Tag: The New Economy

Posted on

Tools and Tips to Help You Automate HR Management

From time tracking to expense management, automating your human resource management will save time and money.  Anything that happens on a recurring basis is ripe for automation. Tasks like data collecting, file creation, document sharing, form filling, and more can all be done using the software in a way that eliminates the need for an HR person to do these tasks and frees you up to do more.

 

  • Contractor and Employee Onboarding – When you bring on a team member, they need to have access to information about your company, including branding information, document templates, and more. If it’s important that your people comply with a particular thing, it needs to be in the onboarding process.

 

  • Offboarding – When someone leaves your company and moves on with another, it’s a good idea to survey them about why so that you can improve. Use your HR system to send an automated exist interview via email that they can do on their own before they leave. Plus, once they fill out the exit survey, they can also be automatically sent other information such as COBRA info.

 

  • Vacation Requests – If you have employees, they may want to leave, even contractors, if you rely on them to do regular tasks on a long-term contract, offering a way for them to let you know they’re going away is always going to make everyone’s life easier.

 

  • Expense Claims – If you reimburse your people for expenses related to the work you do, letting them automatically enter a request for expenses is a lot simpler when done via computer technology and reduces the paperwork and time needed to process such requests.

 

  • Payroll – Allowing your employees to enter their own time in a system that creates the paychecks is a great way to cut down on your need to do data entry. All you have to do is approve the time, and the check or direct deposit for their pay happens automatically.

 

  • Training – Whether employees or contractors offering company training is helpful to them and can improve their work. You can offer branding information and train them on using all your systems without having to do it individually for each person you bring on board.

 

  • Time Management – Let your contractors and employees keep track of their own time using the software.

 

  • Benefits Management – Let your contractors or employees take advantage of their benefits on their own. Self-serve, saving lots of time.

 

  • Tax Forms and Filing – Most bookkeeping software and systems automatically offer tax forms and filing options depending on your needs.

 

Even if you don’t have a bunch of employees and only work with contractors having everything together in a centralized place organized according to the laws and regulations where you live is going to free up your time and help avoid issues in the future.

 

Posted on

Tools and Tips to Help You Automate Your Finances

Automating your business helps free up your valuable time to do more money-making activities. It’s a wonderful time for business finance automation because the tools that exist today are so easy to use, inexpensive, and they work great. Plus, new tools are coming online every single day.

 

  • Bookkeeping Data Entry – Most bookkeeping software today can be integrated with your bank and credit cards. When you make purchases using those cards or that bank, the expense is automatically booked into your accounting software in the right category the moment it happens.

 

  • Invoicing – Most invoices in small businesses don’t change that much from month to month. Because of this, you can set up invoices in most bookkeeping software to send automatically based on entries during the previous week, month, or another time period you choose. What’s more, when your client clicks the invoice to pay, the payment is automatically recorded in the software, and then once the money is received, it’s booked in your bookkeeping software.

 

  • Accounts Receivable – You can set up your bookkeeping software to remind your customers to send you the money, and it will automatically book it properly when received too.

 

  • Accounts Payable – Likewise, if you have bills to pay, you can use the same bookkeeping software to record your payment as you make it. You can also set up your bill-paying system to pay all your bills automatically on their due date. Most banks have this feature built-in for free.

 

  • Tax Compliance and Reporting – Once your accounting software is set up with the right categories, most of it will work automatically. If you have to deal with more than one state due to your business structure, try a platform like Taxify.co to help automate and understand more of this process.

 

  • Expense Management – Managing expenses, especially when you’re away from your office, is easy today with the various software that helps you collect receipts, appropriately book the expense, and so forth. Automating this is more important if you have several people to keep track of. Software that can help include Zoho Expense, com, and even your existing bookkeeping software may have an option.

 

  • Payroll – Depending on how many contractors you have or if you have employees or not, you may need to have an automated way to ensure your people get paid on time. Letting them self-manage their pay helps save time. Look at your bookkeeping software to determine if there are add-ons to help automate this or try using SurePayRoll.com.

