Small Business Owners: Stop Spending Money on Stupid Stuff Just Because You Can

As the economy slides headlong into the dumper, it amazes me to watch small business owners continue to spend money on stupid stuff … just because they can or just because they always have. I can make this statement with impunity because I’m one of them!

What Constitutes “Stupid Stuff” in a Cash-Poor Economy?
So let me clarify what I mean by “stupid stuff.” Stupid stuff equals goods and services that your small business used to buy but, in today’s economy, which it can no longer afford.

I’ve recently gone through my small business expenditures and come up with a list of “stupid stuff” that my small business is no longer going to buy. I’ve listed some examples below. It is by no means a complete list, nor is in prioritized order, but it does cover a wide gamut of “stuff” just to give you an idea of what I’m talking about. Stupid stuff for my small business includes:

- extravagant holiday gifts for business partners
- fancy business cards
- business services that don’t come with a full estimate or fixed rate
- accounting and other services that could be had for less or for barter
- pretty pens (a weakness of mine)
- impulse buys (who needs a third Palm Pilot?)
- 80% of my business meetings over coffee or lunch (I can meet and not eat)
- colored anything just because they are prettier than white (file folders, for instance)
- office munchies for me and the crew

As I said this list isn’t comprehensive, but it does give you and idea of how my small business could save some cash in this economy. On the other hand, I am increasing small business expenditures in certain departments, despite the economy.

What Isn’t “Stupid Stuff” in This Economy?
Just because I am reducing small business expenses in some areas does not mean that my small business does not spend money on anything. In fact, I have increased expenditures in certain areas of my small business. These include:

- online courses in online marketing
- a small business spending savvy course
- backup equipment to safeguard business data
- software to improve the efficiency and data analysis for my marketing efforts

The ruler by which I measure whether my small business spending is “stupid or savvy” is whether it ultimately goes toward the bottom line. A third electronic gadget, while pink and very pretty, does not qualify. A software package that improves the “white hat” quality of my online marketing efforts definitely qualifies. See the difference?

If you have any guidelines of your own for small business spending which differentiate between stupid and savvy, I’d love to hear about them. Leave me a comment and let me know!

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Photo credit: Free Digital Photos

Tags: small business expenditures, small business expenses, small business spending

How to be an Efficient Little Twerp in Small Business

I’m kind of a manic-depressive small business owner, sometimes super-focused and other times distracted to pieces … not a good personality type for running a small business. I figured this out about myself a long time ago and realized that the only way I would ever succeed in small business is to become this:

An efficient little twerp.

What’s an Efficient Little Twerp?
“Efficient little twerp” is the phrase a friend recently used to describe me in the way that I run my small businesses. Being an efficient little twerp is how I manage to be successful in my small businesses despite my major personality flaws, and boils down to three things:

1. Being good or hiring someone better.
2. Knowing the devil is in the details.
3. Accepting AFGOs as part of business (Another Friggin’ Growth Opportunity)

So these three things make me an efficient little twerp and allow my small businesses to run smoothly. They might help you, too, if you run small businesses and suffer from some sort of personality flaws. For instance, manic-depressive cycles are just one of mine. I’m also a lazy, arrogant, in need of external validation, and a host of other foibles. Any of these sound familiar to you? In any case, here are three little rules to being an efficient little twerp in small business that may help.

1. Being Good or Hiring Someone Better
If small business owners are to be faulted in one major area, it’s usually that we believe we are super-heroes and can do EVERYTHING for our businesses. Not only can we do our main area of expertise, but feel we can also do marketing, strategizing, bookkeeping and accounting, customer relations, business development, legal work, and heavy lifting.

Not gonna happen.

We may be able to do all of these things, but chances are that we won’t do all of them well. Part of being an effective little twerp in small business is figuring out what you’re good at, and hiring people to do the rest.

For instance, I’m fairly good at writing, marketing, and online interaction. I suck at legal work, accounting, and phone-based customer support. These I hire out to people, which makes me sane, allows my business to run smoothly, and, of course, makes me the efficient little twerp that I am.

2. Knowing the Devil is in the Details
Having just said that I hire out the work at which I’m not very proficient, I have to now add a caveat. To be an efficient little twerp, I also have to understand something about the work that I’m outsourcing the others. I have to understand the details of the work I hire out, even if I don’t do it myself.

Here’s a prime example: a week before corporate taxes were due, my current accountant (not the new one I’m going with in the coming year) call me up and tell me I owe a few grand in corporate taxes. This did not sound in the least correct to me. I had sent in a payment with my extension early in the year, and didn’t understand why the taxes I still owed were so much higher than the extension. Having done my own corporate taxes for a few years, I smelled a rat.

Instead of just “rolling with the punches,” I pulled up the tax figures I had sent to the accountant and compared them to the corporate return. Bingo. I caught an accounting error where a few income sources had been doubled, which accounted for the major tax I supposedly owed. I called the accountant, got it straightened out, and now have a tax credit.

