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Jul 26 2015

Choosing an accountant

gms final logo

No matter the size of your business, or its cash flow position, a business owner should never be without an accountant.

Accountants ought to provide services beyond the scope of tax preparation. Business owners in our community deserve, and should expect more from their accounting and tax service providers. Your accountant should be

  1. Accessible and open all year round
  2. Someone whom you can trust to offer you sound business advice and guidance (a trusted business advisor)
  3. Someone who can interpret your financial results, and hold a meaningful discussion with you about what the numbers are saying about your business
  4. Someone with whom you have an active relationship with right throughout the year, advising you on how to structure your affairs in a tax efficient way. Not just at tax time, because at that point the relationship is reactive, not pro-active
  5. Someone who can advise you on whether or not the systems and internal controls you have implemented in your business are effective. If not, they should be able to help in the re-design and implementation of suitable controls
  6. Someone who can scrutinize the financial performance of a company that you would like to buy
  7. Able to accurately present your company’s financial performance if you would like to obtain financing or are planning to sell
  8. Able to provide or recommend you to an estate planner (for succession planning)
  9. Transparent in the pricing of their services. That is, you should know exactly (or very close to exactly) what your bill will be for the service being provided. There should be no surprises when you open up the bill from your accountant.
  10. A highly trained professional, preferably one who is licensed to deal with the public. If they are licensed, then they belong to a professional body that regulates them, and ensures that their skills and training are current.
  11. Knowledgeable and up to date on your industry and current accounting/tax issues and trends (up to date on current tax and accounting issues)
  12. Adding value with sound tax planning strategies
  13. Properly represent you with the CRA
  14. Ethical, and a right balance between conservative and aggressive, in respect of tax deductions

Note: When looking for an accountant, you should meet with about 2 or 3 accountants to determine what they have to offer, and if they will be a right fit for your company. While fees are very important, your choice should not be made based on fees, but based on what your accountant will save you I time and money, as well as whether they are a right fit.

If you find the right accountant, he or she should be a priceless resource for your business as it progresses through its various stages (start up to maturity).

Green Meikle & Smith Chartered Professional Accountants

Authorized to practice public accounting by the Chartered Professional Accountants of Ontario

 

1020 Matheson Blvd. E. Unit 10

Mississauga, ON L4W 4J9

905-919-3543 Ext 101

647-338-5306 (cell)

www.greenmeiklesmith.com

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Written by Dwania Peele · Categorized: Green Meikle & Smith · Tagged: accountant, Accountants, advisor, business, business advice, business owner, Canadian Small Business Women, cash flow, Celia Meikle, Chartered Professional Accountants, CRA, finances, Green Meikle and Smith, tax preparation, tax service providers, taxes, trust

Feb 22 2015

Where do content marketing ideas come from?

selfy photo

 

Most business people feel like surfing the internet these days is like trying to sip water from a firehose. It is overwhelming, and with so many businesses out there, online, your business can seem like a grain of sand on an endless beach.  How can a grain of sand stand out?  The simple answer is, Content Marketing.  What content to create is a harder question to answer.

In the last five instalments of this six part series I have walked you through the content strategy process which answers the questions:

1) Why does my business need to produce and publish useful, relevant content? Have a look at post number one, a content strategy primer, and post number two, which is all about getting started and defining your brand values.

2) Who do I target with this content (and where do I find them)? Have a look at post number three, which is all about understanding your target customers as users, and post number four, your social strategy SOS.

3) Where should I focus my efforts to get found? Have a read of Post Number 5, Getting Found by Search Engines.

Content Marketing is about using content to drive sales.  And if you do it right, it’s your best opportunity to stand out and make more money.  It is unqieuly suited to small business because smaller businesses are closer to their customers, with a greater ability often to engage in dialogue with customers and stay aligned with customer needs.  That dialogue is where you find out what content you should be producing.

Getting content ideas from your sales funnel

I never realsied, before becoming a business owner, that I would also need to be a salesperson.  But this is job number one for every small business owner, and content marketing is a great way to warm up your leads: it can help you to generate those leads in the first place and then move those leads down the sales funnel closer to purchase in a gentle, helpful, and purposeful way.

