Month: May 2012

5 Budget Management Tips for the Small Business Owner

Running a small business means pushing your products and services against the odds created by big business and natural competition, making every dollar worth counting at every turn. Limiting overhead and increasing profits are mainstays for all businesses but their minute importance is even more pronounced for small businesses, with a single bill or lost sale potentially making the difference between success and failure.

If you’re a small business owner looking to exert greater control over your budget through new tools and ideas, consider these five budget management tips for small business owners:

1. Separate Personal and Business Finances

Separate Personal and Business Finances

Keeping the money you use for home expenses separate from that intended for business is an absolute must for long-term success. Good accounting entails knowing exactly where expenses and profits belong and mixing these different financial areas, whether on paper or only in your mind, has the potential to lead to disaster.

2. Maintain Six Months of Expenses

Maintain Six Months of Expenses

While often easier said than done, having ample cash to fall back on is of absolute importance if you intend to see your small business to long-term success. Even the most well-thought out startups require time and patience to turn a profit and having money put away for both personal and business expenses to help you through the initial tight stages will help both you and your business to remain viable from opening day onward.

3. Become a Professional Accountant

What better way is there to manage your finances accurately than by becoming a professional yourself? Small business owners in the United States are able to study for and complete the Uniform Certified Public Accountant Examination at any time, giving you the cutting-edge knowledge and tools required to take full, hands-on control over your finances, both personal and business. You’ll need to pass cpa exams in order to do that though.

4. Take Your Taxes Seriously!

Take Your Taxes Seriously!

Whether you take our advice above to consider becoming a certified public accountant or you hire an outside professional to manage your finances, be sure to take your tax returns very seriously. This challenging requirement of being self-employed is more complicated than seemingly endless tax returns; polls show that one of the biggest tax problems faced by small business owners is failure to submit returns at all. The most cited reason for non-submitted taxes is a failure by the business owner to save taxes owed throughout the year only to balk at the total amount when that lack of financial management makes paying a tax bill impossible. To avoid such problems, always be sure to calculate the taxes and other government premiums owed on a regular basis throughout the year, maintaining accounts to hold those funds until the time that they’re needed.

5. Reassess Your Finances Regularly

Reassess Your Finances Regularly

Too often small business owners find themselves needing to review their expenditures when financial difficulty presents itself, leaving months or even years of unnecessary spending in their wake. To avoid wasting even a single dollar on unneeded overhead, take the time to review the money you spend on maintaining your business and make decisions to reduce or even eliminate costs whenever possible, avoiding uncertainty in the future and helping your business to remain viable even during the tightest of times.

Conclusion

While small business management does present difficulties not typically found in the workforce, creating and sticking to a well-thought out plan is the key to maintaining your freedom from the daily grind, making it a more than worthwhile endeavor for any entrepreneur. Follow the tips laid out above, recognize and tackle the hurdles unique to your niche and give your small business your all in an effort to ensure the best possible chance of a successful financial future!

About the Author: Jessy is a small business owner working full-time in the Internet

Image Credits: 1, 2, 3, 4.

The Dual Entrepreneur: How to Balance Running Two Companies at Once

In general, entrepreneurs are idea people. They don’t necessarily have to be creative in the classical artistic sense, but they have to be flexible, self-motivated, and able to follow through on a good idea.

Many budding entrepreneurs hold themselves back by spreading their work too thin. Do you think Mark Zuckerberg would be orchestrating billion-dollar buy-outs if he’d focused half his energy on Facebook, and the other on opening a pizza chain?

Getting a business off the ground requires your full attention. Once it’s up-and-running, however, it’s possible to expand. Just look at many of the world’s most famous athletes and musicians who balance careers in Hollywood and on the playing field. Mark Cuban is a terrific example, juggling ownership of the Dallas Mavericks NBA team, Landmark Theatres, and chairing the HDNet cable TV station.

So how do you get to be the next Mark Cuban? While I’m far from the Forbes 500 list, I can happily say that I’ve successfully managed to maintain two profitable businesses for the last six years.

entrepreneurship tips
Image: @boetter / Flickr

Believe That You Can Do It

I opened my first business when I was 12-years-old in my home country of Iran. Raised by a father with a strong emphasis on self-sufficiency, two partners and I began a small potato chip factory. We hired a few employees and sold chips to supermarkets and local schools.

