6 Hidden Business Startup Costs

Starting a business is exciting! You’re finally ready to bring your dreams to life, become your own boss, and strengthen your local business community. You’ve got everything figured out…at least, you’re pretty sure you do. But with a new business come lots of startup costs, and you want to be sure not to overlook them.…

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How to Find Out What You’re Actually Spending on Customer Acquisition

Getting a new customer isn’t easy, but it can be done. Before you break out the bubbly to celebrate, however, you’ll want to know how much money you spent to actually get that new customer. Talk about a complicated undertaking! As an accountant and former CFO, I’ve gone through this exercise with clients and former employers, but tackling…

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Startup and Organization Costs

When starting a business, the owners are likely to incur two classes of costs that are not normally encountered in the ongoing operations of the business and should not be included as operating expenses. These are startup expenditures and organization costs. Each of these are specifically defined and receive special tax treatment. Startup expenditures are…

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The Best Things Small Businesses Can Do to Reduce Overhead

Running a small business is much different than operating a Fortune 500 company. You may have limited resources when it comes to how much you make in a month or year as well as face limitations as to outside funding sources. If you don’t manage your overhead, the company could lose significant amounts of money…

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How Much Does a Franchise Cost?

So you’re ready to start a franchise. Congratulations! Still, one thing might be holding you back – the franchise cost associated with starting the business of your dreams. There’s more than meets the eye when it comes to starting a franchise. Here’s a more accurate look at what a franchise costs to start. #1. The…

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How to Forecast Sales and Profits Without Just Guessing

Yes, it’s—my title here—a real question, and I get it a lot: how to forecast sales and profits without just guessing. It’s a good question too, because it leads to a better understanding of how and why we use forecasting to help manage a business, and to predict starting costs and the numbers for the…

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How Much Does SEO Cost, Anyway?

The current business climate makes SEO all but a necessity. According to a survey by Yelp, 85% of people searching for the product or service that you offer will begin their hunt online. If your website isn’t coming up when someone types in those keywords, you better believe those customers are going to go somewhere…

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5 Ways to Reduce Business Costs in 2016

There is no doubt that running a business is expensive. This is an inescapable truth of entrepreneurship. This doesn’t mean, however, that you can’t do anything to curb your overhead or that you have to accept the status quo. There are plenty of tricks you can use to reduce what your business spends and, by…

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Are You Creating Value or Cost?

There are thousands of posts and hundreds of books on Value Creation. I’ve, in fact, written 285 since starting this blog and dozens of others at other sites. The themes in all of this stuff usually follow a similar line of thinking: Customers define value in their own terms. Sellers have to create value aligned…

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Franchise Cash Flow Questions

One of the most common complaints among people who have invested in a franchise business is that they aren’t earning enough, that they worry over meeting payroll and bills, or that they don’t have the sales they expected. As with so many franchise business problems, cash flow issues are often caused by a failure to…

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