If you follow my blog at all, then you know I am something of a track geek.  I generally keep up with whats going on in the world of professional track and field, as well as the college and even high school levels.  One of the most popular track and field websites around is Flotrack.  Flotrack combines information, videos, and blogs to provide fans and athletes a great resource.  They started just a couple years ago and have created a very nice site.

Incidentally, Ryan Fenton, one of the guys behind the site, is a graduate of Chevrus High School.  We always like to see Mainers succeeding in the world of business.

Two years ago, these guys had trouble getting press credentials.  This year, they announced a partnership between them and USA Track and Field (USATF) to cover the USATF national championships this weekend via live, streaming internet coverage.  This is a huge leap, and it indicates several things:

• Someone from Flotrack had to work pretty hard to get a meeting and convince the USATF directors that this was a good idea.
• USATF is no longer stuck in TV mode, and wants to harness the power of the internet to increase the fan base.
• The Flotrack guys are thinking big.
• Flotrack is leveraging its advantages to partner with a far bigger organization.
• The partnership is a win-win.  Flotrack increases legitimacy, and USATF provides the coverage that fans are looking for.

This has me thinking.  If these guys can leverage what they have to partner with the biggest organization in their field, who can I partner with?  There are certainly some big names in the world of bookkeeping and accounting.  Who can you partner with?

The key, I think, is to be confident about what you are offering the world.  If you can present what you have to the bigger organizations, and show them how they will benefit by aligning themselves with you.  If what you have is legitimate, it would be crazy for the big company to ignore you!

Below is a video of the two guys behind the site giving a “day 1″ preview of the championships. After watching, you should say to yourself, “if these guys can do it, I definitely can!”

Last week, I wrote a post on the responsibilities of a business owner. After writing that, I thought it may be appropriate to highlight some of the recent failures in judgment of some of the most well-known businesses and industries.

1. All large national and major regional banks. You may think I am stating the obvious, what with the recent housing market debacle and the banking bail-outs. While those are in and of themselves epic failures, I want to get at something a little deeper- their business models. A large portion of the banks’ revenues come from penalties to its customers. Bank of America, Chase, US Bank, and Key. They all do it. Roughly 30% of their revenues come from penalties in the form of higher interest rates to customers who miss a payment, overdraft fees on checking accounts, late fees on credit cards, and so on. Add in the ATM fees and fees for having an account, and you are looking at billions. The only customers that have to pay any of these fees are customers that either make mistakes, are in financial trouble, or aren’t paying close enough attention to know what fees the bank is charging. One can conclude that without the fee income, the banks would fail to be profitable and subsequently fail to exist. It can be determined then, that the banks’ business models rely on customer penalties. Am I the only one that thinks this is unethical?

2. Wal-mart. Where do I begin? Yes, I know its the company we all love to hate. Personally, I don’t hate Wal-mart, but they have certainly shredded a few ethics papers to get to where they are. The one I want to highlight is their treatment of employees. They have become notorious for stamping “manager” on employees and skirting overtime regulations. They are also notorious for underpaying, under benefiting, and creating hostile work environments. Tremendous pressure is placed on store managers and regional managers to boost the profitability of each store. While not every store is guilty of these violations, corporate Walmart is. They have failed to set a precedent that the employees are to be treated fairly, above store profitability. Some would say that if it is so bad, then employees should work somewhere else. Agreed. However, just because someone is willing to be taken advantage of, does that make it right?

3. AIG I wanted to stay away from the big-news ethics failures, but AIG is in a class all its own. Begging for bail-out money, spending wastefully (using investor and taxpayer money), treating lower level employees unfairly, cheating customers. You name it, they did it. It seems to me that it is some sort of case of group think. When they all get together, management seems to think that really, really poor decisions are actually in the best interests of the company.

4. Apple. Yeah, I’m going there. Apple paints itself as the company for the progressive- sort of the antithesis of big corporations. Apple has a lot going for it, but being friendly to the environment is not on the list. In May 2007, they rejected two shareholder proposals to improve environmental friendliness. The old iPhone contained polyvinyl chlorides and brominated flame retardants, something its competitors removed a while before. While Apple has certainly removed those chemicals for the 3G S iPhone, and they are making laptops greener, it seems they have only done so to be en vogue with the green movement. Since they had been painting themselves in a certain light, you would have thought they would have been the leader in “green” all along. Also, Apples computer recycling program is behind Dell in convenience for the customer.

