The Launch Blog: Expert Advice from the CorpNet Team
Closing a Business Checklist: Ten Steps From Our Experts
All businesses go through ups and downs, and many will suffer cash flow crises. After some tough times, you may be tempted to walk away from your business - but closing down a business is not a decision that you should make in a fit of frustration. Starting a business is so exciting, but the day-to-day grind of running a small business can wear down even the most intrepid entrepreneur. That said, if you decide this path is the right decision, here is a comprehensive closing a business checklist that will highlight some of the big issues that you will need to work through. Ten Steps to...
Small Business Tax Advice and Survival Guide
Tax season comes to all businesses big and small, and can be a headache no matter how well you think you’ve prepared. For a small business owner wearing many (or all) hats in the business, it’s an unwelcome extra task sure to cause late hours and frayed nerves. To handle the additional workload during tax season, CorpNet offers some small business tax advice and presents our Tax Season Survival Kit for business owners. Step 1. Gather All Necessary Documentation The first step in preparing for taxes is gathering any necessary documentation. Ask your tax accountant for the list of figures...
Symptoms and Remedies for 13 Common Entrepreneurial Pitfalls
It seems that everyone on Instagram is an Entrepreneur or CEO. What used to be a high risk and scary choice, has now been glamorized into fast money, luxurious lifestyles, and ready-set-go businesses. A picture is worth a thousand words, but the stories behind the glossy pictures are anything but fancy. I know the true stories of self-doubt, self-sabotage, and business burnout. Over the years I've seen the same 13 challenges and entrepreneurial pitfalls in myself, my clients, and other entrepreneurs: Not Having a Clear Focus/Mission Trying to Be All Things to All People Lack of Revenue...
Accounting SEO: Local Search Optimization You Need to Know
Just like traditional businesses, accountants and CPAs have many options available for promoting and growing their service revenue. One of the most vital options is search engine optimization or SEO for short. I might be just a little bit biased since I've been working with SEO for fifteen years. But I am with good reason. I have experienced the benefits of SEO first hand and I know SEO can be a game-changer for an accounting practice or single accountant office. An accounting SEO strategy is similar to that of regular SEO, although there is one important nuance to remember. Since most...
Five Ways to Optimize Your Accounting Firm Operations
If you’re like most entrepreneurs, you frequently get the urge to change the way you do things and replace them with new systems and fresh ideas. After all, spring is the time for new beginnings, and your accounting firm operations could probably use a bit of a refresh. As you well know, your operations are the crucial activities of your business, from sales and accounting to marketing and customer service. It’s important for all parts of your operations to balance and support each other. Keep reading to learn how to optimize your accounting firm operations and boost your bottom line. 1....
7 Expenses You Can Save On by Working from Home
In the past, it seemed pivotal that an entrepreneur have a brick and mortar or office location for their business. If they were unable to afford or secure one, many people would abandon their business dreams altogether. Luckily, this has changed, as more and more entrepreneurs are opening or moving their businesses to their home. In fact, there are as many as 38 million home businesses across the U.S.! Although there are many perks of running a home business, such as having a flexible schedule and improved work/life balance, one of the most notable is that you can save money. With a...
CPA Burnout is Real: Take These 5 Steps to Push Through
Are you distancing yourself from relationships, feeling a loss of personal accomplishment or just overall suffering from emotional exhaustion? You could be on the dangerous road to CPA burnout. Whether your accounting firm is just starting out or growing by leaps and bounds, running your own business can be extremely stressful. You may never have imagined that your entrepreneurial dream could turn into an entrepreneurial nightmare, but CPA burnout is real. Running your own CPA business means being all things to all aspects of your business. Not only are you the boss (the buck does stop...
Dissolve an LLC With These Six Easy Steps
For a variety of reasons, entrepreneurs may decide to close the business they worked so hard to start and grow. Situations change and the need to dissolve an LLC or corporation may need to be addressed. An entrepreneur can grow tired of small business ownership or may simply want to retire. Possibly the business has been losing money or it isn't as profitable as it needs to be. Regardless of the reasons, an LLC needs to be dissolved in a formal and methodical manner. This task doesn't have to feel daunting. Our six easy steps will provide a guide for closing a business within the...
Why a Business Mentor Can Impact Your Business
As a business owner, you want to use every advantage to help ensure success. One opportunity to consider is a business mentor. A business mentor is an entrepreneur with more experience than you and who’s there to help you achieve your goals. It’s someone with no stake in your company that you can trust to keep you moving ahead. Unlike business coaching, which usually is a limited engagement focused on specific business problems, with mentoring you can develop a relationship that lasts indefinitely and is personally and professionally rewarding to both parties. Why You Should Seek Out a...
