I just read a great free report called “Get Outrageously Creative: Creative Tips for Saving Money and Growing Your Business” offered by Small Business Trends. The 23 page report contains tips, tricks, and advice on how to save money and grow your business offered by the readers of the Small Business trends blog.
As advertised, the tips are both creative and outrageous. Some of the tips won’t be anything new to small business owners but they might remind you of knowledge that you might have forgotten. For instance, one reader offered a tip about how creating a joint-venture marketing event at a gallery brought in a lot of traffic and resulted in win-win satisfaction for everyone involved.
Some of the tips boil down the plain logic. One online business owner did tons of credit card transactions and decided to compare rates among the different available card processors. After changing providers, the small business owner saw a 5% increase in net profits. Tips like these remind us not to assume that we are getting the best deal from our service providers, even if we got good deals from them in the past.
And then there are the tips that are truly outrageous and creative. One person chased down a prominent business guru in a mall to get an interview and ended up spending an hour chatting over coffee. Another got online and blogged about her company from day one and got help from some bigwigs just because she was willing to be open about where she was and what she was struggling with.
There are tons of tips in this free ebook – too many to cover here.
Get your own copy on the Small Business Trends website and enjoy!
Tags: cut costs, increase profit, small business trends
Solve Business Woes with the Entrepreneur Pill
Is your small business struggling in this recession economy? No problem. Very soon you will be able to pop a pill and rewire your brain so you think like the most successful entrepreneurs in the world. Imagine popping a pill and suddenly having Robert Kiyosaki or Guy Kawasaki in your brain. You’ll think like a business guru-no joke! Cambridge University scientists have announced that there may someday be an “entrepreneur pill” that will help people replicate the brain chemistry of the most successful small business owners. Would that be better business through chemistry?
Unfortunately the entrepreneur pill isn’t available quite yet. The bad news is that small business owners need it more than ever. Shrinking profits and dwindling customer traffic have many small business owners pulling their hair out. Luckily, they can take steps to gain a fresh perspective on their business, even if they can’t yet directly access the brain chemistry of small business guru.
If your small business is struggling, here are five ways you get a fresh perspective on your small business.
1. Give Your Business a Makeover
To give your small business a makeover you need new ideas and help from some experts. While you may not be able to afford the pricey consultants who do makeovers on major corporations, you can benefit from their advice without paying a dime. Check out Small Business Makeover section on the CNNMoney website. There you’ll find makeover case studies on all kinds of small businesses from carpet-sellers to bath-and-body stores. If you’re offering your products or services online, you’ll be delighted with their Website Makeover section.
2. Get Your Burning Questions Answered
If you want to get a direct answer to the burning questions you have about your small business, you can always submit it to the CNNMoney directly through their “Find Business Answers” form. There is no guarantee that your question will be selected to be answered, but there’s definitely no harm in trying. As a bonus, it still doesn’t cost you’re a dime. CNNMoney usually puts this form at the bottom of its articles. To locate one of these articles just Google for CNNMoney + “find business answers.” There is a form at the bottom of this page.
3. Access Online Training from the SBA
The Small Business Administration has recently begun offering a number of online courses on “Surviving in a Down Economy.” The new courses include:
- Strategic Marketing: How to Win Customers in a Slowing Economy
- Down-Shifting in a Slowing Economy: Business Planning Guide
- Raise new capital / Refinance exisiting debt – How to Prepare a Loan Package
- Diversify with federal contracts – Business Opportunities: A Guide to Winning Federal Contracts
4. Look for a Geographic Cure
If you run a bricks-and-mortar business maybe you’re not located in the right place. To locate your business at the right place at the right time, check out the top 100 places to live and launch a small business by Fortune Small Business. These include the 7 tax-free havens for business (Wyoming, Nevada, Florida, Texas, Washington, New Hampshire and Tennessee) plus the six best towns where technology thrives (Bellevue, Portland, Boise, Blacksburg, Bethlehem, and Folsom). The list is nearly endless and may help you decide if it’s time to move your small business because the grass is greener on the other side of the state line.
5. SCORE Big
SCORE is a non-profit group of 11,200 retired executives who mentor small business owners across the country for free. According to their website, “SCORE offers free and confidential advice to small businesses: face-to-face counseling, online counseling, online workshops and more.” You can post your questions to their website and get an answer, usually within 48 hours. Best of all, SCORE is an unlimited resource. You can ask as many questions as you want plus access their huge library of small business resources.
So what’s the bottom line for small business owners? While you may occasionally feel hopeless you are definitely not helpless. This list is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of the inexpensive resources at your disposable to keep your small business afloat. So until that entrepreneur pill hits the market, get going and get help.
Have you been using any other small business resources that have proven very successful for you? Do tell!
