Is Your Business a Profession?

This week we bid a fond farewell to Alexander Semin, the sometimes star forward for the Washington Capitals. Semin's agent opined this week that Alex was a bad fit for the new system installed by now former coach, Dale Hunter. That system is best described as winning hockey. Hunter's system required even team stars to play defense and block shots. I don't want to say Hunter was tough as a player, but he once cross-checked and slashed Chuck Norris on the same play. Semin is best known for his NHL record four hundred seventy million penalty minutes for pointless, retaliatory slashing penalties in the third periods of close games.

Semin will be joining Albert “Road Rage” Haynesworth, Gilbert “Quick Draw McGraw” Arenas, and Jeff “Chemistry is Overrated” George as first ballot inductees into the Washington Sports Hall of Shame. The Hall is located in a four hundred level men's room at RFK Stadium and is staffed by two winos and a bag lady with a crack pipe. The price of admission is a pint of Thunderbird. The Hall's selection committee includes Mayor for Life, the Honorable Marion Barry and Mike Wise, Washington Post sports columnist, who hates this blog.

There are three differences between a business and a profession. First, a profession puts the needs of customers ahead of the needs of the business. In other words, the first duty of a professional is to work in the best interests of his clients. The first duty of a business is profitability. Second, a profession is responsible to the public at large. A professional must not only serve his clients. He must also consider how his services affect society. Third, a profession will never include Albert “Road Rage” Haynesworth. And, if you are a waitress, you'll never approach Prince Albert in a low cut dress. He does this thing with a credit card – allegedly.

Let's look at the first requirement of a profession by looking at a real life situation. A few years back, during the bubbliest time of the residential real estate bubble, I had a client, Joe, who bought a million dollar house. Here was the problem. Joe's annual income was only $80K. The million dollar, no down payment required mortgage had a nine percent annual interest rate when typical rates were in the six percent range. His annual interest payments of $90K exceeded his $80K annual income. Not surprisingly, Joe defaulted on the mortgage after less than a year. There are two people, who were supposedly representing his interests who should have been called to account for conflicts of interest: the real estate agent and the mortgage banker. Neither of these jerks could remotely be considered professionals.

As a true professional, the real estate agent would have had the best interests of his client in mind. He would have told Joe there was no way he could possibly afford a million dollar house on an $80K income. Joe even had a previous foreclosure a few years earlier. He bought a $500K house when his annual income was $40K. What can I say? Joe's wife likes to live the good life. In this case, the real estate agent was working solely for himself, not Joe. The agent wanted that 3% commission more than he wanted to do the right thing. I'm curious how many real estate agents would have been willing to walk away from that commission. I know a few I would bet on, but not many.

The second dude I'd like to see french kiss a Chuck Norris spinning back fist is the mortgage broker. Why would anyone make this loan? Here's the math behind why this loan was made. The mortgage company knew there was no chance Joe would pay the mortgage for long. In the interim, they were happy to collect the nine percent, above market rate, interest. They expected one of two outcomes. First, they would try to sell the loan into the sub-prime mortgage secondary market and recover their money, probably with a premium for an above market rate, even for sub-prime, loan. Second, if they weren't able to sell the loan into the secondary market, they would foreclose on Joe and resell the house for even more the the million dollar original price. Where did Joe's best interests come into play here? Of course they didn't. Ultimately the mortgage broker ended up the fool. By the time they foreclosed on Joe, real estate prices had collapsed. They not only lost money on the loan, they lost money on the house as well.

Joe's situation, with a self dealing real estate agent and mortgage broker, played out at least a hundred thousand times during the boom. This is how the real estate bubble started, and this is how it ended. If you asked Joe's buddies why they weren't looking out for Joe, they would tell you, “It's not my fault. I'm was just doing what Joe wanted. If he wanted something stupid, who was I to stop him? If I hadn't done it, someone else would have.“ Professionals? Hardly.

The second characteristic of a profession is a sense of responsibility to the public at large. As a CPA, I am not required to put a client's interests first. I am required to put a client's interests second, behind the interests of society. Banks, insurance companies, and government regulators rely on my signature on financial statements as an assurance of objectivity. If there is a conflict between a client's best interests and the best interests of society, the interests of society come first. Several times a year, a client will ask me to prepare financial statements and then say, “Frank, I really need to show good numbers to the bank. Do your best.”

