Small Business Tax Cuts

February 18, 2015 by

64002400The tax reduction small business owners are taking advantage this year is the 75% reduction on the first 250,000 in income. The new tax cuts the governor of Ohio is proposing may seem like a good deal to many small businesses, until those businesses can see, the tax cuts will be minimal. For more news about small business news and what is happening in Ohio, follow the links below.

Meet Congress’s new small business leaders

Rep. Steve Chabot can empathize with small business owners. Before launching his political career – and between his two stints in Congress – the Ohio Republican and seasoned attorney owned and ran his own law practice in Cincinnati.

“We were a small storefront law office, and we had to deal with all the things that come with running a business,” Chabot said in a recent interview on the Hill. “I have seen firsthand the challenges that are faced by small business folks.”

It’s that experience that lured Chabot onto the House Small Business Committee when he first arrived in Washington 1995. After 19 years on the panel (he lost a reelection bid in 2008 only to win back the seat two years later), Chabot last month took over as chairman. He replaces Rep. Sam Graves (R-Mo.), who stepped down in keeping with self-imposed term limits.

Tea Party’s Disastrous Tax Cut Experiment Comes To Ohio

Ohio Gov. John Kasich (R) wants to mimic a tax cut experiment that has already brought fiscal calamity and public service cuts to a state 600 miles west of his.

Kasich describes his $696 million tax cut as a helping hand to small businesses. But the design of the cut would put the bulk of that benefit into the hands of just a few high-income business entities with a handful of employees while providing just a few hundred dollars each to the vast majority of the people who would benefit, according to an analysis by the Cleveland Plain Dealer. For nine out of every 10 companies that would benefit from the Kasich cut, the total yearly savings would be $364 or even less.

For the remaining 10 percent of companies affected, savings could be as high as $8,000 a year, a number that Kasich administration officials acknowledge is far too low to create even a single job per company. Instead of pitching the cut as a direct job creator, the officials are marketing it as an “every little bit helps” move for hardworking entrepreneurs.

How social media can make your small business go gangbusters

Social media is constantly being touted for its brand-building power, and rightly so. But many small businesses fail to reap the expected benefits from their investments of time and money in social media, largely because they haven’t fully grasped the unwritten rule of social media marketing: It’s not which tools you use, it’s how you use them that spells the difference between profitable performance and lackluster results.

Like professional marketers, successful small business owners target their social media activities for maximum impact. While their competitors are adrift in a sea of tweets and blog posts, savvy strategists focus and fine tune their social-media plays. Consider three social media campaigns that generated big results through careful targeting:

  1. When Denver-based Sword & Plough launched its business to recycle military surplus material into tote bags and related products, it had a bold idea and grassroots support, including a $6,500 award from Harvard’s Pitch for Change competition. The firm’s start-up financing strategy focused on building its network of contacts via social media as the springboard for a Kickstarter campaign.
Filed Under: Ohio Business News Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

Goal-Setting is a Way to Success

February 9, 2015 by

64510516The way to achieve success is an age old mystery. Why do some people attain it and others don’t? Researchers, professors, psychologists and motivational speakers have spent lifetimes attempting to quantify and answer that question. They’ve discovered that, while there are many ways people can attain their dreams, goal-setting is still the gold standard. Here are 3 of the proven methods successful people use to achieve their goals.

Make a plan – A new study (soon to be published in “Behavioral Science and Policy”) has found that many people sabotage themselves at the very beginning of their quest for success. The more they want something the less likely they are to develop a plan and set goals to reach it. Its basic human behavior that most people think good intentions are enough and positive thinking will carry them through.

However, thinking isn’t action, doing is action – good intentions and positive thinking aren’t nearly enough. Overwhelmingly, empirical data and antidotal information shows that people with written plans are much more likely to complete their goals than those who don’t have a written plan.

