How To Write A Quick & Easy Business Plan

How To Write A Quick & Relatively Painless
Business Plan ...

by: E.SAUNDERS

If you've never written a business plan before, the idea alone can be
overwhelming.

It doesn't have to be the nightmare of your imagination.

Traditionally, a business plan is used to secure funding from a lender or a
potential investment partner. It serves as something akin to your business's
resume, outlining the purpose and scope of your business, identifying the goals,
marketing and management, and establishing a basic balance sheet.

Now, even if you aren't going to seek additional funding, even if you're going
to grow your business by yourself from your office at home, you'd be wise to put
together a business plan. Simply going through the process has value. It'll help
you develop a clearly defined vision of what you intend to do with your business
and how you intend to do it.

These are some of the questions you should already have asked and answered
before you sit down to write your business plan:

What "want" does your business fill, and what service or product will you be
providing to fill that want?

Who will be your potential customer (this should be an established, niche market
with die-hard buyers).

Why will people purchase from you as opposed to the business down the street (in
other words ... what's your Unique Selling Position)?

How do you intend to reach your customers? A storefront? An ad in the phone
book? Direct mail? An Internet campaign? Selling door-to-door? A combination of
these?

Will you need additional funding and if so, how much will you need and how do
you intend to secure it?

Okay, so let's take a look at what you'll want to include in your business plan.

Most business plans are structured to examine four primary areas:

1. Executive Summary - a decription of the business

2. How you intend to market the business

3. How the busines finances will be arranged and
handled
4. How the busines will be managed

Let's take a further look at these.

Executive Summary: what the business will do, its Unique Selling Position, the
business goals, its ownership and legal structure, your skills and knowledge and
how they will benefit the business.

Marketing The Business: describe your product or service, identify your market
niche, how big it is, and how you plan to reach it. Define your customer,
identify your competition, detail your pricing plan, outline how you intend to
attract and convert customers.

Financing The Business: estimate your start-up costs, project your monthly
operating budget for the first year, outline your ROI (return on investment) and
cash flow for the first year, project your income and expense balance sheet for
the first two years, explain how you're going to compensate yourself, establish
who will maintain the accounting records and how they'll be maintained, and if
you're in need of funding, explain how much you need and how it'll be used by
the business.

Managing The Business: how will the business be managed day-to-day, what the
hiring and personnel procedures will be, how the products or services will be
developed and how they'll get into the hands of your customers. You'll also need
to account for equipment the business will need, and how insurance, rental
agreements, etc. will be handled.

That's it. In a nutshell!

How to Stop Waste, Fraud & Abuse

How to Stop Waste, Fraud and Abuse

by: E.SAUNDERS

Each year, businesses write-off six percent of revenue to waste, fraud and
abuse. But why would managers throw all that hard-earned money away when there
is a reliable way to eliminate waste, fraud and abuse using accounting policies
& procedures to create internal controls. Internal controls eliminate
uncollectible receivables; prevent theft or embezzlement; optimize inventory;
and stop waste, fraud, and abuse. Utilizing just a single control will add real
money to your bottom line each month.

Look for Easily Customizable MS-WORD files to Save Time

You can quickly and easily develop customized procedures and internal controls
for your organization, no matter what size it is. WORD templates reduce the
stress of writing clear internal controls, policies or procedures; of staying
late at the office to research “best practices” or of worrying over what format
to use.

Use Prewritten Text by Industry Experts

It's much easier to edit prewritten controls than to develop them from scratch.
Let experienced CPAs, auditors, and business process experts think through the
steps for each procedure or form. Then, save even more time by using the
resulting content that technical writers have edited in MS-WORD instead of
re-entering the text.

Vital Procedures Resource used by Thousands

Accounting Policies and Procedures is one such vital resource used by thousands
of executives and managers to strengthen their financial operations. Such a
manual contains an introduction to accounting, an explanation of how to create
your own controllers manual, an example of a complete prewritten manual, ample
policies, procedures and forms for the most common processes (revenue, cash,
assets, purchasing and administration), a detailed index to every keyword,
phrase and regulation used, plus a Guide to Embezzlement Prevention.

Examples for Every Owner or Executive

Every month executives share their stories about satisfying their auditors with
new controls, of increased earnings found in their business and how much time
was saved. So, if you want to increase the profits of your business then
consider an Accounting Policies & Procedures manual.

