Business for sale by owner, or FSBO, is an attempt by a business owner to sell his or her own company. While it is understandable that offers of this kind can easily attract a lot of interest, prospective buyers of FSBO should exercise a significant amount of caution; such an opportunity can often prove to be far more risky than it may appear at first sight. On the other hand, buying an established company can also be a very rewarding endeavor. What can be done to minimize the risk and foster the chance for success?

Buying a FSBO Business – an Opportunity and a Challenge
Even the most inexperienced entrepreneur knows by heart that you should not always trust everything that a seller says. Why would this be different when buying a business for sale by owner? Here are just a few ideas for thought.

First, it is possible that the owner of that business will attempt to overstate his or her business profits. You definitely do not want to pay a lot of money for a business that will keep bleeding “red ink”. Second, when buying a business for sale by owner, he or she, even with the most innocent intentions, might be unaware of a real price of a particular FSBO. Most likely, you would risk overpaying. Third, negotiations are not an easy task.

Read More

According to the experts, new technology appears online approximately every two and a half seconds – and theoretically, every new application has the potential to transform your business.

How do you know what’s worth your time and what’s a total time-waster? That’s a serious question, when you only have 24 hours in a day and still have a business to run.

Save time and minimize frustration by adopting this six-step process for approaching new technology.  Followed consistently, this process enables you to identify viable promotional opportunities, discern which ones appear to have sticking power, streamline the learning process, and adopt best practices right from day one!

Step 1: Don’t Believe the Hype
Enthusiastic, cheerleading-style articles touting the lastest tech tool as the solution to all of your marketing challenges are fun to read, but they seldom provide enough information to make a solid business decision!

Put yourself on a short rein, and don’t let enthusiasm for the flavor-of-the-week by your only guide.
Do your research. Discover what demographics are adopting the touted technology. For example, the audience for Twitter-powered microblogs is different from the crowd downloading podcasts onto their cell phones.

Step 2: Seek Out Reputable Resources to Serve as Guides
While you’re doing your due diligence and your research, pay special attention to where your information is coming from.  Not all resources have equal value.  Look to those individuals who are consistently cited as an expert by others.  It’s wise to have a rule of three for this.  If three disparate sources all reference the same individual or work, there’s a better than fair chance that resource has some real value that can be of benefit.

Read More

Sometimes in business or life, we encounter ‘pivotal’ points where we have the opportunity thrust upon us to make changes.  A death, a major illness, or a major economic upheaval can force us to take stock of our lives at that point, and make changes.  But isn’t it better to seize the opportunities to change and grow as a choice?  Entrepreneurs carve out their success by doing just that. It is better to be someone who is open to learn, to stretch and push yourself past your comfort zone into what I call ‘the Winner’s Zone’.  This change is a choice!  Life is a series of changes and choices; why not control the direction and pace?

“Searching for the peak performer within yourself has one basic meaning: You recognize yourself as a person who was born, not as a peak performer but as a learner.  With the capacity to grow, change, and reach for the highest possibilities of human nature, you regard yourself as a person in process.  Not perfect, but a person who keeps asking: What more can I be?  What else can I achieve that will benefit me and my company?  That will contribute to my family and my community?” Charles Garfield, Peak Performers

Ask yourself a few questions and allow your honest reactions to reflect the changes in your attitudes, and actions that need to be addressed to maximize your life, your career or your organization.

What do I really want to have my life to accomplish?  What is my biggest dream?

What am I afraid of?  What is stopping me?

What do I need to change to make it work?

When will I commit to start making these changes?

Will you have the courage to change?  Will you commit to being the best you can be, and all that God intended you to become?  Remember the words of J.C.

Read More

If your business is going to be owned by more than one owner, the simplest business form to create and operate is a general partnership. Forming a partnership entails an agreement between two or more prospective partners. Whomever you choose to be a partner in any given business venture lies solely in what skills, attributes, or responsibilities this person will be contributing. A partner can be an individual, a partnership, a limited liability company, a corporation, or a trust.

What is a partnership?

The flexibility of a partnership allows the business to operate in a manner that best suits the business needs at the time the business starts and later when the business has matured. Later, when the business has grown, new partners can be added, yet their management capacity can be limited to prevent the new partners from usurping the original partners. When a partner contributes capital to a partnership, the partner receives an ownership percentage in all assets of the partnership, not just in the property contributed.

