Presenting The Success Funnel Podcast
Guess Who Has a New Name?
Success Starts with SMART Goals
How to Build a Killer Brand in 4 Easy Steps
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Summer 2021
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Go From Unincorporated to C-Corp - Tax FREE!
P. 8
P. 12
IRS Section 351
branding
Demystifying the Concept of Brand
P. 16
Issue #10
Introducing The Business Guild
Book Review
new feature
P. 34
Back to Contents
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It still looks like the Flackery you've come to know and love, but now there's more!
Hello! Welcome to the Summer edition of Flackery, the digital magazine busting its seams with resources for you, the small business owner. This quarter we're focused on branding - what it is, why you need it, how you can develop it, and where it shows up in the world (hint: everywhere). Pat has, again, done an ah-mazing job with the articles, digging deep into references and resources and connecting with the right people to give us the best and most current information. Facts are substantiated, and geek-speak, legal-ese, or other hard-to-understand-unless-you-live-it languages are translated for those of us who need the easy versions. If you're an expert in your area, consider submitting an article for publication with us! If you're not a writer, I can help you with the article. It's a marvelous way to get in front of other business owners across the US. See flackerymag.com for more info. Let us know what topics you'd like covered, so we can include them in future issues. The other big news today, if you somehow haven't heard yet, is we've launched The Business Guild LLC. A rebrand of NH Business Guild that now has a national reach. Its resources will dive deeper into the content you find in Flackery a lot more often. You'll find articles on the website, but membership gets you access to more content, to groups, to workshops, to one-on-one time with me and Pat, and more. We remain committed to our goals of helping you promote your business, and connect to the people, information, and resources you need to succeed. We'd love to have you share this issue of Flackery with other business owners you know, and delve into The Business Guild to move your business forward. Lisa J. Jackson Editor of Flackery Co-Founder of The Business Guild LLC
Editor's Note
Wondering why the heck we named The Business Guild magazine flackery?
Here's a quick video with all the answers...
p. 8
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Success Starts with Smart Goals
CONTENTS
34
Review of Mindset: The New Psychology of Success by Carol. S. Dweck, Ph.D
Check out our new website: thebizguild.com
31
Why You Need Your Own Brand
22
How to Build a Killer Brand in 4 Steps
16
12
8
26
p. 16
41
Meet Our Members
p. 26
5
Why We Called the Magazine Flackery
38
Advertise in Flackery
p. 22
36
Business Resources
37
Past Issues
44
Back Page
Recession-Proof Your Business
p. 54
40
Photo Credits
Real world tools & strategies to build a strong foundation to help your business stay profitable when the economy is slow.
In every issue
New Feature:
p. 12
4
Your success is our mission
We are pleased (and somewhat relieved) to pull the curtain and introduce The Business Guild. As many of you know, there was no grand plan when we started NH Business Guild. It started as a local blog and grew into a membership group as readers asked for additional features. Once we decided to rebrand as The Business Guild, Lisa and I sat down and spent a lot of time thinking about what worked, what didn’t, and how we could bring the X-factor that NH Business Guild is known for to a much larger audience. We did a lot of research and had months of discussions, but in the end, we kept it simple and stuck to what we do best. Lisa and I are storytellers and professional networkers. We’re good at research, creating content, and having conversations. We’ve both owned multiple businesses and have a keen awareness of what business owners are looking for. Instead of fixing something that wasn’t broken, we decided our rebrand should be more about refining the offering. When we started on this journey, we committed to staying true to our original mission of creating opportunities for our members to promote their business and connect to the people, information, and resources they need to succeed. After six months of planning, we are pleased to welcome you to The Business Guild. The Business Guild is a membership community by and for micro-business owners. Our goal is to help our members promote their business and connect to the people, information, and resources they need to succeed. To put it plainly, your success is our mission. How do we do this? We built our platforms to help members access information. A place where they can connect with other business owners and find the expertise they’re looking for. Successful business owners know the value of having powerful networks and we created our networking and mastermind groups to help members develop solid professional relationships and share expertise. We offer top-level content, including weekly articles, a quarterly magazine, webinars, podcasts, and classes. We have weekly office hours where you can connect one-on-one with us, and online groups and forums to connect with other members. Our Professional membership includes advertising and promotional opportunities in our publications; discounts on consultations with subject matter experts; and member-only access to content and business tools. The Business Guild is the team you wish you had when you started your first business and the team that will keep you moving forward as you build your current -- or next -- one. We bring a level of value not found in a neighborhood referral group at a price that puts CEO groups to shame. We are proud of our offering and pleased to share it with you. Whether you’re just starting out or looking to grow, The Business Guild is your one-stop source to promote your business and connect to the people, information, and resources you need to succeed. Visit our new website at thebizguild.com. When you see what we give away for free, you’ll understand just what The Business Guild can do for you.
