Tool: FileLater for income tax extension

We all seem to procrastinate on our income taxes. I think the IRS realizes this, so they offer an automatic extension for filing, as long as you apply for it. Your tax preparer can file for the extension, or you can do it yourself.

Ryan Thompson, co-founder of FileLater.com, sent me an introduction of his company, and said it is the first (and for now, the only) site that allows you to e-file for an extension. It is an authorized IRS e-file provider. If you don't have a relationship with a friendly local tax preparer, this could be a great option for your business.

Things to know about extensions:

• Sept. 15 is the extended deadline for filing.
• You still must pay any amount you expect to owe by April 15, when you file for your extension. (It's an extension on time to file, not on time to pay.) 
• You don't have to give any reason.
  

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Google fails all the time

But longtime observers know, “The Google” starts and acquires lots of products (and products that were actually features) that never really catch on. Google products fail, in other words. All the time. But that’s okay. You’re not learning if you’re not failing.
Rex Hammock

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Jump into the Brag Basket

Each Friday, I open the Brag Basket for the weekend. It's designed as a fun place for you to share your projects and accomplishments. But you can also cheer for other people, give shout outs, congratulate, and even give someone a well-deserved pat on the back.

The Brag Basket is open for everyone, whether from a small town, a big city, or anywhere in the world. (But it's true that I love small town brags!)

Will you put something in the Brag Basket this week? You can brag on a friend, your own project, yourself, others, anything! You don't need special permission, and you don't have to be from a small town. Just leave a comment right here. There's no deadline, so you can brag anytime during the weekend, and I'll open a fresh Brag Basket each Friday.

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Cleaning up coffee

Jon looked at the spilled coffee, jumped up, fetched paper towels and began cleaning up.

Ten minutes before, all seven people in the circle had been talking about store appearance. One person was talking about employees who stand around talking. Another told of being required to carry a rag, so he could front, face, and dust anytime he walked through the store. Another talked of explaining why standing around wasn't helpful and why always being active in the aisles was important.

Jon didn't say anything. He was listening to the conversation among these managers from local Do-It-Best stores at a training program, but he didn't say anything.

Until the guy next to him spilled coffee.

He looked at the spill. While the rest of us were processing what to do, whether to stop the discussion, how to decide who among the group should do something, Jon jumped. He ran for towels, did triage, got more towels, got the floor of the classroom dry and quietly sat back down. It wasn't his job. He just did it.

After the discussion, as people were leaving, I thanked Jon for cleaning up my coffee. I told him it meant I could keep facilitating the discussion.

"I clean up spills all the time."

Jon works in a store somewhere in Milton, Florida. I hope they knew what they have. He's the guy who looks serious, who doesn't talk much, who watches other people talk about cleaning...and who jumps to actually do it.

And he did it 800 miles away from where he's paid to clean up.

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Tool: External hard drives

External hard drives are my new favorite tool for small businesses.

Last year, I bought a Western Digital My Book. It cost me under $100, and it's small enough to carry around to my various computers. This one holds 500 gb, and that's more than enough for me, even with my digital photography habit.

The hard drive in my laptop crashed this week, so I was very, very glad to have that backup.

Other models work with your wireless network, so you can copy files to and from them without hooking up any cables.

If you don't have an external hard drive in your small business, take a look. It might solve a big problem for you.

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How to account for a land purchase

Here's the reader question of the day:

"In accounting, how do you post a land purchase?"

Of course, I promptly turned this over to Maesz, our resident accounting expert. Here's her reply:

This is for a pure land purchase -- no buildings, fences, wells, etc (technically these must be assigned value at purchase and then depreciated).

The check for the purchase of the land decreases (credit to) cash/checking and creates (debit to) an asset of land (non-depreciable). That way it shows up on the balance sheet as an asset at cost.

The cash "received" from any mortgage increases (debit to) cash/checking; the mortgage beginning amount enters as (credit to) a liability.

The interest on the mortgage is a deductible expense (debit) and the principal payments decrease (debit) the balance of the mortgage/liability due. The "credit" side of this entry is the payment from cash/checking.

Land is a non-depreciable asset. I always just put in an asset account; "brand" it non-depreciable.

Bottom Line:
Land is an asset, not an expense.
Improvements on land have to be accounted for separate from the land.

If you need help with a specific case, check with a local accountant for details.

And if you have a small business question, we'll be glad to try to answer it. Just ask in the comments.

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Review: Brother multifunction printer

Lauren Coley offered me a chance to review the Brother MFC-6490CW. It's a very business like multifunction printer, scanner and fax. One thing caught my attention: 11"x17" printing and scanning. So I said yes.

