10 minute read
Letters to the Editor
Starting Up & Achieving Business Success in the COVID-19 Era AFTERSUCCESS COVID19
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UNCERTAIN TIMES START-UPS— PG. 18
INFORMATION-PRENEUR Innovative Ways to Sell Products NICHE MARKET PR Connect with Overlooked Media! CREATIVE GROWTH TACTICS Thrive During the Pandemic. LENDER READY Steps to Stable Finances
INTERVIEW: DAN AYKROYD Actor and Successful Businessman! —Pg. 16 WWW.HOMEBUSINESSMAG.COM
Reducing Stress and Staying Mindful While Traveling
The holiday season is typically the busiest time of the year for traveling. People enjoy going to see family members or exploring new locations as they have time off from their jobs and schoolwork. This year, traveling may come with a bit more stress and anxiety due to the pandemic that people are facing around the world. The good news is that there are some things you can do to help reduce the holiday stress, as well stay safer while traveling. There may be fewer people traveling this holiday season, but there will still be a lot who do, and they need to know how to make it more enjoyable. Mindful travel is the key to reducing stress, staying safer, and making the most of your time traveling. This year will be a great exercise in mindfulness, which is something to be excited about. By remaining mindful, travelers will go about their experience in a way that is conscientious and intentional. Just as many things in life, this is an issue that comes down to learning to be more focused and plan ahead.
Katie Sandler Personal development and career coach https://katiesandler.com
Creating Effective Video Advertising
People love to watch videos. In fact, YouTube reports that there are over 500 hours of content uploaded to the site every minute. It also reports that every day, people watch over a billion hours of video on the website. The fact is that for smart marketers, video advertising is a literal goldmine. The problem, however, is that most marketers don’t know how to create video advertising that is effective. Marketers who don’t know how to create successful video advertising often just waste their money. To get a great ROI, it’s imperative that you know how to create video advertising that is effective. It’s so important. One of the biggest challenges with video advertising is determining its effectiveness. A good place to start is to consider how time is valued. Everyone is competing for time, so it’s crucial to ensure that you get the viewers' time and attention, as they are the most valued assets. Source Digital has created Source Activated Moments (SAMs), a new ad technology that autonomously allows interaction and removes engagement guesswork. Focusing on the “four P’s of marketing,” which are price, promotion, product, and place, SAMs optimize all of those and do so at precisely the right time. Despite the pandemic, there are no signs that video advertising is slowing down, if anything, viewing has increased, making it even more important that advertisers strive to become more effective.
Source Digital, Inc. Innovative video advertising www.sourcedigital.net
Combat WFH Burnout
It’s no secret. As we approach the end of 2020, people are burned out. Working from home has created unforeseen challenges, and the holidays don’t make it any easier. Allowing employees to keep their calendars private could help with stress and burnout.
Allow your teams to analyze their calendars and determine where they can block off time for undisturbed, focused work. Perhaps there is a thirty-minute segment at the beginning and end of each working day that is theirs, used simply to catch up and plan. Whatever you decide, “Me Time” is a time behavior that protects people from feeling overwhelmed by having too many meetings and too much busy work. Dan Pontefract CEO and leadership expert Known for working with Salesforce and A&W Author of Lead. Care. Win.
Shape the Team Culture You Want
It’s an instant gratification world where people/ employees/leaders want things to change immediately. They want progress to be a flip of a switch. They want the easy button. Every leader, team, and organization want to snap their fingers and magically arrive at their desired outcomes. However, developing people and culture doesn’t happen like that. There is no quick fix or hack to developing leaders and the team culture you desire. It's a process. It takes commitment, discipline, and focus. The most compelling team and organizational cultures invest time, energy, and resources into shaping the culture they want, not just the culture they've experienced in the past. They know that one of their greatest competitive advantages in today’s day is not just WHAT they do as a company, but the culture of HOW they do it. People want to be a part of a compelling culture and contribute their skills to something greater than themselves. Jason V. Barger Speaker, leadership coach and organizational consultant
Author of Thermostat Cultures, ReMember and Step Back from the Baggage Claim Host of The Thermostat podcast
Founder of Step Back Leadership Consulting https://jasonvbarger.com
Step Up Your Gratitude Game
It might look a little different for your employees this year. They may not be doing much traveling due to COVID-19, and their family gatherings are likely to be small, quiet affairs. But leaders can make the holidays special by giving workers the heartfelt “thankyou” they deserve and need right now. Saying “thank you” isn’t just a nice thing to do during the holidays. It’s smart business year-round. It positively impacts everything from employee well-being to job satisfaction to motivation to productivity. It’s a powerhouse tool for building engagement. It may even be a pathway to a more empathetic and emotionally intelligent workplace.
When a leader begins saying “thank you” on a regular basis, it truly can boost positive emotions throughout the workforce. In fact, it can unleash a chain reaction of gratitude in which everyone becomes more appreciative of each other. In hard times, this can make the workplace a haven.
Deb Boelkes Entrepreneur Author of The WOW Factor Workplace: How to Create a Best Place to Work Culture Author of Heartfelt Leadership: How to Capture the Top Spot and Keep on Soaring www.businessworldrising.com
We appreciate your feedback and work-from-home success stories for review and consideration. Please send both via e-mail to: editor@homebusinessmag.com, or via postal mail to: HOME BUSINESS® Magazine, 20664 Jutland Place, Lakeville, MN 55044.
