Good Reasons You Should Take A Small Business Course

Many of us are attracted to the opportunity of starting our own business for many reasons. To become our own boss, manage our own time and do what we love to do are just a few of these reasons. The process of putting up your own company could be easier than what you thought. This is why most budding entrepreneurs don't think of taking a small business course before they even join the industry.

However, maintaining a constant profit that will get the bills paid and the whole business rolling could mean another thing. And if you are not quite prepared, you might get into actions that might do your venture more harm than good. In this article, you will get to know the various benefits of studying such a course in preparation for running a successful company.

Knowing The Legal Processes

No customer would want to deal with some fly-by-night companies. They would rather deal with certified establishments who can provide the products and deliver the services they need even at a higher cost. Striving to be one of these establishments would definitely be a great chore on the business owner's part. There are a lot of rules and regulations to follow before they get permitted to operate. Finishing a small business course would be a great help.

Procedures on advertising, running your business, getting payments and paying your taxes are just a few of the things you need to learn. When you think that you know them all, changes on the legal requirements start to take place. In cases like this, would it not be wiser to have knowledge about these from the very start?

Knowing Money Management

Although entrepreneurs, in general, have quite reliable skills in marketing their products and services, not all of them are skilled in handling the money that goes in and out of their businesses. We know for a fact that companies cease to operate when the required amount of profit is not achieved. With this, money coming in must be properly allocated over different expenses.

By getting small business training, you will know the basic accounting and management of expenses and tax breaks. You will also learn proper strategies on spending your money and paying your monthly responsibilities on time to avoid any unnecessary fines. You will learn in details what percentage of your income must be allocated for expenses and what percentage must be added to your initial capital as an investment.

Knowing Proper Business Management

This starts from writing business plans, observance of the rules and regulations for daily operations, handling people who man the operations, marketing, making sales, testing opportunities for expansion and much more. Of course, you can hire an expert to do all these, but it is more advisable if you have knowledge on how to execute all these yourself even if you are just to oversee everything.

How To Finding Cheap Ink for Your Business?

Savings costs in these hard economic times seem to be imperative for most businesses. Finding cheap ink for your business will obviously result in huge cost savings. However, the printer ink market is very tricky. If it is not the astronomical prices of manufacturer's ink, then it maybe the low-quality third party ink. The perplexing thing is that while the inkjet printer is cheap, the prices of ink are very high. A user may thus be tempted to think that buying a new printer, which comes with free ink, would be a cheaper option. However, this would be wasteful. The truth is that you can save a lot of money by investing in cheap ink.

With the unsurpassed riches of information and products in the internet, you can be sure to find good quality and cheap ink. Buying online will not only allow you to compare the multiplicity of cheap ink vendors in the market, but you will also be able to read customer reviews. Make sure you compare ink prices and deal with authentic dealers. Even when buying cheap ink for your printer cartridges, quality will be of utmost importance.

The original equipment manufacturer's ink is very expensive. A major argument is that the manufacturer sells the printers at comparatively low prices, and then tries to offset the costs by selling the ink expensively. The only way to buy ink cheaply from the manufacturer would be in a sale or by using coupons. You can either get the coupons online, or while on the brick-and-mortar store.

However, the truth is that when buying the manufacturer's ink, you are just buying the brand name. If you want to save on ink for your printer cartridges, then you should opt for compatible cartridges. Compatible cartridges offer the same quality but at low prices. When buying cartridges, it is advisable to buy them in a value pack. This is because buying them in packs will cost much less than when buying the cartridge as a single unit.

Another alternative would be to invest in a refill kit or remanufactured cartridges. However, this will require you to follow the refill instructions to the letter in order for it to be successful. If you cannot find compatible cartridges, then you can invest in remanufactured cartridges. These cartridges have been previously used. They present a cheaper option, with good quality.

Even after buying the ink, it is imperative to use the ink wisely. For example, if the printer allows you to adjust its resolution, then it will be wise to lower it to about 300 dpi. This slows down the rate at which the printer uses ink, while at the same time giving a quality print. You will also need to use the preview option before printing. This helps to avoid unnecessary prints. It is also necessary to invest in a printer with lower ink costs. Finally, to save on costs, it is advisable to really reflect on whether you really need what you are about to print. You will be surprised at how much you can save from on ink costs.