I tested this one a bit more than the other printers I've done, because the printer goes back to Brother as soon as I'm finished.

Setup:

Most of the setup was no problem. The documentation is much more thorough that the average printer.

For reasons I cannot fathom, you connect the USB or Ethernet cable inside the printer. Seriously, you open the scanner deck, and there's a little channel to route the cable up and into the machine. That's a pain, and it eats up some of your available cable length.

And it's big. Quite big. Bigger than you think. For a home office, I think it's actually too big. For a small workgroup with an office, it's just about right.

I couldn't get it to recognize my home network with a direct ethernet cable to my router, so I went USB, which is supposed to be the fastest connection anyway. I also changed it over to wireless to test it, and the change over was relatively painless.

Like a big copier, this printer has two paper trays, so you can load two different types of paper, or just a whole bunch of paper all at once. That's quite handy in a small office printer.

Print:

Text quality on plain paper is excellent, and the printable area is practically the whole darn page.

Photo quality is excellent. I'm sure it's not professional photographer level, but for general business, it's terrific. And with 11x17 capability, you can make all sorts of signs for your retail or show displays.

Copy quality is fine. Faxing also worked flawlessly. It handled a wide range of different paper sizes, with no problems.

Bottom Line:

I love the ability to print 11x17. That's a huge bonus for small business.

All in all, it's a great printer for small businesses that are just shy of needing a big dedicated copy machine.


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Take pride in your success in the brag basket

Each Friday, I open the Brag Basket for the weekend. It's designed as a fun place for you to share your projects and accomplishments. But you can also cheer for other people, give shout outs, congratulate, and even give someone a well-deserved pat on the back.

The Brag Basket is open for everyone, whether from a small town, a big city, or anywhere in the world. (But it's true that I love small town brags!)

Will you put something in the Brag Basket this week? You can brag on a friend, your own project, yourself, others, anything! You don't need special permission, and you don't have to be from a small town. Just leave a comment right here. There's no deadline, so you can brag anytime during the weekend, and I'll open a fresh Brag Basket each Friday.

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Building better small town websites

Our friend Shawn Kirsch, is back with another guest post. He's been thinking about small town websites. 


We are living in a time where it is easier to share information than ever before. We’ve advanced from the telegram, to the USPS, and to email. Today’s internet offers a multitude of ways to share information. Digg and StumbleUpon have been around for some time, but Twitter has made that sharing more social, and Facebook is bringing it to the mainstream user. So why are small town websites not leveraging them?

Rural America has a hard enough time promoting itself, much less in a hurting economy. Do you know where to focus your marketing? Do you have site analytics to show what parts of the country are visiting your website the most? Are you doing everything you can to be found? Do people enjoy looking at your town website?

There are some fantastic city websites out there, Howard, South Dakota is an example. But many more are like those near my hometown, New Leipzig, ND.

New Leipzig’s website is a lot better looking than it used to be, but it’s overly simplistic. Take a peek at the Business directory. How is that helping any of the businesses in town? With 300 people, we all know what’s available. People who aren’t from here will gain no substantial information from that. I also get a kick out of the ‘Area Attractions,’ which includes Yellowstone National Park. If you can’t go there, enjoy yourself and come back within 16 hours, it isn’t an easy drive.

Just down the road is Mott, ND. They do a moderately better job of providing useful information for you, but the site’s design could use some upgrading. To me, it has a mid-90s GeoCities template vibe. They do have a reason to return to the site though, Owen Blickensderfer has entertaining stories on there from time to time, once you find them that is.

Not terribly far north of us is Beulah. One of the better looking site designs in the area, it could use a bit of a refresh, that home page could have bigger….. everything. Beulah’s site has lots of information about the city throughout, and it’s fairly well organized too. The lack of pictures is bothersome to me. The pictures they do have could be bigger too.

The bothersome thing about all 3 of those sites is that they are static. Is your town so devoid of activity that you can’t write a blog post three times a week? You deserve a great big swig of some Google Juice, so give them a reason to index your site. There aren’t any search tools either. Are we trying to make it difficult to find things?

Moms are always looking for pictures. If Dad wants that new job, he’ll probably have to convince her to move, and pictures will help. Set up a Flickr account, establish a group that people can share in. Now you can grow a large collection of pictures, from many points of view. This will give people a good look at your town.

