How to Protect Personal and Business Assets

Posted on March 16, 2012 by randyalletag

I”m lucky enough to live close enough to work that I can go home for lunch occasionally and I usually watch a local TV station to get caught up on the news and weather. One thing I’ve noticed over the years is the increasing number of commercials on two topics, prescription medications and lawsuits. I did some research and found out at answer.com that the United States has the most lawyers per capita in the world.

What brought this to mind was an article in a local newspaper Keeping the judgment hounds at bay that began with this paragraph.

“America is filled with lawyers, and lawyers sue people. Then those people hire more lawyers to ward off the suing lawyers. It’s all gonzo business for lawyers and a nagging little worry for the rest of us.”

The article then starts by providing some tips to safeguard your personal assets, such as making sure your insurance is tops. If you are married, your marriage license provides some protection if you have joint accounts since a lawsuit against one one person can’t touch jointly owned property. Please note, the article emphasizes that this protection varies by state.

A final tip on protecting personal assets in the article is that most retirement accounts such as IRAs and 401(k)s, pensions, etc. are protected from civil lawsuits if they are set up correctly.

There is more risk of litigation if you own a business and run it as a sole proprietor. If someone has an accident on our premises they can go after your personal wealth. For this reason lawyers advise setting up your business as a “limited liability” or Sub S corporation. They can still go after your business assets, but not your personal wealth.

The last business protection the article recommends is the most ironclad and entails using a lawyer to set up an irrevocable trust. The article mentions some downsides to such a strategy, but you won’t have to worry anymore about being sued. The article stresses that it must be set up properly and must be in place before a lawsuit.

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New Facebook Tools

Posted on March 14, 2012 by randyalletag

It seems that Facebook is constantly adding new features or making changes to their user interface, the latest being Timeline launched late last year and rolling out to everyone this year. Facebook has a blog about it here for more information. If you don’t know much about Timeline, I ran across a pretty comprehensive article, FACEBOOK TIMELINE FOR SMALL BUSINESS, on implementing the new interface. Please keep in mind that the article was written by a company that specializes in new media, so they are promoting it and are enthusiastic about the change.

How Facebook’s ‘Offers’ and ‘Reach Generator’ Can Deliver More for Less from Entrepreneur has a different slant on Timeline. They begin by stating that most people dislike Timeline for business and brand pages, but Facebook is planning to launch the following new ads that will look more like content than advertisements.

  • Offers
  • Reach Generator

The article provides this explanation of Offers:

“The most important and widely available new advertising tool for small businesses is called Offers, which allows businesses, brands and other Page owners to share discounts and offers with their fans. Making an Offer is as easy a creating a Status Update. Once posted to your Timeline, fans can claim the offer and use it at your business’s brick-and-mortar location or other point of purchase. And best of all, it doesn’t cost anything to create, post or claim an Offer.”

Reach Generator allows advertisers to make sure their content and ads will be seen by 75 percent of their fans by paying a fixed fee. Currently this system is designed more for businesses with larger budgets, but the article thinks it could offer a less expensive version in the future. Only time will tell how popular these new programs are with small business owners.

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A Business that Provides a Great Experience

Posted on March 9, 2012 by randyalletag

My wife and I have a favorite small local breakfast place that we absolutely love and recommend to all our friends, The Boardwalk Cafe in Webster Groves, MO. Over the years it has become a favorite place for all of our friends that have tried it as well. The food is consistently excellent with large portions , the waiters and waitresses are very friendly and courteous, and the service is fast. It even has outdoor seating in the spring, summer, and fall and dogs are allowed outside. The atmosphere is warm and friendly and the food is prepared in sight of the customers. On a recent trip my granddaughter loved watching the cooks work and some  of the cooks got a big kick out of my granddaughter as well.

It seems to be a real staple of the community with walk in and even bicycle in customers and is always packed on Sunday morning after about 8 or so. I thought of this great and thriving business when I read  Teaching Your Business to Manage Itself that begins with this question.

