Small Business ABC

(prHWY.com) April 12, 2012 - Cairo, AK -- Owning and running a small business can be rewarding - personally and financially - but only if you have what it takes to succeed. This chapter gives you all the know-how you need to be sure that you're making the right decision.
Being a small-business owner doesn't mean that you have to work 70 hours a week, get to make a six-figure income, or have a breakthrough product or service that earns you national recognition. We know many successful smallbusiness owners who work at their craft 40 hours a week or less and some who work part-time at their business while on someone else's payroll. The vast majority of small-business owners we know provide products or services quite similar to what's already in the marketplace and make reasonable but not extraordinary sums of money - and are perfectly happy doing so!
Smallbusiness-abc
Ask the typical small-business owner what he thinks about bankers, and you'll usually get a reaction somewhere between a roll of the eyes and a hair-tearing tantrum. Bankers get a bad rap from the small-business community.
After you determine that your community has a need for your business, you also need to determine the location of your business. Although you could set up in front of your house, you decide that your street doesn't get enough traffic. To maximize sales, you decide to set up your stand on the corner down the road. Luckily, Mrs. Ormsby gives you permission to set up in front of her house, provided that she gets a free glass of lemonade. You've just negotiated your first lease, and you've just had your first experience at bartering.
Think small? What's happening here? Why would the CEO of a gigantic company like GE want his employees to be thinking small? Because Jack Welch knew that small can be beautiful and because success and survival in the business arena always favors the agile over the cumbersome, the small over the big. Thanks to this "small is beautiful" trend - and thanks to increasing technological advances - you no longer have to be big to appear big; everyone can compete in most of today's marketplaces.
After a customer commits to buy a product or service, the customer service must continue. Never halt your efforts to satisfy customers. When a customer forks over the dough for your wares and you don't meet the customer's service expectations, even if the sale is finalized, you may lose repeat business, and you may lose the opportunity for referrals to other customers.
Although the two lists have some overlap, what motivates you, the employer, is in most cases quite different from what motivates your employees. So, if you expect your employees to perform as you want them to, you must figure out how to motivate them differently than you motivate yourself.
To be a successful employer, you must adjust the way in which you envision the motivational process. The biblical Golden Rule needs its own special twist for employees; you should amend it to state, "Do unto your employees as they would have done unto themselves."

The subject of compensation is one of those eyes-of-the-beholder kinds of issues. If you view compensation as an expense when you establish a plan for your business, that's exactly what it will turn out to be - an out-of-pocket, painful expense, with all the downsides that term implies. On the other hand, if you view your compensation plan as a motivational tool, you won't be creating an expense account; you'll be developing an instrument to increase your
employees' performance. Think about it. The best employees are those who believe they're valued and being treated fairly. The best measurable (key word here!) method of that valuation is their salary. If they believe the money is consistent with the value they deliver to your business, you won't have to motivate them - they'll motivate themselves. Poof! The salary expense account suddenly becomes a salary investment account. A huge difference!
If your business legitimately hires independent contractors to perform work, the contractors are responsible for paying their own taxes. However, this doesn't absolve you, as the small-business owner, from reporting on independent contractors that your firm works with. In fact, you're required to file Form 1099 with the IRS (and some state tax agencies), which details the amount of money paid to companies (that are not corporations) that receive $600 or more from your business for services (not the product provided).
Although you may want to expense the full amount of an equipment purchase in the tax year that you made the purchase, doing so isn't always the best option. Looking ahead, if you expect your business profits to increase and push you into a higher tax bracket, you may be able to reduce your taxes by depreciating (over a period of time) rather than deducting (immediately)pushing more tax write-offs into future years when you expect to be in a higher tax bracket.
However, you should resist the temptation to incorporate just so you can have your money left in the corporation, which may be taxed at a lower rate than you would pay on your personal income (refer to Table 18-1 for the personal income tax rates). Don't be motivated by this seemingly short-term gain. If you want to pay yourself the profits in the future, you could end up paying more taxes. Why? Because you pay taxes first at the corporate tax rate in the year your company earns the money. Then you pay taxes again on the profits (this time on your personal income tax return) when you pay yourself from the corporate till in the form of a dividend.
Remember that: online marketing are great for small business - you can use Facebook ads - Google adwords - and YouTube. You can read the full Arabic article at smallbusiness-abc.com.

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