So even though I hire out my accounting work (because I know I can’t keep up with current tax law), I know enough about HOW small business accounting works to know when something is wrong. The devil is in the details, and this case, not knowing the details could have cost my business a few thousand in unnecessary taxes. Sure, I would have eventually gotten a refund, but why pay the government unnecessarily in this cash-tight economy? Now that would not be typical “efficient little twerp” behavior.

3. Accepting AFGOs as Part of Business
This is a PG-rated article, so I can’t say what AFGO really stands for, but Another Friggin’ Growth Opportunity kind of gives you the idea, right? Part of being an efficient little small business twerp is figuring out when you’ve made a gaffe, learning from it, and then moving on.

A lot of small business owners are good at figuring out that they’ve screwed up, but then they stay in “screw up land” forever. So you screwed up. Big deal. Learn from it and move on. The other day I got myself banned from an online site. Bummer … my online marketing activities really took a hit. I researched the steps needed to get unbanned, but after reading what everyone else had to say, realized that it wasn’t going to be possible in the short term. So what’s an efficient little twerp to do? Move on. There are lots of branches on the online marketing tree, so if one branch gets chopped of, just focus on some other branches for a while. No biggie and no only. It’s how I learn to better run and promote my small businesses. AFGO. It’s a good thing. Really. And every efficient little twerp not only accepts them, but eventually learns to welcome them.

I hope this small rant on the three rules I’ve discovered about being an efficient little twerp in business may in some way bring a smile to your face, give you a giggle, and maybe even help out a bit!

If you have any suggestions on being a twerp, or otherwise running a small business better, cheaper, or more enjoyably, please, leave a comment. I’d love to hear!

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Tags: efficient little twerp, small business, small business owner

Triple Your Small Business Capabilities Fast Without Adding Staff

So there is a small business guy around here I really admire - Mike of All Wet Sprinklers. This economy has been just as tough on Mike as on every other small business owner. People are slamming their wallets shut, and fewer people want new sprinkler systems installed on their properties.

So Mike, being the totally ingenious Italian dude that he is, decided that he would expand the services his small businesses offered so he could get more work. The sprinkler system market was shrinking, so Mike decided to expand into other markets, including landscaping, masonry, supplying firewood, and dog walking (actually, I’m not sure if he actually walks dogs or he’s just pulling my leg).

How to Triple Your Small Business Capabilities
So how did Mike go from sprinkler dude to landscaping, rock-working, firewood dude? Well, he didn’t take on any new staff. Instead, he partnered up with a couple of other small business folks in the area who were also feeling the economic pinch.

Chris, a stone mason, knows how to build you a giant wall in nothing flat. Mike’s significant other, Candy, works a regular job but knows landscaping like the back of her hand, so she helps Mike with the landscaping plans when she’s off work. And then there’s some other dude I haven’t met who does the firewood thing.

So Mike shows up to give us an estimate on a little irrigation project for our back field. He’s got Chris with him. We find out Chris is a stone mason and we ask him to give us an estimate on putting our patio and planter rocks back together. The rocks were falling so fast we just about needed to put up a “Danger: Falling Rock” sign. Chris and Mike gave us estimates and we gave them thumbs up.

They tackle the irrigation project first. Mike knows all about irrigation so he does most of the planning and buys the right parts. Chris does the grunt work. Then they move onto the rock work. Here, Chris mixes the all-important mortar and Mike does the grunt work. At the end of the jobs, they divvy up my check. Each of them made less on the total job than they would have alone, but each earned more than an unemployment check.

Mike’s now working on getting me some firewood from his buddy. Same deal … split the check, earn less than usual, but bring in solid work in a lean economy.

See how it works? Can you see how that might work for your small business? Got any lean and hungry business associates who might want to partner up?

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Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/sidewalk_flying/ / CC BY 2.0

Tags: small business capability, small business owner, triple your small business capabilities

Three Crucial Questions for Small Business Owners

There’s no doubt that most organizations, from small businesses to large corporations, are struggling. It’s been a darn hard time for most people. And yet giving up just really isn’t an option for many small business owners since the job market doesn’t offer a lot of hope and many retirement plans have suffered serious setbacks.

But even though the economic situation is less than perfect, it does present us small business owners with a perfect opportunity to ask some penetrating questions. It allows us to ask ourselves what is important about our small businesses. It helps us remember why we started our small businesses, and determine whether those reasons are still important to us.

That’s why it’s important for us small business owners to ask themselves three crucial questions. The answers to these questions will either get you back to feeling great about your small business or clarify the fact that you need to move into some other form of livelihood.