Recognizing and Managing Entrepreneurial Burnout
Every single business owner goes through periods where they've lost their oomph. Sometimes, it's due to a struggling business. Perhaps that growth curve has stagnated (or flatlined) or the feedback you're getting is that your product is all wrong. Perhaps your team is in conflict. Perhaps your expansion has failed, and you're having to go through layoffs or cutbacks or stop the growth of a new division. Oomph goes away for other reasons. One friend of mine found herself without the oomph to keep going because her business had succeeded. She had spent years pursuing financial freedom, and...
Creating Your Own Business and Loving What You Do!
The entrepreneurs you read about or see on TV may seem like overnight successes—but in reality, creating your own business doesn’t happen overnight. Behind every successful business idea, months (or even years) of thought and planning have gone into launching it. After all, who wants to risk the money, time and effort required to start a new business on a mere whim? One of the keys to success is creating a business you’re excited about. Your passion will help you persist through all the obstacles. Here are three ideas for creating your own business and loving what you do. Creating Your...
Startup Podcasts for Today’s Modern Entrepreneur
It’s no surprise why today’s modern entrepreneurs like to listen to startup podcasts. Podcasts are portable -- a great way to get information when you can’t read but can listen. Often podcasts contain golden tidbits that you might not pick up in a written piece. Many startup podcasts include interviews with experienced business experts who can offer invaluable insights to help you grow your business in ways you never considered before. And best of all, they are usually free. Here are 10 startup podcasts to put on your listening list, along with a description of why each is a terrific...
Finance Your Business With These Low Stress Options
Today’s business owners have more options for business financing than ever before. But some methods to finance your business may cause you to toss and turn at night more than others. Of course, stress can be subjective. One person’s definition of stress may be different from another’s. But this list can help you sort through the different ways to finance your business that are less likely to cause you stress or at least allow you to choose what you consider to be low stress. Here are some lower-stress financing options for your small business. Low-Stress Ways to Finance Your Business...
Five Tips for Hiring Freelancers
As your business grows, so too does your payroll. Hiring can be one of the biggest struggles for growing business. The amount of time, money, and other resources needed to find, vet, hire, and train new employees are overwhelming. And, when these new employees don’t work out, you find yourself in an even bigger hole than before. Therefore, many successful businesses are turning to short-term contractors, or freelancers, to alleviate some of the bandwidth struggles they are experiencing. Using a freelancer can make sense if you want to mitigate the risks of new hires. Freelancers are...
Four Ways Busy Entrepreneurs Can Show Their Loved Ones They Care
Although Valentine's Day has passed, it doesn’t mean the time has expired for us busy business owners to show our family and friends we love them. Building and nurturing relationships never goes out of season. And now more than ever, with the divide among people getting wider as the political and social climate becomes ever more heated, I believe we all need to step up our efforts to show we care. But when you’re an entrepreneur bogged down with countless tasks and multiple concerns on your mind, how can you mange all that AND show your people some love? That’s challenging for all...
Should Your Company Use a Professional Employer Organization?
Small business owners may be new to the phrase professional employer organization, but PEOs have been around now for several years and changing the face of human resources management. According to the National Association of Professional Employer Organizations (NAPEO), small businesses that work with a PEO grow 70 to 9 percent faster, experience 10 to 14 percent less employee turnover, and are 50 percent less likely to go out of business. Although these sound like terrific benefits for any small business owner, there are also some drawbacks to working with a professional employer...
Six Tips To Help Business Leaders Gracefully Handle Adversity In The Office
In an ideal business world, everyone working at a company would always get along famously and harmoniously collaborate day in and day out toward shared objectives they all believe in passionately. Sounds nice, right? Unfortunately, it’s not very realistic—neither for the entrepreneur starting a business nor the business owner running an existing business for years. In all companies, leaders face adversity within their ranks at times. Adversity isn’t usually fun, but it doesn’t have to be debilitating either. How can you manage adversity gracefully so it doesn’t hurt your business? Below...
Best Practices For Interviewing Job Candidates
Hiring the right people requires a sure-fire interviewing process. To effectively interview job candidates, you need more than a little dedicated time and a list of questions; you need an understanding of how you can draw out the information you need about an individual’s knowledge and capabilities. You also need to tune into character nuances that might indicate how well a candidate will work with your team. And, of course, you need to do all of that without breaking any anti-discrimination laws. Interviewing can be intimidating, for not only prospective employees, but also for...
Avoiding A Job Discrimination Law Suit
Hiring the right people to be part of your team can greatly affect your business’s ability to succeed. It’s an important process—and a tricky one! When considering job candidates, you need to be careful or you could find yourself facing legal problems. If at any point during the hiring process you don’t comply with the federal and state (and even some local) laws that protect people from job discrimination, you risk having a lawsuit filed against your company. When hiring employees, you must comply with all anti-discrimination laws. Even an unintentional misstep can cause major issues for...
What Can Employers Not Discriminate Against?
