Suggest You - Business

Minimize No Shows For Your Events
Any event will have people who register to attend and fail to show up. There are many reasons for not attending, but it really comes down to priorities.No shows create problems for event planners ranging from wasted meals and poor event atmosphere to listening to excuses and deciding whether or not to charge the posted cancellation fee.Everyone, including the attendees would be better off if people would attend events as planned. Here are some reminders about how you might minimize the number of "no shows" to your event.Get their money (if your event has a fee)With online registration and real time credit card processing, this is easy. Once you have full payment, people will be more likely to show up and if they don't you still have their money.This is where you need a good refund and cancellation policy clearly stated on the registration form. Your policy will need to reflect the type of event that you are working on, but in general you don't want to make the policy too lenient as people may not take the registration seriously, nor do you want it to be too strict as people may be discouraged from registering. See our article about writing refund and cancellation policies.Put on a great eventThis really goes without saying, but if you can make attending your event the best option available then people will be motivated to show up. Try coming up with a list of benefits associated with your event such as who people will see, what they will learn, what great food will be served, etc. Creating an element of mystery may also help as curiosity can get the better of people and they will attend to see the secret new product or hear the latest industry changing news.Send a reminderPeople get reminders about dentist and hair appointments so why not for events? Sometimes people are busy and they simply forget about a commitment. A simple reminder email or phone call prior to the event will help to keep people committed.

of all retail businesses are food service or food sales. It is the largest segment of the consumer market. Because it is a retail consumer business, it deals in 33% cash. Every independent-non-franchise food service business I have been into shows zero profit on the books. Some even go overboard and show a tax loss. It is because they do simple tax planning that does not require an MBA degree to figure out. If the business doesn’t show all of its cash, or any of its cash, the expenses will equal the reported income. This alone makes it attractive to many buyers. We will not discuss the moral issues of this attitude; it is what it is. What we have to discuss is how do you, the buyer, can prove that the business is making a profit? And if it is, how much?

Restaurants come in two categories. 1. Fast food-counter sales. 2. Sit down. Fast food restaurants have computerized cash registers that record the sales into its computer, which has a memory. This memory has daily totals going back to the beginning of the computer’s history. Most owners close out their cash registers at the end of the day and print out the tape of each day’s activities. This does not automatically wipe out the information for the day. The computer does, I am told, have a delete button on it allowing the owner to wipe out the full memory in the computer, in the event of an audit. I have also been told, but do not believe, that an electrical blackout can wipe out the memory in the computer and that is why one seller said he couldn’t give me access to this information.

If we are talking about a sit down restaurant sales information, you can use the daily order ticket, which are then imputed into the computer. This gives 3 sources: tickets, computer and daily tape totals.

When this information is not available, for any reason, an experienced restaurant consultant can tell you the sales activities just by inspecting the restaurant and counting the number of customers eating at 4 key times in a day, and on several key days per week. Then the consultant can figures out what the average sales ticket amount is. With this information

Romania: Investing in a Land of Unexpected Opportunity
I have to admit it. I had almost no knowledge of the country of Romania just five short years ago, when I came here for the first time. What came to my mind were images of Dracula, Frankenstein, and under-cared for orphaned children, the kind that were featured in fund-raising specials that appeared on television when I was a kid. At least I can say that I knew for sure that it existed, and so did it's province of Transylvania. That's partially contrary to what I was taught in elementary school, by the way, when our teacher assured us that Transylvania was only a storybook land and therefore we need not be frightened that the horrible creatures that inhabit it actually exist!Today, five years later, I have a radically different and much more well-informed view of Romania. The things that used to come to mind about this country, rarely do anymore. When I think back about my old preconceptions of Romania, it never ceases to take me aback the great difference between the infamous legends and surprising reality about this country.Now, instead, I am captured by many of the same things that ancient Roman emperors like Cesar and Napoleon found so alluring about this place. (Romania was a part of the Roman Empire and takes it name from the Latin word for Rome.) From incredible natural resources to majestic mountain and seaside landscapes, Romania is a place that has a little of everything you would find elsewhere and a number of things you can't find anywhere else. And as for Transylvania, my teacher was right on one point - it is a storybook land- but, on the contrary, for it's beauty and that of it's people.Ultimately as concerns Romania though, the most important discovery I made in my search for the truth about this land of legends, is the tremendous real estate investment potential that exists here.Romania presents the investor with an exceptional opportunity to benefit from the ascension of an eastern block country to the European Community. The timetime line this opportunity, however,

Introduction:
This article is written as a general discussion on the subject of “Due Diligence”. It is for informational purposes and not intended to be a definitive guideline for your exact situation. You should consult the appropriate professionals with regard to your specific transaction or situation. Further, this article is in no way advocating, suggesting or implying that anyone engages in any type fraudulent activities whatsoever. These are simply the things a buyer should be aware of when doing due diligence in buyer a business.

