What the year ahead holds

I think 2008 will be an interesting year for business as a whole. Businesses that differentiate themselves from the masses (read "The Purple Cow" by Seth Godin), sell the benefits to customers, and run a tight ship will have no problem, those that don't will suffer.

My advice to new and old businesses is the following:

1. Understand your pricing policies and review your prices. If inflation is rising isn't it time to change your prices?

2. Understand your costs better, know what is costing you money whilst what is making you money. For every £1 spent by you is it contributing more than £1 to the value of your business?

3. Take time out to spend on growing your business - during these tougher economic times this will be essential to navigate your business during leaner times.

4. Build an internal and external team of friends and advisors to support you with your plans. Teamwork is essential in achieving your aspirations.

5. Fortune favours the brave. You are more likely to succeed by taking calculated risks, developing your skills proactively and taking action rather than waiting to see what happens!

I hate it when my clients pay................. TOO MUCH TAX

Last week I took on a client who had been using the services of a major accountancy practice in Reading for a number of years. The firm in question are a very good practice with one problem - they don't seem to look after their "smaller" clients very well. I can understand how this happens becasue I have worked in larger firms in the past and have seen this myself.

I checked over the latest accounts figures and was horrified at what I saw!

The accountancy fee for one was huge! But the biggest problem for me was the claim for using the home as an office.

Now this particular business is operated exclusively from home and uses two of the rooms in the house. So there is a potential to make a substantial claim in the accounts as there is legislation which allows this. I had one client where we claimed over £6,000 each year for this.

And how much had the "other" accountant claimed? A measly £240! Yes thats right - £240 for a years use of the home as an office.

I made some quick calculations and worked out the claim could be as much as £4,000 each year. Now that equates to around £1,600 in tax for a 40% taxpayer plus national insurance. repeat this every year and it turns into many thousands of pounds of tax paid which isn't necessary!

My point is that it actually feels like I am paying the tax when my clients hand over their hard earned cash to the tax man! You work hard for it - my job is to help you keep hold of it!

A bientot!

Doesn't time fly?

Well here we are again and 18 days have passed since I last posted here. What a sin!
I do have some resonable excuses and I will reel them off.......................

Work - I spent a week in the UK working - always a distraction!

Snow - when I got home we had a great fall of snow so it was time to head into the forest, cut down a christmas tree and drag it home. To go with this we needed copious amounts of vin chaud to help us get in the festive spirit:)

And to top it all how could I leave that lovely snow alone with out having a play? So I have spent two days out on the snowboard and plan another day this week.

So there you are - a list of resonable excuses for not blogging. I think a new years resolution is due.

Anyway - I hope any readers have a great christmas and a happy new year. See you in 2008!

The story of a father and his son...

This is a recent blog by Dave Dee - a guy who works closely with Dan Kennedy who - if you don't know of him is probably the No 1 marketeer in the WORLD!

The story of a father and his son...

My seven year old son, David, has been asking me for quite a while, "Daddy, when can you and I go out by ourselves and do some 'man stuff'?

"Tonight's the night we are going to do just that.I was thinking of taking him to a strip club

(That's a joke, by the way. I actually hate those places.) but decided to go to the Thrashers game with him instead. We are going to make a night of it. I booked a room at a very nice hotel near the arena, so we could stay in downtown Atlanta overnight.

I think I'm more excited than he is about this and he is pretty darn excited!

The point of all of this is I've structured my business so I can do things like this, on the spur of the moment. I've built my business around the lifestyle I wanted. I don't work for my business, my business works for me.

Some people would say I'm lucky to fly first class from Atlanta to California, first-class at least every other week and that I can take time off whenever I want, do do whatever I want. These same people would tell me that I was "lucky" to be able to afford to stay in a nice hotel, go to all the hockey games I want and sit in the best seats. But you know what?

"Luck" does not have a damn thing to do with it.

Sure, I acknowledge that I have some advantages that other people might not have. (By the way, having rich parents is NOT one of my advantages). On the other hand there are people with far greater advantages who have not accomplished squat. Conversely, there are people who had far less advantages than me but are kicking butt.

What's the difference that makes the difference?

Knowing what you want, making a plan for it and then working your ass off to make it happen.

Most people only dream about what they'd like their life to be about but never DO anything about making it a reality.

They are either too lazy or unmotivated to get up off the couch.There are also business owners, who work hard and think that's all they need to do to succeed. Yes, hard work is important BUT many business owners think "hard work" means working "in" the business instead of "on" the business.

For example, the guy who owns a restaurant thinks he's working hard to make his business better if he is spending time in the restaurant instead of getting out of the restaurant to think and plan for the growth of his business. This is where the real work and the highest leveraged payoff is.

Other business owners are too cheap or intellectually lazy to spend the time necessary to invest in themselves by reading books, attending seminars, hiring coaches, etc. They are even MORE lazy when it comes to developing strategy to take their business to the next level.

Yes, I think my business, the information marketing business is the perfect business. But that is because it fits the lifestyle that I want to have. YOU need to decide about how YOU want to live and spend time, energy and money designing your business around that.

Kick butt, make mucho dee-nero!

Dave Dee

With thanks to Dave Dee
http://www.davedee.com/blog/

Get your website noticed

I was listening to a teleconference tonight with Dan Bradbury and Chad Conger. If you don't know who they are check out their websites www.danbradbury.com and www.chadconger.com

Dan is an NLP coach and trainer and has inspired me to push my business forward recently. Chad is a website guru and really knows his stuff. They both have free downloads on their websites so go and take a look. That is if you want more traffic!

the teleconference was all about different ways you can get more traffic to your website and I picked up a few really great tips from it.

Here are a couple: -

• Make a video and post it on youtube.com. that way you can advertise your website too. Make sure your URL is at the bottom of the video.
• Volunteer to write articles for other websites with a reciprocal link back to yours.
• Join forums and get talking! Ask people on the forum to critique your website and give you feedback.

These are just a few ideas but come on - there are loads of ways to drive traffic to your site for FREE!