Do the people from your town genuinely like it? Enough that they would become a fan of your new Facebook Page? It’s free publicity for you! It’s a place where people can discuss things about town. You have been looking for opinions on how to improve things right? We can only come up with so many ideas ourselves. Which also means you need the comments those blog posts will bring. For better or worse, you can find out how your community feels about the direction the town is going, and you can react accordingly.

A new generation is taking over, and we care deeply about what our friends think. If you have 20 people on Facebook raving about your town, that’s the kind of publicity you can’t buy. Odds are that someone in your area has a pretty good grasp of what’s available to market your community with online, especially the free stuff.

Do you know of any towns using social media? Is there something you’d like to see your town try? How can we do a better job of marketing our small towns, and by extension, our businesses? 

Photo by Shawn Kirsch, used by permission.

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A Little Tax Hint

If you file your own taxes and have not yet gotten them finished, here is a little extra deduction that is new for this year.

If you do not itemize deductions, and if you own your own home (that means, probably, that you make mortgage payments), you may add the amount of any real estate taxes that you pay on your principal residence to the usual standard deduction amount. For instance, if you are single (with no children nor other dependents) and you paid real estate taxes of $575 in 2008, your standard deduction for 2008 can be claimed as $5950 instead of the regular $5450. There is a limit of $500 for single taxpayers.

See the IRS website for further information.

Recovery Act and Small Business

SBA this week is implementing two key provisions laid out in the Recovery Act. Our SBDC offices received information from our District SBA office that is surely good news not only for small business owners, but for our lenders too.

On Monday, March 16, President Obama announced that the US Treasury Department will commit up to $15 billion to get the small business lending market flowing again.

o These dollars will be focused primarily on community banks, credit unions and other small lenders – the local partners for so many of our Main Street businesses, small manufacturers, high-tech startups and others in the cities and towns across this country.

o Treasury’s effort, designed with significant input from SBA, will unlock the small business loan market by purchasing existing and new loans made by banks, freeing up more capital so these banks can restart lending to local small businesses.

Beginning today, the SBA will:

• Temporarily raise guarantees to up to 90 percent on SBA’s 7(a) loan program, through calendar year 2009, or until the funds are exhausted. This increase in guarantee levels will help provide banks with the greater confidence they need to extend credit during the current recession, will mean more capital available to small business owners around the country.
• Temporarily eliminate fees for borrowers on SBA 7(a) loans and for both borrowers and lenders on 504 Certified Development Company loans, through calendar year 2009, or until the funds are exhausted. This will mean more capital available to small businesses at a lower cost. The fee elimination is retroactive to February 17, the day the Recovery Act was signed. SBA is developing a mechanism for refunding fees paid on loans since then.

How are you treating your reviewers

There is a whole series of commercials, based on the idea that hotel staff people are going out of their way to be extra nice to travelers who are going to review them online. I've got some random thoughts from that.

1. You are getting reviewed online, right now. 
Whether you know it or not, people are reviewing your business online. Yes, even your small town business. Especially if you cater to tourists. They might be on Yelp, TripAdvisor, other review sites, their own blogs, Twitter, or a bunch of other places.

2. If you knew your next customer was going to be an important reviewer, how would you treat them? 
Wouldn't you do a little bit extra for them? If you knew in advance when they were going to be there, wouldn't you prepare a few special things?

3. Why aren't you treating everyone that way? 
Because now every one of your customers is a potential reviewer. Every single one.

4. How can you treat everyone as special? 
You set a standard of service, document it, and train everyone in your organization to do it exactly that way.

Photo by Becky McCray.

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You know you want to share something in the Brag Basket

Each Friday, I open the Brag Basket for the weekend. It's designed as a fun place for you to share your projects and accomplishments. But you can also cheer for other people, give shout outs, congratulate, and even give someone a well-deserved pat on the back.

The Brag Basket is open for everyone, whether from a small town, a big city, or anywhere in the world. (But it's true that I love small town brags!)

Will you put something in the Brag Basket this week? You can brag on a friend, your own project, yourself, others, anything! You don't need special permission, and you don't have to be from a small town. Just leave a comment right here. There's no deadline, so you can brag anytime during the weekend, and I'll open a fresh Brag Basket each Friday.

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Review: Classroom Habitude by Angela Maeirs

Angela Maiers was kind enough to share a copy of Classroom Habitudes with me. It's her book on how to teach 21st Century learning habits and attitudes, exactly as described on the cover.

So, why is a small business site reviewing a book that, on first glance, appears to be for teachers?

1. Isn't part of your business to help your customers, employees, and prospects to learn?
   
2. Could you benefit from improving your own ability to learn?
   
3. Didn't you know I come from a long line of teachers? (I had to throw that in.) 

It is an excellent book to help you focus your own personal growth, or to help you as a teacher, educator, or instructor.

