Business Planning

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"Like" This

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America's economy continues to sputter. But stocks are picking up steam and flirting with four-year highs. We're even seeing new "dot-coms" hitting the market. Last May, the social networking site LinkedIn went public at $45 per share, then leaped to $94.25 in its first day of trading. Internet coupon vendor Groupon opened in November at $20 per share, then jumped 31% on its first day of trading. And earlier this month, Facebook filed registration papers with the Securities and Exchange Commission for what may be the hottest IPO since Google.

Companies typically go public to raise money to expand. But Facebook doesn't really need cash from an IPO. The company made nearly $4 billion in advertising revenue in 2011. So why go public?

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Gimme Shelter

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Sunday night's Grammy Awards ceremony illuminated two sides of today's music industry. On stage, British soul singer Adele cleaned up big time, winning Album of the Year, Record of the Year, and Song of the Year. On the darker side, the night was filled with tributes to fallen angel Whitney Houston, who died Saturday after years of backstage struggles with drugs and alcohol.

When you think of your favorite musician, you probably don't think about a third side — taxes. But you might be surprised to learn just how much influence tax laws have over the music we listen to every day.

Rock-and-roll fans know "Gimme Shelter" as one of the Rolling Stones' all-time classics — the opening cut on their 1969 album Let it Bleed, and a dark, brooding meditation on the war and violence that seemed to characterize that era. Surprisingly, it turns out that "Gimme Shelter" describes the band's philosophy on taxes, too.

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Tax "Hacking" With Rupert Murdoch

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Press Baron Rupert Murdoch started with his father's newspaper in Adelaide, South Australia, and built it into the world's second-biggest media empire. Time magazine has ranked him three times in their annual list of the 100 most influential people in the world. Vanity Fair routinely lists him in their "New Establishment" ranking of the 100 most influential people of the information age. And Forbes ranks him as one of the wealthiest men in the world, with an estimated net worth of $7.6 billion.

But now Murdoch's News Corporation is in hot water because reporters at Britain's News of the World tabloid illegally hacked into telephone voicemails across Britain. Since the scandal came to a boil, several company officials have resigned, others have been arrested, and the News of the World — which began publishing in 1843 when Queen Victoria ruled Britannia — has shut down.

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Analyze Your Product And Services Profitability

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Given the number of times we've had clients ask for help evaluating their product or service mix this past year, I figured it was time for a bit more of a technical discussion. So get that fresh cup of coffee and use this entry to begin to ponder how your products or services help -- or hurt -- your business.

Knowing the profitability of each individual product/service you provide can help you make decisions to improve your bottom line. You may want to discontinue products and services that aren’t particularly profitable while promoting the ones that improve your overall results.

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Family Business Transition Dilemma – Who Gets The Baton?

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Family business transition planning is frequently predicated on the assumption that someday the parents will be passing on the baton to one (or several) of their own children. What more satisfactory way of crowning their lifelong efforts and hard won success than to pass on the legacy to their own kin so they too can continue to enjoy and prosper from it.

However, children are never clones of a parent and generations also vary one from another so that we can, these days, point to enough commonalities among age cohorts to be able to characterize this person as a baby boomer, that one as a Gen X and another as a Gen Y.

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Use financial ratios to review your Company's results

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Financial ratios can be helpful tools in understanding your company’s financial health. They are a benchmark by which you can compare your business to industry standards and analyze changes over time.

In fact, benchmarking and comparing to your competition is so important to business success that I provide all my business clients with an annual report on the benchmarks and results for their particular industry or profession. Without this it can be like traveling back roads without a map.

One warning though. If you begin comparing your results and calculating your ratios with incorrect accounting information from your business you just may wind up making the wrong decisions. All of the financial review and performance measurement we can discuss is of no use if your business's basic