Break it down – Break the components of the plan down into manageable pieces. A goal that’s not parsed into smaller, practical actions is too uncontrollable and complex. When people don’t have control they feel frustrated, confused, incompetent and inadequate to the task, which leads to abandonment of the objective.

For example, Joe set the goal of “Being a Better Manager”. It was a good goal, but impossible to achieve without being defined and broken down. What did it really mean? How was he to know when he reached it? What did he have to “do” to be successful? He worked with a coach to define, quantify and sort out the components into manageable daily tasks.

Build in consequences and rewards – After the plan is made and broken down into controllable tasks it’s important to benchmark them, and then attach rewards and consequences to each benchmark. If the mark is hit then the reward is given, if it isn’t hit the consequence is triggered. People are much more likely to meet their goals when this happens.

Involving others is intrinsic to this process. People are more successful in reaching their goals when others know about them. Joe and his coach created a system – when he reached a goal he took the afternoon off to golf and when he didn’t reach a goal he spent Saturday mornings cleaning up the break room. Both the carrot and the stick helped him stay on track.

Goal setting and monitoring can be rewarding and worthwhile. Other times it’s tedious and time consuming. That’s why successful people do it and unsuccessful people don’t. Successful people do the things that unsuccessful people aren’t willing to do.

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Gov. Kasich’s Budget Proposal

February 3, 2015 by

business (6)Many of the states that are considered “small business friendly” are those states that do not have income tax. Gov. John Kasich tax reforms for Ohio and the proposed elimination on income tax from small business owners, is an attempt to help Ohioans share the wealth of the state. Among other proposed tax initiatives is increasing personal exemption for Ohioans earning less than $40,000. For more news about Gov. Kasich tax plans follow the links below.

John Kasich to propose eliminating income tax on most small businesses, boost exemptions for low-, middle-income Ohioans

COLUMBUS, Ohio — The budget proposal Gov. John Kasich will unveil Monday will include reforms that would eliminate state income tax on nearly all small businesses in Ohio and increase exemption levels for lower- and middle-income Ohioans.

Kasich revealed his plan in an appearance Thursday before a conference of the Ohio Association of Community Action Agencies. He also used the event to highlight initiatives in his budget that will help to lift the poor out of poverty and make Ohio’s welfare programs operate more effectively.

His tax plans, touted as “a comprehensive plan for helping all Ohioans share in our state’s prosperity, call for:

  • Elimination of income tax from small businesses — pass through entities such as sole proprietorships and S-corp. companies that report income on the owners’ individual tax returns.
  • Increasing the personal exemption for Ohioans earning less than $40,000 a year from $2,200 to $4,000 in 2015.
  • Increasing the personal exemption for Ohioans earning $40,000 to $80,000 a year from $1,950 to $2,850.

Governor’s new budget to include the elimination of the state’s income tax for many small businesses

CLEVELAND – Cleveland’s West 25th Street is a large part of the city, no doubt, but it is a large part made up of small parts.

“Half of Cleveland’s jobs are in small businesses,” said Sam McNulty. The Market Garden Brewery founder should know—as a small business owner he is an employer and one who could benefit by Governor John Kasich’s budget proposal to be unveiled Monday.

The plan would eliminate the state income tax on small businesses with annual gross receipts of $2 million or less.

“It’s significant and instead of just sending this off to the state… we’ll be able to efficiently deliver those same dollars to the business, reinvest and again creating jobs,” said McNulty. “What this does is this gives all of us the ability to grow the city even more and really supercharge the renaissance we’re seeing.”

The tax cut would cost the state about $700 million over two years and the income tax exemption another $372 million, a fraction of Ohio’s current $60 billion-plus budget.