thebizguild.com
It’s all about the promise...
Do you know what a brand is? Is it a logo? Is it a product? Is it a personality? This article separates the concept of brand from the act of branding to give you a clear picture about what a brand is, why you need one, and how to use it.
It's Not All About Logos
Are you struggling to create a brand for your business? Do you feel you should know how to do it, but fumble with execution? What if I told you there are only three things to know to create a winning brand? 1. Forget everything you think you know about brands. 2. Make a promise. 3. Honor your promise. Many people, including quite a few marketing professionals, think that a brand is a product, logo, or color scheme, but that’s not accurate. Your product, logo, and color scheme are important parts of your branding package, but don't define it. The concept of a brand is nebulous and exasperating. We could even make a comparison to pornography in the sense that it’s hard to explain what it looks like, but we all know it when we see it. In a 2002 article in Digital Output magazine, Jason Miletsky said, “A brand is intangible - it’s an inherent promise made by the company to the consumer that reflects what the consumer can expect in terms of overall quality upon making a purchase.” Your products may be shining examples of what your business sells, and your logo may be how customers identify you in a crowded market, but your brand differentiates you from the competition. Your brand tells the world what it can expect from your organization in terms of quality and experience. When you look at it this way, the concept of a brand is simple. Your brand is your promise. It sets an expectation and commits to deliver a specific experience. BMW Apple Harley Davidson Each of these companies has a distinct brand that reaches beyond the concept of car, computer, and motorcycle. They speak about lifestyle, quality, and experience. You know right away what to expect because their central message, enhanced by their products, logos, and presentation, elicits an expectation and follows through on it. What image comes to mind when you think about BMW? Exclusive, executive, clean, modern, stylish, powerful, reliable. Everything BMW does from the almost boutique set up of their factory, to the showroom, their advertising, and their final product exemplifies these ideas. Now think about Ford. At some point, we’ve all heard someone say that FORD is an acronym for Found On Road Dead. Ford brought us the Model-T, and classics like Thunderbirds and Mustangs. (I think T-Birds lost their way long before I was born, but once upon a time they were the cat’s meow.) How did Ford go from being an industry leader and innovator to becoming the butt of jokes? They broke their promise. Somewhere in the 1980s, Ford Motor Company hit a bad patch and went off-brand by releasing a few less-than-stellar cars marketed to a different audience. Even today, in a world that embraces electric cars and SUVs, the two Ford products that consistently rank well are the ones that stay true to their brand. Ford F-150s are often in the top five trucks lists and Mustangs will always have a certain cachet. Both products are solid and manly and reflect Ford’s original concept of building affordable vehicles that would appeal to middle-class men. It’s very easy to craft a grand statement that looks good on paper, but people will judge your brand on your consistency and adherence to that statement across all aspects of your business. Products & Services Customer Relationships Community Partners Everything your business does has to resonate with your brand. For example, a company that promotes itself as ethical and green can’t use child labor and dump chemicals in local waterways. If your brand embraces family values, then make sure that it embodies family values at every level of the organization. Your brand is the essence of your business. It’s your promise to every person who connects with you. Every action, every policy, and every employee from the janitor to the CEO should personify that promise. It sounds like a lot of effort for something that flies in the face of internet wisdom, but once you embrace the concept, it is easy to put into practice. ✔
Your brand should touch every facet of your organization...
