The idea of owning a small business seems really exciting. You imagine yourself as the boss, probably heading a small company with over a dozen employees, and people doing things on the whim. However, this leary dream is shattered as soon as the taxes start rolling in – it’s something that’s unavoidable and quite hard to understand.

So our advice is that whenever you delve into any small business idea, or a sole proprietorship based platform, always give a hoot about the tax factor; otherwise it’s going to haunt you for a long time to come. On top of that, as a small business owner, the IRS expects you to be responsible and be aware of all the aspects of tax cuts that are related to your business.

The truth is that people don’t have the knowledge about tax cuts, which is why they either shut down their business, or end up paying a huge sum of money to the government. All of this could have been avoided if they knew about:

• Tax Deductions are Incurred On:

• All the direct cost that’s associated with running your business. Ingredients and accessories needed for the business are also counted as tax deductibles.

• The amount of wages, salaries and incentives given to your employees or customers.

• Number of office supplies, travel cost related to business and subscriptions to your publications.

• Total amount of fee that’s calculated as per each credit card payment, on your customer’s behalf.

• You must maintain all the record with client/customer’s name, so that it can be produced in times of need.

Take a look at some of the additional precautions and tips that may help you in managing your small business taxes:

1. If you own a business of content writing, then you need to cut down on the number of accessories that your writers will be, or are, using. Deducing the amount of paper, payments to writing associations for articles that could have been written by you or one of your writers, and such other factors affect the degree of expenses on monthly basis.
2. If the small business has a cafeteria in its possession, it’s best to maintain a record of food items, inventory and side meal accessories, so that the income tax parties can be shown this record, in time of need.
3. All the computer hardware that you purchased last year, it can be written off and should be written off in all its entirety. It also includes the cost of repairs, rentals and any other services that were directly or indirectly attached to your business at that time.
4. Home based small business offices can be managed even more efficiently because the cost control factor lies with you.
   1. All you have to do to avoid tax cuts is making sure that your home office represents the principal business or work operation unit.

Finally, if you ever encounter any situations where your checks or your client’s checks were cancelled or bounced back, do maintain them in a journal. The government agents look into these things whenever required.

I had the pleasure of talking to some of my recent coworkers; most of them had already quit their jobs, while the rest of them were still working 9 – 5. Those who were already doing a job underneath some kind of boss said that they envied the self-employed lot. Likewise, the self-employed friends said that they were better off if they didn’t have to work for themselves, because of the time constraints and all that stuff.

Clearly, there was a misunderstanding somewhere…

Self-Employment – Dreams and Realities Associated With It

There’re a lot of people who dream of working for themselves. Most of these folks are those people who’re:

• Holding office grudges against someone

• Who don’t like work space politics

• People who have a hard time keeping their boss happy

• People who don’t like their job and timings

So the next thing you know is that they listen to some hot shot, who keeps on talking about how he made a million dollars all by himself. It is quite possible but people don’t see the years of effort and isolation that this so called “hot shot” put behind his/ her earnings. People simply see the big and final picture…

The reality of this entire situation is going to pin you down quite brutally. I’m not saying that self-employment is a bad idea, or it’s something that’s regrettable. All I am saying is that you have to be realistic and accept some things that might haunt you down the path.

Now we’re going to take a look at the benefits of self-employment. Bear in mind that any normal day job, or a pure self-employment case, has their own advantages and disadvantages. We can’t really take sides because some people just love doing something for their own, even though if they aren’t making any money at all.

Benefits of Self Employment:

1. You’re Your Own Boss:

• “I am self-employed and I’m lovin’ it”. Perhaps you’ve heard or read this phrase over and over again, somewhere on the internet or on someone’s wall, at Facebook. The biggest advantage of self-employment is that you’re the only decision maker in your business. You’re not supposed to report to anyone about the haves and have nots of your work policies, because everything lies in your hands.

• You have the power to make decisions.

• You define your own timings.

• You get to take away all the profit.

2.       Minimum Economic Constraints:

• During the time of economic recession, you will not be fired from your job. We’ve seen thousands of people getting fired from jobs that they had been doing for the last 10 years. Where’s the employee – employer loyalty factor? There isn’t any. The employer is only loyal to you as long as the economy is good. And you will be fired without any regards, respect or thoughts about how you’re going to take care of your family.

• If you’re self-employed, take it as a part time and back up gig because it’ll help you in the long run.