My response is, “Actually having good financial results would be a good first step in showing the bank good numbers.”

My license and livelihood is at risk if I try to appease these clients. I have a responsibility to the bank even though they aren't paying me. In these situations, my likelihood of getting paid by anyone is slim. That doesn't matter. The CPA profession is about more than just making clients happy. The same responsibility applies to income tax returns. When a client isn't happy with a tax balance due, I can't just change the return to make him happy whether I get paid or not.

Here is one final example of professionalism. This one comes from my business partner and friend for over thirty years, Paul. Paul had a client, Sue, who was hell bent on owning an Italian ice franchise. The business model is that people will pay a premium price for frozen water with a little syrupy flavoring if you slap the word, Italian, on it.

If you do a little math on an Italian ice franchise, you will find that there is pretty much no way you can possibly make money anywhere north of Florida. The business is just a little seasonal. In case you haven't noticed, rents in retail shopping centers aren't seasonal. Landlords expect to get paid year round. For the business projections to work, you have to assume a Russian nuclear attack that turns Northern Virginia into a desert. Then Mel Gibson, in his Mad Max outfit, may come by in need of a cool treat in January. I once did a seminar on buying businesses for a bank where I used this business as an example of a business model to avoid. Sue was in attendance.

Sue had a fine background to run a food based business. She was a career federal worker. There is a cheap joke in there I'll avoid. Paul not only advised Sue not to purchase a franchise, but he told the bank he didn't think the business could work. Then bank made the loan nonetheless. Sue had a cosigner, her father, with some collateral.

Paul has heard from Sue intermittently over the last few years. She hasn't filed a tax return in that time. She doesn't have the money to pay for either bookkeeping or tax returns. Paul may be a professional, but he isn't a fool. He intends to get paid if we prepare the returns.

I'll leave it to you to decide if either Alexander Semin, or his agent, are professionals. Some team will be tempted into signing him as a free agent – some team that doesn't care about defense. In some brief stretches during the playoffs, he showed he could back check and contribute to the Caps defense. The shame is that his talent is only exceeded by his narcissism. Farewell to Alex.

If you are interested in having a couple of good beers, we are having an outing on June 6th after work.  We are meeting at Lost Rhino in Ashburn off Red Rum drive.  I hope to see you there.  If you want real tax and accounting advice, please visit our main S&K web site, www.skcpas.com. Thanks for reading!

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What's the Call to Action?

When it comes to marketing your brand, there is always a goal. You want your audience to sign up for your newsletter, follow you in Twitter and Facebook, comment on your blog posts, buy your products, and obtain your services. You want them to complete an objective – to like your posts, join your contests, and share them with friends. You want them to retweet your content, repost it on their Facebook wall, repin your pins on Pinterest. Basically, you want them to take an action, which is why using a call to action in your social marketing campaign is essential.

You may think that it’s obvious what you want people to do, but sometimes, if you don’t clearly state it, your audience will nonetheless be oblivious to it. They’ll read your social media posts, but they won’t click to “like” it, nor will they leave a comment. They’ll read your blog post, but they won’t subscribe to your newsletter. This is why you need to give them a push – a direct call to action. You have to encourage people to go a step beyond just reading your entry to actually completing these specific actions that will be beneficial to your brand marketing.

So how do you effectively create calls to action that garners the attention of your audience and makes them complete your objective? Here are some tips:

     1. State your objective clearly and prominently

If you want people to take an action, then you need to state it clearly and prominently. In a blog post, for example, you can easily end with, “What do you think? Leave a comment.” This is a direct call to action so that people can quickly realize that you want them to leave a comment about what they think. If you don’t place this action call at the end of your entry, then people are likely to simply read the blog post and then move on without doing anything.

Placing the call to action in a prominent position is also a good idea. You don’t have to put it in all caps, or use a bold font just to get attention. But make sure that it’s placed somewhere that people will definitely see it. If it’s a blog entry, ending your post with the call to action is a good idea since some people may just skim through the post, and they might miss it if it’s in the middle. This also applies to Facebook updates – you can place the call to action either in the first sentence or the last once.