Big Tax Cuts For Small Businesses

CINCINNATI (Paula Toti) — Governor John Kasich officially released his new budget proposal on Monday. He says the state is doing better financially and it’s time for income tax cuts for everyone. Under the plan if you make less than $80,000 a year, you would see an increase in the personal exemption you can claim. Tax rates would also be cut under the Governor’s plan, with the top income tax rate under five percent (verses eight and a half). The part of the plan getting the most buzz is to eliminate state income taxes on small business. The tax break on small businesses would be big. However, what a lot of people don’t realize is there is currently a big break. In the 2014 tax year, 75 percent of the first 250 thousand in income is state income tax exempt. Kasich would increase that to 100 percent, and the bigger part may be that it would expand to any company with less than two million in gross receipts. The Cincinnati USA Regional Chamber says that’s 85 percent of its members. While it might not mean every small shop will lower prices, the chamber says it likely means more jobs and investing in the local economy.

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Small Business News

January 28, 2015 by

59350241There are many tax advantages that came into effect for this year for small business owners, and cutting more taxes is one the things Rep. Steve Chabot wants to accomplish now that he is Chairman of the House Small Business Committee. Cutting taxes and regulations are a top priority for the Representative, and the small business community cannot fail to benefit from this agenda. Follow the links below for more news about small business.

Small business lending in Ohio shifts toward institutional investors

The biggest obstacle to opening a small business in Ohio is still financing, and Juanita Darden-Jones can tell you all about it.

Darden-Jones plans to open a coffee and wine shop in downtown Dayton called Third Perk this summer, which will mark two years since she first contacted CityWide Development Corp. about getting help raising the money for the equipment and renovations to open the shop.

“Small businesses are almost impossible to finance,” Darden-Jones said. “Banks are not very kind to us.”

The equipment for the coffee shop cost at least $30,000, and Darden-Jones expects to invest about $30,000 in renovations to the store. But that doesn’t include any coffee, food or wine inventory costs.

Small business lending in Ohio is becoming dominated by institutional investors as approval rates at big banks remain rather slim, and small bank approval rates are decreasing.

Big banks improved their small business lending approval rate to 18.5 percent by December 2014, up from 15.9 percent in January, but still lag behind the national rate of 21.1 percent, according to the Biz2Credit Small Business Lending Index.

Small business agenda: Target taxes, regulations

NEW YORK (AP) — Cutting regulations and taxes are on Rep. Steve Chabot’s must-do list for small businesses.

The Ohio Republican, who became chairman of the House Small Business Committee when Congress took office earlier this month, plans to continue the committee’s focus on how the government burdens small companies.

“If there’s one thing government can do for small business it’s to get the heck off their backs,” Chabot says. “We do over-regulate them. We do overtax them.”

PRIORITIES

Chabot plans to hold hearings to advocate for small businesses, as did his predecessor Sam Graves, R-Mo. Chabot says the committee will focus on the health care law and regulations issued by the IRS and Environmental Protection Agency.

Chabot also plans to push for tax relief for small businesses. He noted that when the Republican-led House passed tax bills in the past, the legislation stalled in the then-Democratic led Senate. He’s looking for more progress in a Congress now controlled by the GOP.

“We think we have a much better chance at advancing a whole range of tax reform issues,” Chabot says.

What an Ohio fire truck company tells us about globalization and free trade

Think free trade deals will help small businesses? It’s a lot more complicated than that. 

For 125 years, some small portion of America’s fire trucks have come from Columbus, Ohio. That’s where the family-owned Sutphen Corp. produces shining red masses of steel and aluminum, loaded with ladders and tanks, the kind of vehicle that towns buy as a promise to keep citizens safe.

But when the recession hit in 2008, Sutphen knew that the United States wouldn’t be enough.

“We saw that we were totally dependent on the U.S. economy, especially municipal funding,” says Ken Creese, the company’s director of sales and marketing. Sutphen’s orders had dropped by some 40 percent, and they were starting to lay people off. They needed new markets, stat.

To find them, the company looked to a country better known for selling stuff to America rather than buying it: China. They hired a vice president for international relations, began responding to solicitations by local governments, and quickly started filling orders. Now, about 11 percent of the 250 trucks Sutphen makes per year sell overseas — not only in China, but Venezuela, Colombia and Peru. Just last week, the company signed a $3.8 million deal with a Chinese fire department.