3.       No Timed Schedules to Follow:

• Imagine doing a job where you don’t have to work within a certain schedule. Another great advantage of self-employment is that you get to define you own timings. No one is going to pester you for waking up late in the morning, or reporting late than your usual office timings.

I’m sure that there’re tons of other disadvantages about self-employment. However, for the sake of a word count limit on this article, let’s take a look at some disadvantages of self-employment.

Disadvantages of Self Employment:

1.       The Loneliness Factor!

• If you had been working as per a part time deal, then you wouldn’t know about the loneliness factor at all. The thing is that when you’re all into this business, alongside a realization that there’s no turning back, the so called “fun” starts to diminish.

• Your business will take its toll on you.

• Even of the work hours are not defined, you’ll have to work every single day for 20 to 30 years.

• There’re no guarantees in the self-employment business.

• You’ll get lonely; you’ll start having panic attacks later on in your life. So much so that you’ll be cut off from your own family members.

To kill that loneliness thing, you need to interact with people once in a while. Go out with your friends, or hang out at the local restaurant. Just talk to someone for a few hours every week and you’ll be in a working condition.

If there’s no one to interact with, you should arrange for an office where you can just work and see other people passing by. Just get out of your home because you’re going to be sick sooner or later.

2.       Entrepreneurship Takes Extra Guts!

Entrepreneurs are not made, they’re born. Those who’re made, they have to work extra hard to survive in this world. Entrepreneurs have a rebellious nature and that’s the sole reason for their success because they feel like carving their own destinies.

If you have been running your own business, or if you are self-employed at a small level, you have to take some time off and contemplate the fact whether this thing is working for you, or not. If it isn’t, it is time for you to take a real job and mingle with people on a real life level.

3.       No Defined Income!

For self-employed folks, the income is not defined, and you always have to worry about the forthcoming months and all the “what ifs”. Perhaps it is one of the biggest disadvantages of self-employment that people have reported so far.

We signed up in about five minutes, to reserve our biz name as our username. You can do the same by following this link to twitter.com.

If you’re launching an online boutique, you’ll learn quickly that SEO is very important. It’s also an ongoing process. One of my friends at mompreneursonline.com posted a link to this great SEO cheat-sheet:

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/the-web-developers-seo-cheat-sheet

From personal experience, I’ve come to believe that two things are crucial in building your online boutique:

Constant updating – whether it’s via blogging, new images, or constant little improvements to spacing, layout, content, colors, backgrounds, fonts, etc. – it’s important to always work on improving your site. We have an ongoing spreadsheet (which we actually need to revisit and update) that works to track all the changes we want to make to the site. We use google spreadsheets so that I can add to it from anywhere and web design can update it from anywhere.

Perseverance and hard work – it takes time to build traffic, to get a good number of impressions, to build a valuable pr campaign, and on and on. It won’t happen over night, but it will happen if you I keep at it! ! ( I’m definitely writing this as more of a reminder to myself than anything!!)

But if this last month of business is any indication of things, then I think things are finally taking a turn for the better. We had a heck of a great show at Baby Celebration, online sales are up, and the boutique’s sales are picking up too.

We’ve been careful to keep up the momentum as much as possible, focusing on driving traffic to the site and also on keeping in touch with prospective boutiques and current accounts. It’s true that your current customers are your best customers – it’s much easier to sell to someone that already likes you and trusts you. So I’m trying to get appointments with current accounts to get in and show them the new stuff. And I’m really really trying to focus on being optimistic and putting the hard work behind it.

Time management is always a challenge, but my partner is going to take on some new project management tasks, which will help a lot. Imagine if we actually created project schedules for the mountains we want to climb? Miracles might happen.

I hope that all of you are seeing a pick up in business too!! Anyone out there have big trade shows coming up soon? Dallas? Mom2B?

We’ve got Atlanta in 9 weeks because we’ve picked up a sales rep!!!!! Right now we’re in the contract phase and I’m working on getting the first official salesman’s kit together. I can’t believe how much stuff you always seem to need when RUNNING a business.

So we’re just pushing on.  Is it perseverance or blind faith? I have no idea right now. I’m focusing on sales, sales, sales  – especially to wholesale accounts. As I mentioned previously, it’s hard for everyone right now. And we’re all staying positive, trying to stay positive.

I’m reading the Bhagavad Gita right now and one of the main (life) lessons in there is to just put your head down and work. So I’m trying to do this as much as possible during work hours. It’s when I try to focus that I realize how flighty I let myself be with my time – check this email, check the news, blah blah blah.