If the call to action is on your website, you should place it in a position that gets attention, and also have it in a different color so that it pops out on the page. Ideally, you should put it high on the page and in a central place so that people can really see it. You don’t want it to just blend into the background where people won’t notice it.

     2. Use active language and create urgency

Since you are encouraging people to take action, you should use active language and create a sense of urgency so that people will be compelled to do it now. Examples of some active words commonly used in calls to action include:

- Buy now
- Subscribe
- Register
- Sign up
- Download

And here are some examples on how to create a sense of urgency:

- Limited time offer
- Register now and save
- Today only special
- First ten to sign up will get a free gift

The more active the language and the more urgent the offer, the better. Just remember to always deliver what you promised.

     3. Convince people to take the action

There needs to be some incentive for people to complete the call to action. Ask yourself, what will they get out of it? It can be as simple as getting them to think or laugh with you in your social media posts, or getting them to sign up for your newsletter so they can have access to exclusive discounts and offers. It’s essential that they get something out of completing the call to action. Otherwise, what’s the point, right?

When it comes to social and word of mouth marketing, calls to action are definitely essential. Sometimes people need an extra push before they do something, and a call to action done properly will be just the thing needed for them to do what you want them to do.

Make your call to action clear and prominent, use active language, create a sense of urgency, and convince people to take the step necessary to complete the desired action. These are just a few simple steps that will help you engage and connect better with your audience.

Now We Can Measure Pinterest

Pinterest is fast becoming one of the most popular social networking sites in the world. It currently ranks third with regards to the number of users, with Facebook and Twitter the first and second, respectively.

Due to Pinterest’s increasing popularity, more and more brands – business and personal ones – are signing up and using the site for social marketing. After all, brands need to be where the people are, so that they can spread the word about their brand as well as engage and connect with people.

Since Pinterest is still a pretty new platform, many brands are wondering how to measure the success of their marketing campaign within the site. Unlike other popular social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter, where there are already various ways to measure the ROI or success of your marketing campaign using the sites, the best way to measure the success of your Pinterest campaign remains elusive.

So how do you know if your Pinterest campaign is getting the results you want? How do you measure success? Is it enough to count the number of followers you have? Is it enough to see people liking and repinning your content? Can you already say that your campaign is successful?

Even if you answered yes to those questions, how can you be certain? As a small business owner, you have to ensure that you devote your time in the most lucrative way possible, so if you aren’t sure of the results of your Pinterest campaign, should you continue to devote time and resources to it?

Maybe not.

But don’t lose hope. Now there is something interesting that has come up to help you with this problem. A monitoring and analytics platform for sites involved in social curation, such as Pinterest, recently launched – and they’ve already signed up more than 150 brands and agencies.

Curalate is entering the scene at a perfect time – with the growing popularity of socially curated sites, brands really need to have the ability to measure the success of their social marketing campaign, otherwise, what’s the point of using the site, right?

What exactly does Curalate do?

Right now, it is the only available tool in the market that helps give brands a complete picture of how successful their campaign is in socially curated sites such as Pinterest. It uses a sophisticated mixture of proprietary image-recognition techniques and analytics to make you see how effective you are in engaging your audience. You gain insight on how your brand is influenced by your activities as well as your fans. Curalate is currently the only platform that is able to measure both first and third party actions – and this really gives it an edge over other platforms.

As a small business owner, you really want to make sense of social curation. You want to benefit from it, and that’s exactly what Curalate brings you – a way to monitor, measure, and help you grow your presence in socially curated sites.

Other social monitoring tools are effective when it comes to monitoring texts, but not when it comes to visuals. This is why Curalate really stands out – it helps you make sense of today’s visual platforms.

Within the site, you can easily review and respond to mentions of your brand. This helps you connect and engage better with your audience. What Curalate does is that it finds and consolidates all the conversations about you in one place, so it’s easy for you to reply to these mentions.

Curalate also helps you discover your fans and learn who your brand advocates are. These people are the ones who promote your brand and who can influence others to like your brand, so it’s very important that you learn who they are.

Another benefit the site offers is that it helps you identify what types of content are popular with users, so that you can plan your campaign effectively. After all, with socially curated sites, visual content is the most important.

It even gives you insights on your competition – Curalate gives you reports on how your curation efforts weight against those of your competitors. This is an excellent way to determine if you need to step up your campaign in order for your small business to succeed.