 

  • Investing and Saving – The truth is, if you don’t invest and save on a regular basis, you won’t do it. Using your bank to send money to your investments automatically, savings accounts are the best way to make it happen, whether personal or business finances.

 

Automating your finances helps you avoid making the same steps over and over again. There is no reason to repeat tasks today when you have the ability to let the software do it for you. You can save hours each day by implementing these financial automation tips and tools.

 

 

Posted on

9 Tips for Choosing Awesome Contractors for Your Business Needs

When you decide to outsource to others using contractors, you must understand how to find good ones and keep them before you get started. Nothing is worse than finally deciding to pay someone else to do something and making a bad choice.

communication

  1. Know What You Want – If you don’t know exactly what you need, it’ll be hard to hire the right person or team to help you. If you cannot write a detailed job or project description highlighting the expected deliverables and timetable, and budget, you are not ready to find a contractor.

 

  1. One Thing Per Contractor – When it comes to your small home business, you don’t want to hire one person to be in charge of an entire project because it can cause problems. For example, if you hire one writer to write, edit, format, and do every part of a project for you and they get sick, you may end up without a project. But if you hire someone just to do the writing, someone else to do the editing, and yet someone else to make it pretty, you’re more likely to get a better product in the end. Plus, it’s a lot easier to replace someone only responsible for editing since each skillset is specific.

 

  1. Know Your Budget – You need to know the range you’re willing to pay for the projects you’re trying to outsource. To generate the number, you need to find out what the going rate is for that particular expertise. Don’t try to get a rocket scientist on a minimum wage budget.

 

  1. Check References – Even if your friend recommends a person or company for your project, always check up on them to be sure they are who they say they are. You’d do this if you were hiring someone to come to your storefront, do it when you are going to work with someone in your company every single time.

 

  1. Start Small – When you first work with someone, don’t hire them for a long-term project. Instead, hire them for a short-term project with a faster turn around time so that you can find out if they are right for you for future or more critical projects.

 

  1. Respect the Laws – When you hire a contractor, they are not your employee. How they produce your deliverables is not any of your concern. The important part is to answer the question: Did they deliver the results you paid for? You don’t control their time because they are not your employee. For this reason, pay by project or task and not hourly.

 

  1. Use a Project Management System – Some independent contractors have their own system and want you to sign up for their project management system. This is important because it helps establish that they are not employees. But if they don’t use their own, set up a system for them to use with you as it’ll keep everything more organized and on task.

 

  1. Communicate Regularly and Quickly – When your contractors have a question, get back to them as quickly as possible with the answers. They have their own timeline, and if you’re not fast with responses, you can end up being really hard to work with.

 

  1. Pay on Time – Don’t mess with someone’s pay. If you promise to pay them a certain amount of money for the work, then pay them when you said you would. Don’t hire people if you don’t have the funds to pay at that moment.

 

Remember that the old saying that if it’s too good to be true, it probably is. Always check up on anyone you plan to work with, whether you are going to pay them, share private information with them, or have them associated with your business name in any way. There are lots of great people who want to work virtually as a contractor, so if you know what you want and do your due diligence, you will find them.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Posted on

What Do You Do All Day?

 

As a business owner, you have a lot on your plate. But, in order to figure out how to automate your business, you first need to know in detail what you do all day long so that you know which tasks can be automated, should be automated, and even whether it’s something you should be doing at all.

Review
Stay focused

In every business, you will have daily tasks, weekly tasks, monthly tasks, and even yearly tasks or quarterly tasks. The best thing to do is to get out a calendar and enter the items you know you have to do.

 

For example, you have to pay quarterly taxes, and you have to balance your books at the end of the month. You must buy a business license each October or January depending on your location and the rules and laws in your area. Whatever it is that you know for sure has to be done, enter it into your calendar, blocking off the approximate time it will take you to do it.

 

But there are also the daily things you do that generate your income. When it comes to generating income, it’s essential to specify which actions you are doing that generate income and which actions you’re doing that support generating income. Go through the steps you take in your day and write down what you’re doing, step by step.