And on that note, I will be blogging more; we’re growing so much, my time has been consumed. I’m working on getting our sales kit to our sales rep in the southeast – who is ready to hit the road! I’m very excited and nervous about this new development.

PS. You can now email me at info@startupkidsline.com if you have any questions. I’m behind on emails, so I’m hoping this will keep me a little more organized so I can get to all of them. And please, let’s help each other on the forums too!!!

I attended a Business Intensive Seminar on Sales last Friday. The seminar was put on by a business coach who had been referred to me by a friend. I’ll admit I was skeptical, and I battled back-n-forth in my head all morning about whether or not to go. I pretty much had myself convinced  to stay until I told myself “you are going. The only reason you don’t want to is because it’s outside of your comfort zone. So you are going.”

I am SO happy I went.

I really have a different perspective on sales. There were a lot of concepts that were thrown out as food for thought, as well as concrete ways to set sales goals and figure out both lead and sales conversion ratios. However, the main thing that struck a cord with me was the idea that, during any given sales pitch, you are focused on one of two things:

Money

How you’ll make a difference – meaning your service or your product.

If you are focused on how you’ll make a difference to the person you are pitching, you will be far more successful in your pitch than if you are focused on money, or closing the deal. The more you are focused on the money, the more you decrease your chances of converting the sale.

Funnily enough, I can use said Business Coache’s pitch to me as a prime example. When he was pitching me, I felt strongly that he cared about making a difference in my business. He had me sold on his group coaching program and made it sound like he’d send me info and it was all easy-going. The next email I received jumped right into needing my payment for the group coaching, and needing immediately or I’d miss the boat (group). Well, that completely threw me off. I almost immediately backed out and said I would look into it for the next round. If he had stuck with the original approach and made it seem like getting my money wasn’t the MOST urgent part of the process, I would have been happy to stay on course. Instead, I decided to attend this one-time seminar at about 1/20th the cost of the group-coaching program.

I think this is important for all of us who don’t have a sales background. It’s hard not to focus on whether the prospect is going to say “yes” or “no” – which is focusing on the money. Focus on how you are helping them and they will feel lucky to be in business with you. You always want it to feel like a win-win, especially in our industry, where you are looking for long-term relationships.

Even if you aren’t the sales rep for your company, this concept should translate to all of the PR and marketing you do for your company as well.

Great e-commerce job opportunity with 5 Minutes for Mom

I thought that I would post this e-commerce job opportunity in case any of you might be interested in working on an e-commerce site (uploading images, writing / editing product descriptions, graphics work) before plunging into running your own online boutique. 5 Minutes for Mom is offering a great work-from-home opportunity for the right woman with the right skills and willingness to commit to some decent work hours each week ($$$).

In brief, from 5MinutesforMom.com job description:

If html, css, ftp and other techy stuff doesn’t scare you and you are a skilled writer, with solid grammar skills and the ability to quickly write creative product descriptions, you just might become our new team member. If you also know Photoshop and happen to be a whiz at isolating images (removing backgrounds), you’re getting closer.

We are work-at-home moms and we want to offer this position to another work-at-home mom. Our site is all about promoting moms and so we are excited to be able to share the opportunity to work at home.

Click on the following link to read more about this WAHM job opportunity:

http://www.5minutesformom.com/3502/ecommerce-job/

Good luck!!

Fashion Fabric Swatch Kit. I felt really lucky to happen upon the Fabric Swatch Kit that is available at fashiondex.com. It comes as a workbook that you put together. The fabrics are divided by type in the 3-ring binder, and you start with a pile of tiny fabric swatches. As you put the kit together, you can touch and feel and really LEARN about the different types of fabrics that are available, what the common uses are, and all kinds of useful information!

I still use the kit as a reference tool and to keep additional swatches that I’ve found through my designing journeys.

The knowledge that this kit gives you, especially if you are completely new to the field, is invaluable. You will have a lot more confidence in your line and your fabric buying excursions if you take the time to learn about fabric.

I buckle down and work under stress and I’ve finally buckled down and focused on crafting a couple of designs we love (oh wait until you see our little giraffe gift set) and selling them every single freaking day. I spend at least an  hour on sales and marketing every day now. At least. And the momentum is building and the sales are rolling in – but it’s still a battle. New orders inevitably mean new supplies are needed, so we have to be prepared for the constant flow of money going out. I’m learning to watch every penny. Basically, I’m gaining a broader understanding of “cash flow”.

