you go out and buy every technological improvement that comes on the shelf? The obvious answer is no. To be more successful than your competition, is to develop a strategy that includes the tactics of keeping your ear to the ground. The web provides a plethora of information to those who take the time to access it.

As a business consultant CPA, I strive to alert my clients with anything that can benefit them. But opportunities are a kiss in the dark. You can easily miss one if your eyes are closed.