Business and Finance Tips

Starting a small catering business can be a lot of fun. If you do it right, it can also make you a great deal of money. However, there are a lot of things that need to be done initially before you get carried away. If you don’t follow the right procedures, your whole business could wind up in jeopardy.

The first thing that every small catering business needs is a name and a business license. You will also want to determine how you will form your business entity such as an LLC, sole proprietorship, or corporation.

After that, you’ll want to get a tax ID number from the IRS. Be sure to look into which agencies handle the licensing in your state. You may be able to get some tips from other small business owners, since the process is similar for a lot of business owners.

One area where your small catering business may differ from other businesses is that you will need food service and liquor licenses.
The government takes food service very seriously and monitors the food quality, storage and preparation facility of every business where food service is involved.

Although a liquor license isn’t a requirement for a small catering business, it is a requirement for anyone who serves alcohol. Since most catered events involve alcohol, it would be in your best interest to get a liquor license. In fact, it could mean the difference between having a small catering business that flops and having one that thrives and grows into a large successful enterprise.

It is easy to become excited about the prospect of owning your own business, but remember that even a small catering business involves a lot of work. You may feel that you can juggle many tasks, but sometimes there just aren’t enough hands or enough hours in the day.

If you think about it, it really makes good business sense to hire some extra help, or at least line up some on-call helpers that you can bring in when you’re in a pinch. After all, larger events are going to require a lot more people to make things work efficiently.

Starting any business can be a strain on your wallet, so it will pay to remember this before you even begin. You may need to take out a loan. You can expect it to cost a few thousand dollars to get the right equipment and licensing, and insurance you will need.

Also, consider the costs of advertising and marketing, such as a graphic designer, newspaper or TV ads, or a company website and web master.

All of these things and more need to be considered before you ever try to get a small catering business off the ground.

Entrepreneurship is not just a career but an experience. Though genuine success may not always be immediate in this particular career, opportunities and profits abound. The only challenge for first time entrepreneurs is how to start. This was why home based small business ideas were born.

With its small, controllable and highly profitable nature, home based small businesses have dominated most economies, spawning thousands of hopeful entrepreneurs. Cumulatively, they oil up countries with business potential and keep economies running despite financial problems. This goes without saying that aside from being practical and popular, small and medium enterprises are pretty relevant.

Now who wouldn’t be attracted to the idea of creating a small business venture from home? Not only does it put you in line for bigger things; a home based business also gives you a chance to be productive even at the comforts of your abode, at a limited budget. Entrepreneurship, as emphasized earlier is an experience. Home based ventures give you the right exposure to business principles and protocols – enough to support your growth and development in the field. They also make you more competent to take on greater challenges, which may eventually lead you to that coveted success. A lot of big names in the online business community actually started out with a home based small business. But with hard work and ingenuity, their minute industry eventually grew to a million dollar enterprise. Today, they serve as testimony to the possibilities that lie ahead.

Though it cannot be denied that part of the success can be attributed to the creation of a relevant product/service and an appealing campaign, part of the journey which got them to where they are now is being able to put up a viable home based enterprise. And it’s actually the hardest part – starting. A lot of ideas are ripe for the taking. But few dare to make the move.

To prepare your self for this beginning, here are some tips you can consider:

• Research. They say knowledge is power. It couldn’t be truer in business. So if you wish to make a more confident entrance to the world of home based entrepreneurship, you must at least research on it. A lot of success stories and insightful thoughts are found on the internet. Use those as benchmarks for what you are about to engage in.

• Get the support of people who share your vision. Actually, you can start a business alone. And it’s advisable as a start up plan because you are able to maximize your span of control and minimize expenses. But when your business does take off, you’ll need people to help you. In a panic, you might choose the wrong ones. So before the scenario does take place, scout for potential business assistants.

• Prepare a budget. Often times, new entrepreneurs grow overconfident about being able to launch a home based small business. But eventually they find out that they’ve spent more than what was necessary to get everything up and running. This is bad because you might able to sustain your business. Start your budget plan by drawing up an estimate of the possible expenses you may incur for the first five months of your business. Once you have the figure, add 50% or a hundred to account for the unexpected. See if you can afford that. If not, you can either consider a loan or another type of home base business.