“The IRS won’t likely ask you for a specific receipt,” she says. “Instead it may ask you to produce all receipts in a certain category — such as travel and meals — for the last three years.”
3. Get paid the right way
You don’t make money until you get paid. Jason Vitug, founder of phroogal.com, says he learned that the hard way. “I was managing multiple affiliate networks and programs through Excel and another project management tool that just wasn’t cutting it,” he says. “I was missing revenue opportunities and delaying sending invoices.” He now uses Airtable to create data sets and generate reports. “It allows me to easily identify revenue trends and missed opportunities. It also helped me keep track of affiliates that require an invoice,” he explains. Now he can invoice on time and get paid faster. As a business, you want to minimize the risk of a slow (or no) paying client. Here are 3 steps that will help:
1. Have your client sign a solid contract.
“Working with a contract that you’ve pieced together from free samples found online or borrowed from others is like driving a car with four mismatched tires,” warns attorney Annette Stepanian. “Your ride is always a bumpy one and you’ve got this nagging worry that you’re going to blow out a tire and get stranded on the side of the road.” While working with an attorney to draft custom contracts is ideal, if that’s cost-prohibitive, Stepanian offers affordable contract templates for a variety of businesses on her website, YourLegalBFF.com. 2. Invoice promptly. Set up a system, like
Vitug did, to invoice promptly and follow up on slow-paying clients. Consider adding an incentive (such as a discount) for early payment or a penalty (such as a late payment charge) for paying late. 3. Check business credit. You can check business credit on current and prospective clients; no permission is needed. If a client’s commercial credit report shows late payments or other problems you may want to ask for a larger deposit, or even pass on the job.
4. Pay yourself the right way
Smaller businesses often forgo paying formal payroll and simply take money out of their business whenever they feel they have enough to pay themselves. Paying yourself a regular salary, though, even if it’s small to start, recognizes your contribution to your business. Additionally, owners of certain business structures, such as an S Corporation, may run into tax trouble if they only take “owner’s draw” out of the business but don’t pay themselves a salary subject to payroll taxes. Some accounting software programs offer a payroll option, or you can work with a Professional Employer’s Organization (PEO) to outsource payroll, compliance, and even to get benefits. Whichever approach you choose, make sure you get a business bank account and don’t use it to pay personal expenses. Many lenders will insist on reviewing your business bank statements and a bank account that’s a hot mess will do you no favors when it comes to getting approved.
5. Foster a more consultative relationship with your accountant
Next to you, your accountant probably knows more about your business than anyone else. What’s more, he or she may be able to see opportunities to both save money and reap additional profits. Make an appointment after tax time to dig into the weeds of your business finances with your accountant. It may prove to be a profitable investment in your business.
5 Tools to Organize Your Business Finances in 2021
By Gerri Detweiler
Here are 5 tools that will make managing money in your business a breeze:
1. Expensify
A leading expense management tool that lets you scan and upload receipts to easily create expense reports. Integrates with Quickbooks and Xero. Expensify.com
2. iScanner
This AI enabled mobile app from BP Scanner turns your smartphone into a scanner. Turn documents and receipts into images and more. Available for Android and iOS.
3. Freshbooks
Accounting software for non-accountants that makes it easy to generate professional invoices. Freshbooks.com
4. Gusto
Online people platform that helps small businesses onboard, pay, insure, and take care of themselves and their teams. Payroll, benefits, and more. Gusto.com
5. Nav
Check and monitor your business and personal credit for free, and get matched to financing based on your business data. Nav.com
Gerri Detweiler has been guiding individuals through the confusing world of finance and credit for 20+ years. She is the author or coauthor of five books, including her most recent, Finance Your Own Business: Get on the Financing Fast Track. Today, Gerri serves as the Education Director for Nav (https://www.nav.com), an online platform that matches small business owners to their best financing options and gives free access to personal and business credit scores.
Checklist from Home-Based Business Start-Up Guide
Questions
■ Are the people living with you on board with you working from home?
■ Are you the sort of person who can work at home despite distractions there?
■ Do you know how much space you need to operate your business from home?
■ Do you have sufficient space for your business needs?
■ Will your home office meet tax deduction rules?
■ Do you have or can you get the right desk and chair?
■ What electronic equipment is needed for your business?
■ Do you have enough storage space?
■ Do you have the right lighting for your business needs?
■ Do you have to accommodate business visitors to your home?
■ Did you decide how to decorate your office?
■ Did you think about personalizing your office?
■ Do you have enough Internet speed at home for your business needs?
■ Do you need an additional telephone line?
■ Do you have the software you need to run your business productively?
■ Do you have security devices to protect your home office?
■ Have you made plans for data backup?
■ Do you have an IT expert you can call upon for help?
■ Can email marketing help you?
■ Do you have a marketing budget?
■ Are you going to use paid ads online?
■ If you are using paid ads online, which venue(s) will you use?
■ Are you going to use paid ads in other media (e.g., local newspaper)?
■ Do you have a plan to regularly review your marketing efforts?
Yes No N/A
* This Checklist excerpted from Home Business Magazine’ s
“Home-Based Business Start-Up Guide.” To order your paperback or eBook version, go to Amazon.com or visit
HomeBusinessMag.com