Due Diligence Defined:
The phrase is composed of two words. “Due” which the dictionary defines as “Proper or Adequate” and Diligence, which is defined as “Degree of care or caution expected of a person. Especially as a party to an agreement.” Caution: is the watchword in this definition.

Financial Statements – What to look for:

Add Backs: If you bought the business through a business broker you should have received the business financial statement with a separate worksheet showing adjustments to those statements. These adjustments show the owner’s benefits received from the business besides the profit and salary he receives. These can also be defined as personal expenses that need to be added back to the profit. Depreciation, incomes taxes, interest expense are add backs that are not personal. Personal includes such things as family auto expenses, owner life insurance, owner health insurance, business entertainment that was not really spent on clients, business trips not really for business, home office expenses, family cellular phones and much much more.

Make the seller show you the details on some or all of these expenses to verify that they are really personal and not actually business expenses that shouldn’t be added back to profit. Spend time asking detailed questions with the general ledger in front of you. Go through individual charges and what they mean, until you fully understand what is being added back and why.

Inventory:
Inventory of resale merchandise must be checked for two reasons. One is you have to pay for it. Be careful, you do not want to buy merchandise that is old, worthless and not saleable anymore. Only pay for current marketable product. The price you are suppose to te pay for the inventory is the seller’s cost. The price for old slow inventory is negotiable. Always spot check the price and count the merchandise listed on the inventory list. Do people put down that there is three of an item when there are only two? Of course, especially when they think no one is going to be checking them out. Comparing prices from purchase invoices is how you check prices. You cannot check every item against the actual cost but you can do 5% of the items. Pick at random, not by any suggestion made by the seller or others. If you do not understand how marketable the inventory is that you are buying, hire an expert, from that industry. Your broker should be able to help you in finding someone. Do not be cheap, and think you do not need to spend the money on an expert adviser. I will take a lunch bet that they will pay for them selves many times over.

The second reason for checking inventory is that if a seller doesn’t take inventory at least yearly and adjust his inventory value in his accounting records, accurately, the profit figure you are receiving will not be accurate. As a rule, the higher cost of goods sold, the lower the profit. Some business owners reduce the inventory value on the books, intentionally, to a lower value so as to make the business show a higher cost of goods sold, which then creates a smaller taxable profit. If they do this year after year, the profit may or may not be accurate for the current year. It might take a CPA to figure this one out for you, if you do not have a background in retail.

Equipment value:
Next thing to check on the financials is the real, current value of the equipment you are buying with the business. The balance sheet might, if it shows all the equipment the company owns, give you the cost of the equipment when it was purchased. If you are buying assets rather than cash flow, the equipment valuation becomes more important. No one wants to overpay for used equipment. Also check that the equipment works and is actually being used rather than sitting behind the building with other junk.

Cash Sales:
If all income is being reported, check sales volume activities that you have observed against the daily records during your “Due Diligence” to see if the volume corresponds to what was reported last year in the same month. If you see income of $500 per day but the seller shows sales of $1,000 per day, you need to find out why. Some smart buyers sit in the business all day, watch the sales and observe the activities of the staff. This works if the seller is not putting on a full fledge production fraud for you the buyer.

Fraud:
How does a seller defraud a buyer on current sales activity levels? Sellers who keep poor records or no records, many times, suggest the buyer doing a 15-day visual inspection. This helps but it is very dangerous to rely solely on physical inspections alone because the seller can still defraud the buyer. Here is the most famous of the stories I have heard over the years.

Seller owns a dry cleaner. The buyer and seller have opened escrow and the deal is subject to a 15-day physical observation period. The seller doesn’t want the buyer to find out that business volume is very slow. The seller tells all his friends to bring their dry cleaning in to the shop for a two-week period, at no charge. They bring in the clothing, get it cleaned, pick it up and pay for it. Later the business owner meets the customers and reimburses all of them for the cost of their dry cleaning. The day after escrow closes all that business traffic stops. Think it never happens? The same is true of restaurants. Seller tells all his friends to bring all of their friends in for a free meal. Customers pay the bill and some time later or at home, the business owner reimburses all the customers for the cost of their meals.