Many small businesses use competitions and lucky door prizes as a way of generating leads or building their data base. But if done incorrectly you will end up losing customers and could even find yourself on the wrong side of the law.

So how do you run lucky door prizes or competitions that are legal and get you brilliant results?
Top 10 Tips for competitions

1. Work out your intent. You need to know why you are running the competition in the first place. Is it to qualify leads, get email addresses for your database, get a new marketing slogan, and get feedback on your product or some other purpose? Start with the end in mind. When you know why you are running the competition you will adjust the prizes, competition form and process to best match your needs.

2. You need an entry box. A lot of people use clear bowls or fishbowls for people to put their cards into. These don’t keep the details private so could breach privacy regulations in some locations. The best option is a solid sided cardboard entry box. You can buy a gift box and cut out a hole or buy a blank entry box from a cardboard box manufacturer. You can of course get one purpose designed and built for you.

For online competitions I suggest setting up a separate email account just for each competition to keep your entries separate.

3. Somewhere to lean on to complete the forms. People need somewhere to lean on to fill in the forms. If the table you use is too low or you force people to sit down to complete the forms, many people won’t bother entering. Make sure your table is the right height for people to lean on (and no handing out clipboards with forms isn’t the solution. Many people are juggling bags and kids so can’t juggle a clipboard as well). Being comfortable also works for online competitions. If your form is tricky to complete you can expect people to click away rather than stay.

4. Make it obvious. Your competition needs to be located at the front of your trade stand or your office. It needs to be clearly and obviously signed so people can find it and are encouraged to enter. Put a banner on your website letting passing traffic know about your competition and where they can find you to enter.

5. Tell people about it. Tell your regular clients about your competition as well as your new clients. You could also tell some of the major competition sites – where the site collated competitions and lets their members know so they can enter them (my personal favourite of these is Luv2win).

6. Make it worth their while. Giving away a low value item is not likely to generate much interest in your competition. Make the offer enticing with high perceived value.

7. Protect their privacy. You need to make it very clear how you will handle their personal details. Will you pass on their information to other people? Will you contact them to send them marketing material? You need to tell people what you will do with their information. Give them an opt-out box for them to tick if they don’t want to receive any further information from you (and respect that tick in the box if you don’t want to fall foul of Spam Laws and Do Not Call Registers).

8. Sort out your legals. Many locations have strong rules around the operation of gaming including Lucky Door Prizes.

In Queensland the Office of Gaming Regulation Inspectors check every stand of almost every expo or tradeshow for compliance. You need to download the Guidelines for Promotional Games and comply with items such as retention of entries for 5 years, the order of drawing prizes, written terms and conditions which must include things such as:

a. the name of the person running the promotion
b. Eligibility requirements for players
c. Description and retail value of each prize
d. Closing and drawing dates
e. Order the prizes will be drawn
f. How winners will be notified
g. Whether the results will be published and where
h. What will happen if the winner is not present at the draw
i. Any elimination rounds

It almost goes without saying that of you run a competition you must honour your commitments and actually award the prizes (unless you get no entries at all). Running a competition and not awarding the prizes can see you before the courts.

9. Follow up promptly. If you are using the competition to generate leads or create a data base then follow up on all entries within 14 days of close of the competition. You may want to consider hiring a Virtual Assistant (VA) to convert the entries or business cards into a database for you. Pre-book your VA so they have time to do your data-entry when it arrives. When following up remind the person where you got their details.

10. Trumpet the winners. If you can get their consent, get photos of the winners that you can use in your marketing and promote the details of the winners to your mailing list and local media. Most people love the spotlight (and other people love to know the inside of other people’s lives). Good news stories are great for business.

If you follow these top 10 tips you will improve the response to your competitions and lucky door prizes and get more “bang for your competition buck.”