Even as times are tighter, we’re bringing on more help and growing our product line. Our organic onesie sets sell like mad in the boutiques, which has helped me hone my sales pitch. Even today, I got an appointment with a local boutique I’d really like to be in – just because I pushed it. They “don’t do personalized” because they need fast baby shower gifts. Oh and btw, if she had thought that our product line was for her, she would have responded to my email. I didn’t skip a beat before saying “our organic onesie sets are great gift sets that sell like mad in that type of environment. They have photo-real graphics, tattoos on the back, and matching hats.” She wanted another email, I told her I’d rather stop in – she’d be happy to see me on Friday. I’m getting more confidence, we’ve been out long enough that I know what really sells, and I really know that if I can get our stuff in her hands, she’ll want it. Like I said, I’m gaining more confidence.

And praying every day too.

I know SO many people who will be exhibiting at the ABC show this year. It’s coming up fast, can you believe it? We’re not going. I feel such a huge amount of relief at this fact, but don’t let that discourage you, I’m just really happy to be off the trade show stress circuit, it’s personal. But I want to pass my number one tip on to those of you who are going. I hope that this sinks in and you start making  your calls now – make appointments, make appointments, make appointments.

I did not do this last year. This would have made this difference between an I-can’t-believe-I-made-it-through show and an AWESOME show. You have to look at this like cold calling, especially if you’re a first time exhibitor and you’re counting on this show to launch your product. You will be blown away by the number of vendors that they let exhibit there. The buyers will be absolutely exhausted and glossy-eyed by the time they hit the “first time exhibitors” area.

If you have appointments, you’ll keep your booth busy which will naturally peak the interest of passers by – increasing the flow of traffic at your booth. If you’ve made the calls, you’ll recognize company names on badges, and even if you didn’t snag an appointment on the phone, you have an opener “oh, I spoke with you briefly about the benefits…”

Perspective

Last year, there were 32+ rows of vendors on the bottom floor and I think about 20 on the top floor. 50+ rows of at least 20 vendors a row – how do you stand out? I’ve heard raves about doing the new product showcase, so I would jump on that opportunity if it’s still available. And of course, I’ve written a lot about the importance of an amazing display.

If this is your first trade show, here are some quick tips: don’t pitch buyers in the aisle, don’t jump out in front of them (you’ll get  a feel for when a step out is different than hoarding all of their attention down the aisle).  Only visit other vendors when there are no buyers present, and if you are visiting (there will be plenty of time for meeting your neighbors), step away when a buyer stops to view their products.

You can make the show a fantastic show, but you have to MAKE IT HAPPEN. Don’t rely on the show to bring everyone to you, get your name out there before the show. Work the phones, get as many appointments as you can. You’ll start a great amount of momentum now, and with two months behind it, you’ll blow yourself away at the show.

And HAVE FUN.

We have been so BUSY lately! Really running-a-business-it’s-hard-to-keep-up-with-orders BUSY. And it’s great. It’s due to a number of factors, the first being a complete change in our discipline and focus. I’ve also gone to a few business intensive seminars that changed my view of myself and our business completely for the better. Lastly, the biggest thing is having some best-selling items that are flying out of the boutiques!!Organic Cotton One-piece baby gift set

In January / February, our online traffic had been building, and online orders were up, way up. And then, end of February, beginning of March, there was a definite drop-off. I was the first to blame it on the economy. Then I had to blame it on myself and my total lack of discipline. Which is not to be confused with amount of work I was doing – it was just always reactionary; I wanted to be on-top of it. Now, I’m getting there. If I have free time, I focus on what can be done to stay on top of things. I can honestly say that I devote at least an hour and a half every day to sales and marketing. At least. I now use an index card system – which I’ll save for another post but it’s the most simple amazing system that really works for me.

Once I stopped waiting for the world to come to me, everything changed. And our business is growing by leaps and bounds.

The next big factor in the business pick-up is attending business seminars by a really great coach. The first seminar was on sales and the second seminar was on a general business health check-up (WOAH!!!). Both were real eye-openers for me. I can’t tell you how great it is to get some outside input once in awhile. I don’t do it enough on THAT level; meaning, I listen to our customers but need to remember to listen to and seek out more mentors too.

By far though, a giant factor in our recent success is having some great products, at great price-points, that are poised perfectly for this tighter-economy / bigger baby boom / everybody’s going green movement. The great products, and now their proven performance, have given me greater confidence when I walk into a boutique. Which, of course, makes all the difference in the world.