Actual time sellers spends working:
Determine how many hours the seller really works. You are buying an income stream based on a known number of hours of work. Make sure the seller isn’t working 80 hours and telling you he is only working 40 hours, per week. I had an absentee fast food owner tell the buyers and me that he worked part time - 5 hours per week. Closer inspection showed he was working 25 hours per week. One auto repair seller, we’ll call him Bob, said he never was at the business, because he had a second full time job. Inspection found he was working 30 hours a week (4 plus hours every night, and 8 hours on Saturdays).

Find out what job functions the seller does:
Get a list of functions that the seller does. Is one of them bookkeeping? Sometimes the wife does the books part time and this is never said. Again you may find the owner does the bookkeeping, at home, every night, for an extra hour. In an auto repair shop, you may find the owner is doing auto body repair work, personally, on Saturdays, which is work that you, as a buyer, will never be able to duplicate. You need to be sure you know how to do every job function that the seller does or learn them. The time to find out what technical knowledge you need to have to take over the business is when you are doing your investigation, not the day after escrow closes.

Verification of things that are not on the Financial Statements:
It is a common occurrence that businesses do not record all of their income on their financial statements. Yes, this is true. Many people do not, in fact, report the truth on their tax returns. In fact, when I am talking about small retail or service businesses that deal with the public directly, I find it is over 90%. “Will the people with an honest set of books, please leave the auditorium. There are two golf carts outside waiting to chauffer you home. You do not need to hear this.”

The balance of this article will discuss how a buyer might do their “Due Diligence” for different types of businesses. These types of businesses include Restaurants, auto repair shops; real estate services contractors, non-real estate repair/ services, and retail stores.

Restaurants- Non-Franchise:
Restaurants compose over 25% of all businesses for sale. This is not because they all go broke, as the SBA reports. It is because 28% of all retail businesses are food service or food sales. It is the largest segment of the consumer market. Because it is a retail consumer business, it deals in 33% cash. Every independent-non-franchise food service business I have been into shows zero profit on the books. Some even go overboard and show a tax loss. It is because they do simple tax planning that does not require an MBA degree to figure out. If the business doesn’t show all of its cash, or any of its cash, the expenses will equal the reported income. This alone makes it attractive to many buyers. We will not discuss the moral issues of this attitude; it is what it is. What we have to discuss is how do you, the buyer, can prove that the business is making a profit? And if it is, how much?

Developing And Growing A Business Providing Vital Communications Products And Services
Today the world is defined by the term "Information Age." All businesses and organizations, both large and small, require effective and efficient business communication solutions in order to continuously meet their customers’ expectations and maintain the highest levels of service. With the emergence of "converging technologies" currently available, all organizations and agencies have come to realize that the right amount of financing, materials, talent, and experience are not enough to succeed without the products, services, and communications protocols that enables smooth delivery of their products and services. Both inter and intra-communications is at the heart of local and regional integration, with the development of an efficient, cost effective, and technologically advanced communications system. This is particularly true in the markets of: "customer experience" staffs at medical facilities, municipal agencies, educational campuses and small- and medium-sized corporations involved in providing goods and services.Insure that the products and services you offer have the ability of penetrating a lucrative market in a rapidly growing industry. The current increase in public scrutiny and dependence on essential services and their delivery presents an opportunity for vendors to ensure client satisfaction, supported by impeccable customer service. Savvy providers will offer the expertise that a proactive oriented and market-opportunity seeking organization needs to develop and maintain a good communications system. Focus on products to the emerging "customer experience" and "knowledge-based" workers that are responsible for the majority of business-to-business communications that occur in the workplace.There is need to be flexible and responsive, to delight clients by providing them what they want, when they want it, and before the competition can offer it. A successful company will achieve this through a systematic approach that is customer-centric, and in which the customer’s objectives enjoy top p

Be careful, you do not want to buy merchandise that is old, worthless and not saleable anymore. Only pay for current marketable product. The price you are suppose to te pay for the inventory is the seller’s cost. The price for old slow inventory is negotiable. Always spot check the price and count the merchandise listed on the inventory list. Do people put down that there is three of an item when there are only two? Of course, especially when they think no one is going to be checking them out. Comparing prices from purchase invoices is how you check prices. You cannot check every item against the actual cost but you can do 5% of the items. Pick at random, not by any suggestion made by the seller or others. If you do not understand how marketable the inventory is that you are buying, hire an expert, from that industry. Your broker should be able to help you in finding someone. Do not be cheap, and think you do not need to spend the money on an expert adviser. I will take a lunch bet that they will pay for them selves many times over.

