IRS Note: Business Income

The IRS (Internal Revenue Service) is a vital link to the small business sector. Get familiar with the IRS.gov link to best assist you in many helpful areas of your business start up and maintenance.

Much of our consultation to you in the formation and strategy portions of your start-up is verse for verse per IRS policies and procedures. The Bureau gathers the information from many government links, sources and credible resources that are not only verifiable, but tested.

Take a look here for additional information regarding filing tax forms in relation to your Business Income. Contact us at the Bureau for further FREE tax assistance relating to your small business. We are here to help you!

Downsized? Hit the Career Refresh Button

Times are tight no matter what you do. You can find the resume and spend your time rewriting it ten ways for ten possible jobs, or you can invest your time following your dream. Continue your current career out of a sense of necessity or you can reinvent your career, with all the knowledge and skills you've earned over the years, and truly take charge of your life. This page shows you where to start on your new path as an entrepreneur, guiding you through all the first steps and giving you a firm foundation to build your new business.

If you've already got a sense of your new career direction, close this box and explore the Franchising, Financing, Small Business and Legal tabs. If you're starting from scratch, close the box and check out the Explore Entrepreneurship tab. By pressing the refresh button on your career, you gain an new perspective and new found appreciation on what it means to be your own boss and/or manage others.

Define what you think success is. Be ready to attack the untapped potential in the "niche markets". What is that exactly?, well, just remember that there is no need to re-invent the wheel to obtain success. Instead, re-inventing what you view as successful is going to go a long way.

Reinventing your career can mean looking beyond the obvious alternatives. More small businesses will be started in the next twelve months than in the last fifteen years and The Corporate Bureau wants to make certain that these newcomers to the "world of start-ups" are informed and prepared for the success to come.

If you are being downsized or have been downsized, consider this new path of promise. You've put your faith and trust in everyone else's ability, now find favor in your own. Your dreams can become just as much of a reality as they last employer you worked for. Your time is now.

Hiring and Keeping Good Employees!

Our economic tremors notwithstanding, hiring new employees is essential to your organizations vitality. If you want your business to run at a high caliber, then those employees need to also be of a high caliber. Having a company with good employees doesn’t just magically happen overnight, though. It requires you to meet their needs at the hiring stage and continually evolve to meet their needs throughout their employment.

HIRING
Getting quality people into your company from the start will set the tone and get things moving in the right direction, which is why the hiring process deserves time, effort and most importantly, careful consideration. In order for you to be able to hire quality people, however, quality people need to apply. The way to attract them is through marketing, which is done in much the same way as you market to customers. If your company has won awards, let people know. Emphasize the aspects of your company that you’re proud of. People want to work for a high-quality company, so let them know just how high of quality you are.

Now comes the actual hiring process. Here is a simple six-step process to hiring good employees.

Create a detailed ad and job description that accurately reflect the position.
List the set of skills you are looking for, the different roles that need to be filled, the necessary education and experience levels of the applicants, and the personality traits that are important to the position and the company. Once you’ve compiled this information, writing a detailed ad shouldn’t take long. Having a structured and highly detailed ad can prevent many unqualified people from applying for the position. Once the ad is assembled, post it on the Internet, in local newspapers or anywhere else where you think the right people might see it. Within a few days you should start to receive resumes.

Sift through the resumes
Once the resumes are in, start sorting them out. This can be a painstaking process, but as long as you know ahead of time exactly what you’re looking for, it doesn’t have to be. Simply separate the resumes into three piles “definitely qualified,” “definitely not qualified” and “somewhere in the middle.” Continue to narrow the field, eliminating those “definitely not qualified,” until you’ve reached a manageable number. Remember, more does not always mean better. Whether you receive twice as many applications as you expected or half as many, as long as you are receiving quality resumes, you’re on the right track.

Perform preliminary phone interviews
Before you meet face-to-face with your qualified applicants, make sure that they are at least a possibility for the position and don’t have any attributes that would make them unable to perform the necessary tasks. In order to do that you are going to have to conduct preliminary phone interviews. Start by developing a list of questions. The questions should not require long-winded answers. They are meant to be quick and easy questions that weed out applicants that aren’t right for the position. For example, if the position you are trying to fill requires a fair amount of traveling, ask applicants how they feel about that. If some applicants aren’t up for it, then eliminate them. Or you can ask how much money they expect to make. If certain numbers far exceeds what you are capable of paying, then you can eliminate those people as well. Make sure that you are using the same set of questions for each applicant when conducting the interviews. There needs to be a basis for comparison.

Conduct face-to-face interviews
After you’ve narrowed the field down to a handful of qualified possibilities, schedule face-to-face interviews. At this point in the process you already know the education, experience and basic set of skills of each applicant. This is your opportunity to ask more in-depth questions. Find out whether they are introverted or extroverted, open-minded or close-minded. Assess their behaviors and the different personalities of each. The face-to-face interview is a chance for you to see how the applicant might fit in to the company’s dynamic. Again, be consistent with your questioning and maintain a fairly structured environment. You’ll want the interview to flow smoothly and be conversational, but you don’t want to get too far off track.

Run a background check
Running a background check can shed some light on unforeseeable issues. You might find that an applicant has a problematic criminal record or that information on his or her resume is false. You can search the Web for companies that perform background checks. Performing a background check online is easy and convenient, but it’s not free, so be prepared to spend a little money.