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Small Business Growth And the Top Scams of 2014

January 22, 2015 by

Customer Relationship Management business chart on a digital tabDuring the holidays, scams are rampant and catch people unawares, but scams are truly present throughout the whole year and that is why you have to be aware of them. Businesses and individuals alike fall victims to these vile scams and tactics from these individuals, protecting yourself and learning of these tactics can help you avoid them altogether. Follow the links below for more news about small business.

Better Business Bureau’s top 10 scams of 2014

The Houston Better Business Bureau has tallied up the statistics from 2014 and created a Top 10 Scams list. Here’s a heads-up to what scams consumers can expect to see again in 2015.

The BBB’s Top 10 Scams of 2014

Microsoft/computer scams
A caller claims to be from Microsoft or a representative from another computer software company. The caller offers to solve a computer problem or sell a software license in an effort to gain remote control of the consumer’s computer, and later requests a fee for service. Always check out a company first and only hire trusted repair businesses. Microsoft does not make unsolicited phone calls for computer help.

IRS scams
People report receiving calls from “IRS representatives” who claim they owe taxes and must pay or a warrant will be issued for their arrest. Or, they claim the IRS is pursuing a lawsuit against you and you must make a payment immediately. The IRS never uses phone calls for collection purposes. Instead, they only contact taxpayers via U.S. mail.

Small-business transactions hit a record in 2014

A report by BizBuySell.com shows that small-business transactions in 2014 were at the highest level since the online business-for-sale marketplace started tracking data in 2007.

The report aggregates statistics from business-to-sale transactions reported by participating business brokers nationwide.

A total of 7,494 closed transactions were reported in 2014, an increase of 6 percent from 2013, which was the previous record.

This marks the second straight year of such strong activity after several slow years during and immediately following the recession. On average, 2013 and 2014 transaction totals are up 55 percent from the recession and recovery period from 2010 through 2012.

Managing business growth: expert advice for small businesses

Although cash is undoubtedly king, fast growth can wreak havoc on a fledgling business if not managed correctly. When you’re expanding faster than you’re being paid, hiring staff, finding an office and managing stock can take on added difficulty. We held a live Q&A on the topic of managing growth, with advice from a panel of experts. From chasing payments to deciding when to hire, here’s what they suggested:
How can I push a client to pay without losing them?
Late payments cause havoc with an SME’s bottom line. However while encouraging a client to pay, you don’t want to shut the door in their face forever.

Technology can help you here, says Ashley Driver, education specialist at Xero. “There are some great services available to help chase your clients, for example Chaser. We’re seeing some great results from our business owners, accountants and bookkeepers using these types of solutions.”

Another suggestion is to implement a small percentage rise in your product or service, suggests Robert Rutherford, chief executive officer of QuoStar. “If you feel the rise is justified then often you have to stick to your guns,” he adds. “You can also re-contract a set rate or capped rate for the duration of the contract.”

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3 Reasons Why People Succeed

January 21, 2015 by

54642287There is an old saying; “Everyone talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it” (Mark Twain). The same can be said about success – everybody talks about it, but very few people do anything about it. They rarely do anything about it because everybody has faults that keep them from achieving their goals, dreams and desires.
But, successful people persevere in spite of their faults, while others fail because of them. There are many reasons why some people succeed when others, who’re just as smart and talented, don’t. Below are 3 of the reasons why people succeed.
They take personal responsibility – Two of the most common defense mechanisms are rationalization and denial. Successful people work to minimize both behaviors; they don’t make or accept excuses from themselves. They take responsibility for and are always learning from their constructive and unconstructive actions.
They’ve learned that when they’re accountable they’re also in control. When they’re in control they can keep their attention on what’s really important – spending resources on finding solutions. People who expend their limited resources (time, money and energy) on making excuses and justifying their behavior aren’t people who look for solutions.
They don’t blame outside circumstances – The lack of time and money is a universal issue for individuals when they’re trying to achieve their goals, as is the drain of energy due to too many outside demands. These situations are nothing new or unique for anyone.
The difference between successful people and everyone else is that they don’t blame these circumstances for their difficulties. Their answer to these problems is a resounding – “so what”. They understand that adversity is a given in trying to get ahead and never a good reason to give up.
They have high standards – Unsuccessful people accept mediocre behavior from themselves. They cut corners, take shortcuts and are believers in “good enough”, which produces work that has to be apologized for, redone or fixed and compensation made.

