Technology: Create your own TV channel on your blog or Website
1 comment November 20, 2008
Life Balance: Manage Stress
Doing it all–juggling your business, the holidays and a long to do list. Let the resources below help you catch your breath and sort it all out.
We’ve done the work for you and lined up some great resources for battling back stress to get back in the groove & move your business forward.
1. 7 Recession Stress Busters for Your Biz
Check out this crisp and focused clickable set of tips on the actions to take to get it together. Sneak Peak: Prioritize, Delegate and Get Healthy. Visit slideshow.
2. Be Positive says The Mayo Clinic for Your Life
We all have a running conversation going on in our minds. How we think affects how we act. Create a positive reinforcement that helps you take positive action. Read article to learn about the value of positive thinking.
2. Get a Healthy Workforce for Your Employees
Looks like a good tool to keep you and your team healthy. This free PDF is from Entrepreneur.com and provided by one of their sponsors. You do have to fill out a form to get access to the freebie. Download free PDF.
Share what works for you. Add a comment with links you like.
Add comment November 19, 2008
Starting: How Long Should Your Business Plan Be?
Recently, I did a post entitled Avoid These 8 Mistakes in Your Business Plan. The first mistake was that plan drafts are typically too long. So how long should a business plan be?
I surveyed SCORE counselors and experts around the country on this question. Then I did a quick Google book search. Below are the numbers and caveats.
Advice On Length From The Experts
Greg Nelson, SCORE Naples
At the end of the day, the business plan needs to be long enough to address all the key areas so that the reader is not left with serious questions, concerns and red flags…Most businesses should be able to present an adequate business plan in less than 20 pages. Simple businesses can probably do a decent job in 8-10 pages. In cases where there is complicated market research involved in a product, much of the supporting information can be placed in appendices, making the core business plan shorter, more concise and to the point and therefore, more effective.
Jeff Lippincott, SCORE Princeton
I suggest 25 to 35 pages typed. Less than that and the plan is too superficial. And longer than that and some of what is in the plan no doubt should be in an appendix instead.
Add comment November 18, 2008
Do you Prejudge?
Sales is a numbers game and my background is sales so when I started volunteering for SCORE I had the same problem of NOT prejudging as I did in sales. One of my, what is now a very long term client, came to me with a large sum of money (golden handshake) and an idea that seemed a little unrealistic to me. (Actually, more than a little unrealistic). WOW! Should I give her my opinion (which wasn’t asked for) or ask questions that would lead her to the right decision. The decision gods were with me and we moved forward with a business plan. My head started to turn around. We checked out the competition. I was surprised there WAS competition. (Made me think I may not be a bright as I thought I was.) Now 4 years later, she is looking for a second location. Scares me when I think what damage I could have done by prejudging. Same as in sales - clothes do not always make the woman! So, do you prejudge?
Add comment November 17, 2008
Shhhhhhh, It’s Confidential
Confidentiality agreements or non-disclosure agreements (“NDAs”), as they are often called, play an important role in protecting your company’s trade secrets. When used in business-to-business collaboration they can lead to new product development and other opportunities for profit and growth. When used with employees, they make your trade secrets less portable when your employees decide to join a competitor or set up shop on their own.
Keeping it confidential not only protects your valuable information, but also third party information that is entrusted to you. That’s why “keeping it confidential” is one of my 12 Rules for Avoiding Smoking Guns.
Employees may not realize, for example, how quickly a confidential “tweet” on Twitter about an exciting project at work can turn into a smoking gun document and a lawsuit. Training can therefore go a long way towards making NDAs more robust and keeping your business safe.
For more information see www.legalliteracy.com.
-Hanna Hasi-Kelchner Guest Blogger
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Add comment November 14, 2008
Finance: Organize Your Receipts Before Tax Time
Hopefully you’re not keeping receipts in a shoebox and have to scrounge around at tax time to get everything in order. And I hope you won’t have to pay your accountant for the extra hours it’ll take to get everything organized.
When I started my business almost 11 years ago, as part of the Accounting section of my filing system, I had a folder for each vendor I spent money with regularly (e.g., gas, light, Office Depot, etc.). When I found myself sticking receipts in a To Be Filed folder, I knew my system was too tedious. Because I was procrastinating about filing everything, I knew I needed to simplify my system.
Here is a simple solution that works for me.
- Create a home for all receipts for the current month. This can be a file folder, tray, basket, or whatever works for you.
- Create a home for all pay stubs from clients. For all checks you receive for the month, keep these pay stubs separately and near your receipts.
- Keep everything with that month’s bank statement. When the bank statement arrives, use a jumbo paper clip to keep all receipts and pay stubs for that month behind it.
This system is simple so it’s easy to maintain.