Your sales funnel is also a great place to look for content ideas.

Sales-Activity-Funnel

Are there places in your sales funnel, or in the greater value chain that surrounds your business, that your customers are getting “stuck”?  Understanding where your customers are stalled in the funnel is a good way to figure out what kind of content you need to produce and where you need to produce it.

 

When in doubt, ask!

In the Getting Found post in this series, we talked about the questions cusrtomers ask you as a great place to get keywords.  This is also a great plce for content ideas.  What questions do your customer ask you?  When you’re at conferences or other events where your customers congregate, what questions do you hear people asking speakers or other vendors?  As a speaker, I always ask my workshop attendees to tell me their biggest challenges, so I have fodder for blog posts, webinars, and podcasts in the future.

Interview your customers.  If you’re not sure what to ask them have a look at your value proposition and circle your assumptions, then validate those assumptions with your cusomters.  Google survey is a really easy tool, as is mailchimp for keeping email lists.  Use these tools to ask your customers what they need help with!

 

Quality trumps Quantity

And don’t panic if you don’t have a huge base to work with.  The Lean business development model recommends talking to 50 potential customers to find out if your business idea is solid.  User experience designers often only interview 6-10 ysers to find out if their ideas address user needs.  The average number of supporters it takes to fund a successful kickstarter camapign?  Only 100!

You don’t need a huge customer base to do well, if your customers love you.  How will they love you?  Deliver content with TNT: that generates Trust, that targets their Niche concerns, and that Teaches them something, that helps them

The same principle applies to your content: if all you can reasonably manage is one blog post a month, then write one a month, but make sure it is of the higest possible quality, and filled with TNT (Trust, Niche, Teach).   Conisistency also trumps quanitity: a regular monthly podcast is a better idea than a podcast published sometimes weekly, sometimes biweekly, or sometimes not at all.

Consistency is important in the visual langauge you use as well: make sure you maintain a consistent use of your logo, the colours in your brand palette, and that the visual language in your photography and graphics aligns with your brand values and your user needs.

 

Build your editorial calendar

A mistake beginning publishers of content often make is basing their editorial calendar around generic, seasonal events.  Base your calendar on user needs, or events important in the lives of your customers.   In terms of frequency of different types of content, and keeping in mind the advice above (quality trumps quantity), an editorial publishing pattern that quickly build a great content library would be:

  • 1 blog post per week
  • 1 piece of feature content per month such as
    • ebook, whitepaper, or report
    • infographic
    • a webinar
    • a presentation, workshop, or speaking opportunity
  • 3-7 social posts per week

Your editorial calendar should capture the publishing pattern you choose and the topics you will focus on.

One advantage of building your library using the pattern above is that at the end of a year of publishing, you will have enough content to publish a book.   Self-publishing is a great way to get your content into the biggest search engine for experts in the world: Amazon.

Benefits, not features

Your content strategy is the backbone of your online communications whether you are able to content market or not.  If you don’t think your writing skills are up to par, hire a copywriter: your content strategy provides the guidelines they’ll need to review so they can write for your business.  And if in the end you decide that content marketing is not the most effective way for your business to get found, (see last month’s post for more details), sometimes being useful is all about using benefit-driven language in your communications rather than feature-driven language.   If you take nothing else away, remember “Benefits, not Features” as your guide when writing copy for your sales and product pages.

And, print out and post this handy infographic that sums up the content strategy process.

For more resources and information on Content Strategy and to download a detailed description of what content strategy entails, go to analyticalengine.ca/resources or download a Content Strategy Info graphic at http://bit.ly/1qY9tYp.

Christine McGlade is a Business Analyst, Content Strategist, and Usability Consultant.  With over 25 years experience in the media business, Christine helps small business, social enterprise, and Not for Profits how to leverage the power of the Internet to grow their business.  Learn more about Christine at analyticalengine.ca

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Written by Dwania Peele · Categorized: Christine McGlade · Tagged: Analytical Engine, Brand Values, business owner, Canadian Small Business Women, Christine McGlade, consistency, content marketing, Content strategy, editorial calendar, entrepreneur, getting found, infographic, internet, niche, online, sales funnel, search engines, small business, small business development, social strategy sos, teaches, TNT, trust

Nov 22 2013

The Mentor

Kerry George (1)

Several years ago I needed a mentor to continue in my educational path, so I approached a woman that I knew to be very skilled with many years of experience in my chosen career. She looked me over very shrewdly as she drank a cup of tea and then asked a piercing question, “Do you know what you are asking for dear?” She asked me to describe to her what I thought mentoring was and then she told me what mentoring meant for her. She laid out the ground rules and they were a standard that I have since come to live by. I knew from her instruction what a mentor was and how to follow a chosen mentor. I also learned how to become a mentor that would make a difference in the life of many.