In addition, the successful know mediocre behavior is short-sighted and it leads to distrust and broken relationships. They hold themselves to a higher standard where exceptional work is the only acceptable way. They understand that focus, dedication and hard work are the only things that lead to their dreams.
The definition of success is a very personal one. It’s unique to each individual and only they can know if they’ve reached it. Unfortunately, most people say they haven’t attained it. A final word from Mr. Twain, “There are basically two types of people. People who accomplish things, and people who claim to have accomplished things. The first group is less crowded.”

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Time Management For Your Business and Personal Life

January 7, 2015 by

business (5)Almost half of Americans make a New Year’s resolution, and a very small percentage of those people are successful.  But one of the most frequent New Year’s resolutions is the wish to spend more time with their family or loved ones. If your business is taking too much time away from the things you wish to do, isn’t this a year to fix it?  Efficiency in the workplace can be accomplished, thus giving you more time to take care of other issues that will enable you to have more time to enjoy life.   For more about time management and efficiency in the workplace, follow the links below.

5 Fundamental Ways To Save Time And Increase Personal Efficiency In 2015

One constant in my management career – and I strongly suspect in many, many others – was that with challenging projects, challenging people, and a host of intractable business problems, there were never enough hours in the day to do what, in a perfect world, needed to be done.  Simply put, in management you never have enough time.  Accordingly, here are 5 fundamental ways to save time and increase personal efficiency in 2015.

Letting go – Are you delegating all you should be?  Are you holding on to things that others on your staff could be doing just as effectively as you?  Do you tend to bottleneck projects, with others waiting for your decisions and being delayed in the process?  The fact is, all really effective executives are also highly efficient delegators.  There’s no choice.  With multiple projects and priorities swirling around, they have to be… or they wouldn’t be effective for long.

Keep at bay the Great Devourer of Time – I’m speaking of course of meetings, which have a vast appetite for corporate time… and, as everyone in business knows, are too often inefficient.  Time wasted in meetings when other projects needed doing was a constant pet peeve of mine in the business world.  To the extent you can save time both in those meetings you attend (Do I really need to go? Can I send someone else in my place? Can I find out what I need to in a quick phone call instead?) and those you set up (Do I really need to schedule an hour? Might a half hour do? Or even 15 minutes?), your schedule will thank you for it.  Naturally some meetings are valuable and essential, no doubt about it.  But if you approach them all from a certain skeptical standpoint of operational efficiency, you’ll likely find yourself returning useful time to your calendar on a regular basis.

5 Secrets to Managing Your Business While Traveling

Traveling the world and running a business at the same time seems like a glamorous lifestyle: You can work from anywhere you want, make your own schedule and be your own boss.

But the characteristics that make it desirable also turn it terrible.

After all, with complete freedom to choose between exploring far-off lands (and people) and sitting in an Internet cafe doing SEO chores, participating in conference calls and writing emails, who would choose to do the latter tasks? Not many people.

Given the option, you would probably close your computers and go exploring with those beautiful Scandinavians who just invited you to the beach.

The digital-nomad lifestyle may seem appealing, but there’s nothing glamorous about freaking out because your Internet connection in a small town suddenly went out two minutes before an important conference call or product launch.

Yet it’s possible to find a balance and successfully run a business from the road, relying on time management and careful planning.