What’s Your Job as The Owner of Your Business?

 

Coaches Example

 

Ø  Business: Coaches retired teachers starting a second career as independent course and project designers.

 

Ø  Morning: Checks the mail, email, and Trello to find out if there are any fires to put out this morning before paying any bills due for the day. Calls her group coaching clients for the weekly hour Zoom group coaching session. Writes 7 product educational and nurturing emails for a new one-on-one coaching product to market to her group coaching clients.

 

Ø  Afternoon: Records part of an online course in development. Transcribes the group call and sets up her part as a standalone presentation video.

 

Ø  Evening: Answers coaching client questions for those who signed up to receive daily emails and schedules them to be delivered in the morning.

 

As you can see, this is just one day out of an entire year and is not representative of all the money-making tasks this coach does, nor is it a complete picture of what happens in the business overall. But it does give you a great idea about where to start automating and even outsourcing. Once you see what you’re doing visually written out, it’s a lot easier to figure out places that you can improve your process. Take the time to write out every process you do each day that you do them. Once you’ve documented the different activities you do each day, you can identify what needs to be perfected and then automated or outsourced or both.

Posted on

What’s Your Business Type?

 

Do you have a store where people purchase products, or do you offer a service like coaching?

Maybe you offer courses and classes, or you provide customer support or something else entirely? Whatever you offer, how you have structured your business is vital to determine before you start your automation plans.

3 step plan

If you have an online store that people come to in order to purchase products from you, the way you automate and run your business will be very different from the way someone who offers courses or one-on-one personal services does.

 

So, consider what your business type is.

 

Online Store

 

If you sell any type of product, whether it’s physical or digital, with a shopping cart, you have an online store. You may be selling books, content, and even courses if you’re selling them as a product without your extra coaching and input. Essentially if you sell anything online in a shopping cart, you have an online store and can use a lot of automation tips for online stores.

 

Virtual Services

 

If you sell any type of service, administrative, one-on-one coaching, and so forth that you perform at a distance, using your website as your storefront, you are a service-based business. As a service-based business, you’ll organize your business and market yourself differently from an online store where you don’t speak to the customers directly yourself and sell products directly.

 

Virtual Support and Consulting

 

You may also offer only virtual support and consulting without offering direct service. For example, you may coach your clients to create a sales page, set up a freebie, set up a discovery call, but you don’t do it yourself, you simply advise them on what to do, and the client with their team does it. This is an entirely different business structure than a business that does the services directly or delivers the product directly.

 

Virtual Training

 

If you offer classes and “how-to” information to your customers via courses, classes, and content, you have a business that provides classes either self-paced or teacher-led this is a training business. A training business sometimes needs more personal input and engagement than a storefront that just sells the complete self-paced course.

 

There are numerous opportunities for automation in each of these business structures. But first, you need to write it down. What does the composition of your business look like? What do you do for customers and clients, and how do you do it? Is it hands-off or hands-on, or a combination of both? The more you can document how your business works, the easier it will be to find ways to automate and outsource.

 

Posted on

Business Plan Resources You Can Use

You don’t have to reinvent the wheel to create your business plan. There are numerous resources you can use to help you. Use this list to find resources to use to help you create the best and most functional business plan possible.

 

The more you work on this, the more likely you are to be successful. But don’t forget, set a deadline for yourself so that you finish your business plan so that you can get started living the life you dreamed you’d have as soon as possible.

 

  • Small Business Administration – [https://www.sba.gov/business-guide/plan-your-business/write-your-business-plan] In the USA, you can use information from the SBA to help you create your business plan. They have a lot of precious information on their website and in their offices across the country, and most of it is free or low cost.

 

  • Business Plan Software – There are numerous choices, such as bplans.com, liveplan.com, and others. They’re all pretty much the same, so you can choose based on what you need.