“Have you ever encountered a business where everything just felt in place?”

This is exactly the feeling I get every time I go to The Boardwalk Cafe, and the article describes that to achieve this feeling in your business you need to focus on clarity, culture and community.

The Boardwalk achieves clarity by focusing on a great breakfast and lunch with friendly,  quick, and courteous service. Every employee always make sure that everyone feels welcome and the owner is always there and makes sure everything is being done correctly.

The Boardwalk achieves culture  through the very good staff. In the past some family members have worked as waiters and waitresses, and it is also apparent that all the very friendly employees  are eager to make your breakfast or lunch a pleasant experience.

The Boardwalk obviously achieves community by the regular customers (I’ve noticed a lot of regulars over the years) and the positive interaction between the customers and employees. We’ve been very busy lately so it has been some time since we’ve been there, but I think a visit might be in order in the next couple of weeks.

Posted in Customer Service, Food and Drink | Leave a comment

Time Saving Tips

Posted on March 7, 2012 by randyalletag

This Saturday (well actually Sunday morning at 2 in the morning) one of my favorite events of the year happens, Daylight Saving Time begins and we get one more hour of daylight in the evening. I know some people don’t like Daylight Saving Time and really miss that extra hour of time they don’t get back until the fall, but I personally enjoy the extra time in the evening. Since we are losing that hour this weekend, I thought this article on How to Find More Time in Your Day was particularly timely (please pardon the pun). The article proposes these 5 goals to implement in your daily planning to find more time.

  • Zero-tolerance list
  • The rule of thirds
  • 5 people to thank
  • 30 minutes of media
  • 10 replies a day

I thought all 5 tips were valuable, but for me the fist two were probably the most applicable in gaining more time in my day especially this quote from the article in the zero-tolerance list tip.

“Make a list of things you need to stop doing so you can devote more time and focus to your business instead.”

Like the writer of the article, I have a bad habit of checking my email constantly, especially since we are using Outlook 2010 at work and now we get Desktop Email Alerts all day long. By the way, there is a way to turn if off if it distracts your work at this web page. This can be very helpful if you’re in the middle of a very complex project that demands your complete attention.

Another habit I personally have that is both good and bad is I have a tendency to get up and go talk to a person if I have a question or something to discuss. In one sense it is good because I get up from my desk (almost all of us sit too much) and a face to face conversation is more personal than a phone call. A quick phone call is more efficient from a time standpoint, so maybe I need to keep that in mind and use both techniques depending on the situation.

The other tip that would be very beneficial for me would be to start tracking my time as mentioned in the rule of thirds tip. After all, how can you know if you’re wasting time if you don’t know where you spent your time in any given day? Hopefully implementing some of these tips can help save you some time in your current busy day.

 

 

 

 

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Taming the Paper Monster

Posted on March 2, 2012 by randyalletag

My company decided to replace all the carpeting in our main office this year and thought  replacing the old worn out carpeting with carpet squares would minimize the trauma of moving every piece of furniture and all the cubicles in our two story office. I think they made the right decision and the new carpeting is beautiful, but it still meant that everyone had to clean up anything around their area, box up breakables, label their computer and phone cords, etc.

Needless to say it was a difficult task for everyone to some degree, but to us paper hoarders it was especially daunting. I am very challenged in this area and it took me longer than most to prepare for the carpet workers. I did manage to get everything ready, but I already am beginning to regress some so 7 Tips to Get Out from Under a Mountain of Paperwork may be helpful for me and any of you other people in need of help in this area. Here are the tips from the article.

 

  1. Keep what you need and recycle the rest.
  2. Divide and conquer.
  3. Store important documents away from the rest.
  4. Create a filing system that works for you.
  5. Shred it!
  6. Schedule a time to open mail.
  7. Stem the tide of junk mail.