The Promise
The difference between brand and branding is that your brand is a promise of what people can expect when they work with you and branding is how you package it.
Consistency Is Key
Go From Unincorporated to C-Corp - Tax Free!
This one doesn’t have as broad a reach as the Qualified Small Business Stock Exemption, but it could be a major windfall for anyone who wants to move assets from a sole proprietorship or limited liability company to a C corporation. In simple terms, a 351 transaction is the transfer of assets from an unincorporated business to a corporation in exchange for stock. The benefit of a 351 transfer is that it is not taxable. Under normal circumstances, this type of activity would be a taxable event because you are exchanging something of value for something of value, but when it qualifies as a 351 transfer, it becomes a tax-free transaction. It is important to note that the tax-free benefit only applies to a basic asset-for-stock exchange. If payment is a combination of cash and stocks or any form of payment other than stock, the non-stock portion is taxable. The ability to move assets from an unincorporated business to a C corporation without a tax liability is a boon for a small business owner who wants to use existing assets to buy into a corporation or start a new business. In fact, it was the major reason Congress passed this law. According to the decision written by Judge Aldisert in Hempt Bros v. United States, “Section 351 has been described as a deliberate attempt by Congress to facilitate the incorporation of ongoing businesses and to eliminate any technical constructions which are economically unsound.“ To put it plainly, Congress created 351 transfers to encourage people who have an existing unincorporated business to start corporations that will create jobs and generate revenues. When you consider that 73% of all U.S. businesses are sole proprietors and most of those sole proprietors are non-employer businesses, it make sense that Congress would want to do something to help them grow. Taxes for these entities are reported on the owner’s personal tax returns, and because the owner is typically the only employee, there is limited opportunity for growth. A 351 transfer gives the average small business owner the ability to take property, such as equipment, land, or cash that their existing business already owns and roll it into a C corporation tax-free. As you know, the U.S. tax code always has some criteria that you must meet before you qualify for a specific tax benefit. With 351 transfers, there are three rules. You must be transferring property. The transfer must be an exchange for company stock. You must have control of the corporation immediately after the exchange. The big gotcha on the first rule is that the IRS doesn’t specifically state what constitutes property. You’re pretty safe transferring assets like equipment, patents, or real estate for stock, but you may need to wade into Treasury Regulation 1.351-1 for specific guidance for anything else. The regulation doesn’t provide much information about what qualifies as property, but it does explicitly state that “stock or securities issued for services rendered or to be rendered to or for the benefit of the issuing corporation will not be treated as having been issued in return for property.” It also gives a few good examples of different scenarios where gains or losses were or were not recognized. The only potential area of confusion with the second rule is that you can accept cash and stocks as payment for your assets, but only the stock portion is tax-free. If you look it up online, this is what people call 'boot.' I won’t get into boot, recognized gain, or the transferrer’s basis here. Taking cash, or some other form of payment in addition to the stock, is not a deal-breaker for transferring assets from an unincorporated business to a C corporation, but you’re going to be on the hook for the taxable portion of the transaction. This is something that shouldn’t come up if you are taking the assets from an existing business and using them to create a new corporation, but if you are using those assets to buy stock in an existing corporation, it can get tricky. The last rule is the control test. For this, the IRS refers us to section 368(c) where it defines control to mean “the ownership of stock possessing at least 80 percent of the total combined voting power of all classes of stock entitled to vote and at least 80 percent of the total number of shares of all other classes of stock of the corporation.” Remember, the goal of the law is to encourage sole proprietors to move their assets to a corporation so they have more opportunities to grow, not give big businesses another tax break. In a paper for Case Western Reserve Law Review, attorney Katherine L. Powers stated that “the specific 80% post-transfer stock ownership control requirement most likely was adopted arbitrarily as a relatively easy mechanism for limiting such favorable tax treatment to small corporations.” The percentage may have been capricious, but the 