Posted by Marie on September 2, 2011
It is September 2 and everyone I know has stopped using Google+.
Is it just not different enough to entice participation or is it simply too much work to switch over? For me, the very thing that I originally thought would be the benefit of Google+ turned out to be the deterrent.
Circles
I was looking forward to segmenting my messages. Of course it doesn’t make sense for everyone you know to know about everything. Why send out an undefined invitation to dinner when only the people in your area can attend?
But I have found out that the virtual organization of people is a hassle I’m just not willing to take up.
- There is a benefit to be gained when everyone sees everything. It maintains an emotional connection between people who may not see or talk to each other anymore. It makes you feel like you can just reestablish at any time.
- When everyone sees everything, I stop to think if I really should be posting what I’m about to post. Who will see it? Where will my message go from here? For business people, this invites caution because it is never a good idea to put something down in type that you are not willing to yell in a room full of your best clients.
- I have to segment the people I know in my real-world social life. It takes a lot of work. So far, I am not willing to expend the time and energy to go to the same trouble with my social media life.
Google+ has some intriguing business applications that should work better than what Facebook can do. (For example, customers can receive content without signing up for a Google+ account.) But.. without the user base, will the businesses take on the extra work? Google has put a lot into this project, but there has to be a twist coming soon for it to fly.
Posted by Marie on August 26, 2011
Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell
309 pages, © 2008
Use to Small Businesses: informative, enriching
Malcolm Gladwell says in Outliers—
Hard-work, passion, and innate ability are just not enough to guarantee success.
One also needs certain opportunities to hit at just the right times. Unfortunately, some of these opportunities, like your ethnicity’s cultural traits and your own birth date, are beyond your control. But… to operate without this knowledge is to deny information that can help you succeed.
Outliers is a short and fast read. It is also interesting enough that it will keep your attention with things you already knew (within a group, older kids succeed more often than the younger kids do) and with ideas that may be new (airplane crashes are related to the crews’ cultural attitudes about power).
Instead of being overwhelmed with all the beyond-your-control influences though, I think the beneficial take-away of the book is the knowledge that hard work and passion are base necessities among people who succeed. Once these are present in a small business owner, well it only makes sense to be on the lookout for all these other windows of opportunity.
But as Outliers will point out, these turns of fate are not always easy to spot.
Posted by Marie on August 23, 2011
Here at Detour Services, our tagline is “when A to B needs a little help.”
Quite often, business owners do not find it hard to describe where they want to be. The bigger question marks have to do with all those little steps needed to get there.
When this vision puzzle becomes too challenging, try to think of the journey another way.
Ask yourself: Where will my business be in [time frame] if things continue as they are now.
The truthful answer to that question allows the gap between what will be and what you wish for to become sharply defined. The puzzle can now be approached from a different direction, using a different perspective.
Sometimes it helps to take a 360 walk around a problem because looking at it straight on does not always work.
Posted by Marie on May 31, 2011
It happens to the best of us. We resolve that expenses will get entered as they occur this year. This year, we’re going to stay on top of things.
And then one day we turn around… Man! Where did that pile of receipts and statements come from?
And perhaps the more important question is: How long will it take before the whole mess is cleared out?
Wouldn’t you love to drop it off somewhere, and it all comes back organized and in order? And perhaps someone could even put it into your company’s books for you?
Ah, but the dream is at hand. Why not give me a call at the Detour Services office? I am an Intuit certified QuickBooks User. Microsoft Excel is my favorite of the MS Office programs, and I really do enjoy putting things in order. I can help you keep your business resolutions.
Posted by Marie on May 16, 2011
There are two assistants. One is a part-time employee who makes $20 an hour. The other is a 1099 contractor who also charges $20 an hour. Neither person receives any benefits.
As an employer, what are your costs?
To pay the part-time employee, you have to run payroll. That means you are either paying a service or person to do all this for you. Without that, you are putting in unbillable hours to do it yourself.
Then you have to track the withholding taxes from those paychecks and keep the amounts for eventual payment to the federal and state taxing authorities at regular intervals throughout the year. To top it all off, you even have to kick in your share of that person’s Medicare, Social Security, as well as all of your own owed federal unemployment insurance and state unemployment insurance.
Now let’s look at the contractor. As the hiring company, you pay her invoice.
Yes. That’s it.
At most, you’ll have to send out a 1099 form and its associated single-paged summary sheet at the beginning of 2012 to document total payments for this contractor.
It sounds like a big difference doesn’t it?
Keep in mind though… The IRS is serious when it comes to avoiding the payment of your fair share. Certain conditions must be met for someone to be a contractor and not a staff member. Please study their documents carefully. Or contact me for help.
