Tag Archives: Business

Mar
24
2023

Is a Home Business Right for You?

Many people, especially when frustrated by working for someone else, have considered starting a business of their own at home. Not only are you your own boss, but you can work whenever you want to. Creating your own home business can take some planning though.

Use Our Tips To Help You Get Started Your Own Home Business.

Sign up at forums, and also discussion groups, that cater to owners of home businesses. There are lots of easy to find, informative websites that can give you invaluable advice. In addition to forums, you may find great information in a number of blogs.

Always research anyone you hire to do work for you. Poor employees can turn a successful fledgling business into a flop, so be sure that you hire reliable people with the skills needed to help your company grow.

Your website should be updated when your stock of a particular product runs out. Let your customers know the status of their order. If you are out of stock, let them know. If an item has been back-ordered and is not going to be in stock for weeks or months, state this clearly on your product page, and give your buyers the opportunity to purchase an alternate item that is similar in quality and price.

You should not put in your notice at your primary job until after you have started operations at your home business. A new business might take a while before it can generate profit, therefore, it is wise to keep your job going. If you have money before you start you will always be ready for the next new thing.

An office is necessary when you are based at home for work purposes. It doesn’t have to be gigantic, but it does need to be cozy. Make sure that your office makes you feel comfortable and confident while doing business. Use the space that you have for your office as efficiently as possible.

Your business objective is a short description about your business, usually two to three sentences. You should state exactly what your goals are with your business and what it is about. Also describe what is unique about your business and its goals.

Develop a mailing list for your home business. Try to communicate only important issues as you do not want to spam your customers. Certain entities utilize mailing lists to advertize sales and new items. It can also be used to send handy tips to your customers. Add a signup box to your site so people can join.

Risks, as scary as they are, are necessary to achieve true success. When you experiment and try new things, you can get new customers to visit your site. This can help you to make a lot of money. If you always keep the same routine, you will never know if something else would have done better.

Designate a specific room in your home as your work space. It is imperative that you keep things organized, so make sure you have the proper amount of space for your things. Doing this will ensure that your business stays organized, and organization in a business that is based from home is extremely important.

It can be easy to get too involved in your work if you stay at home all the time. Creating a ‘work space’, in which you do work on your business and nothing else, will make it easier to stay focused; also ensure that you set aside some fun time every day to enjoy with friends or family.

When you borrow money, investors may feel entitled to ask more questions than you are willing to answer. Maximize your profits with the money you already have.

You should get a DBA or Doing Business As license. Your bank or chamber of commerce will be able to assist you with advice in this regard. You will most likely need to pay a modest fee. It’s important to do this so that your personal bank account and business accounts are kept separate from one another.

A good home business tip is to look as professional as you can. Nothing will drive customers away quicker than having a web site that looks unprofessional. Look at other professional web sites to get an idea of how to make one.

Home business owners tend to congregate online. Investigate forums and message boards, both those devoted to your business niche and those outside it. Solid advice where you can learn new lessons about operating your own business can come from many different areas, so you don’t want to limit yourself to only your niche.

When you are doing your taxes, make sure to take into account all write offs such as business trips. You can write off as much as half of all travel expenses related to business.

Choose a home business that you know something about. Many people make the mistake of thinking they can learn what to do as they’re working on their business. Yes, it’s possible, but chances are you’ll be more successful when you have some expertise in the industry you are choosing. You should know what your weaknesses and strengths are and start building your business around that.

Save budget money by not investing in high-priced web services. Look for options that will allow you to share server space. This kind of server is known as virtual hosting and can be useful if you’re only running a small website. You need your own business server when hosting a forum on your site.

When you can get by with a simple, modest website, do so; invest in thorough reliability testing instead of fancy bells and whistles. You should design your site to be browser-friendly on all available formats, such as mobile devices, and try to make your information follow similar formats on all devices. Verifying your website’s accessibility across multiple platforms will ensure that you don’t miss out on any potential customers just because they use a different browser than you do.

As you can see, it will require a little bit of work and dedication to make the jump. If you can manage to pull through and stick to the plan, you will be able to accurately represent your dream in the company’s image and create something that is long-lasting and profitable over the years.

