6 Tips For a Pain-Free Tax Season
With the exception of CPAs who make a huge chunk of their income during tax season, most of us wish this time of year would never come around. Yet, it does, so we can reduce our pain and frustration by going into our tax preparation and filing with our eyes wide open and as prepared as possible. These six tips will help a lot. Expect the best but prepare for the worst. The worst outcome is that later in the year you find yourself in the middle of an audit. Use this healthy fear to motivate you as you organize your documentation. Sometimes at the end of our filing we chuck everything into a file folder or shoe box and stick it in the closet hoping to never see it again. Be more thoughtful. As you tuck things away, be sure they are labeled and organized in ways that will make them easy to find in a “worst case scenario.” Be ready for the health insurance question. IRS regulations have turned your tax preparer into an Obamacare enforcer. You have to answer some questions about your health insurance and if you let it lapse for any period of time last year you can expect to be penalized. Also, this added burden on your tax person could make your bill go up. Download as much as possible. If you need to look at checkbooks and other bank records for income and expense information, probe your bank’s website for download links. I’m finding that every year they seem to improve your ability to retrieve transaction information via a spreadsheet file download. Banks used to be pretty stingy about the number of months you could go back. They are improving these services. Scan your digital calendar or appointment software. There is nothing worse than finding you have left out a deduction after you think your work is done. Look through the entries in your electronic calendar for 2014 and make sure you’re accounting for all your mileage and other travel related expenses. Download a checklist. There are so many categories of deductions that you really need a gentle reminder each year to be sure you aren’t missing something. Your tax preparer may have given you a checklist, but if not, there are others available on the Internet. Here’s one from the TurboTax people, but it doesn’t cover all the specific categories of deductions that apply to your business. However, otherwise it’s very good. Put tax preparation on your schedule. Getting organized in order to file taxes is like pulling off a Band-Aid – the quicker you get it done, the less painful it is. Get down to business as soon as you can and then you can move on to other, more productive, projects. I know that many of you have this well organized and totally under control. That’s fantastic. Keep up the good work. If that’s not your situation yet, get the software and systems in place that dramatically reduce this yearly...
read moreWant Loyal Customers? Be Sure You See the Big Picture
Here are three terms that get kicked around a lot today: Customer service. Customer engagement. Customer experience. From your perspective, are they all the same, are they distinctive from one another, or are they terms that aren’t exactly the same but do tend to overlap? Let me suggest that while they relate to one another, you need to appreciate how they differ to make each one “actionable” as you manage your business. For some businesses, customer service is merely – and wrongly – defined as a department or a responsibility that falls on certain employees. When I walk into the local big box home improvement center, I see a customer service department immediately to the left. Then as I make my way past the shopping carts, a greeter engages me and asks if I need help finding something. The aisles are well signed, so I don’t need help at this point – good signage, by the way, is a component of my “customer experience” while shopping at this store. Getting help when you need it I’ve needed to purchase locks in the past and if I buy several, they will re-key them so they can all be opened by the same key – but where’s the hardware person? If I can’t quickly find the person who knows how to do this, the engagement isn’t happening as it should, customer service is being degraded and my overall experience is on a slippery slope to a very bad place. One more point to make on customer experience: It started when I pulled into the parking lot – for example maybe there are shopping carts all over the place – and it continues through the entire shopping-buying-using process. Customer engagement this time around may have started when I received a newspaper insert listing sale items, among which were my new locks. The attributes of customer service, engagement and experience will change dramatically between retail, business-to-business, online and brick-and-mortar businesses. You should understand them well enough to be able to take your business and plug it into some kind of narrative like I’ve provided here. At that point you will be able to list actions you can take to improve each one. Just the FAQs no longer enough The options for improving in all of these areas are rapidly increasing today. For example, just a few years ago an FAQ page seemed like a fantastic help to an online shopper or website user. Today, discussion forums and “knowledge” databases that cover a much wider variety of topics go far beyond the simple question-and-answer format provided by an FAQ page. Having highly trained and engaging sales people or well produced video instructions that inform your customers in the best way to use a product or service will reduce or eliminate calls to a customer service center requesting help or a product return number. What’s in your genes? Understanding that your company’s customer experience DNA starts at the top is critical. I recently stopped by a favorite New York restaurant in the middle of one of our cold spells there were two tables and I was the only person waiting. One was smaller by the door, the other was a booth located further inside. A little under the weather myself, I requested the booth. The...