The focus is not on developing particular skills. It is on gaining the habits and attitudes that carry you through to learn any new skill. What are the Habitudes?

1. Imagination
2. Curiosity
3. Perseverance (my personal fave)
4. Self Awareness
5. Courage
6. Adaptability

If you spent each month focusing on one of those habitudes, imagine how much you would grow as an effective small business person in half a year. You might grow into being a whole different person.

I said that I come from a long line of teachers, but I don't hold an educational degree or certificate of any kind. I only teach workshops, short classes, things like that. But I truly enjoyed this book. Her classroom dialogues, once I got past the "boys and girls" intro, were excellent at leading my thinking about these subjects. There is plenty of relevance for life-long learners, as well as classroom teachers.

Thank you, Angela, for sharing your Habitudes with me.

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How to receive faxes as emails

Need to receive faxes without a fax machine? My sister needs this for her small business. So I did a quick poll on Twitter, looking for services that would receive a fax and send it as an email. Here are the suggestions, from real small biz people using these services for their needs.

• www.myfax.com - $10 per month 
• www.maxemail.com - $24 per year 
• www.onebox.com - $49.95 per month   
• drop.io - didn't find the cost, but it looks COOL!   
• www.efax.com $16.95 per month - has a limited free version   
• www.ringcentral.com $7.99 per month
• www.k7.net - no charge, but will recycle your number, if you go inactive.

Each of these services will assign you a fax number (some use toll-free numbers). Anything faxed to that number gets emailed to you, or stored online. Most of them have many other features, such as voice mail, file storage, collaboration, or more. I only had a few minutes to scan for prices, so I probably missed some important info. Take a look yourself before signing up. And if you have more ideas, I'd love to have you share them!

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Should I blog for my small business

How do you tell if a blog is right for your small business? What if you've heard of blogs, but aren't sure what it means? For today's Small Biz 100, we're going to go over some small business blog basics.

First, what is a blog? It's a special type of website, one that is designed to be regularly updated. Posting an update is about the same as writing an email. This site is a blog, and I also use one for my small business, Allen's Retail Liquors. If you haven't set up a website before, do get some help at least with the setup.

Now to the big question, should you blog for your small business? Here is one great way to tell. Write down every basic question a customer asks you. Start today, and do this for two weeks. If you end up with a long list of questions you can answer, then you have enough material to start a blog. If you don't, then a blog may not work as well for.

But what if my customers aren't online?
Of course, you'd love to have your blog draw more local customers in your front door, or bring you more signed contracts. However, that might not work if you are in a small town with few local people online. Drawing customers isn't the only purpose to blogging.

Side benefits from blogging

1. An answer resource for customers.
   The next time a customer asks you a basic question, you can encourage them to read the answer online. 
2. An answer resource you can publish in many forms.
   Once you've written those answers, you can:
   
   
   • print them out as handouts
   • compile a short booklet
   • put them on a CD as PDF files
   • make a speech you deliver to educate potential customers.
     

The one BIG secret to make it work: 
Focus on what customers want to know, not what you want to tell them about your business.



This article is part of the Small Biz 100, a series of 100 practical hands-on posts for small business people and solo entrepreneurs. If you have questions you'd like us to address in this series, leave a comment or send us an email at becky@smallbizsurvival.com. This is a community project!

Photo by Becky McCray.

The Brag Basket builds community

Each Friday, I open the Brag Basket for the weekend. It's designed as a fun place for you to share your projects and accomplishments. But you can also cheer for other people, give shout outs, congratulate, and even give someone a well-deserved pat on the back.

The Brag Basket is open for everyone, whether from a small town, a big city, or anywhere in the world. (But it's true that I love small town brags!)

Will you put something in the Brag Basket this week? You can brag on a friend, your own project, yourself, others, anything! You don't need special permission, and you don't have to be from a small town. Just leave a comment right here. There's no deadline, so you can brag anytime during the weekend, and I'll open a fresh Brag Basket each Friday.

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Credit Denial; is it a good thing?

Every once in awhile the futility of a company policy just gets to you. While the following is meant as a joke, it has an unwelcome ring of truth to it.

Denied Joke
-- Sanford P. Blank
My wife received a credit-card application in the mail that she had not requested. She didn't want it, but I did. So I crossed off my wife's name on the form, entered my own and returned the application.

I soon got a phone call from a woman saying my application had been rejected.