 

  • Business Plan Templates – You can find them right inside your MS Office templates and free online. Whatever you do when you do use a template, don’t copy someone else’s information. Make sure you add your own information so you don’t make a mistake. Just use the template for layout purposes.

 

  • A Business Plan Outline – Once you decide the type of plan you want to create, make your own outline, so you don’t forget to add any information. It does help to have the basic structure laid out, so all you do is fill in your own information.

 

  • An Accountant or Other Professional Expert – CPAs, Enrolled Agents (EAs), and some bookkeepers who specialize in a business start-up are professionals you want to have on hand to help you with the financial aspects of your business plan. Plus, they can help you with tax planning. Every small business owner should visit a tax planner before they start their business.

 

  • A Mentor, Coach, or Consultant – There are people who are willing to assist you for free or for payment, depending on your situation. Try going to a local SCORE.org office to get some help with your business plan. You can also find a coach or consultant online. Ask your colleagues for referrals.

 

  • Find an Incubator – Almost every local city with a college or university has a small business incubator that is willing to help. Check out your local coworking spaces for more information about this. They can help guide you through your research and business plan creation.

 

Finally, you can also hire someone to create your business plan for you, but this can be expensive. It depends on your situation whether you do it alone, go the volunteer route, or hire someone. The main thing is to learn as much as you can about creating a business plan, read other people’s plans, and then get yours started and done.

How To Build A Wildly Profitable Income Stream From Home Without Lies, Hype, Manipulation or Pressure…

 

https://flawlessfreedom.com

Posted on

Information You Need to Know for Your Business Plan

 

There are many reasons to write a business plan. You may need a plan to borrow money, attract investors, or to validate your ideas. Plus, creating a business plan helps work out operating procedures and can put your business at a strategic advantage over other businesses.

 

To create your business plan, work on collecting the following information and documentation.

 

  • A Description of Your Business – This is simply what you do, who you do it for, why you do it, how you do it, and when you do it.

 

  • Describe the Problem(s) Your Customer Has That You Solve – Make a list of each problem you solve for your customer. Describe them fully and why they need to be solved. It can help to attach the product to the problem for reference.

 

  • Describe Your Solution – Explain how this solution solves the problem for your ideal customer. Try to write this from their perspective to ensure that you are putting the customer in a central place.

 

  • Describe Your Target Customer – You may need to describe more than one target depending on your products and services, especially if you have different levels of products, depending on their place in the customer buying journey. This is a good place for customer avatars.

 

  • Describe Your Competitive Advantage – This is all about how you are different from the competition. It may be due to price, service, innovation, operation, or something else. Some people also describe this as a unique selling point or unique selling proposition. It’s all about your place in the market and how you can leverage it to your advantage.

 

  • Describe Your Selling Process – Website, storefront, affiliates, distributors or salespeople, door-to-door, or something else? For example, perhaps you’ll set up a squeeze page with a freebie to build your list then nurture your relationship with them in email. Be specific and thorough.

 

  • Describe Your Business Model – This is a list of your revue streams and how you’re going to make money. If you have no revenue stream potential, you have no business. For example, starting a blog is not a business until you monetize it.

 

  • Describe Your Start-Up Costs – What are the funds you need to get started? List each expense and why you need it.

 

  • Describe Your Goals and Benchmarks – If you don’t set deadlines, it won’t happen, so make sure you match a deadline or benchmark to each of the goals you’ve set for your business. For example, “I will get 100 new customers each week by hosting two-hour long webinars each week.”

 

  • Describe Your Business Setup – For example, if you’re a sole proprietor who outsources to contractors, state that; if you are an employer with a management team, state so. If you plan to buy human resources, as time goes forward, mention those benchmarks so you know when this will happen.

 

  • Describe Resources You Have and Need – Make a list of the resources you have available now and how you’ll use them and a list of resources you need to buy, and when you’ll do so based on benchmarks.

 

As you work on creating your business plan, it can help to understand fully all the information and data that you need to complete a business plan that is useful for you. Use this list of information you need for your business plan to guide you as you create the plan and build your business.

