“The secret of getting ahead is getting started. The secret of getting started is breaking your complex overwhelming tasks into small manageable tasks, and then starting on the first one.” - Mark Twain

Small Farm

A man owned a small farm.
 
The State Wage & Hour Department claimed he was not paying proper wages to his help and sent an agent out to interview him.
 
“I need a list of your employees and how much you pay them,” demanded the agent.
 
“Well,” replied the farmer, “there’s my farm hand who’s been with me for 3 years. I pay him $200 a week, plus free room and board.
 
The cook has been here for 18 months, and I pay him $150 per week, plus free room and board.
 
Then there’s the half-wit who works about 18 hours every day and does about 90% of all the work around here. He makes about $10 per week, pays his own room and board, and I buy him a bottle of bourbon every Saturday night.
 
“That’s the guy I want to talk to — the half-wit,” says the agent.

“That would be me,” replied the farmer.

Smallbizsurvival has a good article on the times when you should NOT be a sole proprietor or partnership including:

Ownership - if you want to bring in a partner
Liability - if you have the type of business where you are more likely to be the target of a lawsuit
Taxes - if you are going to do so well financially that taxes are going to be an issue
Investment - if you want to be able to bring in other people in an ownership position
Selling - if you want to sell the business and make it easy to transfer to new owners

Actually, since the LLC has become so popular, there are few if any reasons not to incorporate or form an LLC with the exception of a few states (California) that have a large yearly tax on these entities ($800 minimum). Learn about incorporating or forming an LLC right now.

“Sticking to it is the genius! Any other bright-minded fellow can accomplish just as much as I did if he will stick like hell and remember nothing that’s any good works by itself. You got to make the damn thing work. I’ll never give up, for I may have a streak of luck before I die. “  - Thomas Edison

“The men who try to do something and fail are infinitely better than those who try to do nothing and succeed.” - Lloyd Jones

“Efficiency is doing things right; effectiveness is doing the right things.” - Peter F. Drucker

Commentary: Peter Drucker is one of my favorite thinkers and quotes like this one show why. Many small businesses correctly focus on efficiency but they end up being efficient in things that don’t matter. Conversely, some small businesses are doing the right things very inefficiently. The key is to make sure you are doing both: focussing on the right things and doing them right.

Craigslist.org, the popular classifieds listing site, has a CEO with some unique thoughts on running a successful business. Many seem counterintuitive but craigslist has been running a huge site with a very tiny staff successfully for many years and was recently purchased by eBay.

Some thoughts include:

• No meetings, ever. “I find them stupefying and useless.”
• Put speed over perfection: “Get something out there. Do it, even if it isn’t perfect.”
• Listen to what users want. Try to make the site faster and better.
• He doesn’t reply to any of his 100 daily messages, most of which beg Craigslist to do a deal. “I’m not real chatty on e-mail.”

I love CEO’s that go against conventional wisdom - something tells me he’s on to something.

“A good plan, violently executed now, is better than a perfect plan next week.” - Gen. George Patton

Commentary: As we’ve written before, planning can go on forever until everyone thinks it’s perfect. However, many times a good plan is good enough and the quicker you start working on it the faster things will get done.

The Marketing Experiments Blog has a great article on 10 things you can do today to improve your internet marketing that includes:

• Build a new headline for a high traffic landing page.
• Add a new testimonial to a high volume landing page.
• Place an order on your own site.

These internet marketing ideas are great and many can be done quickly and today!

People often wonder how to cancel an existing FEIN (Federal Employer Identification Number, also called a Federal Tax ID) when closing a business. The IRS has information available HERE on this topic.

We can make the process of closing an existing business simple and painless! Just visit our page on Additional Corporate Filings and fill out the quote request form to have a custom quote emailed to you.