Incorporation gives a separate distinct identity to your business, completely different from the shareholders or owners. The assets and liabilities of your business and owners or shareholders are distinct. The company has a separate legal existence albeit it does not have a separate body or mind of its own.

The personal property of the shareholders is safe even in cases of settlement of dues of creditors or any other form of lawsuits. You are liable only to the extent of your investment in the business. Similarly, the company property is safe if you are into any personal lawsuits.

Business incorporation allows you to transfer your ownership easily, sometimes without any paperwork too. The credit ratings of the company are separate from that of the different shareholders of the company. Your personal poor credit rating does not affect your business in any way.

Applicable tax rate for your company is much lower than personal tax rates. Your company can carry forward any amount of losses into the next financial year.

The existence of your incorporated business does not suffer due to the death or incapacity of any partner, owner, or shareholder. Your business continues its existence as usual. This offers greater … Read the rest

If there’s any common theme among coaches—it’s that they don’t like marketing… they just want to coach. But, when it comes to bottom lines, the reality is that you don’t make money from coaching—you only make money from marketing. So, the question becomes how can we make marketing enjoyable and even fun so we will actually do it?

I got an idea the other day when I was preparing a workbook and worksheet for our monthly training package. When I thought about how much fun it will be to go through these materials with members, I realized that the titles of these documents could be better! After all, coaches already have too much work, so are they really going to want more “work,” i.e. a WORKbook and WORKsheet? Then it came to me. I’ll rename my materials “Playbook” and “Playsheet”. Then the perception will be that they are going to play, not work, with the materials.

This perception shift can be applied to marketing too. I know it’s a leap, but what if when you schedule a time to work on your marketing, you call it “play time” instead? I’ve already been doing this. I tell my friends that I … Read the rest

A business grant is provided to a business or a proposed business after it fulfills certain criteria. It works very much like a commercial loan, except for the fact that you need not repay a business grant. Because the business grant does not burden you with issues like repayment and interest, the competition for these grants is fierce. They are harder to get than loans, and take longer to sanction, since a committee scrutinizes your application first.

Private organizations, business groups and government institutions provide business grants. In the US, though the federal government does not provide direct grants for small businesses, state government and many private organizations help out new businesses by providing grants.

For small business grants, almost all kinds of privately run businesses with less than 30 employees qualify. Whether you run a day care center, photocopying business, or retail from home, you can apply for a small business grant. The only eligibility criteria are that you must be above 18 years of age and a US citizen or resident. You need to submit a well-written business proposal in order to get a grant sanctioned, since you have to convince the grants committee about the feasibility of … Read the rest

No Built in Equity

In addition to paying the higher cost, you are not able to build any equity in the business equipment you have leased. This is because you are not the owner of the business equipment. This is a very big disadvantage of leasing business equipments. This lack of ownership is also responsible for the increase in the overall cost of the business equipments, because you also pay to the lesser for carrying the risk of the ownership with him. Moreover, the payments for insurance charges and taxes, further increases the cost of acquiring the business equipment.

High Early Cancellation Charges

One more disadvantage of leasing business equipments is that irrespective of the fact whether you are using the business equipment or not you need to pay for the total term of the lease. In some cases, you may get the facility of lease cancellation if you do not need the leased business equipments any more. However, this is at the cost of very high early termination fees.

Tax Deductions

It is also possible that IRS do not accept the leasing of business equipments as purchases for the tax benefits. In that case it will be a great … Read the rest

Hard work is important. Those who work hard and are consistent with their work are much more likely to achieve the things that they want.

However, working hard doesn’t necessarily mean that the work you are producing is of value and good quality. Other times working too hard may cause stress that leads to producing work that is of lower quality.

I believe that we must put more emphasis on working smarter. Let’s look at 5 ways on How to Work Smarter Instead of Harder.

Time. The first thing that you should be aware of is how you spend your time working. It’s a good idea to make a plan of what you will be working on, how you will carry out your work and also to decide how long you need to spend working on each task. This way you will learn how to use your time in a smart way so that you can reduce your working hours while being more productive.

Standards. Having standards are different that having goals. Standards mean that you have to obey to them because that is how your mind is conditioned. Setting higher standards mean that you are conditioning your mind to … Read the rest

Interesting without Fanfare

Once you have identified your buyer, imagine that you’re talking to them face-to-face while writing your product description.

Note that nothing can be more boring than kilometric sentences stuffed with unnecessary fillers, especially overused adjectives like excellent, one of a kind, the best of its kind and top quality, among others.

Use short, clear-cut words to highlight the features of your product; it is also best practice to present these in bullet format.

Your customers will appreciate bite-sized information more than a block of big words.

Remember that online customers stay on a web page for about 10 seconds, but the holiday rush could shorten this as they’ll be busy shopping for themselves, friends and loved ones.

Create Desire in Their Minds

Unlike in a physical store where practically everything on the rack can be touched and tested, your product can only be viewed on your website, which makes it hard for customers to decide whether to buy it or not.

Using a writing technique which breathes life into your product, you can easily make them want to buy your product.

By nature, most of us want what we don’t have yet-otherwise, none of us would be … Read the rest

Importance of Customer Referrals

Referrals come from many sources vets, customers, and neighbors. Be sure to provide quality services to clients if you want them to refer you to other people. A happy customer will come back to you and use your pet grooming service at least 5 times a year. Multiply that by the number of years he will live in the area, and you get to understand the importance of keeping your customers happy.

If you offer good services, chances are that the local veterinarian will also recommend your pet grooming business to pet owners. Apart from providing quality services, you also need to work on customer relationships if you want them to refer your business to other people.

In addition, keep in mind that if the quality of service is bad, you won’t lose just the client but many other potential clients as well. This is because the unhappy client will tell others to stay away from your pet grooming business.

Therefore, you see how important referrals are to your pet grooming business.

Customer Referral Strategies

How to get customers to recommend your pet grooming business to other people? Here are a few strategies.

• Ask for it

Some of the risks that small businesses face are overhead cost, cost of equipment, expected sales volume, salary cost, taxes, price charged for service or product, competitor’s actions, the local economy, changing trends, risk that the product may become obsolete. Other risks include damages from fire, water, natural calamities, intentionally inflicted damages, loss of data and property due to theft, machine breakdown forcing work to come to a standstill, cash flow problems that may force a business to close.

Every sector has its set of risks and the responsibility of the owner is to identify study and counter these risk factors. Loss of records due to fire or other such risks will make it impossible to determine the financial transaction details such as who has to pay or who has to be paid, making it impossible to bill or collect from customers.

Failure to obtain all necessary licenses and permits may be a risk that could close the business. Employees that may embezzle, liability losses, public liability, liability to employees, business could close temporarily due to ill health of its owner or due to his death, when a key employee who was invaluable is unable to continue etc. are some … Read the rest