Select the candidate who is the best fit:
One thing to remember when making your final decision is that the most qualified applicant is not always the right choice. You’re going to be spending a lot of time with this person, possibly very stressful time, so make sure you choose someone who isn’t going to drive you crazy. Obviously the person has to be a good fit for the position, but he or she also has to fit well with you and be able to grow with the company. If an applicant is intelligent, eager and open-minded, the training will be easy and the skills will develop on their own.

RETAINING
Bringing good employees into your company is only half the battle; keeping them there is the other half. Now that you’ve got them, you’re going to have to put a little work into keeping them happy.

There are two basic categories that most forms of employee retention fall under—monetary and non-monetary. Monetary retention is pretty self-explanatory. If any of your quality employees are looking to move on to greener pastures, you pay them to stay. Providing monetary benefits certainly has an effect on many employees, but there are also a great deal of employees out there who are looking for something that money can’t buy. On top of that, it’s nice to have something to offer employees when you can’t afford to simply off them more money.

One thing that many employees look for is flexibility. If you feel like any of your employees are starting to stray, pull them aside for a little chat. Talk to them and find out what steps you can take to make their lives better and easier. If there are certain tasks that an employee doesn’t need to be in the office for, then allow him or her to work from home on occasion if that’s what is going to help out the employee. Sometimes it’s just as simple as letting employees work out their own schedules. If the work is not sensitive to any particular day or time, let employees work when it’s most convenient for them, so long as they are still accomplishing the same amount of work. Another retention tool to keep in your arsenal is vacation. Employees have lives outside of work, lives that are very important to them, so don’t underestimate the power of extra time off.

Non-monetary benefits don’t stop at flexibility. Many times employees just want a work environment where they feel comfortable, not tense. Even if everything else is suitable, an unsatisfying workplace atmosphere can be enough to cause any employee to want to quit. Make the physical environment bright and cheery. Give employees free reign to voice their opinion, respectfully of course, and have a little fun. Employees that dread going to work rarely stay long. They are also not nearly as productive as happy employees, so keep lines of communication free and clear so that you can make work an enjoyable place for everyone.

Count up all the costs of your business start-up!

There's no way you can start and build a successful small business if you don't have the funds to back it up. Yet so many first-time business owners greatly misjudge the amount of money they'll need to get their business off the ground. That's why so many new businesses fail. You may think you have a pretty good ballpark estimate, but that's not good enough. You need a detailed map with solid, well-researched numbers.

Here at The Corporations Bureau, we want to make sure that you consider all the "valid" costs. The CB is designed to assist all the small business owners and entrepreneurs out there in obtaining all the success they desire at a nominal cost. Unfortunately, many organizations out there greatly profit from your desire to launch a new start up...to the point, where they grossly overcharge minor services provided. And in many other cases, the CB has found reputable organizations charging for services that are normally provided to you for free! (What you don't know, hurts you).

The first thing you need to do is figure out exactly where your costs are coming from. There are two different kinds of costs—initial costs and ongoing costs. Initial costs are one-time expenses that are needed to set your business in motion. Ongoing costs are those expenses that you anticipate paying again and again (could be weekly, monthly, annually, etc.). Start by making a list of ALL your initial costs, no matter how small or insignificant.

Initial costs you should consider:
Incorporation
Legal fees
Accounting
Licenses and permits
Rent and security deposit
Signage
Transportation
Insurance
Building/remodeling
Supplies
Initial inventory
Furniture and equipment
Installations


It's not enough to consider how much a large piece of machinery costs. You also need to think about the costs involved with transporting it or setting it up. Everything needs to be accounted for!

Now do the same with your ongoing costs.

Ongoing costs you should consider:

Rent or mortgage
Utilities
Supplies
Business insurance
Inventory
Attorney. CPA or professional fees
Payroll
Health insurance
Equipment/machinery lease payment
Building/landscape maintenance
Advertising/promotions
Delivery expenses
Loan payments
Credit card charges


Figure out exactly what maintaining your business will cost you on a month-by-month basis. When you review your monthly financial statements, you'll be able to gauge whether you're on track and if adjustments need to be made.

Now that you have a tally for both types of costs, add extra money to each and consider this miscellaneous. Extra unforeseen costs are always going to come up, so you want to be prepared for them.

What you should have now is a total for your initial costs and a total for one month of ongoing costs. Take your one-month total and multiply it by six. It is generally recommended that you have enough cash on reserve to keep your business going for six months. Some might recommend a full year, but make sure you prepare for at least a six-month period.

Many of the expenses that you will incur can be difficult to gauge. That's why you need to do sufficient research. The best way to start is to talk to people who have already started similar businesses. You obviously won't want to approach direct competitors, but talking to related businesses or businesses in a different geographic area might be helpful. Trade associations can also be a wealth of information. Many have startup packages that can help you in calculating your startup expenses. Suppliers, manufacturers, distributors—they're all excellent resources for figuring out costs. Call them and tell them that you're planning to start a business and are looking for costs. Ask about things like bulk-buying discounts, startup inventory packages, credit terms or anything that might lower your cost. Make sure you contact several sources to get an accurate picture of these costs. You can also always check out websites or libraries for information.

There is no one-stop-shop type of resource for accurately researching startup costs, but as long as you keep digging and ask plenty of questions along the way, you'll eventually come up with accurate numbers. The thing that you need to remember is that good research is invaluable. It can tell you whether your business idea is financially feasible and give you a better picture of what your place is in the market.

When you actually get your final tally, you may be surprised by how expensive a startup can be. This may even prompt you to review your expenses and slash the things you can live without. Talk to an established business owner to see what suggestions he or she might have for bringing your numbers down to a more manageable level.