Everyone has a top ten list at the end of the year but rather than slave over creating ten videos I’m turning to the National Federation of Independent Businesses (NFIB).
NFIB is a great resource for small businesses, and they’ve created their own top ten video list. It covers subjects like unemployment and unemployment insurance, the federal deficit and debt ceiling, the EPA, the new health care regulations and one bright spot of young entrepreneurs.
The videos are all around 5 minutes or less, so check them out…
Top 10 Videos of 2011 for Small Business.
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Who’s not paying their fair share? According to Elizabeth Warren, those who build factories and create jobs – meaning those who create wealth. Quoting her…
“You built a factory out there? Good for you. But I want to be clear. You moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for. You hired workers the rest of us paid to educate. You were safe in your factory because of police-forces and fire-forces that the rest of us paid for. You didn’t have to worry that marauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory — and hire someone to protect against this — because of the work the rest of us did.”
My question is: Who are “the rest of us” that Elizabeth Warren talks about? The top 1% pay 38% of income tax, the top 10% pay 70%, the bottom 50% pay 2.7%. Who’s not paying their fair share?
The small business owner, who can’t afford lobbyists to buy loopholes, works 60, 70 hours a week, creates jobs by hiring employees, and maybe makes 2, 3, 400 thousand a year and what happens? He/she pays 50% taxes in fed income, state income, state sales, sometimes city income tax and city sales tax, property tax, fees up the ying-yang, and for what? Continue reading .
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Do politicians never learn? California, like many other states, just passed a law mandating online companies (like Amazon.com) collect state sales tax if their “presence” in the state includes affiliate marketers.
The Supreme Court has already ruled that a state can’t mandate collection of sales tax unless a company is physically within its boundaries. So, whenever a state passes some silly law that says an online affiliate constitutes a corporation’s physical presence, Amazon tells all those poor affiliates that they can’t be affiliates anymore.
So what happens to the state? NO MORE INCOME TAXES FROM THE REVENUE ON AFFILIATE SALES!
California, which has about the worst budget deficit in the country, just shut down 25,000 sources of income tax. Why do you think so many companies are leaving California? Why have California and other liberal states lost population over the last few decades?
Because you can’t do business in California without the government as an unwanted partner. An overbearing, micromanaging, ignorant partner to boot. (A State Board of Equalization? Really? I’m just saying.)
I’ve written about this often, but the stupidity of politicians is truly mind-boggling.
It’s like when the federal government passed a special 10% surtax on any recreational boats over $100,000. What happened? The boat manufacturing business lost 20,000 jobs. With that loss of income tax, the government ended up losing money.
When a government gets too greedy, the economy goes underground. Look at Greece. 30% of its economy is “off the books”. When taxes get too high people find some way around them or just move somewhere else.
So why do governments do it? Because of the way government does accounting. Say that in your state 10 million cartons of cigarettes are sold per month. If you raise taxes by $1.00 a carton, the state gets an extra $10 million a month, right? WRONG!
People quit smoking. The politicians even say that’s why they’re doing it, to make people quit smoking (for their own good, of course, that’s why they’re called sin taxes). Or people start smoking pipes, or buy their cigarettes in the next state, or on the black market. The government KNOWS that will happen.
If that’s the case, why do they figure on collecting $10 million/month? It’s called “static accounting”. They don’t take human nature into account.
As a small business person, you know if you triple your prices you’re NOT going to triple your revenue. Why? Because people quit buying if the price is too high. If you start counting on that income you are going to be in for a rude awakening. It’s called the law of diminishing returns.
It’s the same thing with taxes only politicians are just too damn stupid to figure it out. They all just pat each other on the back and start spending the money they think they’re going to get.
This week President Obama stated that businesses don’t like added regulations “because it eats into their profits”. Well, duh! How does the government think it makes money? Through JOBS. Through BUSINESS. And the government is doing everything it can to ruin both while complaining of those ‘greedy businessmen” and companies “hoarding” cash.
Let me ask you something, would you go to Las Vegas and gamble your money if the pit boss changed the rules every 10 minutes? I don’t think so.
I don’t know about you, but I am so tired of hearing about greedy businessmen during the last 2 years. How about a few news stories on greedy governments?
