Tax Benefits for Your Business
Mind Your Own Business!
The concept of minding your own business means that while you are grinding away at your day job you need to be investing in your future and minding your own business. Pretty soon you’ll be able to walk away from that day job and mind your own business full time.
The best way to do this is through the acquisition of real estate.
Let’s take a quick look at where you are losing all your money-taxes. Taxes have been around since 1913 in the U.S. and 1917 in Canada (even earlier in England). While the original intention was to only tax the wealthiest of the population, obviously that’s trickled down to the masses, including those in poverty.
Now, keep in mind the more money you make the more taxes you pay. The wealthy know a way of getting around this-form a corporation. Corporations offer tax benefits and protect you from lawsuits. To learn more about this talk with one of our business coaches or your attorney.
We’ve all heard the golden rule of: Pay Yourself First.
But, many of us don’t do it. Until you learn and put this rule into effect, you won’t have any chance of getting out of the rat race. What this rule does is force you to come up with more income to pay your expenses.
There are some key areas of finance you should learn about, taking classes is one of the best ways to do this. Here are the basics you should learn:
Accounting
It pays to know how to read financial statements. When acquiring businesses or assets you need to quickly see the financial standing of the company you are acquiring.
Many grown adults do not know how to balance a balance sheet. In the long term, this knowledge will pay off for you and your business.
Investment Strategy
This skill will sharpen with experience. Talk to investors and observe how they play the game.
Market Behavior
Know the laws of Supply and Demand. No business owner can do without understanding these basic principles of the market. Bill Gates saw what people needed. Open your eyes to opportunities. Look at what sells and who buys.
Law
Do everything you can to grow your business within legal boundaries. Know your corporate, state, and accounting laws.
Once you know these areas of finances you can make them work for you. The rich practically invent money. You have to know where to find a great deal. Let’s continue with real estate. Look for houses in trouble or find the court in your area that handles foreclosed, police impound or other real estate situations. You can either renovate and sell or rent for residual income.
So, essentially there are two main types of investors:
- Those who buy pre-packaged investments
- Those who create their own investments
You know which are the most successful. In order to be one of those people you need to know what to look for and how to respond.
You must:
- Find a good deal other people have missed.
- Raise the capital needed for the transaction.
- Put together a svelte team to execute the plan.
There is risk involved in every acquisition. The goal is not to avoid the risk, but to respond to the risk with confidence and a steady hand.
If you need help identifying potential money-makers, where to get the capital you need and how to put together a smart team, try our FREE test drive to gain access to our resources and tools.
Check it out at www.BestEntrepreneurSolutions.com/guidedtour
To Your Success,
Nancy Baki at Best Entrepreneur Solutions
Getting Out of the Rat Race and Onto Your Journey of Creating Wealth
Get Out of the Rat Race
We’ve all worked jobs we hated. We were underpaid, underappreciated and bored out of our minds. We either quit these jobs or were fired for poor performance because we just gave up. Instead of taking that approach you need to consider every job an opportunity to learn something new that you can apply down the line to find success.
When you give people the tools they need to come up with unordinary solutions, you are enhancing their lives for the long run. You need to take this approach. What if one of your terrible jobs had been one with no pay at all and you needed to come up with some ingenious ways of making money? I bet you could have found a diamond in that rough. This idea can also be used in your own company.
Now, I don’t recommend going into the next meeting declaring that no one will receive pay anymore, but you can tell them that their potential raises, bonuses and other perks are now dependent on their creativity in ways to enhance business.
Let’s talk about a great concept called financial literacy. This certainly isn’t something they taught you in school, but is still essential to know. So, what is financial literacy?
The old school way teaches people to be good employees and not employers. This mindset will never make you wealthy. You need to focus on becoming a good employer. You also need to learn how to not only attain wealth, but sustain wealth for generations. This is what financial literacy is all about.
So, how do you get out of the rat race and start working toward a wealthier future? You need to understand the difference between an asset and a liability. Take a look at your own life and you’ll probably find the following:
Assets
- Real Estate
- Stocks
- Bonds
- Intellectual Property
Liabilities
- Mortgage
- Consumer Loans
- Credit Cards
You’ve probably been fooled into thinking things like your house, car and entertainment system are assets. They aren’t! Assets should be continuing to MAKE you money. When you continue to struggle, you are not building wealth. If you’re primary income is from wages and each time you make more money, you pay taxes-you’re not really creating wealth either, are you?
