The Educated Franchisee Insider Newsletter
The Educated Franchisee
The How-To Book for Choosing a Winning FranchiseMay 2011
Author ImageGreetings!

I would like to open this newsletter by sharing a few thoughts from my good friend Ford Kyes of ActionCOACH Pinellas. Ford's firm is consistently ranked as one of the top business coaching firms in the United States.  The nexus of their exceptional success comes from the unique ability to combine personal empowerment with tight attention to financial management.  I have seen the results and they can be spectacular.  From Ford -
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Last time I checked, we all have the same amount of time each day and we all know how much that is:  24 hours, or 1440 minutes or 86,400 seconds are in each day.  The difference between successful people and those wishing they were is how they choose to invest their time.

And when is the last time you didn't find the time to do the things you REALLY want to do? I could call the "busiest" person I know (maybe that's you) and tell him/her that I have 1 million dollars waiting for him, if he just makes the time to travel to California to personally pick it up. He'd be there (wouldn't you). 

Almost everyone I've ever asked tells me they value integrity as one of their most important (usually top five) values. What is the definition of integrity?  For me, it's doing what you say you will do.  That does not include doing it partially and providing an excuse (like "I was just too busy" or "I just ran out of time")

 

I wish people would stop saying "I didn't have time", or even better, "I was too busy". Who isn't busy these days? It would be far better if they were simply honest and told the truth.  This starts, by the way, with being honest with themselves.  The "truth" was they weren't really interested, or, they had other higher priority things they had to or liked to do, or, they wasted so much of their time on unimportant but seemingly urgent matters that they ran out of available time for things that were truly important.  

 

Please don't use time as a reason for not doing something you agreed to do. Reasons are simply Excuses and Excuses are lame and below the line.

 

(Note:  This was adopted from a blog Ford Kyes read on linkedin - original author unknown.)   

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Hope you enjoyed Ford's comments and that you invest your time wisely this month. 


Respectfully,
Apple Image
Rick Bisio
Apple ImageHow Does Your State Rank at Tax Time?

There's nothing like the proverbial knock of the tax man to focus your attention on how much it costs your company to do business. How much you must pay to play depends in part on where you've chosen to hang your hat.

 

If you can take the weather and relative isolation, for example, South Dakota is a great state for entrepreneurs and small businesses, according to the just-released "Business Tax Index 2011" from the Small Business and Entrepreneurship Council (SBE Council). It took the top ranking for being tax-friendly in this year's index.

But if your business calls the nation's capital or Minnesota home, you're not as blessed. The District of Columbia came in dead last, handily leaving in the lurch the next-to-the-last Land of 10,000 Lakes.

 

The index is based on 18 different tax measures that include income, capital gains, property, death/inheritance, unemployment and various consumption-based taxes such as state gas and diesel levies.


Go to Business News Daily.com, Click Here
Apple ImageIRS Watchdog Seeks Overhaul of Tax Code 

 

National Taxpayer Advocate Nina Olson Wednesday told lawmakers the U.S. tax code is "a mess," and in dire need of simplification, but any overhaul should rework rules for corporate and individual taxes at the same time.

"I believe that fundamental tax reform must be made a priority," Ms. Olson said in her written testimony to the House Small Business Committee. "However, in order to be effective and far-reaching, such fundamental tax reform should include both corporate tax reform and individual tax reform."

 

Focusing only on corporate tax changes would ignore the fact that a substantial number of businesses are "pass-through entities" that are subject only to individual tax rates, she said.

 

Go to the Wall Street Journal, Click Here
Apple Image A Plan for Working on (Not in) the Business

 

Lots of business owners wish they could be less involved in the day-to-day operations of their businesses. When you have 10 or even 20 employees, you can be intimately involved in all aspects of the business from sales to finance to operations to purchasing. But if you want the company to grow and perhaps get to that elusive "next level" everyone's always talking about, you have to build an organization that can get the job done without you managing every detail.


Over the last 33 years, I have gone from running my business with one employee to five, 10, 20, 50 and now 105. For many years I felt like the old-time entertainers who would spin dinner plates on poles, running from one to another as the plates started to slow down and wobble. For me, it wasn't entertaining at all. It was stressful, it was frustrating and it was exhausting.

Go to The New York Times.com, Click Here  

Apple Image Minority-Owned Firms on the Rise 

There are more Hispanic-owned businesses than Asian-owned businesses. Likewise, there are more black-owned businesses than Asian-owned businesses. But the total sales at Asian-owned businesses exceeds the combined sales at black-owned and Hispanic-owned businesses.

 

Last week, the U.S. Census Bureau released a detailed report on the growth of businesses owned by people of Asian origin between 2002 and 2007 - an analysis that is conducted every five years. In that time, the number of Asian-owned firms increased more than 40% to 1.5 million, while the sales at those businesses hit $507.6 billion.

 

The Bureau released similar reports on the state of Hispanic-owned firms and black-owned firms in September 2010 and February, 2011, respectively.

Between 2002 and 2007, the number of Hispanic-owned businesses increased by 44%, to 2.3 million, according to the Census data. They generated $345.2 billion in sales in 2007.

 

Meanwhile, the number of black-owned businesses increased by 60%, to 1.9 million, and pulled in $137.5 billion.

 

Asian businesses pack a punch when it comes to hiring, too. They employed 2.8 million workers in 2007 - the same as Hispanic-owned and black-owned businesses combined.

 

Payrolls totaled $79.6 billion at Asian-owned firms, exceeding the collective $78.5 billion at Hispanic-owned and black-owned firms, the Census data show.
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Author - Rick Bisio,  rbisio@educatedfranchisee.com