As a business owner, it’s exciting to hire employees and watch your company grow. But there are legal risks if you give job candidates and employees reason to believe your staffing decisions and policies are discriminatory. The first step in avoiding a job discrimination lawsuit is to have a basic understanding of what you can’t discriminate against and the nature of the laws that prohibit employment discrimination. You need to comply with all applicable federal and state (even some local) laws that protect people from job discrimination. So, in your employment ads, job applications, job...
How to Legally Structure Your Business To Secure Financing
All the pieces of your entrepreneurial dream are finally falling into place. You have a name for your business, a product or service that makes you super excited, and you’ve even started noodling designs and logos. Before you can go much further, however, you’re going to need funding. And in order to get funding, you will need to decide what type of structure is best for your business: a sole proprietorship DBA (doing business as); a C corporation or S corporation; a professional limited liability company (PLLC) or a limited liability company (LLC). Let’s take a look at the available...
5 Tips to Help You Manage Your Books
Bookkeeping is a big concern for small business owners as many don’t have past experience managing the books. However, being smart about how you deal with it will save you a lot of time, effort, and headaches. In this article, we’ll cover 5 tips to help you manage your books. Manage Your Books With These Tips 1. Keep all of your business records organized. If you want your business to run efficiently and smoothly, you need to keep a record of every part of your business. Imagine if a client refuses to pay and it leads to a court's summons. Having a paper trail of your records can help...
The Fail Proof Process for Incorporating in California
Have you considered incorporating in California but you're just not sure where to begin? As a California business owner, I’m excited to help guide other entrepreneurs get their companies up and running in this fine state. In this post, I’m going to walk you through the process of forming a corporation in California. But first, let’s take a look at the various kinds of corporations the state recognizes. Types of Corporations in California General For-Profit Corporation (General Stock Corporation) - A General For-Profit Corporation is a legal entity, separate from the shareholders who own...
Closing Down a Business – The 12 Steps of Corporate Dissolution
You're not the first owner to consider closing down a business and you certainly won't be the last. But it is a big decision and one that should be taken lightly. Regardless of your final decision, you need to prepare yourself for the necessary steps involved in the process. Closing down a business requires a certain process be followed. This process is just as important as the steps required to start a business. I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work. ~ Thomas A Edison 12 Effective Steps for Closing Down a Business 1. Admit It! It’s Time to Close Making the...
How to Rekindle Your Love for Your Business
This time of year, a lot of us are thinking about romantic love, or in my case, romantic love + business partner. But what happens when something you love — i.e. your business — isn’t bringing you the joy it once did?
What To Do When The Luck Of The Irish Isn’t On Your Side
With certainty every year, the celebrations of all things Irish in honor of St. Patrick’s Day go into full swing on March 17. But when you’re starting or running a small business, nothing is ever completely certain. Sometimes all things go according to plan and it’s smooth sailing. And then there are times of challenge when you’re wondering what else could possibly go wrong. Yeah, it’s no fun to face circumstances of adversity and feel like the luck of the Irish isn’t with you. For example: Slow sales periods when the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow seems farther away than...
Eight Must-Haves To Include In Your Freelance Work Proposals
As a freelance professional, establishing a solid working relationship with your clients often hinges on mutual understanding and clear expectations. New entrepreneurs learn that very quickly upon starting their businesses! That’s why having a proposal that covers all the bases can be one of your best business assets. Proposals that provide clarity and detail help to ensure you and your clients are on the same page. That’s important for both “one-off” transactional projects and ongoing assignments. What should your proposals include? At a minimum, I recommend you make sure they have the...
21 Things Our Dads Teach Us That Make Us Better Entrepreneurs
Every year around Father’s Day, I reflect on the profound impact my own father had on my self-confidence and work ethic. His encouragement and the fine example he set forth have contributed to my ability to succeed in business. And every day, I see Phil—my husband and co-founder of CorpNet—encourage self-assurance within our four children, laying the foundation for their future successes. I imagine many of you have had similar life experiences. Fathers, regardless of whether or not they’re entrepreneurs themselves, influence and shape who we are as business owners. Their values,...
5 Avoidable Mistakes Real Estate Investors Make With Their LLCs
With any investment property, liabilities come with the territory—faulty electrical wiring, broken stairway railings, black mold, and other possible flaws are all inherent threats. It’s no wonder savvy real estate investors decide to form LLCs (Limited Liability Companies) to protect themselves. The LLC legal business structure shields investors’ personal assets from liability associated with their investment properties. So with an LLC, your personal assets won’t be vulnerable if a tenant or visitor to your property sues you. While forming an LLC can be done rather quickly and without any...
Running Your Business: Do You Know What You Don’t Know?
With school back in session, students of all ages are learning new things—and discovering how much they don’t know in the process. Whether you’re an aspiring entrepreneur or long-time business owner, one thing is certain: like the kids who are back to school, you always have room to learn and grow. As I’ve learned and grown as a business owner, one of my favorite phrases has become, “You don’t know what you don’t know.” How true, right? It’s far too easy to fool ourselves into thinking we really know all there is to know. But the truth is we will never ever know everything when it comes...