Photo credit: Pills
Tags: business makeover, recession, SBA online training, SCORE, small business
Posted by Stephanie on Mar 13, 2009 in
Small Business Management 
I wasn’t born with a silver spoon in my mouth but I was born with a laptop on my lap. I come from a computer science family and worked in three software development companies before I got out of the rat race. I know a thing or two about computers and the internet.
Having said that, I still have a MILLION questions that I am dying to have answered about online marketing, social media, offline marketing, online forums, and how to stay on top of it all. I recently read a post on the Indie Business Blog that pointed out that time was the new overhead. Forget wages, insurance, rent, and utilities. The new thing that eats up all our resources in small business is time.
Time as the New Overhead
We need time to keep up with all our friends and contacts on Twitter, Facebook, Ryze, and our blogs, not to mention answering emails, writing super-excellent blog posts, and submitting top-quality articles to article directories. And guess what? If you really want to dominate your niche you need to do all of this 5 or 7 days a week! Aack! Can you say overwhelm?
Many small business owners who are just getting their toes wet in online marketing and social media are in total overwhelm. The sheer volume of the information stream out there is incredible. Not only do we need to read it all, we need to respond to it, answer important questions that people are asking, and reach out to people we want to be our customers.
Dealing with Overwhelm — The List
So how can we deal with this overwhelm? One technique that works really well for me is to make the list of a million questions. About 15 times a day questions that I need answered pop up in my head. Needless to say, I don’t have the time right then and there to go find the answer. Most of these questions need to be researched by searching Google, poring through the feeds on my feed aggregator, posting a question to a forum, or asking for help on Twitter. Well, that’s not going to happen when I’m in the middle of my conference call with clients who are paying my mortgage!
So I jot down my questions on my list of million questions. The list resides in a 10 cent spiral notebook I bought at Walmart during the last “back to school” special. Really fancy, right? So far the list hasn’t reached a million questions, but does take up about 34 pages.
So how does this list help me? Here are 7 ways it helps:
- By writing my questions down they don’t hang around in my head, nagging me.
- I don’t have to write the questions on my hand (it gets crowded and ballpoint pens don’t work so great on skin).
- It reminds me of the directions I want to pursue in my small business marketing when I get confused (which happens a lot).
- I can show it to my hubby as proof of my voluminous productive work when he accuses me of spending all my time surfing the web for horse tack or, heaven forbid, horses for sale!
- When I have a spare moment and feel tempted to get tweet about non-business items, I turn to my list instead and post 2 or 3 questions to online forums and check on answers to past questions.
- When I feel like I’m not making any progress in my marketing education, I flip through the list and look at all the early questions that I have gotten answered. Then I literally pull my arm out of its socket congratulating myself for having come so far!
- I often post the questions on my blog or in a forum to generate conversation and learn something. A well-phrased question of importance posted to the right location can generate a lot of learning and traffic. Plus, you’ll be surprised at how many other people have the same questions as you – they are just too chicken to ask.
The list of a million questions is a totally simple, almost childish device, but I always think about it like this: “It’s cheaper than therapy!” In today’s business climateI really believe it’s possible for small business owners to suffer post-traumatic stress syndrome just from handling the day-to-day operations. It is overwhelming.
But just think about this: a 10 cent notebook from your local discount retailer can save you years of therapy if you just take the time to jot down all your insane questions. Get them out of your brain and onto paper, where they can’t drive you crazy. Then, in your saner moments, get them answered. Voila! You’re one step further in your marketing progress than you were before, possibly without adding any more gray hairs!
What works for you in dealing with overwhelm?
Photo Credit: Question!
Tags: list of a million questions, new overhead, overwhelm, small business owners, social media
Posted by Stephanie on Mar 12, 2009 in
Employment and Jobs 
What To Do If You Get Axed
Pink slips are becoming an epidemic and a lot of people are feeling quite depressed about it. Surprisingly, though, a high percentage of people are feeling quite freed by the sensation of not having to get up early in the morning. Some are wondering what to do with their slack time until a new opportunity opens up. And all kinds of creative options are popping up. If you’ve been laid off, here are some things you can think about doing in your slack time.
1. Be Like the CSS Guy
The Wall Street Journal just published an article about Justin Rockwell, a web developer who got laid off last fall. He didn’t know what to do with himself or necessarily how to get a job, but he did find himself spending a lot of time on Twitter. He decided to put his skills and his Twitter network to work for him. He began searching tweets for people posting about problems with cascading style sheets (css), an aspect of web development, and offering his services to those people. He offered several payment options, ranging from $35 (which gets your problem fixed within 3 days) to $135 (which gets you two hours of his time). He’s not making a full-time living on Twitter yet but he is catching the attention of quite a few people. And, he earned $1400 in February from Twitter referrals.