Further reading:
The silly California law (PDF)
Amazon ends deal with 25,000 California websites
[Update Oct. 7, 2011]
Amazon has worked out a deal with the California legislature to hold off for a year while Amazon tries to prod the federal government to come up with a nationwide solution regarding online sales taxes (yeah, good luck with that). Amazon then sent emails to former California affiliates asking them to re-up..
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March 31st is World Backup Day. In celebration, here are some tips to get your backup system in place.
First, consider all of the data that is on your computer and what would happen to your business if all of it was suddenly gone. How long would it take to reconstruct the data? Would it be even possible to reconstruct the data? You can’t reconstruct email if it wasn’t backed up.
How about orders, invoices, customer data? Accounting data? If it’s not printed on paper the data is probably gone forever and in the case of fire or flood, the printed files may be gone also.
Here are your three main considerations when creating a backup plan:
- How often it needs to be backed up
- How much data needs to be backed up (in MB or GB)
- Where to back up your data
Backing up your data is the most important and most often neglected aspect of running a small business. How often you back up your data depends on how much data you can afford to lose. It can be done continuously, daily, weekly or monthly. Consider the nature of your business and how much new data is being entered to determine the frequency of your back-ups.
I back up my data daily.
Data can be lost due to a hard drive failure, data corruption due to a virus or worm, or theft or destruction of the computer. Because of the latter possibilities, your data also needs to be backed up “off site”. Backing up data from one hard drive to another in the same computer or on the same network will prevent data loss from a hard drive failure or virus, but not from theft, fire or flood. Continue reading .
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Security is only as good as the password protecting it and from a recent evaluation of 32 million breached passwords it appears that security is still lacking 50% of the time. It’s like securing a barn door with a stick through the hasp instead of a lock.
Researchers at Imperva analyzed millions of passwords that were hacked from rockyou.com and published in a database on the web. The results?
Source: Imperva.com
Using the same password for multiple logins is also a security breach. If one password is hacked it opens up all your logins.
So, what do you do? Use a password manager.
Using the ‘remember my passwords’ option in your browser is NOT secure, especially in Internet Explorer. Firefox gives you the option of using a master password which makes it a little more secure.
Instead of trying to remember complex passwords there are several software solutions where you only have to remember one password and they do all the rest. Most will even fill in online forms for you. They’ll also generate strong passwords – since you don’t have to try and remember them, you’ll be that much more secure.
One of the most popular browser-based programs is called RoboForm. While it has a free version it’s only limited to 10 logins. The Pro version is only $9.95 and can be used on multiple computers.
Another browser-based option is LastPass (free for computers, premium for smartphones)
If you want a non-browser based password protector, we’ve used the free Password Corral for years to store not only browser passwords, but software keys, combinations for locks and safes and anything else we want to keep encrypted or you can try KeePass, the free and open source password manager.
So there’s no longer any excuse for using simple passwords in this age of increasing identity theft, is there?.
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I’m kind of old school. When I get a WordPress theme I go through all the hassle of creating and/or adding new graphics, add any Adsense or other ads I might want and THEN mess around with the CSS to get the background, nav bars, colors and fonts right.
If it’s a free WordPress theme then is it new enough to handle widgets, pingbacks and trackbacks? I have to use the trial and error method to find out.
There’s a new breed of WP themes now that is starting to eliminate all of the headaches I’ve experienced for years and I’d like to share one I just discovered called the Socrates Premium WordPress Theme and boy is it a time-saver.
All you do is upload it and everything is done from within WordPress. Here’s just some of the stuff it will do, all with a click of your mouse:
- Built-in header generator with 200 headers (or use your own)
- Built-in background graphics
- Custom nav bars
- Custom colors and fonts
- Multiple layout (sidebar) options
- Affiliate program integration
- HTML rotator
and that’s just the beginning. They also include Sales and Squeeze Page templates and training on how to use the theme. The only drawback I’ve found is that it’s fixed at 960 pixels wide, but that’s is what I recommend to my clients, anyway. They seem to update it regularly so that may be fixed in the future.
A single domain license is $47 and an unlimited domain license is $77, one of the best prices I’ve seen for this type of WordPress theme. Check out the video on it here..
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