I asked her why, and she told me the card could only be issued to the person originally solicited by the offer. However, she invited me to reapply, which I did during the same telephone call.

A few days later I got another call to tell me my second application had been rejected.

Why? The woman told me their files showed that I had previously applied for a card and had been denied.

So maybe this guy was better off in the long run not doing business with this company. Sometimes we accept credit card offers we don’t need and may not even use. Having an abundance of available credit is not always a good thing. If, for instance, you are applying for a business loan; while your credit score is good, there may be some risk involved for the lender and he may not be comfortable with that available credit. If you use that credit and incur the debt it may hamper your ability to service the loan debt.

Give some thought to those credit card applications before you send them in.
• Do you really need that credit?
• How will using it affect your cash flow when it comes time to repay?
• Can you get better interest rate elsewhere?
• Are the terms good for the long haul, because you will make minimum payments, no matter what you plan for now?

Good Credit is one of the most valuable assets of a small business owner. Treat it like you would your most valuable tangible posessions, keep it under lock and key and protect it well.

Configure your business to serve customers

"Our job is not to configure customers, it is to configure our business to serve customers."
Liz Strauss

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How to Pay Business Debts You Can't Afford

This month I am hosting a Lunch & Learn titled “How to Pay Business Debts You Can’t Afford” and when I read this Fences in Your Mind Excerpt it made me wonder how many small business owners are right there; strangling in debt and fighting mental fences that say there is nothing to do about it.
Here is what Betty Mahalik has to say in the excerpt I read:

Fences in Your Mind
Excerpt from Five Star Life
By Betty Mahalik
I've watched the movie Chicken Run at least a half-dozen times. Just beneath the surface of its simplistic look and story line lie a number of wonderful messages told by a bunch of Claymation chickens trying to break out of their chicken-wire world to escape their fate at the chopping block. Their freedom leader, a feisty little hen named Ginger, comments profoundly in one scene: "The fences are all in your mind." She reminds her fellow chickens (and us), that bigger than the physical fences they're surrounded by are the mental fences that hold them captive.
It's been a good reminder for me on those occasions when I've been dealing with my own mental fences...those created by self-doubt, uncertainty, fear. Can you relate? Where have you fenced yourself in mentally in recent days or weeks? Perhaps your mental fence is procrastination, a deadening habit that keeps you stuck. Maybe yours, like mine, is related to self-doubt, and the on-going internal noise it produces that keeps you immobilized. Perhaps yours is the belief that you don't deserve success, so you sabotage yourself to avoid having to find out how successful you could be. There are a million variations of the theme, but the result is still the same: we stay stuck like the chickens in the movie.

Last fall at our ASBDC national conference in Chicago Corporate Turnaround made a presentation on this subject. They have since made their simple do it yourself guide available to SBDC’s across the nation so that we can help our clients manage debt. I found their guide easy to understand and follow, with specific calculation guides. The Arizona SBDC has posted on their blog with links that include the guide and video tutorial.
I KNOW I have clients who need this help. I just hope I can reach them.

The 5 Ts of Word of Mouth Marketing

I am a talker.

Not in the "person who talks all the time" sense of that word. In fact, I spend a lot of time not talking. In a crowd, unless I'm in front presenting, I'm at the back listening.

I am, however, a talker in the sense that Andy Sernovitz describes talkers. For Sernovitz, talkers are people who are willing to talk about whatever it is that you are selling. They are at the heart of word of mouth marketing.

I guess I better explain that phrase.

According to Andy, word of mouth marketing is

"1. giving people a reason to talk about your stuff and 2. making it easier for that conversation to take place. "

For a small business owner, having people talk about your stuff (positively) is your wildest hope. It is what can make business come without advertising. It is what I love to do for people who treat me well as a customer.

And that's why I say I am a talker.

And talkers are the first of 5 Ts of Word of Mouth marketing that Sernovitz identifies.

You can find talkers among your customers. You can find them in your chamber of commerce. You can find them working as servers at the coffee shop with the most business in your town. You can find them anywhere people are likely to be listening for advice and direction and help.

Once you have talkers, give them topics, something to talk about.

Then you need to give them tools to help spread the message.

You can't leave them alone however without taking part. If people are blogging about you, comment on their blog. If people are complaining, then respond.

Finally, you need to be tracking what people are saying about you.

Too brief a summary? Sorry. I don't have much time. But Andy has a couple free downloads that will explain word of mouth and help you with the 5 Ts.

And then you can find Andy's book here: Word of Mouth Marketing: How Smart Companies Get People Talking, Revised Edition

For an expanded case study on how this model works, head over to Levite.

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