read moreHow to Say Yes to the (Viral) Dress in Your Business
A friend of mine was at an NHL game the other day when a woman in the group behind him took out her smart phone and started to discuss the day’s major online controversy: Was the dress blue and black, or was it white and gold? Although the teams on the ice were battling each other like it was the final game in the Stanley Cup series, there was more intensity among this group of spectators who found themselves sharply divided between blue-black adherents and white-gold partisans. It was the first my friend had heard about #thedress. The next day he looked it up on the web. If you were following this phenomenon at all, you may have noticed that people started showing up on television wearing the dress in question. Pushing something on the web to official viral status is difficult, especially when it has such a strong commercial angle like the dress. Pet videos are one thing, but something that will drive people to push a “buy now” icon is entirely different. But while creating viral media is difficult, it doesn’t mean you should stop trying. The payoff can be huge. Let’s break down the underlying commercial principles of viral media into their basic components and see how you can use them in your business. Brand or product recognition. The idea is to get your company or product in front of as many eyeballs as possible. I encourage you to use any clever means you can through the social media to get this done. Many of the most productive are the epiphanies created when one of your users features you in a post that goes viral. You can’t plan on that, but you can do things to increase your odds by creating opportunities. I know about a small local music shop that has a very cool logo design and it’s been selling that design on t-shirts for more than 40 years. One day there was a huge protest event in the Middle East and the next day people came into his shop excited that they had seen someone wearing his t-shirt in the news coverage. Lesson: Create a great design for your company and get it out into the public. It’s been working for a certain tractor company forever. It will work for you too. Enlist volunteers. There are many ways you can have your customers promote your products and the more strategies you use, the better odds you have that something will eventually go viral. Organize contests that encourage your users to post photos or videos to the social media. Create hashtags to accompany events, products, opinions or anything you can dream up. Encourage your customer to post online reviews. If you have products, send them to bloggers and others who review in the media and invite their opinions. Local viral. You don’t have to become an international viral sensation to increase sales. Many, and perhaps most, small businesses will do great if they can just get some more local “buzz” going. To be successful at this, you need to understand how opinion is created in your community. Consider things like local sponsorships of teams and events. Find ways to get your business featured in the local newspaper. If you do a blog, get more out...
read moreHow Two New Trade Agreements Can Propel Your Growth
Although many small business owners go about their daily routines never giving a second thought to foreign trade, it is actually a very important issue for the small business sector of the US economy. That is made amply apparent by two facts. First, small businesses are the biggest job creators in our country and second, small and medium sized businesses account for nearly 98 percent of all US goods exporters. This is true even though only 24 percent of our small businesses are engaged in global commerce, according to a UPS survey. Therefore, when the number of exporters increases, the number of jobs created gets a big boost as well. Free trade agreements There are some rather big political issues that are up in the air right now. The Obama administration is negotiating two free trade deals, one with a large group of Pacific nations – the Trans-Pacific Partnership Free Trade Agreement (TPP) – and the other with the European Union – the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP). At the same time Congress is debating whether or not to reauthorize the Export-Import Bank. The free trade agreement negotiations have been lingering on for years. TPP talks date back to 2005 and both agreements were to be finalized in 2014 or 2015. Due to the number of nations involved and thorny issues such as agriculture and intellectual property, it’s uncertain if either negotiations will be wrapped up this year. These agreements will require majority approvals in both houses of Congress and will need bipartisan support. Some liberal democrats may oppose the agreements due to union pressures. Moving beyond NAFTA The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) greatly benefited small business exporters. Today the overwhelming majority of our small biz exports go to NAFTA nations. These agreements have the potential to create similar opportunities throughout the Pacific Rim as well as in Europe. If there is any element of your business that can become involved in global commerce, it would be wise to start putting your strategy in place today. The UPS survey cited earlier and other statistics point out more important facts: 95 percent of all consumers live outside the US, small businesses that export are 20 percent more productive, and small biz exporters create 20 percent more jobs than their non-exporting counterparts. Lobby Congress Further, let your representatives in Washington, D.C. know that you would like to see trade restrictions eased by fast tracking these agreements when they come to Congress. In the same way, get your local business and professional organizations on board with their vocal support. For any every business, new avenues of growth are the most precious commodity. With these important trade agreements pending, major opportunities can become...