What Is A Mentor?

A mentor is someone who has gone before you and who is willing to share insights on how to overcome during your own personal journey. A mentor is a friend that you trust and one whose advice you value. They are someone who you would follow. They are in life where you want to be and you can see that a relationship with them would help you get closer to your goals and save you from many pitfalls that you would certainly fall into on your own.

Selecting A Mentor

When you select a mentor you should be careful to pick someone who has similar values, so when they ask you to do something you are not continually questioning them. Often the mentor does not have a lot of spare time, and the act of mentoring implies that the one being mentored is there of their own free will having already made the decision to follow. A good mentor realizes that you have free will but as busy, successful people they may not be able to continually over-explain and sometimes one just needs to trust that the mentor has a deeper understanding of the situation and take their advisement.

The mentor that you select should be someone that you respect and admire. It should be someone that you want to listen to and that you aspire to be like. They are not going to be perfect people. Nobody is perfect. In time, you may discover weaknesses in their humanity and you will need to ask yourself if those weaknesses matter to your end goal. Are they things that you can live with? Are they irrelevant to their area of expertise? Or are they something that your own morals won’t allow you to overlook? If a mentoring relationship needs to be severed or adjusted it should be done so with the upmost of care. This is someone who took the time to sow into your life so you want to be honoring to them even if one must eventually take a different road.

How To Receive Mentorship

Successful people may be willing to sow into your life but not if they have to chase you. They are successful because they already know how to value their time. So they will usually require you to go where they go, and to do what they do so you can get a few minutes at a time with them before and after events. Volunteering to be part of their team can gain you the entrance that you need to get their time. Don’t take advantage of your mentor’s time. Respect that they are a professional in their field and that they are therefore in high demand. Others may pay them a lot of money for their counsel so if you are getting any of their time for free or for a small fee realize that this is a privilege.  Be on time when you meet them and try to fit your need for their time into their existing schedule as much as possible.

Don’t ask to borrow money or do anything that would affect the mutual trust that you have for each other. This is the last person you should ask to assist you in your drama. Your relationship should not be putting them into a position where they need to rescue you from your own bad management. A mentor is an advisor.

Value their advice and do what they tell you to do. In our democratic society many will take exception to this tidbit but here is the kicker, “Why do you want a mentor if you have no intention of listening to them?” Don’t waste their time with rebellion. If they are not worthy of being followed, then don’t ask them to mentor you in the first place. The whole idea is to accept the guidance of someone who can lead you to success faster than finding the way on your own. A mentor will save you time and money is mistakes that you will make. Learn from them and as you learn to follow you will also become a leader who is worthy of being followed. Someday you will be the mentor and you will be glad for the mentoring that you enjoyed along the way.

Kerry George is the owner of the Canadian Imperial Business Network which is currently the largest business network in Alberta and rapidly expanding across the country. She is a serial entrepreneur/author and speaker with a zest for life and a passion to help others succeed in increasing their potential and their bottom line. Kerry has several publications and blogs that you can follow and welcomes most interaction online.

Twitter

@createloyalty2U

@CIBNtweets

@yycbiznetwork

Blogs

http://loyal2u.blogspot.ca/

http://calgarybiz.net/blog-3/

http://kidsincowtown.wordpress.com/

http://loyal2u.ca/category/social-media-2/linkedin/

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Written by Dwania Peele · Categorized: Kerry George · Tagged: business development, Canadian Imperial Business Network, Canadian Small Business Women, entrepreneur, insight, Kerry George, mentor, mentorship, personal journey, selecting a mentor, trust, volunteer, what is a mentor

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