Help Your Business Grow Now

Can you afford to let a single precious hour pass without finding out what
Policies and Procedures can do for your business??

How To Write A Quick & Easy Business Plan

How To Write A Quick & Relatively Painless
Business Plan

by: E.SAUNDERS

If you've never written a business plan before, the idea alone can be
overwhelming.

It doesn't have to be the nightmare of your imagination.

Traditionally, a business plan is used to secure funding from a lender or a
potential investment partner. It serves as something akin to your business's
resume, outlining the purpose and scope of your business, identifying the goals,
marketing and management, and establishing a basic balance sheet.

Now, even if you aren't going to seek additional funding, even if you're going
to grow your business by yourself from your office at home, you'd be wise to put
together a business plan. Simply going through the process has value. It'll help
you develop a clearly defined vision of what you intend to do with your business
and how you intend to do it.

These are some of the questions you should already have asked and answered
before you sit down to write your business plan:

What "want" does your business fill, and what service or product will you be
providing to fill that want?

Who will be your potential customer (this should be an established, niche market
with die-hard buyers).

Why will people purchase from you as opposed to the business down the street (in
other words ... what's your Unique Selling Position)?

How do you intend to reach your customers? A storefront? An ad in the phone
book? Direct mail? An Internet campaign? Selling door-to-door? A combination of
these?

Will you need additional funding and if so, how much will you need and how do
you intend to secure it?

Okay, so let's take a look at what you'll want to include in your business plan.

Most business plans are structured to examine four primary areas:

1. Executive Summary - a decription of the business

2. How you intend to market the business

3. How the busines finances will be arranged and
handled
4. How the busines will be managed

Let's take a further look at these.

Executive Summary: what the business will do, its Unique Selling Position, the
business goals, its ownership and legal structure, your skills and knowledge and
how they will benefit the business.

Marketing The Business: describe your product or service, identify your market
niche, how big it is, and how you plan to reach it. Define your customer,
identify your competition, detail your pricing plan, outline how you intend to
attract and convert customers.

Financing The Business: estimate your start-up costs, project your monthly
operating budget for the first year, outline your ROI (return on investment) and
cash flow for the first year, project your income and expense balance sheet for
the first two years, explain how you're going to compensate yourself, establish
who will maintain the accounting records and how they'll be maintained, and if
you're in need of funding, explain how much you need and how it'll be used by
the business.

Managing The Business: how will the business be managed day-to-day, what the
hiring and personnel procedures will be, how the products or services will be
developed and how they'll get into the hands of your customers. You'll also need
to account for equipment the business will need, and how insurance, rental
agreements, etc. will be handled.

That's it. In a nutshell!

How to Stay Focused & Build Your Business

HOW TO STAY FOCUSED AND BUILD YOUR BUSINESS

by: E.SAUNDERS

You have a detailed business plan, which showed the overall intent of your
company. You presented the business plan to your bank before start-up and they
submitted funding in the amount that you both deemed acceptable. The original
business plan contained the basis of the procedures that will help you stay
focussed while the company grows. Let's examine some of these processes that you
will use to give your business the focus it needs to grow and succeed.

1. A marketing plan.

If sales are a part of your
operation (and it seems that some form of selling is always a big part of every
company), then, you will need to have your sales group focussed on a marketing
plan. Short term and longer-term analysis should be a part of this planning and
will likely contain an analysis of your competition, market potential and sales
projections. Be careful not to fall into the trap of letting “the business take
care of itself”, stay focussed at all times and be sure your managers are tuned
into this market monitoring regularly, nothing is more defeating to the general
manager/owner than to be told by a sales manager…I didn't see that coming!
YIKES!

2. Accounting procedures.

If sales are important,
then the need to stay focussed on receiving the proceeds from sales is equally
important. Accounts payable, expenses and accounts receivable need to have fixed
procedures in place to allow money to flow freely through the company coffers.
Focussing on these procedures at regular weekly and monthly meetings will put
the accounting and marketing groups on the same path. A rift between marketing
and accounting is a common bureaucratic occurrence; so don't be surprised if one
point you hear from someone from sales state, “We make the money here, how come
I have to live by their rules?” Getting these two operations to stay focussed on
a bottom line results oriented approach is a regular part of an owner's job
description.