Since my company recycles all paper and cardboard, I put a box behind my desk for those materials to make it easier and more convenient . I also liked the “FAR” approach mentioned in the article.

“One paperwork-reduction expert advocates the “FAR” approach: file, action, and recycle. Store what you’ll need for later reference in one file, keep action items in another, and recycle the rest.”

I plan to implement several of these tips in my area keep the paper monster under some semblance of control from now on.

 

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Small Business and Job Creation

Posted on February 29, 2012 by randyalletag

In the current economy we hear all the time that small businesses are one of the main job creators. I wondered how true this was or if it was an exaggeration, so I did some research and found this information from the U.S. Small Business Administration website FAQs. It turns out that small businesses generated 65 percent of net new jobs over the past 17 years (these figures were through 2009), so they really are powerful job creators.

Something further down on the page caught my attention with the mention that:

“An estimated 552,600 new employer firms opened for business in 2009, and 660,900 firms closed.This amounts to an annual turnover of about 10 percent. Nonemployer firms have turnover rates three times as high, mostly because it is much easier for them to go into business and cease operations.”

A more sobering trend I spotted in the statistics was that from 2005-2007 there were more firms created than closed, but the trend was reversed in 2008 and 2009. I then thought, if small businesses create all these jobs, what happens when a business closes? I got one answer from The New York Times in How Small Businesses Can Hurt the Economy.

The article describes how all the employees working at the business lose their jobs and other local businesses and the community are impacted as well. The article provides some sobering real world examples of the effect of small business closures, but also provides some ways to preventing the failure of a small business when it is sold or passed on to the next generation This quote from the article probably sums it up best.

“If businesses are treated as long-term, stable assets — with sustainable and transferable revenue and profit — the economic landscape changes. And it happens one business at a time. We grow and protect our economy from the bottom up.”

Te end on a positive note, careful planning can result in a successful sale or transfer to the next generation. I posted Local Small Business and Christmas Eve near the end of last year and one of the examples was a local bakery, McArthur’s,  that had been established in 1956. Not only had it made a successful transfer to the next generation, but it has expanded over the years from one to three locations creating jobs and having a positive impact on local communities.

 

Posted in Challenges of the Future, Strategic Planning | Leave a comment

Change is Essential for Small Businesses

Posted on February 24, 2012 by randyalletag

I live in Crestwood Missouri (a suburb of St. Louis) and I read a sobering article in the local newspaper this morning, The rise and fall of Crestwood Plaza. The article describes how one of the most successful malls in the St. Louis area has gone from four anchor stores and 90 other stores at it’s heyday down to no anchor stores (the last one, Sears is closing soon) and 15 stores.

I remember the days when it was so busy during the holiday season that mall employees had to park across the street and take shuttle buses to the mall. Traffic backed up for a mile or so on the main street to the mall. Now almost all of the stores are emptied and they used it for art space for the last year or so.

There are a lot of factors that led to the demise of Crestwood Plaza, but one major one was a failure to change over time. Another article I recently read, Small Business Strategies: Retail’s changing; so should you makes a strong argument that change can be essential for the survival of small businesses as well as malls. The article gives these three ideas for changes for your small business.

  1. Diversify the revenue stream.
  2. Enlist members.
  3. Create new relationships with vendor.

I really liked one quote from the article that I think sums up one of the biggest challenges that will face small businesses in the coming years.

“People don’t pay to come to showrooms. They browse; they discover; they ask salespeople for recommendations. Then they go online and buy from a company that didn’t invest in the selection and staff.”

As the article mentions, with some of the new smartphone apps, they can even check pricing while they are in your store. Implement some of the changes mentioned above  or others in your business to try to counteract some of the looming challenges for small businesses. After all, you don’t want to wind up like Crestwood Plaza or even worse, Northwest Plaza, another mall in St. Louis.