An Example: My Four Small Businesses
For instance, I run four small businesses. Three are well-established and require fairly passive management on a daily basis. The fourth is a startup, not quite a year old, and one that I hope to grow within the next two years. The startup takes some fairly active work to keep afloat, not to mention monetary investment, but I don’t resent the investment or the elbow grease. Having done three other startups, which are now established businesses, I know the length of time it takes to launch a startup. I know the patience required.

On the other hand, there are days when I just want to give up the ghost and call it quits. Some days I get very little done or I’m just too tired to even stagger over to my cigar stash for a relaxing puff. It’s off to bed so I can get up and do it all over again tomorrow. These are the days I ask myself, “Why the hell am I doing this?” These are the days when the two years I’ve given myself to build my startup seem like the equivalent of living in purgatory …forever. These are the days when I have to sit down and reflect on why I have small businesses, and why they are important to me.

Three Questions for Small Business Owners
On those DODs (days of despair, not Department of Defense), I ask myself three questions:

1. What do I get from my small businesses and what do I pay?

2. Are the original reasons I started these businesses still important, and if not, are there new reasons to keep going?

3. Is there a way to change my business model to fit this new economy?

My Answers
It would be too long-winded and boring to list my answers to those questions for all my small businesses, but I will give you the answers for one business, just for grins. So one business I have is an online school that teaches magic (like spellwork and Tarot) and shamanic traditions. Answers to the three questions are as follows:

1. What do I get from my small businesses and what do I pay?
I get to spread this esoteric information to people all over the world, especially in countries where this kind of information isn’t readily available, like Nigeria and New Zealand. I get to play a part in spreading magic into the world. I also get a solid paycheck.

Aside from regular operating expenses, I pay in elbow grease … in the attempt to reach the right audience. The information we offer is for people who really want to learn the art and science of magic and shamanism, not for people who want a free online spell to help them win the lottery. I pay to develop my own patience and tolerance while wading through hundreds of “send me a free spell” emails.

2. Are the original reasons I started these businesses still important, and if not, are there new reasons to keep going?
Yes. Not only do we have a group of advanced students who have been with us for more than a decade and really take part in bringing magic and shamanism into the world, but teaching the classes and creating the materials keeps me in touch with my own spiritual practice.

3. Is there a way to change my business model to fit this new economy?
Definitely. Offering the information in different online forms, from YouTube videos to webinars, is the way I’m going. It makes the information more readily available, and can be transmitted at the speed of light. It takes work to convert the material to online form, but it’s happening little by little.

What About You?
So those are my answers, good, bad, or ugly. What about you? How is your small business treating you, and how are you treating it? Is it time to re-evaluate your reasons for owning a small business? Is it time to change the way you run your small business? Most importantly, do you still remember what is important about your small business?

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Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/marcobellucci/ / CC BY 2.0

Tags: small business owners, small business questions

Finding a Good Small Business Accountant

A while back I wrote a blog post on finding a great accountant for your small business. Recently, I decided to take my own advice. I have used the same accounting service for almost a decade, and have always had a great relationship with them.

However, I found that as my small business focus shifted away from a “bricks and mortar” city environment to an online environment mixed with country living, I needed an accountant with different specialties and skills.

Where to Find a Good Small Business Accountant
I’m of the generation who “Googles” everything first. It hardly ever occurs to me to peel open a phone book if online access is just a few clicks away. Digging around on Google, I found several “accountant search” sites, and entered my request on several. Most sites asked for the following information:

- number and types of businesses I owned (sole proprietor, S-corp, etc.)
- number of employees and contractors I employed
- average revenue numbers
- accounting specialties being sought (home business, agricultural, government contracting, etc.)

I was surprised and pleased to receive both an email and a phone call from a representative at GoodAccountants.com. Shahana Faridi, my representative, asked several questions and said she would get back to me within a week with one or more suitable accountants. In fact, she got back to me within a couple of days, and set up an appointment for me with some local accountants.

I had thought she was setting up a phone appointment, and marked it as such in my calendar. Boy was I surprised when Denise and Janni showed up in person! The interview went well, and I will soon be finalizing my agreements for them to handle my small business accounting needs in the coming year.

Is It Time To Reconsider Your Accountant?
The difference between a suitable accountant for your small business and an unsuitable one can be vast. It can be the difference between paying in a huge chunk in taxes every year versus paying a much smaller sum. It can be the difference between sleeping well at night knowing your accountants will back you up with the IRS should the need ever arise, and sweating at night wondering if the other shoe is going to drop soon.

For me, an accountant suitable for my various small business enterprises means someone who knows about home business, the livestock business, the publishing business, and S-corporations as well as C-corporations. I asked a number of probing questions, all of which Denise and Janni answered to my extreme satisfaction. It was a good time to change accounting services, and I am looking forward to my new relationship with Denise and Janni.

What about you? Have your small business accounting needs changed in the recent past, and is it time to re-evaluate your accounting relationship?

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Tags: good small business accountant, goodaccountants.com