One thing though, I had to figure out a way to quickly find receipts for higher-priced products in case I needed repair, etc. I created a contact in Outlook called “Big Ticket Items.” In the text area of the contact I have a 2-column table that is similar to the one below. If I ever need to find a receipt, I’ll know which month/year bank statement to pull. (To create the table: if you use Outlook as your email editor, create the table in Word and paste it into the text area of the contact. Once it’s there, you can click inside the cells and type as you normally would. When you need a new row, click inside the last cell of the table and tab. Once this table fills up, you can quickly find what you need by using Find. Open the Big Ticket Items contact, click anywhere in the body, then press F4. Type whatever you’re looking for in the resulting Find what box and press Enter.)
| Date Purchased | Description |
| 5/15/2008 | HP Laptop, Best Buy |
| 5/29/2008 | Office Telephone, Office Depot - ATT |
| 8/6/2008 | Luggage at TJ Maxx |
| 8/23/2008 | Headset for ATT phone, Office Depot |
| 8/29/2008 | Took iPhone back and got BlackBerry, AT&T |
What system have you developed that works for you? Let us know.
4 comments November 13, 2008
Managing: Tune Out Bad News & Tune Up Your Biz
It’s time for a hard look at your sales, expenses and net profit so far in 2008. With Less than 60 days until the end of the year–really think about what next year could bring.
Okay, everyone has maybe had enough of the general gloom and doom in the news. If you’ve tuned it out, then tune in to some of your own research. Is your industry growing or shrinking? What does that mean to your sales projects.
Act Now to Manage for Success in 2009
1. Call SCORE to find an office near you for a Small Business Check-up. Schedule a personal mentoring session. Get a free and confidential review of your business in 2008. Call 1-800/634-0245 or Find SCORE Online.
2. Do Some Research. Use Google search to find out general industry trends. If you’re in retail, how much is retail down right now? What sectors are doing better or worse. This is the news you need–specific to your industry with an impact on your business. If you see an industry holding steady, growing or contracting, your plans for 2009 should take that into account.
3. Tune up your business plan. Really take a hard look at sales projections and expenses. You can break the plan into quarters, this way you may plan revenue and expense based on slower sales earlier in the year and a pick-up in volume a little later in the year. It’s too late after the fact. Now, you have the chance to set budgets based on expectations–and that is the management tool that helps you in 2009.
Add comment November 12, 2008
Managing: 4 Keys to Extending Credit
This week I’d like to share some helpful credit advice from my colleague, Bob Paul, at Chicago SCORE.
“Revise your credit policy now to avoid problems associated with extending credit later” says SCORE counselor Bob Paul. (He was vice president of credit and collections at John Deere for a multi-billion portfolio of loans to businesses and individuals.) Here are his 4 keys to extending credit.
1) Avoid extending credit if possible. Get paid on delivery, in advance, or at specified milestones during a project. Accept credit card payments where possible. Extend credit only if it is demanded in your industry. Providing credit to your customers eats up your cash and costs you money in terms of added expenses and a higher level of debt. Be sure you are appropriately compensated either through interest collected or through your pricing strategy.
2) Develop a credit policy which defines procedures to approve credit and authority levels within your organization. The rules may vary for granting larger credit amounts. The procedures may include requesting and reviewing the customer’s prior years tax returns, historical balance sheets and income statements, credit references, and credit reporting agency data. Higher levels of credit require greater scrutiny. Know how to evaluate creditworthiness. Be aware of all credit extension laws that are applicable to you and your customers. Follow them carefully. Failure to do so may result in you losing your claim to the account (and you may also be liable for punitive damages).
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1 comment November 11, 2008
Mentoring on a Bus
At SCORE we love mentoring our clients, but on a bus? Yes and no. I was on a shuttle bus going from the airport to a conference hotel when the woman next to me started talking about her business concerns. I starting asking her probing questions to help her think through what she was saying and suddenly a light bulb went on and she thanked me for my help. This I call short term mentoring.
There are many kinds of mentoring situations, but we often just think about the long term formal mentoring situation. Sometimes we just need a mentor for the moment as in my example above, sometimes we need long term mentoring (which is my favorite kind of SCORE client mentoring) and sometimes we need a secondary mentor. Example: At SCORE I often get clients with marketing or franchising needs, but as we work through their business concerns, the financial portion of the business plan always pops up. This is where we call in what I call a secondary mentor. Someone with a financial background.
As a business owner, your job is to find good mentors — someone who has been there done that and sometimes just talking things through with another person solves the problem. A good mentor keeps you on a positive track both mentally and businessly. (Yes, I know there is no such word as businesssly, but can you think of a better substitute?)
Isn’t it fun to be a mentoree after you have been mentored? We are constantly on both sides of the mentoring fence as we change and grow. What mentoring experiences have you had? I hope to see you on my next bus trip.
4 comments November 10, 2008
What Every Woman Entrepreneur Should Know about the Law
Women in business face enough hurdles as it is. Stepping on legal land mines shouldn’t be one of them.
Identifying potential flash points before they escalate lets you decide how much legal risk you want to take. It keeps problems small and inexpensive. It saves you time and money best spent on growing your business than defending it in court.
Use this 3-point minesweeping strategy to avoid lawsuits:
1. Review employment policies and make sure that your managers apply them fairly. Eighty percent of all business suits involve employment matters.
2. Read and negotiate contracts carefully. They are the number two source of business disputes.
3. Protect your market niche with intellectual property protections (i.e. patents, trademarks, copyright, and trade secrets). It will give you a competitive advantage.
For more information listen to my Business Week podcast.
-Hanna Hasl-Kelchner, guest blogger
View More Posts by SCORE’s Guest Blogger
Add comment November 7, 2008
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