5. Purdue Pharma LP. They make OxyContin. To me, this fits best in community responsibility, seeing as they have destroyed entire communities with their highly addictive drug. While the drug met all the legal requirements, and was brought to market legally, it seems no different to me than white-collar heroine dealing. Even after it was apparent that the drug was super-addictive and causing people to do some crazy things, Purdue Pharma didn’t make any effort to help the situation. They kept right on producing the same drug, and making millions in the process (to help pay for the lawsuits). When it came time to take the blame for convincing the public that this was LESS addictive, they put the felony on another company called Purdue Fredrick- presumably so Purdue Pharma could still do business with Medicare. In addition, they never REALLY admitted wrong doing- only that some employees told other employees to make false statements.

There you have it. As a small business owner, make efforts to stay on track with your decisions. In the long run, its better for business.

It seems that many managers and CEOs were absent the day they taught business ethics in their MBA courses. At least that’s the perception we, the general public, get. The reason for that is simple: the number one responsibility of a corporation is to it’s shareholders. If their responsibility to shareholders conflicts with another responsibility, shareholders win every time! Combine that with the overwhelming drive to succeed on an individual basis, you have upper management of large corporations who will stop at nothing to please the board of directors and shareholders of their companies. Just because this is what “is,” doesn’t mean this is what ought to be. To whom should these companies be responsible? Better yet, if you own your own business, and you are “your own boss,” where are your responsibilities?

1. Investors. Yes, you are responsible to the people that invested in your company. Those people expected a decent return on their investment based on the information you provided. You have to do your best to deliver while maintaining your integrity and that of your company.
2. Community. You have an obligation to your community. Once you establish your company, grow your company, and do business in a community, you have responsibilities. For one thing, you can’t simply uproot your company and leave because you get a better deal someplace else. You owe it to your community to negotiate and try to work through any issues you have. Second, you and your employees should be volunteering your time and services to local causes and events.
3. Environment. You don’t have to be Al Gore to know that your company impacts the environment. Do what you can to reduce your impact. Recycle, save paper, use less power, less water, less… you get the idea. Conserve. While it has been a politically divisive issue in the past, I believe taking care of our environment should be bi-partisan. It should have less to do with laws and more to do with responsible adults.
4. Employees. Each and every person you hire is a responsibility. Yes, you are responsible to pay them, but what else? You need to provide a good working environment, the tools to succeed, decent wages, and reasonable assurance you’re not going to lay them off at the drop of a hat. Stop thinking like you are doing your employees a favor by hiring them. It is a relationship, and you need to live up to your end of the bargain. In today’s economy, it becomes tempting to hold employees hostage because you know they can’t work somewhere else. Don’t.
5. Government. Pay your taxes and obey the laws. While I do believe corporate income tax has a lot to do with governmental corruption, it is what it is. Don’t evade. Some tax avoidance is OK by timing your purchases and such, but it seems some people will move heaven and earth to avoid paying taxes. Just do it, and be thankful you live in a country where starting a business is virtually as easy as hanging out a shingle (and paying some fees and filling out some paperwork).
6. Customers. This one is easy. Deliver on your promises, and don’t cheat. Never sell a product or service you wouldn’t buy yourself. Again- you are not doing customers favors. They pay you, you deliver. It is an established relationship, and the burden of responsibilities lies on you.

If you cannot or will not live up to all six of these responsibilities, please don’t go into business. If you want to make a positive impact on the world, have fun, and make money, then keep these in mind. For a great resource on this topic, see MEBSR.

Many service businesses are paid in checks, especially if it is an invoice-then-pay type of system. Even in a small business, sometimes the volume of checks received require multiple trips to the bank each week- sometimes daily. It’s not as if you have plenty of spare time to be trotting off to the bank to stand in line- not to mention the gas and traffic.

Surely the trips to the bank have become such a part of doing business that you never think about it. What if you didn’t have to? What if you could make your deposits whenever you feel like it?

