If the time has come to strike out on your own you must, of course, begin with a plan for the operation of your new business.

Preliminary considerations include where you will operate the business from (your home, rental space, purchasing or building, whether or not you will need to hire employees at the outset or wait until after the business develops, how you will finance the start-up costs and continued operation of the business, and whether or not you will be solo or if you will have a coowner or co-owners.

It is of critical importance that you have sufficient cash or financing available from the outset, since one of the primary reasons for new businesses to fail is undercapitalization. A well prepared business plan to be reviewed with your financing source is essential. Once all of these preliminary considerations have been addressed, a decision must be made as to the form of business entity that your new business entity will adopt. There are several options and choices that must be considered.

• Sole Proprietorship
  Perhaps the most basic form is a sole proprietorship, which is a business that is owned by a single person. The main advantages of a sole proprietorship are that the start-up filing fees are minimal and all of the business income is reported on Schedule C of your own personal income tax return, with no separate income tax return required for the business itself. The main disadvantage is that you will be personally liable for all of the debts of the business.

• Partnership
  Yet another entity choice is a partnership. For purposes of this article, discussion is limited to general partnerships only, since limited partnerships are beyond the scope of this article. Some of the main benefits of a general partnership are lower start-up costs and no double taxation of income at both the partnership level and at the individual partners’ level.

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Strategy is the brains of branding. So to rev up your business and your own personal profile, try out these 5 strategies that professional marketers use to position their brands successfully:

1. Own an Attribute

(Think: Volvo and Safety)

Let’s say you’re in a crowded, competitive field (aren’t they all?), and you’re having trouble distinguishing your business from your key competitors.Consider adopting the Attribute positioning strategy. Look for an attribute that it’s credible for you and your business to own that someone else doesn’t own. It must be an important attribute in your industry (or one that you can make important.) Maybe your strength is accountability or your relentless drive in servicing clients. Or your product has a quality or design feature that is an advantage.Use your attribute as your organizing idea in your elevator speech and all your company’s marketing.. Make it your mantra. Use examples and stories to connect the attribute with you and your company.

2. Invent a “New Process” or “Magic Ingredient”

(Think: Google)

Creating a “new process” or having a “magic ingredient” is one of the oldest brand strategies dating back to patent medicines in the 19th century .  While it’s takes creativity, consider this strategy if you’re a consultant, doctor or an innovative professional or entrepreneur. Put the focus on how and what you do that is different and remarkable.Look at Dr. Arthur Agatston. He a new process for dieting  and branded it with a great name - The South Beach Diet.

3. Be the Maverick

(Think Steve Jobs and Apple)

As much as leaders are part of our mythology, so are mavericks.

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To change your life, you must get rid of old thoughts and be able to accept some new ones.  One of the greatest truths is that you create your life with your thoughts.  Your thoughts are what make things happen.  Thoughts and words have power.

Each thought in your mind is the seed for everything you do, feel, or say.  Thoughts are what create our feelings.  If you want to feel happy you need to change your thoughts.  If you are feeling depressed, angry, jealous or sad you are the one that is causing you to feel that way with your negative thoughts.

You have more control over your thoughts than over anything else in your life.  When you are able to control your thoughts you will be able to control your world.

Thoughts create everything that happens to you.  Thoughts are what produce results in your life.  You will get more of whatever you focus your thoughts on.  Whatever you think about frequently will happen in your life.

If you focus your thoughts on lack of money, worrying about a certain event or about becoming sick, that is exactly what is going to happen.  You have a great power that needs to be used in the right way.  Drop your negative thoughts today like a hot potato!

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Words are cheap. What matters is the true belief system behind your words and the actions you take because of those belief systems. Economies don’t improve, people improve. Waiting for something to happen is for losers. The most important economy is the one created between your ears.

During down markets you have to get creative to make things happen. Although you may not be able to push a new car market if it’s not there, you can niche market, create affiliations, utilize your customer base better and push a used car market. In other words, there are options for success. Standing and waiting for the world to create your economy is not a good option.

There is an old quote that says, “When you go to work on yourself and get better it’s amazing how much better your customer’s get.” The one activity that can always pay off during a down economy is individual and organizational development.

Everything boils down to the four P’s of business - people, process, product and positioning. Do you work daily on your personal development? Do you work daily to increase your knowledge and ability to sell your product? Do you work daily to increase the effectiveness of your process? Do you work daily to increase your positioning through better marketing? If you work on these things daily you will determine your sales success in good times or bad. Good times will now become the norm.

Thoreau said it best: “Things don’t change; people change.” Make a commitment to figure out why you want to do something. When the why gets strong, the how gets easy. When you know why you want something, ideas of how will flow to you. Concentrate on the solution, not the problem. When you dwell on the idea of a prosperous market you create the reality of a prosperous market.

When you open the door to your belief system, you close the door of scarcity.

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My wife is from Pittsburgh, so you know what I was watching Super Bowl Sunday. Being a lifelong Bengals fan, it was painful for me to watch the game. Although the game wasn’t played well by either team, it was fun to watch the advertisements. I watched the ads not from a football fan or TV viewer’s perspective, but from a marketing perspective. My goal was to figure out if each ad was a super ad or a super waste of money.