The best part is, Curalate shows you the complete picture, so you know which content is driving the most traffic to your site or store. This really helps you discover which area you need to focus on in order to promote your brand effectively.

Social curation is all the rage today, which is why brands need to have the ability to measure brand engagement as well as the success of their social marketing campaign. Curalate offers you that and more, so don’t hesitate and try their free trial now.

The hottest investment of energy

Investment in solar energy is one of the hottest investments this year. It is a good reason for using solar energy. Many companies are able to produce solar energy for reducing the cost of their assets. People find more solar products in their homes for helping support reduce the energy. Because of solar energy can reduced price of the production process, many people buy solar product. That’s means more profits for solar companies can get for reduce the production. For the investors, this means that investment in energy with these companies is a great way to make profits by using solar energy. And there has never been a better time to make this investment for their profit. 

There are many ways to invest in this type of energy when you consider yourself in almost all major reported strong fluctuations in revenues and earnings due to the initiative of everyone tries to be part of it for keep in go green. Increasing demand and prices are expected to come down to this energy has many advantages over the others. By investing in the energy sector in general have some ups and downs to be expected but things look from the perspective of most of the current stable of solar energy companies. Each state has its own clean energy and solar energy initiatives in place and tends to undermine the popularity of this business in solar energy investments. With the solar energy is something that all of investors should remember it. Energy investments are such as oil or other products that are worth the risk of becoming one of the reasons in energy investments. 

Investment in solar energy is more stable than long-term investments that give better results significant over time compared with other energy. The company is not burst and does not have a lot of ups and downs like other energy products. This makes them ideal for people who are just getting started or those who are more prudent with their investments. Take time to look at different types of actions of energy companies and other investments to specify the right decisions in your investments are doing.

Pinterest When You're a Service Provider

Lately, everyone seems to be on Pinterest. It’s really becoming one of the most popular social networking sites, as more and more people sign up to create virtual pinboards, share them with their network, as well as check out all the lovely creations of other Pinterest users.

Since more and more people are using Pinterest, this definitely puts pressure on personal and small business brands to learn the platform and use it to their advantage. Nowadays, it’s all about word of mouth marketing, as well as connecting and engaging with your clients and customers. So brands need to be where the people are, and right now, Pinterest is where many people are spending their time on.

Many personal and small business brands who sell products are taking advantage of Pinterest by creating pinboards that feature the items they sell. They host contests, interact with their followers, and basically create buzz marketing for their brand.

But what if you’re a service provider? What if your personal or small business brand doesn’t sell products, but offers services? Should you still use Pinterest in your small business marketing mix?

Before you can decide on that, here are some things you should ask yourself:

     1. Are you willing to devote time on this?
     2. Are you willing to share more about yourself?
     3. Are you willing to become a more “visual” brand?

If you answered “yes” to these questions, then you should definitely consider using Pinterest to market your brand. But how exactly do you do this? Here are some tips:

Show off your personality visually

Most people aren’t one-dimensional creatures. You may be a lawyer, an accountant, or a doctor, but it doesn’t mean that that’s your only interest. You may also be a great cook, an avid reader, or a music enthusiast. And you can definitely share these interests of yours on Pinterest.

Before you can sell your brand on Pinterest, you need to connect with the users there, which is why it’s a good idea to show off your personality and the things you like in order to create a good following. Create boards that are creative, inspiring and beautiful. Show off the things you like and love. Then once you have a good number of followers, you can start creating boards that are related to the service you provide so you can promote what you do and drive traffic to your site.

But of course, you need to utilize Pinterest on its terms first before you branch out to what Pinterest can do for your brand.

Consider your target audience

Who is your target audience? What are they most interested in? These are two important things you need to ask yourself so you can effectively promote your brand on Pinterest. You want to create pinboards that your target audience will be interested in, so that they can be directed to your website and avail of your services.

For example, as a cardiologist, your clients are likely to be people who are very concerned about managing their weight and maintaining a healthy heart, so you can create boards that are dedicated to helping people maintain their ideal weight and be heart-healthy.  One board could be about heart-healthy foods, while another board could be about exercises that are good for people with heart disease.

By becoming a good resource for your target audience, you can effectively promote your brand and sell your services.