First, if you are a Bank of America customer- and as a small business owner in Maine, you probably are, hopefully you have checked out their awesome ATM deposit feature. At the Market Street and Forrest Ave. ATMs in Portland and Main Street in Westbrook, the have what is called “multi-check deposit ATMs.” You insert your ATM card, enter your pin, and put in your stack of checks. No envelope required! The machine scans each check and you confirm the amounts. Your receipt includes a scan of each check. You can make your deposits 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. You can find more multi-check ATM locations at Bank of America.

What if you don’t even want to go to an ATM? Yes, there are now options available to scan your checks at home and make your deposits online. Chase Bank is now offering this service for a monthly fee and a free scanner. You insert your checks in the scanner using their system, and you deposits are recorded. After 14 days, you can shred the checks.

If you are not a Chase Bank account holder, you can still take advantage of online deposits using a third party called DepositNow. This service works with any bank and deposits your money according to federal regulations and is perfectly safe. You pay them 39.95 per month, and they give you a free scanner. You make deposits whenever you feel like. What makes this the best option is that it syncs with QuickBooks, totally eliminating double entry. Scan the checks- it looks for QuickBooks invoices to match and records the payment and subsequent deposit. While 39.95 sounds like a lot if you just have a few checks, it sounds like a great deal if you normally spend time entering multiple payments in QuickBooks, making copies of the checks, filling out a deposit form, running to the bank, standing in line, and making your deposit. All this is accomplished with the click of a button.

You should frequently examine every process in your business. That includes even the most mundane processes like bank deposits. You never know when technology, costs, and other factors have changed enough to change the way you do business.

There are thousands of small business owners that never went to business school, and many are quite successful. Although some don’t want to know anything about business, many rely on the internet for articles, blogs, and other free resources to learn what they need to know in order to grow their businesses.

One of the big differences between business school and internet blogs is variety. A marketing class at business school, for instance, will focus on marketing theory and progress toward performing case studies on actual business stories. While there are many different schools of thought in marketing theory, a particular professor will likely only focus on his particular bent of marketingology.

The internet, however, provides nothing if not variety. You can get every sort of new and old idea of marketing available. Each business blogger gives advice in his or her supposed area of expertise. Many times this is simply because he or she runs a successful business, and it is believed that those same methods could apply to any business.

While business school provides a narrow view of marketing, it does provide the theory that builds a base to filter all marketing ideas and thoughts. It’s kind of like math- sometimes the theory- or the reason why- is necessary to build a solid foundation in a particular math discipline.

Assuming everyone isn’t going to sign up for a University of Phoenix online MBA (although it may not be a bad idea), how does one decide which blogs to read and follow and which blogs to ignore? Without any formal marketing training, how do you decipher which marketing blogs are good, and which are just taking up valuable bandwidth?

1. Ignore any blog that frequently attempts to sell you something. A one liner in a blog is fine, or using a blog to make people aware of a new product, service, or upcoming conference is fine. However, if just about every one of their posts are centered around some sort of featured product or service, beware. In many cases, bloggers gain some credibility then sell out to the highest bidder. Their “featured” product happens to be an offering of the blogs chief sponsor.

2. Follow bloggers that are field-specific experts. For example, in social media, there are many people that make their living helping businesses succeed in online marketing. They offer loads of free advice- the same stuff they use to help their clients. The same is true in insurance, human resources, management, and more.

3. Follow bloggers in your field. For example, if you own a photography business, look for successful photographers for solid advice in growing your type of business. People who have been there and done that can provide invaluable insight into getting and keeping customers, staying organized, and more.

4. Follow local bloggers. People in your area that blog regularly can help keep you aware of business leaders and happenings. Their insight can help you wade through the local business climate and get to know some potential resources for your businesses.

Finally, use common sense. If a blogger gives practical advice that is simple enough for you to try, go ahead! If however, a blogger is giving advice that would require you to completely overhaul your business, and has no real evidence that his particular solution works, ignore it. He may just simply be trying to get noticed. If you like two blogs and the advice conflicts, pick the one you think most applies to your business. If it’s not working, try the other one!  Oh, and why not think about attending a collegiate level business class to help you sift through the nonsense?

I recently developed a new idea for a service that fits in with what my company already offers. I thought I would share the steps I took to shrink the time it took to get the idea to the market. Complete the following steps in just a couple weekends.

1. Brainstorm. Develop the idea into something you can process. Get concrete steps for the end user of your idea. Brainstorm who the targeted market is, why they want to buy it, how much they will pay, etc. Quickly evaluate the competition to see others who may have similar offerings. How does your idea differ?