That same spirit of motivation led me to dentistry school. Nearly two decades ago, with a fresh doctorate in hand, I threw myself whole-heartedly into my practice. Over time, I built wealth that needed to be invested. Wall Street didn’t appeal to me, so I bought real estate. When the housing market dropped, I took the wake up call as a sign to diversify.

Like any entrepreneur, I always have my eyes open for new ideas with revenue-generating potential. At one point, I recognized a need for a glass and mirror provider in our market, found a suitable partner, and went into business again. Although my wife might say I’m addicted to work, my dentistry practice never suffered.

Love What You Do

If owning a dentistry office and running a glass and mirror supply company bored me or stressed me out, I’d quit one or the other. Because I’ve found industries that appeal to me, I rarely feel like I’m actually working.

Let’s put it this way — my son plays video games for an hour a day. He says it’s his ‘down time.’ My wife watches soap operas for an hour each afternoon that’s her down time. And what I do in front of the computer for my businesses is truly a down time for me. It’s not work. If it was, there’s no way I’d be able to do it. At home on the computer, I can casually answer emails and truly relax. I enjoy what I do, so it’s more of a game than anything.

Sure, it’s a cliché, but I fully believe the old quote that says, “Find something you love to do, and you’ll never work a day in your life.”

Don’t Rule Anything Out

Ten years ago, I would never have imagined I’d own a glass and mirror company. When the opportunity arose, however, I didn’t overlook it because of my lack of expertise in the area.

It’s not so much the product that matters when you’re an entrepreneur, but the business itself. As long as you know how to run a business and you understand the numbers and how to market and sell, then the product just has to be something that interests you. It could be glass or wood or anything — if you understand business and recognize a need, you’ll succeed.

For me, personally, dentistry and glass sales go hand-in-hand for my lifestyle. Being a dentist is a physical vocation that fills my days, while glass and mirror sales are a number-crunching, analytical job that I do in the evening. It’s like a hobby.

If you already own a successful business and another opportunity arises, don’t run away from it for fear of being over-burdened. As long as you enjoy both jobs, running two businesses can truly be a pleasure.

What combination of businesses would you most like to own or manage?

About the Author: Bahram Nasehi is a Vice President and partner at Dulles Glass and Mirror. He is instrumental in the developement and manufacturing of commercial and residential glass products including tempered glass, glass table tops and shower doors.

Why Most Small Businesses Don’t Last

They say that if you want to earn unlimited income, you have to start your own business. No wonder that there are a lot of people who immediately resign from their jobs. Yes, that can be a great plan if you want financial freedom. However, it’s not that easy. You have to think twice, in fact you have to think a lot of times. If you will not plan your business right, you’ll end up bankrupted.

As much as you want to become your own boss, you need to prepare properly. You have to know the risks involved.

In this article, I will briefly explain some of the reasons why more than half of small businesses die.

They are too excited. This is one of the most common reasons why businesses falter in no time. We want to open up our own business even without careful research. Establishing your own trade doesn’t happen overnight. In fact, some successful business owners spent months, even years of preparation, so they can create a long running industry.

Your adrenalin might be at its peak. But don’t let that excitement push you to start something which you aren’t prepared for.

They usually join the ‘business trend’. It’s a big No for you to become a ‘copy – cat’. One business idea might be good in some locations. However, it might not be the best for you. You have to be original. You need to have fresh ideas.

Trends or fads are not forever. Are you going to establish a business that is just for a period of time? I don’t think you like that, right?

out of business
Image: AR McLin / Flickr

They lack promotion. In promoting your business, you have to be aggressive and personal. Don’t take this for granted. How can your business grow if no one knows it? I believe that most business fail in the first few months because they were not able to advertise it properly. You don’t have to spend so much. You can just send messages to your friends and I’m sure they would be willing to share the news with their friends too. Aside from that, you can maximize the social media. It would be nice if you will create your own business page in Facebook. You can also make a twitter account. There are so many ways to promote your business. Invest time for it if you want to be successful.

They don’t keep track of the inventory. Most business owners are busy counting their money. The problem is, they don’t check their inventory. That is very important. A lot of my friends who started their businesses thought that they were doing well only because they have money at the end of the day. But after few months, they realized that the money at hand is not equal to their inventory. And with further investigation, they found out that a clerk stole some items from them.

This can be avoided if you are strict in checking your inventory. Make it a regular habit.

They are not hands on. Even if you are the boss, it doesn’t mean that you have the license to be lousy. You shouldn’t depend the success of your business to your staff. You have to be on top of the game. Being a boss has a lot of responsibilities and being a couch potato is not one of those.