80% control test is significant and stands as one of the key challenges for a small business owner trying to qualify for a 351 transfer. Keep in mind that one of the benefits of a C corporation over a sole proprietorship or limited liability company is its ability to raise capital. It doesn’t matter if it’s an angel investor or private equity firm, outside investors want a piece of the pie in return for their investment. In order to do that, the owner will most likely have to relinquish part of the 80% ownership. The good news is while you must control 80% of all the corporation’s stock following the initial transfer, you don’t have to retain control of those stocks in perpetuity. One of the first cases that challenged the 80% control test was American Bantam Car Co. v. Commissioner of Internal Revenue. In this case, the transferrer planned to exchange stock for services and sell a block of preferred stock after transferring assets from the original company to the new corporation. The court determined “the sale of preferred stock was secondary to the principal goal of the plan, which was to organize the new corporation and to exchange the stock for the transferrer’s assets” and the transfer was deemed non-taxable. There is nothing simple about the tax code. My goal is to introduce small business owners to the idea of 351 transfers, but I am leaving the nitty-gritty details to the lawyers and accountants. There are a lot of potential tax savings for a sole proprietor who wants to transfer their assets to a C corporation, but you have to make sure you are seeing the entire picture. I touched on the major points, but there are a lot of other issues, like debt, that come into play when making this decision. If you are a sole proprietor who has assets and you feel like your business needs to be incorporated to grow, talk to your lawyer. They can help you review your situation and determine your options. Who knows? If you do this today, you may also find yourself enjoying a 1202 Qualified Small Business Stock Exemption in five years. ✔
By Pat Hammond, The Business Guild
In the Winter 2020 issue of Flackery, we discussed IRS Section 1202 Qualified Small Business Stock Exemptions and how claiming this exemption could represent significant tax savings for a small business owner selling their business. This time we’re looking at another beneficial tax savings opportunity, IRS Section 351, Transfer to a Corporation Controlled by the Transferrer.
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What's the Catch?
Why Did Congress Pass This Law?
Thinking about changing your business from an LLC to a C-corp? A 351 transfer could save you a lot of money.
The goal is to encourage sole proprietors to move their assets to a corporation...
351 Exchange Transfer Flowchart, by Attorney Andrew Mitchel
Final Thoughts
Looking for more information about 351 transfers? Attorney Robert C. Bramlette wrote a fantastic article called Federal Income Tax Consequences of Incorporating the Firm that breaks down the general concept, rules, and decisions that govern section 351 transfers. The law has changed slightly since the article was written, but it will give you a good foundation to understand the overall benefits of section 351.
Have you noticed how many people use terms like 'mission statement,' 'vision statement,' and 'brand statement' interchangeably? It's confusing, right? People define, redefine, and ad-lib until they're left with a confusing amalgam of meaningless words. The concept of brand is no different. At The Business Guild, we take a more holistic view of what a brand is. It may fly in the face of what you see on the internet, but we separate brand from the act of branding by defining a brand as the core promise from a business to its employees, customers, partners, and community about what to expect when they work with an organization, buy its products, or share a neighborhood. Unlike a mission statement, a brand is ethereal. You can represent it with a color or logo, but the promise itself is more like a magnetic field that holds your business components together to create a distinct offering. And yes, we know that is about as clear as mud, so we’ve put together a one-page brand planning canvas to help you develop a clear, cohesive brand promise so you can apply your brand to all aspects of your organization. It may sound counter-intuitive, but this is not where you fill in a clever, awe-inspiring statement about how great your business is. The goal of this canvas is to help you generate an idea that sets an expectation for anyone who connects with your business. Popular wisdom may say that a brand is your presentation, but that’s just packaging. Your brand is the essence of your business and trickles down into all aspects of your organization, from hiring employees to community relations, relationships with suppliers, and everything in between. It’s about promises, and how well you keep them. Think about how other companies’ brands make you feel. Not their logos or products, but your expectation when you do business with them. For