Build Your Business For Lasting Success With This Tip From The Grateful Dead

Whether you’re into hippy jam bands or not, you have to admit: The Grateful Dead were masters of their business. Sure, they only had one Top 10 song on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. They didn’t win a Grammy during three decades of active music production (though they did finally receive a Lifetime Achievement Award in 2007).

But they found a niche and they dominated it — and their strategy is one that businesses of all kinds can learn from.

You’ve heard about the fox and the hedgehog: the ancient Greek poet Archilochus penned the oft-repeated phrase “… the fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing.” The poem is a philosophical touch point for business theory, personality testing, and more. The Hedgehog’s one big thing — curling into a ball to protect himself from attack — helped him fend off the more cunning fox, whose every creative effort to eat the hedgehog is foiled.

The hedgehog approach is key to starting a successful business. A successful startup knows its one big thing and does it better — or cheaper, or faster — than anyone else.

It’s exactly what the Grateful Dead did in developing and marketing their music. Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah, the founders of Hubspot, argue in their book Inbound Marketing that the Grateful Dead found extraordinary success by doing three simple things: they created a niche market, they upended traditional marketing strategies to build an audience, and they focused like a laser on the one thing they could do best.

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Now is a Good Time to Reflect and Direct

January 7, 2015 by

business (10) The company party was a success, clients were feted, venders gave you more liquor than you will drink in all of 2015, vacations are over and people are settling back into their work routines.  If you have not already done so, now is an excellent time to think about and set your company goals for the coming year.  In addition, this is a good point in time to get input and by-in from your advisors, key people and employees.

This time of year is a window of opportunity, because, it is human nature to use milestones (i.e. the New Year, birthdays, anniversaries, holidays) as an occasion for people to look at themselves.  They reflect on where they have been and set goals for where they want to go.  They see these recognized, fixed points in time as a place to start anew, wipe the slate clean or correct past mistakes.

An effective manager will utilize this knowledge of their employee’s behavior and mindset.  He will use this insight to create focal points and manage the employees towards the company’s goals.  He takes advantage of people’s natural inclination to use a milestone as a starting place and rallying point.

Concerned that you missed the 1st?   Don’t be, it doesn’t matter; there are other milestones to use instead.  While the focus is usually on the New Year it does not have to be then – people can and do reflect, start fresh and commit to a goal at any time.  What matters is that it has a defining starting point.

Therefore, launching a new set of goals can be at the beginning of the fiscal year, the company’s anniversary, the July 4th picnic or Labor Day.  Monday is the most popular day of the week for people starting new goals and is shown to be the best day for kick-off, and benchmarking, meetings.

A successful manger will learn about and use his knowledge of human nature to reflect and direct.  He will use people’s natural proclivities for milestones (and benchmarks) to set and meet goals for the business.  As Warren Bennis (a pioneer in the field of leadership) once said, “Leadership is the capacity to translate vision into reality”.

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Workplace Stress – Now is a Good Time to Pay Attention

December 9, 2014 by

business (1) The holidays are here and most likely your employee’s stress levels, which were high to begin with, have increased to ultimate, super high.  So why, as their manager, should you care?  Stress is a part of life and isn’t it the employees private concern on how they take care of it? The answer to that question is a resounding “no”.  An effective manager is aware of workplace stress and takes steps to deal with it.

People’s jobs typically require 40 to 50 hours a week – both at a worksite and, with the advent of personal electronic devises, at home during unofficial work time.  Their employment is a big part of most people’s lives, as is the stress which comes from it.  Personal stress and professional stress are linked and they influence each other more than ever.

A successful boss is aware of how workplace stress is an important part of an employee’s life and takes steps to relieve it.  Because, not only is it good stewardship, it’s important for the company’s bottom line.  A conservative estimate is that job stress costs businesses more than $300 billion a year (American Psychological Association, 2013).  Stress leads to absenteeism, diminished productivity, higher health care costs, and theft of property, time and money.