3. Human resources.

If you have ever worked for a
manager, who considered his employees as expenses rather than assets, then you
will be familiar with the need for managers to stay focussed on human resources
within the company. A manager who is fixated on staff reduction regardless of
their accomplishments will create an atmosphere of fear. Certainly, no one wants
to be grossly over-staffed, but a good owner/manager will focus on keeping
adequate employee base numbers, and ensure continuing training, safety programs
and top of the line employee benefits. It's your campground, why not have “happy
campers?”

4. Selling your business.

This does not mean
selling in the true literal sense. It means focusing on being sure your company
image is one that is the envy of your competitors and is known in the business
world as a first class operation. You can do this by having key managers
attending industry conferences. Be clear and tell them that their focus at these
seminars is to network, thoroughly gathering as much new information that they
can. They should also 'sell' other attendees on the importance and efficiency of
their company in the industry. Upon their return, have follow-up meetings with
these managers where they will report in detail on what they have learned.
Managers attending conventions and seminars should take opportunities to enjoy
themselves, nevertheless, they will be the “face” of your company, it's wise be
sure that they focus on making them business meetings, and not all “playtime.”

If planning, organizing, staffing, direction and control are five major
factors in managing a company, staying focussed throughout the process, is
paramount

How to Quit Your Job

How to Quit Your Job

by: E.SAUNDERS

Do you to know without ending up on the street? In a nutshell, you need to avoid
the self-employment trap, think like a business, and create multiple passive
revenue streams.

Avoid the Self-Employment Trap

If you quit your job and hang up your own shingle, you might work harder for
less money. You may enjoy working from home or choosing your own clients, but
you might end up living from client to client without building any real wealth.
Many self-employed people I know suffer from feast or famine. They spend lots of
time and money marketing their services and get lots of clients. They get really
busy doing the work and stop marketing and then their prospective client pool
dries up.

If you set up your business so that you do everything - marketing, sales,
bookkeeping, operations, and fulfillment, then you are limiting your success
potential from day one. You will spend lots of time on non-income generating
activities and may get frustrated and burned-out in a short time.

The real key to successfully creating wealth outside of a job is to avoid the
mistake of trading one boss for another boss. You need to stop trading your time
for dollars. Stop thinking like a wage slave. Look beyond earned income.

Think Like a Business

There are many problems with earned income. The biggest one is that you are
trading your time for money. If you stop trading your time, the dollars stop
coming. This is a huge problem if you decide to have a baby, get sick, want to
take an extended vacation, or are ready to retire.

The IRS penalizes self-employed people who operate as a sole proprietorship with
a hefty self-employment tax. How can you avoid this? Well, I am not an
accountant or CPA, so I am not giving legal or accounting advice, but I have
learned to think like a business. Before you quit your job, interview local tax
advisors to educate yourself on different business entities and tax strategies.
Start thinking big.

Build a Company with Multiple Passive Income Streams

You need to build a company that works for you. My best advice on how to quit
your job is to build a business that offers multiple streams of passive income
in addition to your earned income. There are so many exciting ways to design
your income portfolio. It requires imagination, courage and planning.

Structure your business so that your daily activities are fun and challenging.
Identify the things that you don’t enjoy or are not good at and find other
people to do these activities – outside partners, independent contractors, or
employees.

How to Quit Your Job

My advice for how to quit your job is to avoid thinking that you have to do
everything yourself to make your new enterprise run. Think big! Set up systems
and structures that work for you so you don’t have to work so hard. Incorporate
and make the tax system work for you. Design your work around multiple passive
income streams to support your active work. And finally, have fun!

Fours Simple Steps To Improve Your Resume

FOUR SIMPLE STEPS TO BETTER RESULTS WITH YOUR
RESUME

by: E.SAUNDERS

Is every job description you read the same? No.

Is every job you submit your resume to the same? Of course they aren’t.

If all these job descriptions are different, why do you submit the same resume?

Every day, people send the same generic resume out as though each position was
identical and each employer was attempting to hire identical skills and
attributes. Too often, the results they receive are like the broken watch that
is right twice a day—hit or miss success.