The cost per ad in a Super Bowl time slot is reported to be somewhere between $800,000 and $2.5 million. How could one commercial be worth that much money? Can it possibly pay for itself?

I judged each ad by several criteria to determine if it was worth the money. I also judged the ads from an automobile dealer’s perspective to see if anything could be learned and be used on a smaller scale.

First, I judged whether the ad caught my attention. This can be accomplished through humor and other emotional connections. Some of the commercials grabbed you immediately and compelled you to watch while others almost forced you to lose interest from the beginning. Remember, market share of mind precedes market share.

Next, I judged if the commercials kept my attention and created interest in the product or service. Some of the commercials grabbed your attention and then got lost in their journey to reach their final destination. A simple question of “What are we trying to accomplish?” would have eliminated this problem.

Another important aspect was if the ad created a desire to either find out more about the product or service or to buy it. The biggest lesson to be learned here is that some advertising companies sell a bill of goods to their clients. The ad company gets the client all wrapped up in the creative factors, such as how funny it is or how clever the production is. However, the real reason for the advertisement is to sell something now or in the future.

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The first step in advancing the productivity of your staff in using the phones is a better understanding in the importance that the telephone can play and how it affects your business. Often a lack of the right attitude is displayed in the treatment towards the receptionist position. The receptionist is usually hired without any guidelines that would be used to hire for an important position. In your dealership do you have personality profiles, set interview questions and guidelines to hire an exceptional receptionist? Do you have a formalized training process and performance based pay? Often the receptionist is the lowest paid person in the dealership but is often the person who influences the customer first. Why not pay the receptionist a bonus based upon various criteria such as average time to answer a call, average hold time for a customer etc.

The sales people also need training on the understanding of the importance of both inbound and outbound sales calls and how this can affect their incomes. A sales person can sit around all day waiting for someone to come in, but they can take incoming sales calls and treat them like they are not important. The average dealership will spend a fortune on advertising to get people to call and come in but not pay attention to what is happening when the customers call or come in. Call a competitor or call your own dealership and mystery shop a few times and ask yourself if you are impressed with the results.

Let’s talk about a few things to improve the importance of sales performance in utilizing the phone. First of all, the dealership needs a formal call tracking process. Many dealerships know their floor traffic but not their phone traffic. Why? This sends the wrong message. You must quantify to qualify, meaning you must know where you are at to understand where you would like to go. Have the receptionist use a call tracking sheet that they are trained to use.

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Many times people say they don’t like to negotiate; yet, they still shop around and never pay full MSRP. Most people act in their own best interest. And most people who say they don’t like negotiating, actually still want to.

There are three things you should always listen to in this business:
1. What people say.
2. What people are trying to say.
3. What they really mean.

Often, what people are saying is they ‘hate’ to negotiate. What people are trying to say is they could do without the way auto dealers negotiate and what they really mean is they don’t want to make a mistake.

When people say they don’t like to negotiate, they are trying to say they don’t like the feelings of manipulation that occur when auto dealers overuse the ‘higher authority principle’ of negotiating. In other words, they dislike an improperly used desk system. You can still use a desk system, but you can decrease the back and forth, and keep the customer from feeling manipulated.

The first step is to have a written process that everyone understands. The second step is to make the process the same for each manager and each deal every time. The third step is to train your sales people how to negotiate, handle objections and assist the buyer to finalize a buying decision.

A written, detailed negotiating process that all sales people and managers understand is essential. Many dealerships seem to operate by the seat of their pants when dealing with the negotiating process. All proposals should be started in the same fashion. Although each deal can vary differently as you begin to negotiate, they should all start the same way to eliminate emotional, bad decisions. Having a precise, written and clearly understood process can eliminate different managers from working proposals in completely different directions that confuse sales people.

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Atlanta CPA on How LLC’s Can Convert To An S Corporation Saving Owners Big Dollars

LLC’s came in vogue approximately fifteen years ago when the state of Georgia enacted legislation allowing LLC’s (Limited Liability Company’s) to be established. Although the LLC does allow for some greater flexibility and ease of operation it often results in a higher tax obligation that might not have been incurred if the business was an S Corporation.

Tax law treats all the earned income from an LLC as being subject to both FICA & Medicaid taxes whereas an S Corporation has to pay those taxes reflected on W-2’s. For tax purposes, the law allows an S Corporation to legally convert to being an S Corporation as long as all active employee/owners pay themselves a fair and reasonable salary. This number is best determined by the facts, position, and profit of a business and the truest test of this calculation is what a business owner would have to pay someone else to perform their position.

All businesses are unique and therefore all saving opportunities are different. But even the smallest of businesses with the smallest of profits may save approximately $6,000 by converting from an LLC to an S Corporation. Already this year, we completed this process for an LLC saving them $25,274 of FICA/Medicaid taxes.

There are only four rules to qualify for being an S Corporation.  You must:

- Have a December 31st year-end.

- Have less than 100 shareholders.

- Have shareholders who are U.S. citizens or resident aliens.

- Have only one class of stock.

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