All partners are jointly liable for the obligations of the partnership. Joint liability means that each individual partner will equally be held responsible for all of the obligations of the partnership. If there is an instance in which any one partner solely contributes to any betterment of the business, that business partner can collect the other partners’ pro rata share of the debt regardless of whether or not the other partners are financially able to repay their share. If this is the case legal action may be required.

There are basically two types of partnerships:

Read More

Billionaires From the Frozen North
Any annual listing of the world’s richest people invariably conjures up many of the same names from one year to the next.  Yes, Warren Buffet is on there, and so is Bill Gates.  Ho hum.  But the average American-centric observer usually fails to recognize the wealth and entrepreneurial spirit that continues to thrive in our Neighbor to the North - Canada.  That country has its share of wealthy people, and successful people, and successfully wealthy people.  And even though the recent economic downturn has had some negative effects on those Billionaire Balance Sheets - comparing 2009 to 2008, the world’s billionaires shed approximately $2 trillion in asset valuation - none of these people is expected to show up in a bread line anytime soon.  According to Forbes, the magazine nearly everyone reads when it comes to exploring entrepreneurs and their successes, here are the ten richest Canadians for 2009, along with a brief description as to how they got there in the first place.  Unless otherwise noted, all figures are [not ironically] in U.S. dollars.

1. David Thomson and family ($13.0 billion); media conglomerate
Thomson is the grandson of Roy Thomson, who founded Thomson Corp. in 1934.  The company began as a book publisher, and today it continues to be one of the world’s prominent providers of textbooks for higher education.  But the corporation really took off once it got involved in electronic media and information technology, dominating such sectors as healthcare, financial services, law, and science.  The company acquired the Reuters news service in 2007 and is now formally known as Thomson Reuters.

2.

Read More

Women in the Boardroom, and Beyond
Over the past several decades, women have gained a far more prominent position on the American business scene.  Once relegated to roles of subservience, as viewers of the AMC television series “Mad Men” can attest, female corporate executives have continued to assert themselves in boardrooms across the country.  The business magazine Fortune has, for the past twelve years, created an annual listing of the 50 most powerful women in business.  Some of them hold the top spots in their respective companies, while others are well on the way to that position.  The characteristics they share are hardly different from their male counterparts - vision, persistence, and intelligence - but many will privately attest to the fact that reaching this point in their careers took extra effort.  As much as we would like to believe in an egalitarian world of business, there is still an extra thrill when a woman manages to “make it in a man’s world.”  One measure of success - when the list premiered in 1998, only two women of the 50 was a CEO or its equivalent.  This year’s list includes 13 CEOs.

Most Powerful Women in Business
Fortune has selected fifty powerful women for its annual list; here is an in-depth look at the top ten:

1. Indra Nooyi (PepsiCo); Chairman and CEO
This is the fourth year that Nooyi has topped the Fortune list.  She led this food and beverage conglomerate to $43 billion in sales and led the drive to buy out the company’s two largest independent bottlers.  That move alone is expected to save the company close to $300 million a year.

2. Irene Rosenfeld (Kraft Foods); Chairman and CEO
Remaining at the number two spot, Rosenfeld helped increase company revenue 15 percent and saw her company become part of the Dow 30, a highly influential position.

3.

Read More

Businesses For Sale By Owner (FSBO)
Existing businesses are being sold all the time, but many sellers elect to use the services of a business broker.  This saves them time and effort, although a broker - no differently than a Realtor in the housing market - is paid a fairly substantial commission for handling the transaction.  There are advantages to the seller when it comes to businesses for sale by owner (often abbreviated FSBO in a sort of business shorthand), but there are even more advantages to the buyer of a business for sale by owner.

Advantages - Let Us Count the Ways
With a business for sale by owner, the buyer can expect to benefit in the following ways:

Read More

Buy Business, Profit Now - Get MBA, Profit Later?
Recent college graduates and those contemplating the completion of their studies in the near future - specifically those majoring in business - are often torn between two disparate choices.  The question asked most often is, “Should I stay in school and earn my MBA (Master’s of Business Administration), or head out into the world and buy a business?”  There are four factors that come into play when buying a business or continuing in school - the money one needs, the amount time to be expended, the potential return on that investment, and the state of the market.  Most people who go on to do a MBA do so under rather stressful circumstances.  They work part-time at low wages, making just enough to get by while taking classes full-time.  They use up personal savings, borrow from relatives, and go into debt via student loans.  At the end of the two- or three-year process, they have a substantial educational advantage over their peers who did not take the MBA path, but they’re also that much behind the curve in the professional world.

Read More