They list their name, address, phone numbers and email address, list an
objective, education, and chronology of experience with dates of employment. The
resume includes some successes or accomplishments. This is their resume.
In the days prior to computers when changing a resume required you to re-type
different versions, this made sense. Today, when computers allow you to
customize, spell and grammar check documents so easily, you are missing out on
opportunities and costing yourself money by being lazy and not tailoring your
resume for each opportunity you are interested in.

Here are several steps that you can do to improve your resume and get better
results.

1. Each employer will be interested in different
attributes of your experience. They often indicate it by the items they describe
in their job ad. Emphasize the experiences that you have that relate to the
skills being sought and the functions you will perform in the job they will ask
you to perform. If you are applying for a staff position, emphasize your staff
experience and minimize your management experience. If you are being hired to be
a leader, write about your recent leadership.

2. Employers are more interested in recent work,
rather than work you did many years ago. Use more space in your resume to
highlight recent experience, rather than things you did before George W. Bush
became President.

3. Like setting a goal where you make them
specific, measurable, achievable within a specific period of time, describe your
successes or achievements concretely. Reducing costs is a nice start but it is
more powerful to describe something as reducing operational costs globally by
2%. Increased departmental sales by 27% resulting in . . . You get the idea. Use
action verbs wherever possible.

4. Ask someone you trust to critique what you’ve
written. Too often, people believe that they can do everything by themselves
without asking for help. Ask a friend in your industry to critique what you’ve
written to insure you’re on target and aren’t missing the mark.

When you go to a restaurant and order a meal, you have the expectation that
it will be prepared in a way that will please you and be presented on the plate
beautifully. Writing a great resume requires that you be the chef and prepare a
meal that is both visually appealing and tastes great too!

Five Reasons to Incorporate a Company Offshore Account

Five Reasons to Incorporate a Company Offshore
Account

by: ED SAUNDERS

When it comes to the term ‘offshore’ used in conjunction with company
incorporation, the term ‘offshore’ generally refers to any jurisdiction other
than one in which the company incorporated will conduct the majority of its
activities.

Usually such a jurisdiction has some degree of taxation or reporting benefit
attached that makes it attractive to the company owner, and the concept of
incorporating a company offshore will bring at least one of the following five
benefits to a business owner: -

1) Ease of Operations – depending on the
jurisdiction and the type of business activity to be conducted under the company
name to be incorporated, the operating restrictions, auditing and accounting
requirements and standards to which the business and its employees and directors
must adhere are often far less restrictive offshore than onshore.

Exceptions to this rule are financial services based companies in many
jurisdictions for example, who have to comply with extra regulatory legislation
for the protection of the company’s clientele.

The advantage of easing operations particularly for a small or start up company
is a reduction in operating costs and in the amount of time a company’s
directors have to dedicate to form filling and report filing.

2) Reporting Simplification – this ties in with the
first benefit; in the majority of offshore jurisdictions favoured for company
incorporation the company activity reporting requirements are often far fewer
and simpler as the business activities entered into by the company are conducted
outside of the jurisdiction in which it is incorporated.

Furthermore personal information relating to the company’s directors and
shareholders need not be declared in all cases or the extent to which personal
information is required is far less intrusive.

3) Taxation Reduction/Negation – the reduction in
taxation liability is one of the main benefits associated with investing
offshore, opening an offshore bank account or incorporating a company offshore.

If you set up your company in a low or no tax jurisdiction you could potentially
save yourself substantial amounts of money legally. Often the rules are that if
the company incorporated in a particular jurisdiction never derives an income
from the local economy it can operate tax free.

It’s therefore possible to use an offshore company in an overall international
business structure and ensure profits are posted in the offshore jurisdiction
and so no tax is liable! Many international corporations operate in this way and
actually negate their tax liability fully.

4) Asset Protection – by operating a company
offshore, i.e., outside the jurisdiction in which the company operates, it is
sometimes possible to position assets away from the reach of any potential
litigious action and also to shield business transactions from the eyes’ of the
competition.

5) Personal Privacy Protection – the level to which
a director or shareholder’s personal information is required, held, visible or
investigated offshore is likely to be far less invasive and intrusive than
onshore. It is also possible to appoint nominee directors and secretaries for
offshore companies in many jurisdictions thus keeping the true company owner’s
identity shielded.

The information contained in this article cannot constitute advice. Each
individual’s circumstances are unique and whether or not offshore company
incorporation is something that could benefit your business can only be
determined with personal advice.