example, why do you have a different expectation of Walmart than Target? They are both large chain stores that market to families with tight budgets, but the experience, the presumption of quality in both the products and interactions, is quite different because their promises are quite different. Once you have that distinction in your mind, write one or two brief sentences for your promise that describe the general quality of your products and the type of experience people can expect from your business. Now that you have a better idea of what you’re promising, look at specifics. What quality can people expect from your products or services? Brands do not have to be aspirational. Walmart sells budget-friendly products. Customers understand they will get what they pay for and are happy about it. They know a $3 T-shirt won’t hold up to repeated washings or be handed down to a younger sibling, but it is still a great value to a family on a tight budget. The other piece of expectation is the experience. What kind of experience can people expect from your organization? On an average day, your business needs to connect with customers, employees, business partners, and many people within your community. What can they expect when they work with you? Do you make it easy for people to find solutions? Are your representatives friendly, efficient, and knowledgeable? Or are they disgruntled and surly? When you go to Walmart, you expect a large no-frills warehouse-type store with concrete floors and open shelving. Target’s stores are as big as Walmart’s, but the experience is completely different. Target has bright colors and highly polished floors. Their aisles are wide and they display merchandise to entice. Both models work because you know upfront what to expect. How will you apply your brand to your customers, employees, partners, and community? We live in a highly connected world. People judge us just as much by our actions and interactions as they do on the quality of our products and services. We’re not saying you have to build a socially conscious business like Ben & Jerry’s, that starts charities and promises organic ingredients, but your brand has to be consistent across your company. Use this section to give a few bullet points about how you will apply your brand to your customers, employees, partners, and community. How will you measure brand success? Once you have those ideas in place, explain how you will measure the successful application of your brand. Maybe it will be employee longevity or tracking how many customers write reviews and refer your company to friends and colleagues. The metric can be anything as long as you can use it as a standard for measuring success. The last task on the planner is to identify six keywords that describe your promise. We added this to the end of the planner because the concept of a brand is so intangible. It’s more than a fancy logo or written guarantee; it’s what happens between the lines and contributes to your business reputation. Having a few keywords on hand that illustrate the essence of what your company is promising is a simple way to check that your products and policies are consistent with your brand. Remember, people will judge your business on your consistency and adherence to your brand across all aspects of your business. Take a few minutes to run through the planner and make sure your promise is the same for your customers, employees, partners, and your community. ✔
business tools
Step 1: The Promise
1. The Promise 2. Expectation 3. Application 4. Keywords
Step 2: Expectation
A brand is like a magnetic field that holds your business components together to create a distinct offering
Visit thebizguild.com for more planning canvases
Marketing Canvas
Email Marketing Canvas
Step 3: Application
Step 4: Keywords
Business Canvas
What do you call a podcast that covers all the elements of business success? How about The Success Funnel Podcast?
Page 28
The first question that came up when we started talking about doing a podcast was, what's it going to be about? Will it be about marketing, networking, or entrepreneurship? What about current events? They were fair questions, but we had a better idea. We all know about sales funnels and marketing funnels, but nobody ever talks about success funnels. Since The Business Guild's mission is to help our members succeed, it made sense to host a podcast that tackles all the components that lead to success. Planning Leadership People & Resources Opportunity Success These are the topics that challenge people. They're also the same topics we tackle every day in conversations and guild content. t's a little different than our usual content, but we are thrilled to take on this new platform. In addition to being a resource for business information, we hope it will give you a chance to get to know us, our personalities, and what it's like to work with us. Please join us as we launch The Success Funnel Podcast, your one-stop source for everything you need to know to succeed. ✔
Check out our first episode - Success Starts with SMART Goals!