Should I Incorporate My Business? How Benefits of Incorporating?

At some point during the life of a small business, you'll face the question of whether or not to incorporate your business. Incorporation does carry a few extra costs, such as generally higher startup fee and some continuing state and federal tax responsibilities -- but for many businesses, the pros of incorporating far outweigh the cons.

Let's take a look at some of those pros so that you can decide whether they might benefit your business and offset the costs involved in incorporating.

Limited Liability Protection

Probably the most highly sought-after aspect of incorporating is the limited liability protection a corporate business structure provides. Without incorporating, the owner of a business is personally liable for any debts or contractual obligations of a business; if the business defaults on a loan and cannot pay it back, the owner is responsible for that debt.

When you incorporate, however, your business becomes a legal entity, capable of entering into contracts and taking out loans on its own. There's a layer of protection between you and the business, known as the Corporate Veil, and as long as you're running the business properly, keeping careful records, and following federal and state rules and regulations, the courts can't seize your personal assets to pay for any defaults of the business.

Reputation

Incorporating your business means you're able to put that valued "Inc." or "Corp." at the end of your business name (sole proprietorships, in most jurisdictions, are not allowed to add a corporate ending that indicate a business structure other than the one they have), and this means the public can see at a glance that you're serious enough about your business to step it up to the next level.

There's nothing wrong with being a sole trader, doing business under your own legal name. But some customers have a higher level of confidence in registered corporations. It may not be fair, but it's human nature, and by incorporating you can use this to your marketing advantage.

Longevity and Structural Integrity

When you incorporate, your business takes on a life of its own. If, God forbid, you should pass on, your business can continue to survive and be passed on to other owners.

How Role of Leadership in Business?

Do you know that great leaders who create great business are made and not born? And you know why? It is because of true leadership traits that are not developed automatically but are willingly learned. The role of leadership in Business is indisputable. Leadership is an essential character in any business traits. Understanding the meaning of leadership is equivalent to lead success in any business activities.

Leadership has so much of influence in our life that aligns our productivity to the success of bigger purposes. Teams have high potential synergies and if motivated and directed in a right way will surely achieve success. Without leadership, organization works slowly, remains directionless.

The absence of leadership can be dramatic leading to adverse effects, as leadership & business walks hand in hand. Leadership is a process by which individual influences the attitudes, behaviors and thoughts of others. It sets a direction for the team and defines goals to be attained. Leaders help their follower to visualize things which they may have overlooked. Without Leadership in Business, the team quickly degenerates into conflict or arguments and struggle with accomplishing regular business operations. Leadership has the capability managing people and getting work done.

A leader should possess traits such as he or she must be able to express their vision clearly and in convincing manner so that people get engaged easily. His communication skills should be good enough in reaching out to his people or team. A true leader is easily recognizable. It is not only his words, his actions too sends message to people across the organization. A leader can't be excited one day and impassive on the other. People judge their leaders through commitments and their works.

The first responsibility in any Business Leadership is to have great vision. A leader who is clear about what needs to be achieved, he will with ease able to channelize the potential of his team in that direction. A visionary leadership must create unique concept of what the organization can achieve. A leader with a plan and a plan with a leader is enough to attain any goal. A leader should also be a motivating factor in the entire process of teamwork in order to help an organization evolve, grow and adapt in any changing circumstances.

Effective communication helps to facilitate successful exchange of information within or among leaders or employees. Without effective communication skills, Leadership in business can be dramatic. Assessing the situation, identifying the areas of concern, evaluating the alternatives at disposition and coming up with a plan. A leader needs to be proactive and strategically sound enough to come up with effective solutions.

Some Tips to Follow When Moving Your Business

According to a 2011 survey by the Centre for Economic and Business Research, more than 30% of all small business owners in the UK are thinking about moving their business to a different location.

If you are one of these businesses, here's a to-do list to make sure your move goes as smoothly as possible:

1. Give yourself at least a year to prepare. When you move your business, you're not just moving furniture: You'll be moving employees. You're going to be affecting your accessibility to your current clients. You're going to need new utility lines, new phone and Internet providers.