How To Build A Wildly Profitable Income Stream From Home Without Lies, Hype, Manipulation or Pressure…

 

https://flawlessfreedom.com

 

 

Posted on

Are You Being Realistic About Your Goals?

People often struggle in both life and business with the process of goal-setting—more than likely, you’ve read a lot about creating SMART goals. SMART is an acronym for: specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and timely. Being realistic is one of the criteria for setting goals that will serve you, but the truth is, the rest of the acronym helps ensure that your goals are realistic.

 

It’s fun to fantasize about starting a business, and it’s not uncommon to imagine becoming a millionaire or making a high six-figure salary while sitting on the beach. The problem with this is that it’s just not that realistic. It’s not to say that no one has ever done it, but more than likely, they already had tons of resources like money and contacts that allowed them to simply delegate while they’re lying on the beach.

 

This is not an uncommon happening. Even the neighborhood dog walker probably had high hopes for how much money they can earn. When you come up with a figure or a measure for your goal to track, you want the number to be realistic and not just pulled out of thin air.

 

For example, let’s say that you are a virtual assistant. You plan to work as a VA full time. At first glance, you may think that means you can bill at least 40 hours a week. We often choose 40 hours because that’s what we’re used to in terms of work. However, it’s not really that realistic. There are other things you need to do for your business aside from the direct and billable work you’re going to do for them.

 

To be super accurate and realistic about how much you can earn, you need to figure out the order of operations at your VA business. What will you do all day? More than likely, once you figure out, you’ll realize you can work four or five hours a day that is billable, and the rest of the time, you’ll need to work on marketing and other aspects of your business.

 

After you’ve organized your day, you accept that you have five hours a day, Monday – Friday, that can be considered billable hours. That means you have that much time to work directly for a client that you can bill them for the time. How much money will you earn with that criteria at the rate you planned to charge? If you only charge $20 per hour, you’ll only make $500 a week before taxes or expenses. Is that enough?

 

You can raise your rates, or you can find other ways to earn more money, such as by going to a flat fee per service and finding people to outsource to or by hiring a full-time employee to help. Perhaps you can automate a lot more than you have so far to free up more billable hours. Maybe you develop an app that does what you would do automatically that you sell to your audience or that you use to serve your audience.

 

The main thing is that you should not leave these numbers to chance. Design your entire day and figure out what is realistic for your goals in each case. Don’t just pull a number out of the air. Think about the number and how it can happen or not happen before you put it in writing.

How To Build A Wildly Profitable Income Stream From Home Without Lies, Hype, Manipulation or Pressure…

 

https://flawlessfreedom.com

Posted on

Describe Your Ideal Customer or Client: Create a Customer Avatar

One of the parts of your business plan that is essential is to describe your ideal customer or client. As you get to know your customers, you’ll find answers to questions such as: Who are they? Where do they hang out? What do they want? What do they need? What are their pain points? What keeps them up at night. Where do they get their information?

 

One practice that has become popular due to the fact that it works is to create a customer avatar from the information you collect that best describes your ideal customer. When you first begin, you’re going to create one avatar that best describes your most ideal customer. You’ll use that information to inform all the products that you create.

 

A customer avatar is simply one document that succinctly describes who your customer is, how they live their lives, and what they want and need in terms of your expertise.

 

The information you need to complete a customer avatar is as follows:

 

  • List Places Your Customers Get Their Information – Make a list of websites, journals, magazines, blogs, newspapers, books, and so forth that comprise where your ideal customer likes to get their information. These are all excellent options for networking and advertising.

 

  • List Your Ideal Customer’s Goals – Make a list of your customers’ goals for the solution you are trying to sell to them. The goals have to be in line with your expertise and your offers. For example, if you’re a Keto Coach, their goals will be about succeeding on a Keto way of life.

 

  • List Your Ideal Customer’s Values and Principles – Most people make decisions based on their morals, values, and principles. It’s the way they judge if something is true or not. The more you can relate to these values and principles with your words and actions, the better.