Oct
04
2022

What a “Business For Sale” Really Means

Having a business for sale can mean a lot of things – more than people might think. How does one business value compare to another, and how to arrive at that value? Because there are many types of businesses that exist for many different industries, it stands to reason there are numerous ways of approaching the process to find the value.

There are the three main approaches to value, which are the income approach, the market approach, and the asset approach. There are variations of these approaches, and combinations of them, and things which must be looked at because each and every business will have variations of what gives the business worth, and some of these differences are substantial.

First we must identify the type of sale: stock sale or asset sale. A stock sale is the sale of the company stock; the buyer is buying the company based upon the value of its stock, which represents everything in the business: earning power, equipment, goodwill, liabilities, etc. In an asset sale, the buyer is buying the company assets and capital which enable the company to make profits, but is not necessarily assuming any liabilities with the purchase. Most small businesses for sale are sold as an “asset sale”.

Our question, when selling a business or buying a business, is this: what are the assets considered to arrive at an accurate value? Here we will look at some of the most common.

1. FF and E: This abbreviation stands for furniture, fixtures, and equipment. These are the tangible assets used by the business to operate and make money. All businesses (with a few exceptions) will have some amount of FF&E. The value of these can vary greatly, but in most cases the value is included in the value as determined by the income.

2. Leaseholds: the leasehold is the lease agreement between the owner of the property and the business that rents the property. The agreed upon leased space typically goes with the sale of the business. This can be a significant value, especially if there is an under market rate currently charged and the lessor is obligated to continue with the current terms.

3. Contract rights: many businesses do business based on ongoing contracts, agreements with other entities to do certain things for certain periods of time. There can be immense value in these agreements, and when someone buys a business he or she is buying the rights to these agreements.

4. Licenses: in certain business sales, licenses do not apply; in others, there can be no business without them. Building contracting is one of them. So is accounting. For a buyer to buy a business, his purchase includes either buying the license to the company or the license to the individual. Often times, the buyer will require the access or availability of the license as a contingent element of the sale.

5. Goodwill: Goodwill is the earnings of a business above and beyond the fair market return of its net tangible assets. In other words, whatever the business makes in excess of its identifiable assets is considered “goodwill” income, where there exists a synergy of all of the assets together. This one can be tricky. Most business owners assume they have goodwill in their business, but goodwill is not always positive; there is such things as “negative” goodwill. If the business makes less than the sum total of its identifiable assets, there exists negative goodwill.

6. Trade secrets: some businesses are all about secrets. The reason the business is in operation may be because of a trade secret, some aspect of a product or service that sets it apart and gives it a market. In a business purchase, these secrets have value and go with the sale.

7. Trade names, telephone numbers, websites, and domain names: some businesses generate business simply because of its name and identifiable aspects. If those were to change, so would the profits. So in buying a business, the buyer will have need of those names and numbers to continue on in business. Of course, in some cases these things would not matter at all, and that is why each one must be approached individually.

8. Works in progress: a construction company may have a multi-million dollar job going on at the time of the sale, which can take months to complete. In case such as this, the buyer would have need of continuing on in the particular job the company was engaged in; for money and for reputation. This is considered a work in progress and has value and therefore is considered an asset and made part of the sale.

9. Business records: the history of a business detailed in documents and spreadsheets must necessarily become part of the business sale. The new owner can make use of records in identifying progress, tracking increased or decreased sales, adjusting expenditures and depreciation rates, etc. When someone purchases a business, they are buying the current operation and all the details that led to it.

10. Real estate: the seller-owned property on which the business does its business is inherent to the operation and therefore the value. There are times when the new buyer needs to move the business to purchase it, but more often the real estate is viewed as a major aspect of the business value, especially if there is equipment attached to the property and buildings suited specifically to the business.

When a business for sale is valued by a professional appraiser, a business broker, or a business owner, more than just the income is considered. Assets, economic values used by the business to produce revenue and profits, are weighed heavily to determine the worth of the business. And they must be considered to understand what a “business for sale” really means to a buyer.