Now, you know what are the worst things you can do for your business. Plan carefully and be consistent so you can enjoy the fruits of your labor in no time.

About the Author: Toni Okeson writes for a great welding school site. If you want to start a career or a small stick welding business, you should try reading their resources.

How To Create Your Own Business?

Creating your business is starting a life full of rewards and difficulties as creating your own business has pros and cons. Starting your own business requires focus and time because you have to make it grow and succeed. There are a lot of steps and advices on how to start a business. Here are some of the great ways on how you can get through the startup phase of a business.

Conceptualize and Start with Your Own Idea

Starting your own business may need your own idea on the products or services that you are going to offer. Starting with your own idea means that you take hold of your own business; you can have additional advices from other people, but your own idea is most important because it is what you are going to offer the public.

Do research

Since you are just starting, looking into business plans of other small and large companies will be helpful in assisting you start your business. Research for your possible customers, how much you need, where should you advertise, who are your competitors and how will you compete with them. Research is one of the steps in planning your own business.

Draft your business plan

After researching, make your own business plan, which you will use in undertaking your own business. Make a thorough financial planning as to how much you need in order to fund all the aspects of your business.

Identify sources of funds

You have to determine if you need financing from bank loans, credit cards or others. You can also self-finance if you have adequate funds. It is important to have in your business plan the probable expenses in order for you to produce the adequate funds you are going to need. It is also important to allot a sufficient salary for yourself in order to mind your living as you still enter into a new world of business where several possibilities maybe met.

Make complete and updated list of your clients

The customers are the best asset of a business because the income of the business comes from them.

Have a clean book

This does not mean having book to read, but a list of the finances such as the expenses of income of the business. Most of the small busies do not accounting of their finances, which is very hard for them to know if they are gaining or not.

Have an electronic credit card machine

Even how small your business may be, it is important to have a credit card machine because other customers always have to pay using credit cards and you don’t want to lose any clients just because they will not be able to pay you with their cards.
Find the purpose of your business

In every business, it is important that you know where you are going and what your mission is. In this way, you become more inspired to start and maintain your own business.

Creating your own business will never be easy, but what is important is you have the passion and inspiration to start it.

About the Author: Amarendra, the author likes to write on how to start and register a company. He is blogger, freelance writer and SEO.

Tips for Being Productive Outside the Office

If you have ever had a job working in an office, then you have probably heard plenty about productivity. Many bosses take great care about finding out how productive potential employees will be when looking to hire new staff, and productivity is often a big part of performance evaluations.

Productivity is simply a big part of having a job; however, productivity should extend outside the office. After all, going the extra mile is what separates the good employees and the excellent employees. But it can be difficult to be productive outside the office if you do not know how.

business productivity tips

Separate You Work and Social Life

One big part of being productive outside the office is separating your work and social life. One good way to help keep these two sides separate is to get a second phone line. This does not mean you need to carry two phones, since the SmartPhone app Line2 can work as a second phone line on a SmartPhone for business calls. Separating your phone lines can help you to seem more professional and productive.

To further keep your work and social lives separated, avoid making many friendships that might interfere with your work. It is fine to have a colleague or two that you get a drink with after work sometimes, but it might be a problem if you find yourself invited to your employee’s daughter’s birthday party.

This is a matter of common sense and personal judgment, since all business relationships are different, but it’s generally not a good idea for business associates on different levels of “the food chain” to get too close. This not only can cause people to become suspicious if you or your friend gets a raise or paid vacation, but it can also lower your productivity dealing with the issues that can arise.

Working From Home

Another situation that can give people trouble is when they have to work from home or a hotel, such as finishing and sending in a report while on a business trip. It can be distracting and demotivating if you do not have to get ready or dressed to go into work, so many people find themselves becoming less productive in these situations.

The best thing to do is pretend you are at work. When you wake up, take a shower and get dressed. This gets you in a working mindset. Set a strict schedule and follow it, and avoid all distractions such as television and friends. Also, make a list of things to do every night for the next day. This will help you keep track of exactly what you need to do.

If there is one thing that impresses employers and future employers, it is an individual’s ability to be productive outside the office. It is often the deciding factor when an employer is deciding between applicants for an open position or when deciding who they need to lay off. Increasing your productivity outside the office is a great way to put yourself ahead of the competition.

About the Author: Jessy is a stay-at-home mom and business blogger.