So, if buying a house isn’t an asset (and, it’s not because you spend about 30 years of your life paying it off), then what is. Here are some of the best assets to attain and when you can start to actually see wealth being created because of it:
Average time of holding on to an asset before selling it for a higher value:
1 year
- Stocks (Startups and small companies are good investments)
- Bonds
- Mutual funds
7 years
- Real estate
- Notes (IOUs)
- Royalties on intellectual property
- Valuables that produce income or appreciate
So, here are the steps to getting out of the rat race and onto your journey of creating wealth:
- Understand the difference between an asset and a liability.
- Concentrate your efforts on buying income-earning assets.
- Focus on keeping liabilities and expenses at a minimum.
- Mind your own business.
If you need help getting out of the poor mindset and into the wealthy one, try our FREE test drive and let’s look at working together.
Check it out at www.BestEntrepreneurSolutions.com/guidedtour
We went through the first three and next time we’ll talk about how to mind your own business to keep your eye on the prize.
To Your Success,
Nancy Baki at Best Entrepreneur Solutions
The Science of the Memes and How Spreading Ideas Around and Through Society is Ingrained in Humans
Science of the Memes
Today I’d like to discuss the science of the memes and how spreading ideas around and through society is ingrained in humans.
Memes:
This refers to types of ideas that spread the fastest through society, why they spread fast and how that affects consumerism. You can use this same information to create a lasting positive impression about your company, products and services. People are more likely to try a new product or services when they feel protected and reassured by the masses.
It’s been determined that spreading ideas is essential to the survival of a society. There are 5 main situations where this occurs. They are:
1- Crisis
2- Mission
3- Problem
4- Danger
5- Opportunity
Think of evangelism. This is prime example of people not only spreading the word, but convincing people to jump on board and start to spread the word themselves. To do this effectively, you need to incorporate a few key things that always catch people’s eye:
1- Sex
2- News
3- Unique Results
4- The Unusual
5- Helping Others
6- Secrets
Next we are going to switch gears a little and talk about viral marketing. While, traditional marketing can be used to your advantage, the reality is viral and online marketing is the king of the castle. You can spread the word online like the plague, if you know what to do. Here are some simple steps to do this:
1- Find an interesting idea
2- Make it easy for people to experience or trial
3- Spread the idea while people who are in close contact with others
4- Take advantage of existing communication methods
5- Develop the way of trying your product in such a way that it automatically draws more try-ers
6- Some great places to use viral marketing are:
7- Geocities
8- Ebay
9- Roger Wilco
10- ICQ
11- AOL Instant Messenger
12- MSN Instant Messenger
13- Winamp
14- Hotmail
15- “Tell A Friend” Buttons
16- E-Greeting Cards
There are six things everyone should be doing to benefit from word of mouth on the Internet:
1- Put Word of Mouth components on your website.
2- Assign people to monitor your viral marketing.
3- Place testimonials in different places on your website to walk a customer through the purchasing cycle.
4- Set up an email marketing campaign.
5- Stay up to date on what products and services the experts in your industry are recommending.
6- Use your website to demonstrate the great ways people are using or finding success with your products and services.
Here are other non-viral Internet opportunities to explore:
1- iPhone’s
2- Handheld PC’s
3- Blackberrys
4- And other well connected electronic devices
This wraps up the lesson on traditional and viral marketing. If you need help putting together any of the plans or successes in this lesson, try our FREE test drive to get all the help you need to put these plans into action.
Check it out at www.BestEntrepreneurSolutions.com/guidedtour
To Your Success,
Nancy Baki at Best Entrepreneur Solutions
How Word of Mouth Messages are Delivered and How You Can Influence Those Messages
Decoding Word of Mouth Messages
Today’s lesson will talk about how word of mouth messages are delivered and how you can influence those messages.
There are essentially 3 methods of word of mouth:
- Expert to Expert
- Expert to Peer
- Peer to Peer
When experts are talking about your products or service you will usually receive an amazing rush of sales and new customers, so obviously this is one of the best things that can happen. You can also help to facilitate this by offering free products to experts for them to review.
Expert opinion can also bring about new ideas that help to fuel new products, services and operating systems within your company. If you take the time to change or develop the opinions of even a small group of experts, you will have the opportunity to help your market explode.
There is a standard word of mouth delivery system that, in most cases, takes a few years. But, you can speed this up into only a few weeks. The standard system is:
- First impressions from an expert
- Organized trial of your products or services
- Pooling peer experiences
It’s important to know exactly who is advocating for your products and service. Take the time to find out who they are and reward them. While, you may already have a customer service system for filing complaints, do you have one for compiling praise? Most likely not. If you take the time to show these people appreciation, they will help take your products and services to the top.