Genuine Competence Increases Your Ability To Influence Others
Remember that the more consistent and congruent you are in every aspect of your life, the more honest and genuine you’re perceived to be. If you believe in your message, you’ll practice what you preach. If you practice what you preach, you’ll be more authentic, and the door of trust will swing open for you. When you possess congruency, there’s no need to manipulate or camouflage. Trust increases when others can see that your words match your actions. This is called congruence. Agreement and harmony in verbal and nonverbal messages increases your ability to influence. When congruence is lacking, a red flag is raised and, either consciously or subconsciously, your listener will not give you his or her full trust. It’s like the clothes you wear every day. If your clothes match well, usually no one really pays attention to what you’re wearing. If your clothing choices clash and are mismatched, they will be the only thing people notice and remember about you.As one author put it, “People love someone who seems to believe in what he is doing, who is a man of principle. It doesn’t seem to matter what the principle is, as long as he holds to it against all odds, expresses himself clearly, does not get defensive, and sticks to his story.” Most incongruities are found in our body language. Countless studies demonstrate that when body language is incongruent or in disagreement with the message, the body language will always be believed over the message. You body language must be congruent with your message and must be used to support or enhance your message.Are you congruent with your history, your last interaction, and your reputation? Are your emotions congruent with your message? What are your audience’s expectations of you and your message? When your past history and your message don’t match, flags of incongruities will wave in your prospects’ faces. Suspicion will be roused and your prospect will start to look for things that are wrong with you or your message. This in

t. Also check that the equipment works and is actually being used rather than sitting behind the building with other junk.

Are You the Culprit?
Are you a business, non-profit or association manager who pretty much ignores your organization’s important outside audiences?If that’s you, do you realize how difficult you’re making it to achieve the important behavior changes you really need and want? I mean changes that lead directly to achieving your department, division or subsidiary’s objectives?I’m talking about achieving new levels of membership applications; growing the repeat purchase rate; capital givers looking your way; attracting new prospects; expanding the list of organizations officially specifying your service and products; or suppliers newly motivated to meet your strict quality and delivery requirements.Start operating in your own best interest by taking a closer look at the public relations work underway on behalf of your unit.Is it focused more on communications tactics than upon a workable, comprehensive plan for dealing with those key external audience behaviors that impact your operation the most?What may be needed is a refocus on the fundamental premise of public relations: People act on their own perception of the facts before them, which leads to predictable behaviors about which something can be done. When we create, change or reinforce that opinion by reaching, persuading and moving-to-desired-action the very people whose behaviors affect the organization the most, the public relations mission is accomplished.When you meet with the PR people assigned to your unit, be clear about the need to list and prioritize those key external audiences, and then monitor how your unit is perceived by members of those audiences. That means interacting with those folks and asking lots of questions. Now, and only now, can you mount an effort to alter those perceptions, and thus behaviors, in your direction.You need to evaluate the data gathered during the perception monitoring session. Is there a glaring inaccuracy about your organization mentioned

orking 40 hours, per week. I had an absentee fast food owner tell the buyers and me that he worked part time - 5 hours per week. Closer inspection showed he was working 25 hours per week. One auto repair seller, we’ll call him Bob, said he never was at the business, because he had a second full time job. Inspection found he was working 30 hours a week (4 plus hours every night, and 8 hours on Saturdays).

Whadda Jerk!
If one does not understand a person, one tends to regard him as a fool. Carl Jung Sadly, public discourse today seems to have degenerated into warring parties spitting epithets at one another. With little inclination to see the other’s point of view, the parties are reduced to name calling, labeling and the simplification of complex issues. The only commonality is the shared belief that the other guy is a jerk. Thanks to Jung’s pioneering work on personality type, we know that there are at least sixteen discrete ways to view any data set. This means that given any situation, there are sixteen different, though perfectly normal, ways of evaluating it. Not surprisingly, sixteen different points of view might yield very different conclusions. Too often we tend to ignore or demean points of view that don’t match our own. Respecting that there are other, equally valid ways of approaching the same subject, can yield tremendous insight and improve the quality of our own decisions. The next time you run into a point of view that doesn’t match your own, pay attention. Don’t dismiss it. By the same token, don’t assume that different is better. But it just might be, that the different drummer your hearing isn’t another jerk; it could be Gene Krupa.