And ideally, you're going to have to accomplish all these things without stopping operations for more than a day. In effect, you'll be doing a feat like a bus driver loading and unloading people without ever stopping his bus.

This needs a lot of preparation, planning, human and logistic resources. This will need a lot of time. Give yourself a year to do it.

2. Give your employees and clients time to prepare. As we said before, you're not the only one moving here. Warn your clients and employees of your plans way ahead of time. This will give your employees a chance to find a new place to rent, if necessary.

Some of your clients will not be able to go with you. If so, they will appreciate the advance warning that allows them to find somebody to replace your services. In return for your courtesy, they just might refer you to somebody to replace their business in the place you're moving to.

Or they just might figure out a way to retain your services despite them move. They will be more inclined to do that if you warn them ahead of time.

3. Schedule the best date. You're looking for a weekend when it's least likely that you'll have existing projects being disrupted. Most companies whose business is not in retail sales choose the Christmas or Easter season to make the move.

4. Prepare a budget, and then add 20%. What will you need to spend on? Well, there are removal fees, layout and installation of facilities for the new location, removal and transport of existing furniture and machinery, site de-commissioning and disposal, and backfilling of activity shortfalls, and dilapidation costs for your old office.

And then, there's the fact that no matter how well you prepare, there will always be unexpected problems, which translate to unexpected costs. That's what you need the extra 20% for.

5. Hire a relocation company to help you make the move. This may sound like extra cost at first, but when you consider the amount of time and effort professional services can save you, you will realize they are well worth their pay.

How Big a Problem Is Hacking?

Statistics where hacking is concerned are hard to come by for a couple of reasons. First, most companies don't like to admit that they have been hacked. Such an admission can lead to public backlash and loss of trust among a company's customer base, so usually, only the very highest profile cases make the news.

Second, because oftentimes, unless the intent of the hacker was to outright destroy data, the successful incursion may never be detected at all, or if it is ultimately detected, it could be weeks, months, or even longer before anybody in the company even knows about it, much less figures out what information was viewed, copied, or taken.

Taken together, this makes gathering statistics on the number of hacking attempts worldwide a pretty daunting task, but the best information we have on the topic indicates that a successful hacking attempt occurs about every twenty seconds. By the time you finish reading this short article on the topic, half a dozen or more companies will have been hacked, and of course, that only estimates the successful incursions.

Unsuccessful attempts are vastly more common, and occur at a rate many times higher than the rate of successful breeches, which begs for the question to be asked: How safe is your system? How safe is your company's data? How confident do you feel in the network security you have in place, to ward off all but the most determined attacks?

Perhaps it is a thing you've not spent much time thinking about, and if that is the case, and if your company's web portal and your network as a whole are of some import to you, then I would urge you to have an independent evaluation done as soon as you can, and at least once a year thereafter. Once every twenty seconds. Don't let the next victim be you.

How Important Is Your Web Portal to Your Company's Business?

There are a great many companies for whom their web portal represents a significant percentage of annual sales. In fact, for some companies, their web portal represents their entire sales channel (think Amazon, and most of the eBay Power Sellers).

If you are among this number...if your website represents a significant driver of your company's total annual sales, then protecting your website is equivalent to protecting your business as a whole. Lose the website, and you've just lost your primary sales vehicle.

At the other end of the spectrum, there are a number of companies for whom the primary purpose of their website is merely to provide customer information. Dealership location, in the case of most auto companies. Specifications and particulars about your various makes and models, and for these companies, not many sales (or perhaps none at all) are derived from the presence of the website itself. For these companies, should the website go down, it would be more a matter of inconvenience and perhaps embarrassment than an actual impact to the bottom line.

In either case, some thought should certainly be given to the role your company's website plays in your overall sales picture, and the more important that portal is to your bottom line, the more care that should be taken, and the more resources that should be invested in ensuring that your business website is as safe and secure as you can make it.

Especially for smaller businesses (though as the Amazon example illustrates, not JUST for smaller businesses), a company's website can be a major component of annual sales, and should the company site be hacked, or brought down by a sustained denial of service attack, it can spell real financial trouble.

Don't allow yourself or your company to fall victim to such attacks. Take the time to implement strong security protocols and software driven solutions, then have your site audited periodically to ensure that the level of protection you've got is sufficient to the task of keeping the site safe.