Travel can be a huge expense for any small business that does business in different places. If you are a consultant or if you are a self employed professional then traveling will be a huge part of your business. Although it can be mean a lot more business it can be very bad for your cash flow and making sure that you save wherever you can in really important – especially in this day and age. Another important thing to remember is to charge your clients for your travel expenses as its part of your service.

Finding simple ways to save on business travel expenses can make a huge difference. Saving a little on every trip can add up and if you have several employees then it can quickly add up. Here are 3 basic tips to help you get started.

1. Flights
Air travel, although convenient, can be expensive. With all the checks and regulations its not all that quick either these days as getting to and from the airport, checking in and checking out can be very slow. Its well worth looking into alternative means of transport. Driving or taking a rain can be a faster and more economical way of doing it.

2. Hotels
Accommodation represents a significant part of travel expenses and its probably the one area you want to try and save. There are quite a few alternatives that is well worth looking into. Guest houses are not only cheaper but offer a lot more comfort and value for money and is great for extended travel to prevent yourself from getting the “hotel blues”.

3. Travel Insurance
Taking out individual travel insurance for each trip can quickly add up. If you travel with valuable as part of your business then its an important consideration. Try and put your travel insurance under the same umbrella as your business insurance – it can save you quite a bit.

For small businesses there are some advantage that’s probably not available to bigger businesses. You can certainly look into business grants and government programs. Some programs allow you to write off your travel expenses and some even allow you to conduct business internationally and write off all the travel expenses. The point is that there are a great many options and exploring them all will help you save. As the economy continues to tighten up we all have to spread our wings and look for business opportunities elsewhere. Travel will continue to take a more prominent role in your business, so take advantage of these opportunities.

Small Business Tips For Success: The feast or famine business model

The feast of famine business model merely refers to my personal perceptions of certain prevalent business models you or anyone else might likely find while searching for a business to join online.

Most often employed by many high cost or “high ticket” programs and products online, this model for business would most accurately be described as a recipe for disaster.

The underlying premise being, at say $1000 a sale, how many sales would you need to make a return on your investment, quit your job, buy a house, etc., etc. Feast or famine…

For those with a proven track record of success online, more often than not the case for them will be feast. For those with the skewed perception that any kind of success, be it success online or success in general, happens over night; I see famine in you future.

small business tips #1:

Operating your business on the firm belief that x amount of traffic will generate y amount of conversions without the market research to prove it will cause you nothing but grief.

The best way to avoid falling prey to a feast or famine type scenario is to do your homework, and make sure that the numbers support your efforts.

For PPC (pay per click) marketing, be sure to track, track, track, everything. By using tracking links in your ad campaigns you can determine your cost per lead as well as your cost per sale along with your cost per click/click thru percentages provided by you campaign provider.

small business tips #2:

Next, estimate the value of each sale. If the income is residual, what’s the retention rate of your program or down line? Once you can place a decent estimate on how much each sale is worth and you’ve calculated your cost per lead per sale, then and only then are you in business.

Flying blind with your marketing dollars in hopes that good fortune will smile upon you is far to fanciful a notion to actually be effective. Be sure to track all your marketing efforts so that you can be aware of what works and what doesn’t; as well as what could use improvement.

small business tips #3:

To some, the entire notion of feast or famine may seem a bit much like some savage struggle for survival set in the most unforgiving of landscapes. To those individuals, I would suggest that in the time it’s taken them to form said opinion, they have most likely dropped an additional notch or two on the food chain.

Business is extremely competitive by nature. The best strategy for success is to always try to ensure you happen to be among the biggest fish in the smallest pond I can find i.e. research and niche marketing.

small business tips #4:

In summary, I’d say that most endorsements of unrealistic and unfounded business practice work off the premise that people in general will always take the path of least resistance; forever hoping to not only get something for nothing but, attain great success with little effort on their part.

A very lovely notion, but so is the lottery; and your odds would probably be about the same.

Unfortunately, I’ve found out (the hard way), that internet business is not the financial freedom vending machine I was led to believe it was. For every few dollars I put in I have yet to find happiness wrapped in $100 bills (although I do remain hopeful).

Be sure to treat your business more like a business and less like a lottery and you are sure to do well.