Some of the ways you can show them appreciation are:
- Invite them to a customer appreciation dinner
- Offer to video tape their testimonials
- Ask to interview them for feedback to improve with
- Offer them a premier customer membership
- Ask them to join a referral incentive program
There are lots of things you can offer your biggest fans to help spread the word about your products and services.
Conventional media has been around forever and while it can still be effective, it’s lost a little of its luster over the last few years. There are a few reasons for this:
- Expensive and doesn’t necessarily return results
- Boring, lacking something fresh and new
- Too short of a time slot to offer enough information
While these are all true, there are ways you can make conventional media work for you. For the information to be effective it needs to be presented in the right sequence, come from the right sources, be relevant to the target customer, be credible and be delivered at the right time in the medium.
We’re going to switch gears a little and talk about the two phases of the product adoption cycle. Traditional media is great for taking you through the information stage where you can offer the information you need to your potential customers, but it’s not so great for measuring the results of those efforts.
Without these results you can’t fine tune your marketing and therefore can easily miss the boat and lose potential customers and waste a whole lot of money. Once a consumer has the information they need, they’ll go through a verification process as they analyze whether or not the purchase was a good one. They generally get their information through:
- Direct experience with the product
- Interaction with peers using the same product
- Experts’ experience
- Scientific journals and other resources
- Independent reviews and opinions
- You can accelerate this process by:
- Providing your own demo’s and free trials
- Offer them indirect experience through the experience of others
- Offer a good true story that can be passed around
Once you have the ability and are able to work through these concepts, you will be able to target your customers much better. If you need help with any of this along the way, try our FREE test drive to gain access to an experienced business coach and consultant.
Check it out at www.BestEntrepreneurSolutions.com/guidedtour
To Your Success,
Nancy Baki at Best Entrepreneur Solutions
7 Specific Areas You Need to Consider in Your Franchise Prototype Process (Part 1)
The Corporate Puzzle
The 7 specific areas you need to consider in your franchise prototype process:
- Primary Aim
- Strategic Objectives
- Organizational Strategy
- Management Strategy
- People Strategy
- Marketing Strategy
- Systems Strategy
These 7 areas will fine turn your plan for the ultimate level of success. In this lesson we are going to cover the first three.
Primary Aim
It’s essential in business development to set goals and see a vision for the future. This needs to go beyond the business and you need to think about what you want out of life. What do you dream about? How do you see your success unfolding? Knowing and understanding these things will give you the momentum to get started and the stamina to see it through. Even take a minute to write them down and tape to your desk for a constant reminder of what you’re aiming for.
Strategic Objectives
These are essential in taking your business from surviving to thriving. All of these objectives should offer solutions for how to get to your primary aim. There are many things you can use to set strategic objectives, but here are a couple of the most popular:
- Money: Setting monetary goals is a great, simple way to see how you are doing at any point in the game. It’s easy to measure and easy to find adjustments to help meet this goal.
- Worthy Opportunities: When considering partnerships and other business opportunities you need to think about whether or not they will help you reach your primary aim. Those that will are the best opportunities to seriously consider.
The key in setting standards and goals is not to limit you or stress yourself out. You need to find some quantifiable things you can use to measure your progress toward your primary aim. These are just two suggestions, but make sure no matter what you standards you set you are paying attention to the details, as these are one of the biggest keys to your success.
Organizational Strategy
The strength of your organizational structure can make or break your business, so it’s important to take the time to put together a solid structure for your business to grow from. Generally a company is organized around the roles and responsibilities that need to be taken care of on a daily basis and the personalities that need to fulfill those roles.
No matter what roles and responsibilities you’ve defined for your employees, you must always keep your personal primary aim separate from your company’s primary aim or mission statement. Once you’ve identified the primary aim for your company it will be easy to set up a position structure that will work.
Don’t forget to put together position contracts. Your employees should sign a statement of their roles and responsibilities. This helps keep them clear for you, the employee and other employees/vendors or other individuals.
You can see how these areas all work together to build a solid structure on which to build your business. If you need help defining any of these areas, you can check out the resources, tools and speak with me directly during your FREE test drive. Check it out at www.BestEntrepreneurSolutions.com/guidedtour
To Your Success,
Nancy Baki at Best Entrepreneur Solutions
www.bestentrepreneursolutions.com