It also causes employees to quit their jobs; turnover is directly affected by stress.  Almost 1 in 4 people (24%) gave “too much stress” as a reason they would quit their job (Randstad, 2014).  Inadequate pay and limited opportunity for advancement were the only reasons that scored higher.  Unfortunately, pay and advancement are often something a supervisor can’t do anything about, particularly in a small business.

But, stress on the job is something she has power over, it can be controlled in many ways.  There are some fundamental time tested techniques, and some innovative ones which are geared to a particular worksite or type of employee.  Skilled mangers will learn and apply these ideas, because healthy stress reduction starts at the top and works its way down.

A supervisor’s negative viewpoint filters down and impacts the whole team.  Workers often identify their boss’s behaviors and attitudes as the primary stressors.  Now is a good time for managers to take an inventory of their own attitudes, as well as the employees.  Going into next year with the idea to increase the company’s bottom line through reducing workplace stress is a worthy personal and professional goal that everybody benefits from.

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Tips To Grow Your Business for 2015 and Other News

December 4, 2014 by

business (5)As 2014 comes to an end, small business owners and organizations start thinking and strategizing for the coming year. Many companies begin the year with new budgets for different departments, and strategies for their marketing campaigns are reevaluated again if they are not working, or if they need to take a different direction. Healthcare packages and other financial incentives for their employees can be evaluated to compare prices and offer them better choices than the previous year.  Follow the links below to read more about small business news, and ways to promote your business for the coming year.

11 Foolproof Ways to Grow Your Small-Business Facebook Following

Your business may have a solid marketing strategy, but are you an effective Facebook marketer?

Facebook estimates that it is home to more than 30 million active small-business pages. How will yours get noticed? How do you turn one fan into 1,000? Here are 11 creative (and perfectly legal!) methods to generate a Facebook following that convert likes to sales fluidly:

1. Make your Facebook page home.
Once you have set up a comprehensive business page, request a personalized web address, such as www.facebook.com/ENTMagazine. Promote your new hub of business across your other social media profiles (LinkedIn, Twitter etc.) and on printed marketing collateral including business cards, highlighting: We’re on Facebook!

2. Analyze your advertising efforts.
Through the admin panel of your page, or the Adverts Create Tool, you can orchestrate simultaneous marketing campaigns on your budget. The benefit of Facebook advertising initiatives is that it tracks your customers’ responses in real figures. Examine what works and engineer your efforts according to that response.

 Can small business help Russia bear West’s sanctions? Putin hopes so

 Moscow — Admitting that Russia has suffered a “difficult” year and faces what now looks to be permanent ostracism from the West, Vladimir Putin on Thursday argued that the current economic malaise is a matter of national security that will determine the country’s ability to survive.

That appears to make it official: the Kremlin now believes that it’s locked into a replay of the cold war, which it does not intend to lose this time. “We are ready to meet any challenge of the times and win,” Putin said.

But in a startlingly new appeal, Putin said in his annual state-of-the-nation address that the way forward is to liberalize the economy and let small business flourish in Russia.
The Russian president rolled out a series of liberal economic reforms in his state-of-the-nation speech today, saying that clearing away bureaucratic red tape and offering tax breaks to small business would soften sanctions’ bite.

Top Retirement Strategies: Small Business Owners

As a small business owner, you are completely responsible for your own retirement planning. Unless your small business is just a side job, you don’t have an employer to set up a retirement plan or choose a set of possible investments for you, and you’re definitely not getting a pension. Further, if you have employees, you may feel responsible for helping them plan for a successful retirement.

This article will discuss the considerations and retirement savings plans that you, as a small business owner, should consider when planning for both your own retirement and that of your employees.

Develop an Exit Strategy

It might seem strange that developing a business exit strategy should be one of your first considerations when planning for retirement. But consider this: The small business you spend your life building might become your largest asset. If you want it to fund your retirement – and if you want to actually stop working – you’ll have to liquidate your investment.

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