Business & Finance Blog

Eighty percent of respondents indicated growing their business was their main goal this year. And they're in luck. We've got experts in marketing, entrepreneurship, and business management, who will help you reach your goals by providing the information and resources you need, such as:

- Developing a public relations campaign for your restaurant

- Using your business card to generate leads

- Managing your business with confidence

- Creating effective website content

We'd like to celebrate your business successes, so let us know how your company grows by sharing your success stories in our discussion forums.

I've been working for this client for almost 6 years, and in that time, have only raised my rates once. My rates were low to begin with, probably because this was the first client I ever acquired, back when I was new to self-employement, and a lot more willing to accept whatever rate a client was willing to offer.

The importance of pricing, a more importantly, not underpricing, was a lesson I learned early on. The first opportunity I ever had to bid on a project, I later found out I had priced myself so far below the other competitor, that the client perceived my work to be low-quality. I wasn't awarded the contract, and it's a lesson I've never forgotten.

Recently, a new client in need of some urgent work came to me offering a rate far below what I would consider working for nowadays. Suspecting I might be out of her budget range, I simply told her my current rate with the expectation that she would look elsewhere. To my great surprise, she okayed my rate and gave the go-ahead on the work.

So I decided to include a note with my latest invoice to my long-time client that as of Jan. 1, my rates would be going up. I haven't heard a peep yet, so I'm assuming they value my work enough to recognize that a rate increase is in order.

The credit, called the Children's Fitness Tax Credit, allows families to deduct some of the costs of fitness programs for their kids. To be eligible, programs must contribute to cardio-respiratory endurance, and offer one of the following:

muscular strength

muscular endurance

flexibility

balance

For more information, go to:

http://www.news.gc.ca/cfmx/view/en/index.jsp?articleid=263839#Backgrounder

Whether you work for yourself in a home-based office, or telecommute to your job electronically from the comfort of your home, you've likely discovered the many benefits of working from home.

If you have yet to take that plunge, here are some articles that might inspire you to do so:

Starting a Home-Based Business

The Work From Home Parent

Technology You'll Need to Work from Home

The silence in this blog over the past month can only be explained by an excuse I'm sure many of you readers will understand: I've been swamped with work. Fortunately this section's writers have kept their keyboards churning to keep you up to date on the important issues you -- as both employees and entrepreneurs -- encounter day-to-day.

One of my most time-consuming tasks has been writing grant applications for non-profit and small cultural organizations. So I was thrilled to welcome aboard a new writer for our Non-Profit Management section. Estela Kennen has kicked things off with an article on...you guessed it...grant writing.

Meanwhile, over in our Self-Employment section, writer KC Morgan has also been discussing money; just how much bacon should an entrepreneur bring home? She's been helping readers set self-employment goals and has offered up some budgeting resources to figure out just how much you need to earn.

Starving artists will appreciate Marketing writer Brenda Keener's latest article on marketing for artists. She discussed strategies for promoting your works, while leaving your audience hungry for more.

And while we're on the topic of hunger, Workplace Culture writer Melissa Dylan has had a lively discussion going on about the dos and don'ts of eating at work, while her latest blog post tells at why the mere site of food, not to mention work, has had her heading for the porcelain.

Enjoy!

October 15-21 is Small Business Week in Canada. Organized by the Business Development Bank of Canada to celebrate and support the contributors of entrepreneurs and small business people, Small Business Week offers events and exposure to the more than 2 million small businesses in Canada.

Under the theme “A World Without Boundaries Open to New Markets”, Small Business Week 2006 focuses on the world’s developing economies and the opportunities they present for entrepreneurs. For more info about events in your area, go to:

www.bdc.ca/en/about/events_publications/small_business_week/default.htm

I’ve heard employees referred to in many ways over the years, and in most cases, the terms have had that icky quality of derogatory undermining that often trickles through from the upper echelons of management.

Cases in point: human capital (sounds like herding cattle), man power (hello? employment equity?), cycles (budget-dependent, easily disposable should profits plummet), workforce (sounds like workhorse?) and the most common of course, human resources, which I suppose isn’t all that bad, but for the fact that it ranks employees right up there with other renewable resources like, you know, air, water, oil….