It seems like whenever a business does an employee survey, one of the biggest complaints they get is that workers feel disengaged because they don't know what the company's goals are. It makes sense, right? How can anyone do their job if they have no idea what is expected of them? They know they're responsible for answering the phone or checking for missing rivets, but it's hard to get excited and feel ownership of their responsibilities when they can't see how it fits into the big picture. This isn't just a worker issue. Have you ever drawn a blank or struggled to provide a clear answer when asked what your company does? You, as the owner, can work for a while with a phantom idea of what you want to accomplish in your head, but it's not very efficient and you're going to stumble when you reach a crossroad. If you want to succeed, you need to see the big picture. You have to have corporate goals. Unlike sales or marketing goals that track to a specific metric, your business goals reflect your organization's overarching mission. They are the big picture that provides the road map from where you are now to where you want to be tomorrow. They also lay the foundation for all of your other business goals. All the components of your business build their goals to support your company's goals. Sales & marketing, production, and human resources all need to know what your corporate goals are so they can understand their department's role in achieving it. Larger organizations are much better at setting corporate goals because they know their departments need to have that information to ensure everyone in the organization is working towards the same purpose. This is an area where micro-businesses flounder. You'd think it would be easier because a micro-business typically has fewer than ten employees, but it's not. Large corporations have clear delineation between individual roles and responsibilities. The marketing manager would never be responsible for sourcing production materials, but in a micro-business the owner may do everything. When one person, or a handful of people, take on multiple roles, the lines get blurred. People get laser focused on the task at hand and lose sight of why they're doing it. And that leads to wasting resources like time and money. Two things no small business can afford. Good news: The Business Guild is here to help. We know how easy it is to get caught up in doing the job and forget your mission, so we've created a simple one-page goal planner to get you back on track. Our planner will walk you through all the elements of a SMART goal. What you want to do How you're going to do it Resources you'll need Relevance Timelines & Benchmarks All it takes is answering eight easy questions to get a clear picture of what you want to do and how you're going to do it. Think it can't be that easy? Watch Episode 1 of The Success Funnel Podcast to see how quickly you can turn your dream into a goal. ✔
The Success Funnel Podcast, Episode 1
Download the goal planner canvas and all of our planning tools at thebizguild.com/succeed
successfunnelpodcast.com
Why You Need To Own Your Brand
O
wning your brand starts and ends with knowing what your brand stands for and making sure that everything your company does, from products and services to customer experience, reflects that message. It sounds simple enough, but the challenge is that brand is a nebulous concept that is redefined every time someone tries to wrap their head around it. Most people will say your products or logo define your brand, but the truth is your products and logo represent your brand. They are the public-facing exemplification of the quality and experience people can expect from your organization. More than an image, logo, or product, your brand is your promise. It sets an expectation for anyone who connects with your business and it’s what separates you from the competition. Understanding this distinction is important because we live in a world where anyone, anywhere, can pull out their phone and see photos, social media posts, reviews, and conversations about us. Many of these are things we cannot control. Even our own content can present an image that differs quite a bit from who we really are if we lack the unifying force of a brand. This is why it is so very important that you own your brand. Now that you understand why you need to do this, let’s look at how. Taking ownership of your brand requires you to ensure that every action, interaction, product, and policy presents a unified image that is in line with your brand. That can’t happen until you create the expectation, the promise, that your brand represents. The good news is developing a brand is a lot easier than you think. In fact, there are only three basic steps. Write one or two brief sentences to outline your brand's promise. Define the quality of your products and the type of experience people can expect from your business. Be sure to be specific. Explain how you will apply your brand to your customers, employees, and partners. Once you have this information, you can start working on all the products, logos, and policies that will support it. This is where ownership comes in. Your brand lays the foundation for all of your interactions with customers, employees, and community partners. It’s the core of your product development and marketing and touches almost every aspect of your organization. Taking ownership of your brand means making sure that all your moving parts are working together to present the same message. For example, if your brand promises a personal one-on-one experience, then you must provide that experience in every email, invoice, and each time the customer calls. Your brand is the soul of your business, not just the face the public sees. The promise you make to customers is the same promise you make to employees and the community. Remember, the whole point of a brand is to differentiate yourself from the competition. Products and logos can’t do this on their own. They need you to do the work. To make the promise, set the expectation, and deliver the unified message so you can stand out from your competitors. This is why you need to own your brand. ✔
You hear a lot of talk about brands and branding, and the importance of owning your brand, but what does it mean and how do you do it? If you're confused about what a brand is and what it means to take ownership, look no further. We've put together a quick article that explains what a brand is and how to use it to stand out among the competition.