A double check procedure for restaurant consultants is to then look at the food purchases and its costs and can confirm that it matches the actual sales figures. One consultant that was hired to review a Johnny Rocket restaurant for $7,000 did the audit and put together a marketing program for the buyer. The marketing program included delivery and catering. Both of which do not normally show up on the computerized cash register.

Restaurants - Franchise:
You would imagine that franchise restaurants records would be very accurate because the franchise company gets a percentage of the gross income. The bigger ones connect up to the individual franchise and know what is happening faster then the owner. As stated above, the only sales that can be made and not declared to the computer are catering or delivery orders, which could be done without ringing them up.

Some franchises do not hook up to the individual franchise computers and do not do audits regularly. This allows the franchise to report reduced income to the company and the IRS. In case either comes to audit, they press the delete button on the computer. If you as a buyer can get access to the computer you know the numbers are correct even if they are not complete. It is impossible for the staff or the owner to change the computer records. The information can only be deleted. Again catering and take out may not be on the computer. Theft from employees can only be in the form of 1. Employees that give free food to friends. 2. Employees not ringing up an order, which is difficult when businesses put up signs saying, “If you do not get a receipt, your order is free.”

Some sellers are so paranoid of the IRS, they are not willing to show anyone their private records or computer tapes for fear that the buyer could be an IRS agent. My personal opinion, and what I advice sellers to do, is to get their books legal and honest and hire themselves a top notch CPA, like Donald Trump, and use every legal trick in the book. Martha Stewart didn’t go to jail for inside trading. They got her on lying. There are legal ways to avoid taxes so that fraud is not necessary. If you cannot find a good accountant, I will recommend one.

If you ask someone "Are you a government employee or IRS agent?" and they lie to you; that might be considered entrapment and a good possible defense in court. But, I ask you. Is it worth the grief?

The normal action of sellers, in this situation, is to require that the buyer take the business based on the recorded records and guess as to how profitable the place really is. This is a very difficult situation for the brokers and buyers, since sellers do not price their business based on these reported numbers but base their price on the real numbers.

I hope this is of some help to you in doing due diligence on a restaurant you might be interested in buying.

Auto Repair Shops:
Auto repair shops are almost as bad as restaurants when it comes to under-declaring cash. The normal procedure for most, I have run across, is to declare only the checks and credit card charges. The cash they put into their pocket. The good thing, in doing audits is that almost every one of these owners keeps their work orders-invoices. These are kept in monthly manila folders and put into a drawer or file cabinet. They never tell you that they keep these records, but they do. They even tell me, as the broker, that all backup documents have been destroyed, but they are not. When I insist that they cannot sell their business without providing these invoices, they tell me of their existence.

With the sales invoices an audit of income becomes simple. Since the sellers keep them in a manila folder by months, you only have to pick monthly folders at random and total the actual invoices. Then compare them to what the “State Board of Equalization” report says and calculate what percentage of the total was declared. If you do this for a few months, a pattern will develop. Some sellers have even run a calculator tape of the month’s activities and/or written it in a private ledger. You can check the actual invoice tapes against the private ledger records to confirm the private ledger information is correct.

Conclusion:
It is a hard life when you own your own business; you work long hours. Many people feel that is better than the alternative, which is to work for someone else, pay high taxes, never know if you will be laid off and after years of hard work, never have anything to show for it all.

If you are going to buy a business with your hard earned money, you want to make sure you get what you paid for. Many people believe it is all right to cheat the taxman but otherwise are very honest citizens. Others feel it is all right to cheap any poor sucker that comes along. Don’t be a sucker, do your due diligence and get what you paid for.

Then build your new business into something you can be proud of and enjoy. While building your new business make a point to study everything you can about Tax planning, tax avoidance and reducing taxes legally. I started in College learning about the tax codes, and there are so many ways to save taxes legally, you would never believe it. You will sleep better at night, I promise you. Then 10-20 years from now when you want to sell your business, you can ask top dollar and get it. This because a buyer can do a simple due diligence and know that your business is doing exactly what your books say you are doing.

DO YOUR DUE DILIGENCE and buying your own business can be a pleasant and rewarding experience!

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Shredders are devices used to destruct documents such as receipts, bank statements, and other sensitive records.

I am a business woman. I work from my home and with so many opportunities opening through the internet, it is nearly impossible to catch them all. All too often I find that an opportunity has passed me by simple because I did not know that it existed.

If you have been is sales for any length of time you have been exposed to numerous sales training seminars or full-fledged sales programs. Some you may have decided to take part in on your own, some you may have had suggested by someone else, and others you may have been directed to take part in.

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