Be active

Truly, the best way to market yourself on Pinterest as a service provider is to be active on the site. You need to regularly create boards, comment and re-pin other people’s images, encourage people to like and re-pin what you’ve posted, and so on. If you aren’t willing to devote your time to maintaining your Pinterest page, then it’s far better to just utilize other social networking sites that may help you connect and interact with your audience better.

Just like any other social networking site, time and effort needs to be devoted to Pinterest in order to successfully use it to sell your service brand.

Personal and small business brands can definitely utilize Pinterest in order to promote awareness of their brand and create buzz. Though brands who sell products definitely have the advantage since their brands are more “visual,” as a service provider, you can still create interest in your brand by showing off your personality, considering your target audience, and maintaining an active account on the site.

So don’t be afraid of using Pinterest to market your brand. Show off the things you like and love, and you can create a good following that directs traffic to your website as well as the services you offer.

Creating Good Karma with Your Contacts

The current market is extremely competitive. In addition to having to compete with large corporations, small businesses also have to jostle for positions with other small businesses that sell the same products or offer the same services. 

This is why it’s crucial for small business owners to build excellent client and customer relations. Word of mouth marketing is essential for small businesses to survive and thrive in the current market. In addition, building great customer relationships can help you get repeat customers as well as new ones. 

As your small business grows, however, it can be difficult to manage all of your contacts. To succeed in your business, you need to maintain frequent communication with your suppliers, business partners, and of course, your clients and customers. You also have to keep track of your schedule, your meetings, your business overhead and supplies, and so on. You need to juggle all of these properly to ensure that your business runs smoothly and capably. You don’t want to end up missing an important meeting, or worse, sending out the wrong order to a customer.

So how do you solve this? Well, you could create a spreadsheet and encode all the information there. You can continuously add and subtract to it, and hope that you don’t get confused with all the rows and columns you’ve added. Or you can try a customer relationship management tool. There are currently many customer relationship management tools available in the market. One of the most promising ones is KarmaCRM.

KarmaCRM aims to make your life easier. It’s basically a customer relationship management platform that’s entirely web-based, so you can access it wherever you are, whenever you need it – there’s no need to download anything. It offers a simple and easy-to-use interface to help you manage your contacts and the things you need to do without problem.

What exactly are the things you can do with KarmaCRM?

     1. Manage your contacts

KarmaCRM allows you to import contacts from external websites, and customize your contact list so it only includes those relevant to your business. You can add photos, files and tasks to your contacts, so you always know who you’re talking or transacting with. You even have access to a Google map so you can easily see where your contact is located. 

You can also assign an urgent, hot or cold status to each lead, so you know whom you need to prioritize, and customize your contact status in the settings.

     2. Manage tasks

KarmaCRM helps you easily manage the tasks you need to do, so you don’t forget any important meetings and deadlines. Within the platform, you can place due dates for each task you need to do, so you don’t find yourself rushing when it’s nearing the deadline. You can also set up email and SMS reminders when deadlines are approaching, so you don’t forget anything. How often have you forgotten an urgent task only to be reminded when it’s already due?

You can assign tasks to a contact or a member of your team. This way, they can also be reminded about their deadlines.

     3. Create cases

You may occasionally have small or large cases that need to be prioritized. With KarmaCRM, you can create a case, customize its type, status and priority, assign contacts, and add notes and tasks to the case. This makes it easy to manage each case and then close them once they’re finished so you can move onto the next task. 

     4. Manage your schedule

You can create a calendar of activities in this platform and customize the view according to your preference. You can even import and sync your calendars with your Google account, as the site integrates with many third parties. You can use it to add tasks and events easily and manage your schedule. With KarmaCRM, you won’t have to worry about ever missing a deadline, an important meeting, or an upcoming event.

     5. Chat with team members, store and transfer files

Also within the site, you can privately chat with the members of your team and even create unlimited group chat rooms. You can easily see who among your team members are online so you can talk to them about a task or case that’s almost due. Chat transcripts are even saved for future reference.

Files can easily be transferred from one team member to another. You can store your files and presentations so that any of your team members can access them anytime and anywhere, as long as they have an Internet connection. 

So why trouble yourself with spreadsheets and other tools when there’s an easier way to manage your contacts and ensure good customer relationships? To create good Karma with your contacts, why not try out KarmaCRM today?