 

  • Describe Your Ideal Customer’s Demographics – Demographic information includes things like age, race, income, education, and so forth. Include everything relevant that will help you with targeting ads and content.

 

  • List Your Ideal Customer’s Pain Points or Challenges – As it relates to your experience and offering, list their pain points and challenges. What wakes your customers up at night? If you’re a Keto Coach, maybe your customers have diabetes, but maybe they just want to lose weight. You may have more than one ideal customer, too, but you should differentiate them so you can laser target the information you provide.

 

  • List Any Objections Your Customer Might Have at The Point of Purchase – Take the time to go through and make a list of each objection your customer may have based on who they are. When you list the objections, find facts and information that can overcome the objection.

 

You’re going to have to ask and answer numerous questions to fully gather all the information you need to create a well thought out and effective customer avatar. Once you do that, you should give your ideal customer a true persona and name. You can draw a picture of them, or you can cut out pictures from a magazine or use clips online to build your customer avatar. It’s up to you, but you want the avatar document to be as specific as possible. Once you start your business and start to collect more data information, you’ll be able to create more avatars based on their buying journey.

 

How To Build A Wildly Profitable Income Stream From Home Without Lies, Hype, Manipulation or Pressure…

 

https://flawlessfreedom.com

Posted on

What Is Your Business’s Financial Outlook? How Can You Know?

As you are creating your business plan, the part about understanding your industry and business’ financial outlook can seem daunting. But the truth is, while the numbers are assumptions based on what you studied, if you do a good job, your projections should be pretty close. Let’s look at how you can know and document your business’s financial outlook.

 

  • Study Your Industry – Remember that killer technologies are always being invented that can impact your business and even end your business. This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do it, but you should keep up to date so you can mitigate or change course as needed.

 

  • Study Your Competition – If you keep aware of your competition and what they’re doing every day, you’ll also see signs of issues in the industry or with your customers, especially if you’re in business by yourself and not a huge multinational corporation. If big businesses are worried about something, you should be too.

 

  • Project Your Expenses – Make a list of all the potential expenses you’ll have for your business—for example, website hosting, software updates, contractors, employees, supplies, and so forth. Before you make one cent, you’ll have a few expenses.

 

  • Project Your Income – After you know how many customers you can go after and how many you think you’ll convert over time, you can now project your income. You do that by figuring out how much they’ll buy per purchase, whether or not they’ll be repeat buyers, and how you’ll get more customers over time.

 

  • Know Your Break-Even Point – Your break-even point is when your basic expenses match your income. Knowing this is going to help you know where you can cut back in hard times.
  • Understand Your True Financial Needs – The business plan only includes how much you are going to make, how you’ll make it, and how you’ll spend it per your business, as a small business owner who wants to make a certain income, you can include that figure for your own needs.

 

  • Document the Potential Income and Expenses For 12 Months – Once you have the information, create a spreadsheet to enter the income and expenses you’ll have for your business over the next 12 months.

 

  • Use the Figures for Planning – Each of the numbers you generate can be used for future financial planning and business planning. For example, you can set up benchmarks that inform you when you add to your business. “When my net income is $5000.00 per month, I’ll hire a virtual assistant for $1000 a month.”

Know your number

  • Be Ready for The Unexpected – One thing that is always good to do with any financial projections is to have contingencies in place if your plans don’t work. For example, what will you do if there is a natural disaster? What if you can’t do business in the way you are used to? Can you change and how will you do it?

 

  • Monitor the Reality – While you’re making projections, understand that reality will happen as you grow your business. As reality happens, update your projections to account for that reality.

 

  • Update as You Know More – Update your projections any time you have new information that will make your numbers more accurate.

Use a spreadsheet to enter the figures you discover so that you can easily update it and change them based on new knowledge or assumptions. As you grow your business each year, your projections will become more and more accurate. This means the planning you do, based on those projections, will also become even more useful.

How To Build A Wildly Profitable Income Stream From Home Without Lies, Hype, Manipulation or Pressure…

 

https://flawlessfreedom.com