Does that spark any creative ideas of how you can leverage your skills on Twitter?
2. Turn Your Online Presence Into You Online Resume and Job Application
So maybe your blog and Facebook account have thus far been a mish-mash of business tips, personal details, pictures of your cat, and any other random thoughts that come to mind. Well, it’s time to shape up and start cleaning house. According to well-known blogger Robert Scoble, if you want to attract a new job you need to focus all of your online resources in the same direction. His advice? If you want to drive a cab then start posting pictures of cabs, offering tips for cab drivers, and following current cabbies in social networking sites. He has a lot more details, too. Check ‘em out here.
What kind of job do you want next and what can you do to focus your online presence toward that aim?
3. Seth Says, “Become an Expert and Get a Following”
We all do what Seth Godin says, right? Well, maybe not everything but the guy does have quite a lot going on in that shiny head of his so he’s worth listening to. His advice for the recently pink-slipped? Make use of your slack time. You’ve got the time so use it wisely. Learn something you’ve always wanted to learn, like a foreign language or how to program your own webpage. On the practical side, he suggests, among other things, building a tribe of followers for your favorite non-profit organization and turning your experience into a case study for your industry or niche. Sounds like a pretty good marketing tool to help you get your next job. Oh, and while you’re at it, get a following and build an online reputation. He suggests doing random acts of kindness, like hooking up people who need each other for no personal gain or giving away information really need. Very much along the lines of “give to get,” which actually works. Read more about what Seth says …
What are you going to do with your slack time?
Photo Credit: Used to kill
Tags: blog, online presence, seth godin, social media, the css guy
Posted by Stephanie on Mar 11, 2009 in
Small Business Strategy 
What If You Get Hit by a Beer Track Tomorrow?
This question may seem silly to you because you may think that any self-employed individual is also a small business owner. Technically this might be true but the difference in mindset between someone who is self-employed and someone who owns a small business is BIG. So what’s the difference between these two?
Leverage.
If you are self-employed you do everything for your business by yourself. You produce the product, make the sales, handle the accounting and finance, ship out the packages, and handle all the customer service issues. You are the company and the company is you. If you get hit by a beer truck tomorrow then your company goes down the toilet. It’s a bad scenario.
Small business owners, on the other hand, don’t do everything in the business by themselves. They leverage the efforts of other people in multiple ways.
Small Business Owners:
- hire employees
- outsource tasks like accounting, payroll, marketing, and order fulfillment
- partner with other compatible businesses to share marketing and promotional expenses
- leverage investment funds from business partners and/or banks
- hire managers to handle daily administration
In other words, small business owners are like general contractors: they pull together the resources necessary to operate the business but don’t necessarily spend a lot of hands-on time in the business. If an employee becomes unable to work or an outsourcing company fails to fulfill their contract, the business doesn’t die overnight. Other employees can be hired and work can be outsourced to a different company. Best of all, the business can continue to generate revenue and profit for you, the small business owner, on a continuous basis.
Have you taken a look at the way you run your business lately? Are you operating from the self-employment model or the small business owner model? The self-employment model means you are a slave to your business and can never leave to go on vacation. Being a small business owner means you can come and go as you please, depending on the extent to which you have leveraged other resources to run your business on a daily basis.
MLM as Leverage
One way some people have chosen to move away from self-employment and into small business ownership is to leverage the power of MLM, or network marketing. With MLM, the parent company handles product production, order fulfillment, accounting and finance, and often even worldwide promotion. As a business partner you only handle direct marketing and sales, using marketing methods of your choice, and get a check for your efforts. MLM is a very inexpensive way to move into small business ownership because you can leverage the power of a very large parent company for a small investment.
Having said all of that, I have to insert a word of caution here: it’s still possible to run an MLM business from the self-employment model. If you try to handle all the sales and marketing yourself you will still be self-employed. Unless and until you bring in new business partners underneath you in your network who will also do sales and marketing, you haven’t created the maximum leverage in your business. Think about it. If you handle all the marketing by yourself and you get hit by a beer truck tomorrow, your income still goes down the toilet. On the other hand, if you get hit by a beer truck but your business partners are still out there marketing, you still get a check. Again, it’s all about how much you can leverage the efforts of others for your small business.
Photo credit: I Love Hitachino Nest Beer
Tags: self-employed, self-employment, small business, small business owner
Posted by Stephanie on Mar 10, 2009 in
Small Business Technology 
With small businesses already struggling to stay afloat in the recession economy, it’s more important than ever to stay on top of the trends that will boost your business (lest you sink!). Small Business Trends has put out a great list of 10 technology trends for 2009 that is worth reading.