 

 

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Some Cash Saving Ideas

Posted on February 22, 2012 by randyalletag

Almost everyone likes to save money and it can be especially important for a small business to watch expenses in order to maximize profits, so when I read Seven Ways to Free Up Cash You Already Have from Entrepreneur I was interested in their advice in this area. Some of the advice is aimed more at personal finances, but much of it is applicable for businesses as well. After I read the article I thought of a recent example from my company, but first here are the 7 tips presented in the article.

  1. Read your credit card agreements.
  2. Check your service levels.
  3. Ask for lower rates.
  4. Optimize your bank accounts.
  5. Inspect your investments.
  6. Review your insurance.
  7. Reread your lease or rental agreement.

Now for the example from my company I mentioned above. We recently made the decision to allow one of our telephone support associates to work from home. They would need a good Internet connection as well as telephone service with some bells and whistles such as unlimited long distance and voice mail. We contacted a local provider and picked the business bundle we thought would be appropriate.

We got the first bill and the additional charges made the rate much higher than we originally planned, so looked at ways would could reduce the charges. Based on the first month we noticed that we could use a different tier of the phone plans and thought we would have to wait to change it for some time period, but decided it was worth a phone call. to see.

We were happy and surprised that the customer service rep informed us that they could make the change immediately and the next bill would be prorated from the time of the change. This isn’t really an exact example of any of the tips presented above, but you might keep our experience in mind as you review ways to reduce your business expenses after all a phone call only takes a few minutes and could save you some money.

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Not To-Do List

Posted on February 17, 2012 by randyalletag

We’ve all heard of and probably used the venerable to-do list in one form or another over the years. I use the term venerable since I ran across this interesting article on the history of the to-do list that describes  how Ben Franklin ran into on of the major problems with a to-do list: trying to do too many tasks at the same time and allowing your different tasks to conflict with others.

Another article I read recently brought up a different approach to the to-do list and that was coming up with a not to-do list. Small Business Strategies: Tasks to keep off your to-do list suggest these things you shouldn’t do:

  1. Be indecisive.
  2. Be right all the time.
  3. Neglect the important from the urgent.
  4. Get bored with your core business.
  5. Get distracted by too many ideas.
  6. Criticize your employees.
  7. Ignore current customers when marketing.
  8. Put too much faith in social-media marketing.
  9. Put no effort in social-media marketing.
  10. Shop entirely online or from big-box stores.
  11. Let things slide.

For my not to-do list I personally would add something to the very top  that is similar to  number 11 on the list and that is Don’t procrastinate. Hopefully you are not cursed with that problem, but it appears that a lot of us are because when I did a search on “procrastination quotes” I got pages of results, and if you are trying to put something off here are some of the funniest ones I read to waste a little time.

One last point,  if you’re interested in how to create one and use a traditional to-do list more effectively, here’s some great advice from MindTools along with some other good business owner tools.

Posted in Miscellaneous | Leave a comment

A Valentine’s Day Memorial

Posted on February 14, 2012 by randyalletag

Last year I wrote about a local small florist that had recently failed in A Small Business Owner’s Worst Nightmare and I thought about this today because it was the first time in many years that I wasn’t able to buy flowers for my wife for Valentine’s day at his now closed store. I really didn’t consider very much the reasons his business failed in the last post since I don’t know how well run his business was, but I thought I might get an idea about the reasons he might have failed after I read Lessons in Management Innovation from Main Street.

The main thing that struck me about this article was all the very successful businesses described in it thrive on change, to quote the article.

“They live in a world where agility is survival. They understand, experiment, learn and iterate. They know to seize upon what works and build it out while the building is good.”

I’ll never know the reasons that my favorite florist shop failed, but I suspect that a large part of it was so much competition from the large grocery store chains who sell flowers. I mean who would have thought of a small florist ship in a grocery store 30 years ago? The owner of the store stated that he had built his business on a quality product, which is very important, but he was in business for almost 50 years and I just wonder if he wasn’t able to make the changes needed in a very different business environment.

Posted in Challenges of the Future | Leave a comment