When I find a business book that's a pleasure to read, that I find myself marking up, and one I keep handy to reference at any time, it's one that I recommend to others. Mindset falls into this category. Mindset is a big topic. Mindset effects every part of our lives. Stanford University psychologist Carol Dweck's premise for this book is that our beliefs -- conscious and unconscious -- guide our lives in profound ways. Our beliefs are what help us succeed, or not. She includes many stories that can resonate with readers and demonstrate how crucial our mindset is to our success - in business, in relationships, etc. Mindset is more anecdotal than a deep dive into psychology, so it is easy to digest. You'll discover the differences between fixed and open mindset and how they apply to real-world scenarios. You can decide if you believe your mindset is inherent or changeable. In the new series of commercials for apartments.com, actor Jeff Goldblum says, "Change your apartment. Change the world." It is akin to how you may embrace "Change your thoughts. Change your world." after reading this book. I find it a useful book to re-read once a year. Sometimes we get so wrapped up in tasks and to-do lists and musts, that we veer away from being open to opportunities that may come along - we may not recognize them! Taking the time to take a breath and acknowledge our thoughts and refocus our mindset can go a long way to success with our businesses. A recommended read. ✔
Book Corner
By Lisa J. Jackson, The Business Guild
Review of Mindset: The New Psychology of Success by Carol S. Dweck, Ph.D.
Who can participate? Newer (1-3 years) businesses Single owner or partnership LLCs Business bank accounts/credit cards with less than 100 transactions per month (no combined business/personal accounts) Owners who want to learn about better business practices
Call for more info 978-566-1459
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Program Includes:
Business & Strategic Planning This includes federal business resources, useful tools, and all of The Business Guild's business planning templates. Web & Graphic Design The web graphic design resources feature useful tips for choosing a CMS, building a website, improving page speed, and site maintenance. It also covers graphic design tips and links to several free graphic design programs. Sales & Marketing Sales & Marketing has info about ERPs and CRMs, tips, tricks, and strategies for boosting sales, top picks for email marketing programs, templates for sales and marketing campaigns, and links to community partners. Classes & Training The classes & training section offers a collection of live and on-demand classes, events, and seminars from The Business Guild, our members, and community partners. Back Office This section contains a variety of back office tools and resources for your HR, accounting, and IT questions.
It would take the entire magazine to list resources for every city, state or county, so we're including direct links to the corresponding resources pages on The Business Guild's website. If you're looking for a resource that isn't listed, please send us an email to info@thebizguild.com and we'll try to help you find what you;re looking for.
Free and Budget-Friendly Resources For Your Business
thebizguild.com/succeed
Winter 2018
Fall 2019
Winter 2019
Spring 2018
Fall 2020
Winter 2020
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Spring 2021
Fall 2018
Your Original Content Members: FREE Non-Members: $125 Deadline: July 30, 2021
Flackery is now accepting feature stories and sponsored posts from The Business Guild members and non-members.*
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Cover Photo Old School Workplace Concept Banner by sentavio on www.freepik.com p. 8 - 9 Red Curtain - www.freepik.com p. 11 Public Relations Concept by pikisuperstar - www.freepick.com p. 12 Businessman in gray suit jacket by asierelampagoestud - www.freepik.com p. 14 Premium Vector Guarantee Badges for linimasa_art - www.freepik.com
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Thank you for reading Flackery. If you liked what you read, be sure to check out our back issues for more tools, tips, and business insights at Flackerymag.com
p. 16 Calculator photo from pxhere.com p. 20 Section 351 Transfer chart from Andew Mitchel - www.andrewmitchel.com p. 22 Branding Concept vector by pikisuperstar - www.freepik.com p. 30 Brand Building vector by macrovector - www.freepik.com p. 32 Business Team Planning vector by pch.vector - www.freepik.com p. 34 Book cover, Mindset: The New Psychology of Success from Amazon.com
Key Takeaways Plan Early Have a team of advisers Understand your expectations Open discussions with key players Know your company's value Have a "Plan B" for after the sale
Your Business Could Be Here
Meet a few of our members
IRS & Small Business Specialist
www.johnmorganva.com
Allegra Boverman Photography
Let me tell your story
AllegraBoverman.com
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Business & Industrial Photography
Editorial - News, Features
Community & Public Relations
Business Rule #18: Honor Your Promises