And therein lies the problem. Just as with our precious oil supply, many of these words imply the idea of replaceability, as if there were an endless supply of humans for companies to work to the bone and toss away once their value is all used up. And sure, I suppose many employees are, to a large degree, replaceable. But realistically, in today’s labour market, where shortages are expected in many sectors due to the impending mass retirements of Baby Boomers, skilled and educated employees will not be replaceable in any way, shape or form. And in either case, as an employer, wouldn’t you want your employees to feel needed, valued and important? Referring to them as something akin to cattle is not the way to do so.

A document I was reading this morning referred to employees as people resources. I liked that; it certainly sounded a lot nicer than anything I had heard before. People resources are people first. And as one of the people resources referred to in said document, I can tell you it made me feel more valued than I ever have felt with any previous employer.

A Statistics Canada study released this week says the number of wives who earn more than their husbands has nearly tripled in the last 40 years. In 1967, about 11% of wives were the primary breadwinners; in 2003 that number had risen to 29%--that’s 1.4 million of the 4.7 double-income families in Canada.

Last week, Forbes editor Michael Noer published a self-authored piece on why men shouldn’t marry carry women. The article pointed out that women who are career-driven are less likely to be satisfied with their husbands, more likely to cheat, less likely to have kids, and more likely to initiate divorce. “Marry pretty women or ugly ones. Just, whatever you do, don't marry a woman with a career,” he wrote.

The story, of course, sparked a heated debate. Aren’t women entitled to a career just as much as men? Aren't they entitled to a decent income? Why should women have to give up their careers to raise kids? With more and more women as primary breadwinners, are men threatened by their earning power? And even more so, are men threatened by the fact that women are no longer dependent upon them for their every need?

The advantage, of course, to earning a decent income is that you CAN leave your marriage if you're not happy. You aren't tied to it for financial reasons. But does that mean you shouldn't marry a woman who has career ambitions? What do you think of all this? Come join the discussion in our forum!

One of the benefits of being your own boss is the ability to hire and fire the people you work with. As an entrepreneur, this also applies to your clients. Evaluating the benefits of keeping vs. dumping a client is an important business activity, particularly if your business is growing and getting busy. It’s hard to say no to work, but sometimes a client is just not worth your time—no matter how much they pay.

A friend who runs Consultant Journal is looking for client-firing stories, so here's mine. I once fired a client who told me that his non-profit organization applied for all the funding it qualified for in order to hire consultants, but never heeded the recommendations of said consultants, as evidenced by the piles of dusty reports lining its shelves. So why would I, as a consultant, put time into a project that was only going to get shelved?

Well, in this case, the budget was sizeable and the project gave me experience in an area where I didn’t have much. I reluctantly took it on, only to have to battle for cooperation from the staff. In the end, the funding body withheld a portion of the grant because the organization didn’t jump through all the hoops it should have. And I didn’t get paid in full. Lesson learned!

If you've been working for yourself, you likely haven't worried too much about having a resume on hand. After all, the boss is you, and you know your experience pretty well.

But if you do decide to look for a job to supplement your income, or to take a break from entrepreneurship, you'll need a resume that accounts for what you've been up to all those years.

This can get tricky, as I recently discovered during a job hunt. I've been working for myself for many years, but have typically had some form of employment at the same time. I recently sent out a bunch of resumes which listed both my self-employment experience along with my work experience. Oftentimes the dates overlap, because I often do contract work "on the side". Apparently, employers do not like this. It confuses them. It arouses their suspicions. And it makes them wonder what kind of employee I could be if I had resorted to working on the side (a damn hard worker, I would say, using my inner voice, of course).

I not only had to downplay my contract work in interviews, but I had to arrange it on my resume so it appeared as though I had closed that chapter. One interviewer actually seemed angry at the fact that I appeared to be involved in so many things at once. While I was successful at obtaining a great new job (all the while maintaining my contract work), I did have to downplay my extra-curriculars. Apparently being a damn hard worker does not appeal to all employers.