read moreThis Week in Small Business: Elvis Costello, Cybercrime and Ex-Cons
From what I hear, the Irish saved civilization and they definitely made last week a lot more fun. We start out with a serving of Irish (marketing) stew before moving on to productivity, taxes, the best cities for women in terms of wage parity and much, much more. Marketing What do Elvis Costello, Guiness and Riverdance all have in common? They are great examples of Irish marketing triumphs. We hope you toasted these on St. Patrick’s Day! David Ciccarelli, CEO of Voices.com, outlines some principles to help startups do their own marketing on a tight budget. And here’s more on the topic: Startup marketing is its own beast. If you need a little guidance on how to pace your marketing strategy, Ed Zimmerman offers guidance. There’s definitely a line between personalizing an experience and stalking a customer. Sky TV’s marketing guru says you should know where that is. Increased touch points, customer data and custom content will be driving increased email marketing success in 2015. And for an in-depth look at how companies are pushing personalized experiences to the next level, here’s the story. Social media marketing Have you noticed changes in your Facebook “Likes”? Here are the latest machinations at our biggest social networking platform. More FB news: Facebook has a “firehose” of user-generated topical data that it is finally opening up to marketers. This should keep people busy for a while. You’ll find the most important social media metrics to follow in this article broken down by social media platform. Tips and tools To make the sale you need to establish the relationship, understand your prospect and keep the conversation going on the right level. Here are 30 effective questions to ask that will help you close more deals. Appeal to your customers’ primal instincts to connect on a very visceral level. Here are four ways. Forbes writer Drew Hendricks says these are the only six content marketing tips you need for 2015. We’ll see about that.., There’s nothing fancy about this list of 80 (I think) third-party marketing tools, but look it over and see if there are any you don’t recognize or any categories you don’t know about. Entrepreneurship, venture capital and startups Most states offer some type of tax incentives for investors who pour capital into early-stage companies, however many companies and investors are in the dark about these breaks. It’s time to shed a little light on the subject. “Storage Wars” makes for great reality TV on A&E, but buying abandoned storage units may be the ideal recession-proof small business opportunity. Darrell Sheets explains. If Indiegogo fundraising is an indictor, Christopher Engelo has hit it out of the park with his 21st century tool box. It proves that even products that have been around forever are ripe for innovation. I’m going to take another look at that mousetrap. To be a successful entrepreneur, one trait is valuable above all the rest: Persistence. Jeremy Johnson describes its many benefits. If your startup is of the virtual variety, review these five tips for starting your business online. Take note of this year’s #SXSW Accelerator Winners and check back next year to see if their picks were on target. Government, politics and economics Would you be surprised to learn many SBA loans from $1 million to $5...
read moreHow Much Better Would Business Be If Washington Acted on these 10 Priorities?
The situation in Washington D.C. reminds me of the scene in “Rebel Without a Cause” when Buzz (Corey Allen) and Jim (James Dean) are playing a deadly game of “Chicken Run” in their cars, racing toward a cliff and testing who would be the first to pull up. The big difference is that Congress and the President declare they want to solve the same national problems and then they play a game where the winner seems to be the first to act. The President beat Congress by a wide margin on immigration. Taxes are now the target with the President’s spokesman recently declaring that President Obama is looking into taking unilateral executive action to raise taxes. This should put Congress under pressure to act sooner rather than later and to prod our lawmakers forward on a variety of issues that impact small business. The National Small Business Association (NSBA) recently issued the group’s Top 10 Priorities for the 114th Congress and this would be a good place for lawmakers to start. Look over this list and see if they jibe with your views, then take time to lobby your elected officials, industry groups and local organization to support those you favor. Corporate Tax Reform and Small Business. We need tax reform, but if it is solely for corporate entities, it would bypass most small businesses, which are organized as pass-throughs. That would put small businesses at a disadvantage. Improve Access to Credit and Capital. We know how difficult credit has been to obtain in recent years. The NSBA favors changes to the SBA loan programs, enhancing the status of credit unions and reforms that would make crowdfunding more viable for small businesses. Deficit Reduction and Entitlement Reform. These are certainly two of the biggest issues facing the long-term health of our economy and small business. Sweeping changes to the tax code, Social Security and Medicare are required. I don’t see anything happening until after the next presidential election, if then. Rein-in the Costs of Health Care. The Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare, didn’t really solve the affordability problem, except for those individuals who now have subsidized health insurance. Modernization, tax reform, and market-based solutions need to be injected into the system. Capital Gains and Dividends. President Obama is proposing changes that would dramatically increase the amount of capital gains taxes small business owners pay, especially when they pass their businesses along to beneficiaries. Tax Extender Permanency. Each year Congress extends various business tax deductions and this song-and-dance is growing rather tiresome. Small business owners need certainty so they can plan new equipment purchases and capital improvements. Export-Import Bank Reauthorization. While there is some debate on the effectiveness of the Export-Import Bank for small business, the NSBA urges its reauthorization for a four-five year period. National Regulatory Budget. Our regulatory environment is probably the biggest inhibitor to economic growth. The NSBA urges Congress to pass legislation that would require regulators to estimate the economic burden created by new regulations as well as create caps to control those costs. Immigration Reform. There is, of course, much to do here, but as a guiding principle, policies should be adopted that encourage immigration by individuals who will benefit the American economy and our competiveness, including foreign students graduating from our colleges and universities,...
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