As a small business owner you obviously have a lot to juggle and technology isn’t your only focus. However, this list of technology trends has tips that even the least techno-savvy business owner will want to know about. For instance, this list highlights the importance of social media for small business, especially those that want to network not just with their own customers but also with people who are not yet customers.
This list also highlights another important trend: the widening gap between small businesses that have an online presence and small businesses that don’t. The bottom line is that you MUST have an online presence … but how will you do it? Is a website enough or do you also need a blog and a forum?
This list doesn’t answer all of these questions but it does highlight the questions you should be asking about your small business’ state of preparedness in terms of technology trends. Other trends include netbook adoption, broadband usage, cell phone software, video-conferencing and more.
Check out these techie trends here.
Photo credit: Computer Technology Fortune
Tags: online presence, small business technology trends, social media
Posted by Stephanie on Mar 9, 2009 in
Small Business Tax Tips 
IRS Mileage Deduction Rules for Small Business Owners
If you own a small business and drive a vehicle then you’ll want to study the IRS mileage deduction rules so you can maximize your deductions. Whether you know it or not, your car represents one of the largest possible sources of tax deductions for your business.
So what do the IRS mileage deduction rules say you can write off with respect to the miles your drive? There are two areas: straight business mileage and commuting mileage.
IRS Mileage Deduction for Business
Anytime you accrue mileage for your business you can deduct it as a business expense. If you drive from your office to a business meeting and back, you can deduct the round-trip mileage as a business expense. If you drive from your office to the bank and back to your office, you can deduct the round trip mileage as a business expense.
Now here’s the neat part of this equation. Suppose the dry cleaner and grocery store are in the same shopping center as your bank. If you have to go to the bank on business, you can stop at the dry cleaner’s and grocery store after you make a deposit at the bank. The mileage for the entire trip can still be deducted as a business expense, even though you added in some personal errands. As long as the mileage has a primary business purpose, errands are allowed. Thank you Uncle Sam!
IRS Mileage Deduction for Commuting
According to IRS regulations, commuting mileage is not officially a deductible business expense. Specifially, IRS Revenue Ruling 90-23 says, “Daily transportation costs for going between the taxpayer’s residence and one or more regular places of business or employment are non-deductible personal commuting expenses.”
However, there is a way you can get around this regulation. IRS Revenue Ruling 55-109 (often called the “two business location rule”) says, “Daily transportation costs for going between two specific business locations (whether in the same business or different businesses) are deductible business expenses.”
So if you have both a home office and a remote office at a different location, you can deduct your commuting mileage between your house and remote office as long as you follow certain rules. To clarify, let me add that your home office can be for a home-based business, such as MLM or network marketing, or can be the home-office for your regular business, which also has a remote location.
But there’s one more rub. Normally, according to Revenue Ruling 55-109, you would only be able to deduct a one-way trip between your house and your remote office. But there is a way to deduct the full round-trip commuting mileage. Simply be sure that you actively engage in business activities in your home office both before you leave for your remote office and after you come back.
Some More Details on Mileage Deduction
To really make the commuting mileage deduction work in your favor, you need to fulfill a few rules and regulations.
1. Make sure your home office is a principle place of business, which means one of these three items applies to your home office:
- The primary value of your business is delivered there
- You regularly meet with customers or prospects there
- The primary management or administrative function of your business is conducted there
As long as any of these are true of your home office, it counts as a principle place of business.
2. You must document your activity in your home office to prove that you actively engaged in business activities before and after you go to your remote business location. You don’t need to write a book on your activities, but just jot down a few lines in a business diary or spreadsheet. Be sure you are totally consistent by entering data every single workday (not just for 90 days, as for the mileage log below).
3. Keep a mileage log of your driving. Make sure to log every single trip between your home office and your remote office, and vice versa. Also be sure to document every business mile for which you want to claim a deduction. The really great part of this is that according to URS rulings, you only need a keep a mileage log for “a typical 90-day consecutive period” each year to determine your annual business mileage. That’s not bad. Just be sure the 90-day period is fairly typical of your average driving habits.
What is Your IRS Mileage Deduction Worth?
Documenting your mileage and your home-business activities can seem tedious but it can create a giant business expense that you can use as a deduction at the end of the year. In 2009 the IRS is allowing a deduction of 55 cents per business mile driven. If you typically commute 5,000 miles a year, that’s a $2,750 deduction. What’s more, with proper documentation you can also deduct:
- 24 cents per mile driven for medical or moving purposes
- 14 cents per mile driven in service of charitable organizations
So putting pen to paper can really save you a bundle in taxes by creating large mileage deductions. Don’t you think these mileage deductions are worth a little extra time?
What else would would you like to know about saving moeny in your small business?
photo credit: I.R.S
Tags: deductible mileage rules, IRS mileage deduction, irs mileage documentation