2. Register Domain for the service. Instead of just creating a section on your company website, try creating an entirely new site. By creating a domain that relates more closely to what you are offering, your search results will be better. Also, a landing page can look and feel completely different from your main site.

3. Use competitor sites to develop your landing page. Give your new site a look and feel that your potential customers are used to. Keep it simple, and use only the landing page and a contact or purchase page. Think web 2.0.

4. SEO the new service and landing page. If you don’t know how to do this, visit your friendly neighborhood SEO expert, plunk down the cash, and get your page to the top of the search results quickly. The cost is genearlly quite reasonable. Flyte New Media is a good place to start.

5. Provide visitors the opportunity to “Buy it Now” Rather than simply offering a contact form or phone number, also give the visitor a chance to purchase your service.

6. Calculate. If you have done it right, you can expect 1 or 2 out of every 100 visitors to convert to a purchase. Driving traffic to your new site will be the most important, so spend your time and money on that. If your converting fewer than 1% of your visitors, contact an expert to see if you can improve.

Using this method is a great way to test out a new idea without spending a lot of cash.  Obviously, these steps aren’t universal enough to fit every new idea.  However, if you are a service company that has thought of a great new way to package and offer one or more of your services, go for it! A small change in the way you present what you do can yeild results you never thought possible.

The folks over at WebWorkerDaily never miss a beat.  They find all the quirky web applications and generally announce them before they are released to the public.  Occasionally, they come back to something one of the big companies like Microsoft, Apple, or Google produce.  This week, they published an article on Google News Timeline.

Google News Timeline.  This new service straight out of Google Labs seems to be a pretty useful one for people that write blogs.  We all have our ways of staying current and getting to the news stories and articles we want quickly.  The timeline service allows you to see all of your search results on a chart organized by date.  It defaults to show you a daily view, but you can set it to weekly, monthly, yearly, or by the decade.

This seems to fall in line with Seth Godin’s thinking that, by the year 2012, people won’t get there news by reading it from a paper.  The easier it becomes to view news stories that interest you online, the less need you have to purchase the paper copy.  Hopefully, the news organizations will figure out a way to make enough money to actually report the news by then!

I imagine this will be useful not just for bloggers and online writers, but also for actual news reporters.  In addition, I see the value for researchers from grade school to terminal degree research papers, as all the news stories published in an online version going back for decasades can be seen in an organized fashion with the click of a button.

As usual, Google is changing the way we do just about everything online.

A lot of people got into freelancing and sole proprietorships last year. Since the job market tanked, many people took their skills into the open market. That’s what America is all about right? Anyone can make money!

But now its tax time. Many of these same freelancers are finding themselves in a pile of debt with Uncle Sam. Poor record keeping has led to disaster because there are no ways to prove expenses, even if they were known. Fear, uncertainty, and doubt has filled the minds of these freelancers.

If you are one of those people, I have a 3-website solution for you:

1. Freshbooks. This site will handle your invoicing. It keeps things very simple, secure, and accurate. You can invoice based on time and materials, fixed fee, or however else you see fit. You can set up automatic invoicing, and automatic payments. Invoices can be online or the site will snail mail your customers. According to their own data, users get paid an average of 14 days faster than using their old system (whatever that was).

2. Outright. This site is to keep track of your income and your expenses. It integrates with Freshbooks, so your income side sort of takes care of itself. The expenses are conveniently divided into IRS Schedule C categories, making your life a lot easier at the end of each quarter. Speaking of taxes, they actually estimate your tax payments for you! The site has a “taxes” tab. At the end of each quarter, it will calculate both your self employment (social security and medicare) tax and your business income tax (based on 10% marginal rate on your profit). They are probably on the high side, but its better to be safe and get money back, right? Another great feature is the 1099 calculation, based on you using the “contractors and freelancers” expense category. The site will then make a list of all the contractors you paid at least $600.

3. Shoeboxed. Here is where you will store electronic copies of your receipts. You mail your receipts to shoeboxed, they scan and store them. Outright can pull your expense data right from shoeboxed, but you may have to manually edit the categories to get them to match up. To save money, you can do the scanning and upload them to shoeboxed for free.

