Beginners Guide for Business and Financial | Thesecretmeeting.com

Archive for November, 2011

In this day and age it is almost impossible to maintain a decent standard of living on one paycheck, but in a family where children are involved it is not always feasible for both dad and mom to have a job outside of the home. Daycare expenses, the need for a second car, and too much time away from the children are some common drawbacks. This however is the exact situation that a Home Based Business works to its greatest advantage.

Home Based Businesses are great and can be extremely profitable but without the proper knowledge and tools you can waste an incredible amount of time and/or money which defeats the purpose you started out with, namely to make money and have time to do the things you want to do. This article was written to give the average person like you and I a practical guideline to getting started in a home based business the right way, and to save you wasted time and money.

My experience has shown me that there are basically 3 main pillars or principles of a solid home based business.

Pillar #1: It must have minimal start up cost.

A home based business that has a high start up cost will take longer to see a profit, and as we said earlier, time is one of the things we are trying to cut down on. Minimal cost will also make the home based business more assessable to a larger amount of families or individuals who are just starting out.

Pillar #2: It must be easy to set up and maintain.

The more complicated your home business project, no matter what it is, the more likely you are to give up out of sheer frustration before you see a profit. A business that is easy to set up and maintain will give you confidence and a sense of accomplishment as you complete each simple step in the process.

Let’s face it if you enjoyed wasting a lot of time and effort maintaining a home based business you would not be reading this article. This is about freeing you to spend time with your family and doing the things you love, not creating another taskmaster to replace your job! The first two pillars of a solid home based business are necessary for the third to occur.

Pillar #3: It must have a quick return on investment. (ROI)

You can spend months building a home based business but it there is never any real profit generated in a reasonable amount of time many people may get discouraged and give up. What is a reasonable amount of time? I would plan for a time frame on the order of weeks instead of months. Depending on the type of home based business some people have had a decent ROI within days, and unbelievable as it may sound some businesses that deal with affiliate marketing and sales can see profit as early as 15 minutes from startup!

You may be thinking to yourself “that’s too simple!” Let me say that within these 3 pillars there is plenty of detail to keep anyone busy. The business that you choose to start should definitely be something that interests you and possibly even something that you already have a measure of experience in doing. Whatever home based business you get involved in make sure that it is propped up by the 3 pillars listed in this article. Do not make the mistake of overcomplicating your efforts or you will see very quickly that you will get bogged down with a lot of needlessly wasted time and effort.

Here’s to your home based business success.

If you have a checking account, of course you balance it periodically to account for any differences between what’s in your statement and what you wrote down for checks and deposits.

Many people do it once a month when their statement is mailed to them, but with the advent of online banking, you can do it daily if you’re the sort whose banking tends to get away from them.

You balance your checkbook to note any charges in your checking account that you haven’t recorded in your checkbook. Some of these can include ATM fees, overdraft fees, special transaction fees or low balance fees, if you’re required to keep a minimum balance in your account.

You also balance your checkbook to record any credits that you haven’t noted previously. They might include automatic deposits, or refunds or other electronic deposits. Your checking account might be an interest-bearing account and you want to record any interest that it’s earned.

You also need to discover if you’ve made any errors in your recordkeeping or if the bank has made any errors.

Another form of accounting that we all dread is the filing of annual federal income tax returns. Many people use a CPA to do their returns; others do it themselves. Most forms include the following items:

Income:
Any money you’ve earned from working or owning assets, unless there are specific exemptions from income tax.

Personal Exemptions:
This is a certain amount of income that is excused from tax.

Standard Deduction:
Some personal expenditures or business expenses can be deducted from your income to reduce the taxable amount of income. These expenses include items such as interest paid on your home mortgage, charitable contributions and property taxes.

Taxable Income:
This is the balance of income that’s subject to taxes after personal exemptions and deductions are factored in.

Hiring an employee can be a big step for many small business owners. It means the end of doing EVERYTHING yourself and passing off some of the work!

In order to make the experience rewarding for both you and your employees there are a few things that every boss and leader should do…

1) Reward people for a job well done. Its frustrating working for someone who enjoys all the financial rewards of the efforts put forth by the entire team, especially if they don’t recognize what everyone has accomplished and contributed.

It doesn’t take much to acknowledge the effort of your staff. It makes a HUGE difference in the working atmosphere when you take a few moments to acknowledge your team. People like to know that they’ve done a good job.

2) Always provide a balance between positive and negative comments. Your job as a leader is to recognize the talents of those around you and feed them with the motivation and positive energy to take YOUR ideas to entirely new levels. Help them serve you better by building up their confidence… not tearing it down.

3) Step up and accept responsibility for your projects. At the end of the day if things don’t go according to plan, in my opinion, the responsibility falls onto the leader’s shoulders. Stand up and accept the responsibility should anything ever go wrong.

If your staff always bear the burden of projects gone bad, it will drag people down and destroy your working environment. Start contributing to the emotional bank account of those around you.

If you acknowledge the behavior you want to see more of, you’ll start seeing more of it. Be positive and accept some responsibility when things don’t go according to plan.

4) When you have good people it’s your responsibility as a leader to hold on to them. People with talent will take your company to entirely new levels but if they keep leaving, the growth of your company will be stinted.

People with skills know that they have options. Hanging the carrot of a potential big pay day will only work for a certain period of time. After a while it wears off and they start looking elsewhere. The last thing you want is for them to end up with your competition.

So the moral of the story is find good people, train them, treat them well, and your business will take off.