Glenda Lange asked:

Have you ever wondered why there are so many bookkeepers and accountants out there and how they can ALL be making money? No, it’s not because they charge so much. It is because most small business owners don’t know even the basics of accounting.

Most small business owners start with an idea on how they can make money working for themselves instead of working for a boss. They love the idea of being able to set their own work hours and of being in control of their own financial future. Let’s face it, who want to work 40+ hours a week to make someone else rich?

So, they have this idea about how they can work for themselves, doing something they either enjoy doing or they know how to do well.

Okay, if you are smart enough to start your own business, then you are smart enough to know how to write an invoice and a receipt. You also know to keep all the receipts for money you have spent. For many small business owners, this is where their record keeping ends. They shove it all into a box or an envelope and toddle off down to their account or bookkeeper to let them sort it. Most will then not give it a second thought until the bill comes in from the accountant.

If you use this system, you may want to be sitting down before you open the bill. On the other hand, you will probably fall off your chair when you see how much the bill is anyway, so it is merely a choice of how far you want to fall as to whether you sit or stand.

Seriously though, if you want to save yourself some money, but don’t want to learn it all, there are a few simple things you can do.

Most stationery stores have accounting books that you can buy to record your business transactions. You know, those books that have heaps of columns that you never knew before why anyone would use them. Well, now’s your chance to show everyone just how smart you are!
When you have finished reading this article, head down to your stationery store and buy two of those mysterious books with columns. On the front of one book, in big letters, write receipts and on the other write payments.

Now every time you receive money, write down the details in the receipts book. You know, the date, what it was for and amount. Use all the other columns to record taxes and to keep a record of the total sales for different items. Use the payments book in the same way for all your purchases. Then all you have to do is total up each month and hand the books to your account. You’ll be pleasantly surprised when you get your next bill at how much money you have saved.

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Patty Prescott asked:

Ask yourself some important questions before you make the leap into self employment. You can dream away about the idea of being self employed, but take the time to take into account the sacrifices that have to be made. Granted you no longer have the boss telling you to work late or come in on the weekend for the good of the company, but if you want to be successful take a hard look at what self employment involves and make your decision from there. It certainly can be done, just make sure you go in with your eyes wide open.

Are you the type of person who feeds off of the social interaction at work? If so then self employment may not be right for you. However, if you feel you can be quite content sitting alone at your desk at home whenever you feel like it, then a home based business could be perfect for you. If you don’t need a bunch of people all around you, including the boss, then you too can enjoy the lifestyle that you want and deserve.

The key to your success: self motivation. You have to be able to push yourself ahead. That drive and determination will only be reinforced with every sale you make. The level of success you achieve is totally dependent on the time and effort you put in to your business. This is a liberating journey! Finally you get to go from employee to boss. You will finally get to expand your knowledge for your own benefit instead of doing all the work for the boss.

Your financial success rests totally on your own shoulders. You will finally be the boss, but are you truly able to work independently? Do you have the time and patience to feed your business everything it needs to grow? Working at home enables you to achieve many things you were unable to do when you were stuck working for your boss. You can make good money at home and still take care of your family at the same time. Fancy doing that with your old boss hovering over your every move! Imagine doing the laundry and still making money at the same time. Working from home opens up endless possibilities.

Stay positive and focused on your home based business. Please ignore the negative feed back from those out there still stuck in the regular job rut. You have made the decision to achieve your dreams, do not let those who haven’t even tried sway you from your determination to be financially successful at home. Success can be the best revenge. Keep your positive attitude no matter what they say. When you are living your dreams, where will they be?

Kansieo.com

Sarah Short asked:




Party plan as a vehicle to become a Business Woman is an option that many women contemplate at some stage in their lives.

When our youngest child has started nursery or school, we mothers find ourselves left with a dilemma: Do we return to work part time, with all its limitations, or do we start our own business? Returning to work has several serious limitations, let me list them for you:

Unless you are fortunate enough to have left a career that you are able to return to part time, most part time jobs are paid minimum wages. By the time you have factored in the new clothes you will need, the travelling costs and lunches etc, not to mention tax, it can mean that you are working for very little more then the privilege of calling yourself employed! You need the hours to fit around your family. Your employer needs workers who can fit around customer volumes. Customer volumes are higher (be they visitors to shops, or telephone callers) when school is out. Not a great match, I think you would agree. You may find, that having to compromise on your hours so that both you and your employer are happy, means that you end up paying child care, which eats even further into your pay.

Unless you are committed to returning for work for reasons other than the money, part time work really isn’t a great option.

So, we mothers find ourselves looking at working from home, for ourselves. We look at becoming a business woman using party plan as a platform from which to launch ourselves. On the face of it, this seems great. We are our own boss, we work the hours we choose, we can, to an extent, dictate our own pay. Perfect! So why do so very many women fail at this? What information is it that we are lacking that causes us to fall?

I believe that the reason that most women fail in this type of business is because they are too caught up in the “how”, with not enough attention paid to the “why”. The how is the lovely products we get to play with (cosmetics, kitchen items, lovely candles etc). The why is the financial details behind the business.

“EEK!” I hear you cry! “I just want to sell a few cosmetics and not worry about anything other than how much I sell at each party!”.

The difference between those women who succeed beyond their wildest dreams with party plan and those who potter along and subsequently discover that they actually LOST money when they take what they spent overall from what they earned, is that the former had a plan. Several plans in fact – a marketing one, a sales one and a business (including financial one). I can guarantee you that for every successful party planner, there is a woman who carefully drew a map of where she was and where she wanted to be. That map is called a business plan.

Most women have no idea at all how to formulate a business plan. You can download them from the internet, but it can be very confusing about which information goes where. A great way to get a fantastic business plan is to employ a business coach (like me) but we can work out to be quite expensive. Most party planners however, don’t have lots of money to spend – they want to make money, not spend it! Fortunately, there are now inexpensive online coaching packages available. These packages can be designed with specific users in mind. As I am The Business Woman’s Coach, guess which people I had in mind when I designed my Business Coaching program?

So always remember

If you fail to plan, you plan to fail.

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