In her role on the ethics committee, she helps evaluate specific charges against IMC-USA members. She also recommends ways to improve and enhance the distinction of the Certified Management Consultant designation.

The Institute of Management Consultants USA administers a unified management consulting examination to its members, part written and part oral. Fewer than 10,000 management consultants in the United States have obtained the elite Certified Management Consultant designation.

Positus Consulting LLC provides comprehensive management consulting solutions for small and medium sized businesses, including professional services firms, wholesalers, hospitality and tourism, and medical practices. www.positusonline.com.

Enjoy!

http://www.openforum.com/idea-hub/topics/money/article/should-you-spend-money-on-education-thursday-bram

Your business can be a superpower. Call POSITUS!

While looking for some lending alternatives for a start-up client recently, we stumbled across an innovative new web site. Microventures.com marries social media with the concept of searching for funding, opening up the possibilities to a world of investors willing to help small businesses get off their feet and grow.

On the investing side, the site allows people who have money to invest to sign up. They specify the types of companies they’re willing to consider and the amounts they’re putting on the table. Microventures creates a profile for them that then matches them to opportunities that fit their desired parameters.

For the small business owner, Microventures requires an application submittal with a $100 fee. The application is pretty simple, with a committee evaluating the application for its merit of a second phase review.

If the initial application is approved, Microventures will request a fee of $250 and some additional information: a business plan; financial ratios; financial projections; use of funds analysis; amounts currently invested by owners; pending or current litigation; and a few more details. (HINT: POSITUS is seasoned at working with small business owners to build rock-solid information for consideration by such groups.)

If a small business is approved for listing, there are some additional considerations. First, they must agree to an equity-interest for the investor(s), something that may give many small business owners some heartburn. Small businesses are also charged a fee of 10% of the amount requested if the transaction completes successfully, meaning that all the needed funds are procured through investors on the site.

In a tough lending environment, Microventures.com may be an ideal place for entrepreneurs to go to find the capital they need to establish their businesses and grow them successfully. If you check it out or pursue this concept, please touch base with us and let us know about your experience.

One last statement: Microventures.com did not pay us anything for this article, give us any free seed money, or otherwise be nice to us in any way for promoting them here.

How many businesses make the same mistakes? Marketers are good salespeople, and they convince business owners every day that more marketing will mean increased revenue. Sadly, many of them don’t pay attention to operational details, like when a new shoe season will be ready and available for market or whether the business owner is on top of her web site updating so that she will benefit from a coup like a mention in the NY Times.

Marketing expenditures for anything – social media promotion; press releases; advertising online or in print – is like flushing dollar bills down the toilet one at a time without the proper operational backbone behind it. Anyone who tells you otherwise in an attempt to make money by selling you marketing services is handing you snake oil.

Here are some things that Melissa could have done to capitalize on her company’s mention in the NY Times – before the public relations firm got her here.

Checked delivery deadlines for the jelly bubble shoes. If the cute booties truly were not yet available, she could coordinate a more advantageous release date with her PR firm so that shoppers will be converted to buyers when they follow the provided link.

Made sure she will have enough shoes to meet anticipated demand. Again, if the shoes won’t be available, or if she doesn’t have them on her site because they are sold out, she could most likely coordinate another alternative with her PR firm for promotion, or make an additional rush order in anticipation of demand.

Included the correct web domain. Maybe her PR firm blundered this one in the submission, or maybe she moved or changed her domain prior to release of the article. Either of these snafus could’ve been rectified with some communication between client, PR firm and news outlet.

Created a platform for ease of ordering. How ordering platforms work is normally an operational issue, with the marketers worrying about whether or not they look pretty. This is one of my most consistent complaints with web sites – the order platforms are too clunky, include too many steps, don’t seem secure, or are impossible to find. The coolest web site in the world is useless to me if I can’t figure out who to have the company relieve me of my money.

Evaluated whether or not this sort of publicity would be good for the company. Many times, national or international publicity can backfire on a small company. In the case of service industries, it gives the appearance of being expensive or out of the league of many possible clients. For small product based businesses, they may simply not have the workforce, capacity or funding to pounce on the promotion, causing a brief boost in awareness with no real economic benefit. Oh, they’re working harder to try to move some product, but nothing ever really happens.

Be smart with your marketing dollars by making sure your business is ready operationally for the sales increases a successful marketing campaign will contribute. Again, any marketer who tries to convince you to market your business without considering the operational baseline is just after your money.

from NY Times Magazine

Check out our post on Cheryl’s blog by clicking here.

from clipart.com

This article in Barron’s is awesome. It succinctly explains why Wall Street is having an easier time getting loans, while small businesses are finding them almost non-existent. Lending institutions will always focus their energies on those products that make money. Period.

Right now, with the federal funds rate practically at zero, interest rates overall are extremely low. Bankers aren’t making loans because there’s no real incentive to make them. They can take all the influx of cash they got from the government and do other, more lucrative things with it right now. They’re investing in Treasuries and lending money to hedge funds because that’s where the real money is at for them in the current market.

How long will things stay that way? I’d be a rich girl if I could make that prediction. But I will say that as long as interest rates practically don’t exist, don’t look for banks to waste any energy making business loans. There’s nothing in it for them, and that’s the way of the banking world in the 21st century.

Maybe the writer’s advice to form your own small business hedge fund is the way to go – for now.

George Steinbrenner, from the Washington Post

I can only imagine that, were I still in public accounting, yesterday and today would be a veritable feast of discussion over the death of George Steinbrenner. The Yankee owner rarely made a misstep, even in the timing of his death.

This interesting article in the Washington Post spells out the estate tax ramifications for his heirs. To translate all the gobbledy-gook that numbers folks tend to clutter everything up with – his heirs will not pay one penny in estate tax. $1.15 billion estate value/$0 estate tax.

I was still in public accounting when this little rule was passed. While I don’t want to confuse people and give them the impression that I still do taxes or practice public accounting in any form, I do want to put the other side of this story out there.

Yes, Steinbrenner’s estate will pay no estate tax because he died during 2010, a year that Congress decreed estate tax free years ago. However, his heirs will likely pay tax on all of the things they inherit at a much higher estate tax rate, and they will be hard pressed to avoid paying much, much more because of the no-tax rule this year.

Normally, estates get to value assets as of the date of death. Because many assets normally appreciate (the past couple of years notwithstanding), getting to claim what they’re worth at death is a great deal for an heir. Instead of valuing a baseball team at the paltry few million Steinbrenner likely paid for it, the heirs could value it at what it was worth yesterday, the day he died, which is much, much, much more.

Because no estate tax will be paid, the value of their shares will be what he paid for them. When they die and pass them along, the tax rate they are going to pay is currently set at 55%, though with our Congress that could always change.

This isn’t the “deal” it appears to be.

The principles highlighted aren’t revolutionary. In fact, they’re pretty basic. Fostering a sense of community in small business is critical to its survival, because a small business is a community whether anyone admits it or not. It’s too small to be anything else. If the sense of community among the people involved, whether they be employees, vendors, and/or customers, is negative, those feelings permeate quickly, and the business suffers as a result.

Use these tips to build a community of people who feel invested in what you’re doing, who believe they can make an impact because you’ve demonstrated they can, and who celebrate your business success because they feel a part of it. Good luck!