Pricing: If you are a really small operation, you can get away with using these three sites for free. If you have 25 clients or less and less than 150 receipts/month to scan, your total cost will be $34/month. Expect Outright to run $10-$20 when they come out of Beta, bringing your total to $54. By doing this, you will have very little to actually enter into Outright. You simply sit down for 20 minutes a month to reconcile your information with your bank statement, and view your reports.

Limitations: To be honest, I’m not crazy about web-start-up-accounting-apps. What happens if they go out of business? Will your data be usable by anyone else? By using old trusty Quickbooks, you get the security of knowing you have your financial data that can be read by any accountant or bookkeeper. Also, the reporting on Outright is weak when compared to a serious piece of accounting software like QuickBooks.

Another option: Not to be a shameless promoter or anything, but for close to the same cost, my company offers full service bookkeeping using Quickbooks, electronic storage of receipts, and custom quarterly reporting.

You have to do something. In your second year, if you are not making estimated tax payments every quarter, the IRS will penalize you- severely. Use something that will allow you to keep accurate track of all your income and all your expenses.

Many of us start a business with big ideas. We know we have a great idea, that it will catch on, and we will become a household name across the country- or maybe even the world. Usually things go well for a while. We make some great sales, build a little business, and hire some employees. After a while, though, things level off and we find ourselves wrapped up in actually running the business instead of growing huge.

The GO BIG Network is a great resource for small businesses and start-up companies. Wil Schroter has a knack for bringing business owners back to square one and giving great advice. Last week Schroter wrote a post called “Identify The Growth Factors.” In his post, he explains that each business has certain factors that, with energy and focus are applied, will cause your business to grow quickly and become strong- much like gamma rays to the incredible hulk.

Here is a quick synopsis of his main points with a little bit of my two cents:

1. Identify what makes you business grow. Schroter says this will be just a couple of factors- like reducing the cost to make a sale, converting website visitors to sales, or even just reducing your cost of goods sold. If you don’t know what these factors are for your business, it’s time to sit down with your CEO hat on and brainstorm. Do some what-if scenarios, make some assumptions, and get your thoughts organized. Chances are, your growth factors are sitting just beneath the surface waiting to be discovered.
2. Shift your energy and focus to those growth factors. Although this point seems obvious, it won’t do you any good to know your growth factors if you don’t do anything with them.
3. Outsource. It may be a scary word, but it’s worth a look. What is your business spending time on that doesn’t significantly add to growth? Why not let that aspect be handled by a company that solely focuses on that? Cheaper than employees, scalable, and expertise. What’s not to like? You can outsource IT, HR, Sales, Production, and yes, bookkeeping and accounting.
4. Get the rest of your team on board. If people in your company are being petty and territorial, you are going to stay stuck. Find creative ways of getting everyone on your team to stay focused on growing the company. Give them incentives to do so. Having everyone on the same page is essential to the fast, strong growth you are looking for.

Growing your company should be a priority. In many cases, if you are not growing then you are dying. Get your mind off the day-to-day and start looking at the big picture. Your employees, your bank account, and your customers will thank you.

Spring is a time when most people think about cleaning. Clean the house, the windows, the office, the basement, etc. One thing that needs cleaning just as badly as all those is your email inbox.

Over the past few days, I have been sorting through my Gmail inbox and deleting, labeling, and responding. If you have ever read David Allen’s “Getting Things Done,” you know that nothing is supposed to stay in your “life’s” inbox. The same is true for your email inbox, since that is a major source of tasks, next actions, and plans in your life.

If you are using Gmail, this is a simple process.

1. Go to settings and chose to view 100 emails per page.
2. Go the the last page (oldest) of your inbox itmes.
3. Select all items.
4. Un-check all the emails that cannot be deleted.
5. click “delete”
6. Go through the emails that are left on the “oldest” page one by one. If you need to make a quick response, do so now. If not, tag and archive the email in one step using the “move to” button.
7. Repeat the process for every page of emails.

If you’re at all like me, you will find many emails that slipped through the cracks during this process. Something that would have only taken a couple minutes to complete has been completely forgotten. Use this time to catch up on some of your older “to-dos.”

Labeling
If you haven’t been labeling your emails, start now. Its much better than using Outlook’s folder system, it just takes getting used to. Label as specifically as you need to. If you need a new label, you can still do it from the “move to” button. Just start typing and click create new. One easy step!

Good luck!