How Seasonal Marketing Opportunities Can Drive Sales

As many retail businesses have discovered, holidays and special events are perfect opportunities to run limited-time promotions. E-commerce and brick-and-mortar stores alike make concerted efforts throughout the year to attract customers with sales and markdowns coinciding with major gift-giving holidays like Valentine's Day, Mother's Day, Father's Day and Christmas. As New York and New Jersey-based businesses recently experienced with this year's Super Bowl, local and regional special events like this can also serve as an opportunity to drive sales.

 Any seasonal sale you choose to host can be a potential profit-booster, but it must be properly publicized.

"You need to have an internal marketing calendar and make sure customers know [about sales] ahead of time," said David Goldin, president and CEO of alternative business financing company AmeriMerchant. "Don't wait until the last minute."

 Goldin offered four more tips to help your business make the most of seasonal sales opportunities.

•     Make sure you have enough capital. Before you dive headfirst into planning your sale, it's important to make sure you have the capital to do it. Marketing, inventory and seasonal hires all require money, so if you don't have enough, you'll need to seek loans or other funding to pull it off.
•     Give yourself enough lead time. All campaigns require time to work out the details. Months before your sales event occurs, you should be determining how much of an inventory and labor increase you'll need, as well as what kind of tactics you'll need to spread the word 
•     Have a strong team. Business owners tend to think they need to do everything themselves, but an entrepreneur's best role is as a strategic visionary, Goldin said. Having a trusted team of people in place to delegate some of the smaller tasks of the sales event is crucial to success.
•     Keep up with industry and tech trends. Business tech is evolving quickly, and small businesses need to be more nimble than ever to keep up with the most recent trends. Using the latest technology can help you stay ahead of the competition.

Source: http://www.businessnewsdaily.com

St. Petersburg Restaurant named one of USA Today's 10 best vodka bars

Robbinsdale is quickly gaining a lot of national attention and this time it has nothing to do with the Travailian revolution that's been going on over there. This week, USA Today named St. Petersburg Restaurant & Vodka Bar to its list of the 10 best vodka bars in the country.

   "Today more than ever, vodka drinking is considered multifaceted and nuanced," the article states. The piece then goes on to explain the growing trend of vodka drinking across the country and calls out several bars across the United States that specialize in the spirit.

"St. Petersburg Restaurant and Vodka Bar offers Russian hospitality, an extensive selection of Russian vodka, and a wide array of traditional dishes to nibble while sipping the smooth libations. With 100 different vodkas and chilled flight combinations, guests can discover for themselves which Russian region has the most interesting tastes and intriguing flavors."

Other vodka bars on the list include Sub Zero Vodka Bar in St. Louis, Czar Ice Bar in Atlanta, and Red Square in Las Vegas.

The article also articulates the nuances of American and Russian appreciation of vodka. Louis Aceves, general manager of Las Vegas's Red Square, says, "For Russians, it is culturally acceptable to drink vodka every day, while Americans view it as more of a social activity and typically indulge in vodka for special occasions and in the evening while hanging out with friends. Traditionally, Russians drink vodka straight, cold, and not shaken or mixed."

Source: http://www.citypages.com

Salary or Draw? How to Pay Yourself as Business Owner

Congratulations! Your small business has moved beyond the initial startup phase and is now a profitable venture. Although you may have worked for free in the early days, it’s time to pay yourself for your efforts.

You generally have two options for taking home a paycheck: a salary and/or a draw based on the structure of your business.

Your Payday

If you are an officer in a corporation, the law says you must be on the payroll and receive regular checks that include withholdings for Social Security, Medicare, federal income taxes, and state income taxes in states that require them.

If your company is legally structured as an S Corporation, you must receive regular paychecks with those same withholdings, but you also have the option of taking additional money beyond your salary in the form of a draw or distribution. Checks for draws and distributions are written without withholding the taxes that are taken out of a regular payroll check.

So, how do you decide how much to take as a salary and how much to take as a draw?

Reasonable Compensation

As far as your salary goes, the IRS requires you to earn reasonable compensation for the type of work that you’re doing. As a guideline, the government suggests choosing an amount similar to what another business would pay someone to do what you do.

Sheryl Schuff, a CPA who specializes in small-business bookkeeping and payroll, says that before you start cutting checks to yourself, you need to carefully consider the total amount of your salary and draws.

“Owners of S Corporations have come under increased scrutiny the past several years, as they typically prefer to take draws rather than payroll to avoid paying the associated payroll taxes,” Schuff says. “It’s imperative for business owners to understand the position the IRS takes on reasonable compensation. One of the largest financial risks to entrepreneurs is penalties and interest for incorrect payroll-tax reporting.”

Source: http://intuit.com

5 Affordable Last-Minute Valentine’s Day Ideas

So Valentine’s Day is quickly approaching, and you’ve ignored hints about fancy restaurant reservations, that subtle list of local florists, or the engagement-ring Pinterest board she shared on Facebook. The timing couldn’t be worse: thanks to holiday spending, tax season, and that embarrassing Super Bowl bet, you’re broke and running out of creative ways to make her friends jealous.
Well, don’t blow your paycheck at the mall jeweler. You’re better than a meaningless box of Shari’s Berrys. Here are five thoughtful ways to show her your love without draining your checking account.
Surprise her with a ready-made movie night. On your way home from work, swing by the movie theater to buy some fresh popcorn, and snag an extra large cup and straws. Light candles around the couch, then queue up her favorite romantic comedies on Netflix. When she comes over, serve her the warm popcorn, her favorite candy and a jumbo-sized soda. If she’s not head-over-heels for this show of creativity, a ticket stub with a personal note should do the trick.
Show her your flower power with brute force. Set your alarm clock early, because you’ve got a lot to do before she gets to her cubicle. Head over to your local corner grocery or bodega in the morning and buy five cheap bouquets of mixed flowers. Drop the first bouquet off on her front door, leave the second with the office receptionist so she’ll receive it when she gets in, and place the third on her office chair. Place the fourth bouquet at her door when she gets home, and arrive with the fifth to finish out the evening.
There’s still time to sweep her off of her feet. Book a solo dance class this week — for yourself only — or do a YouTube deep dive. You don’t need to master the art of the tango or swing, you just need to know enough to surprise her by taking her out dancing. Don’t forget to bring her a long-stemmed rose. If she doesn’t want to hold it, you can clamp it in your teeth for an authentic tango touch.
For guys who never cook, now is your obvious chance. Ina Garten’s truffle pasta is as easy as it is delicious. If you can boil water and melt butter in a pan, you can treat her to a decadent Valentine’s Day dinner. Serve it with a side salad taken right from a plastic box of mixed greens, and copious amounts of Prosecco. Finish off with a store-bought pint of chocolate gelato.
You can be romantic without creating an elaborate experience. Purchase a picture frame, and write a love note to her on the back. Instead of putting one photo in the frame, go ahead and stuff ten in there. Write a different reason why you love her on the back of each photo. If you’re stumped, a few lines from a Pablo Neruda poem. You know that dude never had time to run around town buying flowers.


Source: http://www.mademan.com

Made in Minnesota

The centerpiece of this exhibition, curated by sculptor Wayne E. Potratz and painter Howard Oransky, is George Morrison's massive 4-by-20-foot Landscape: Wood Collage, an assemblage of 29 wood pieces that is at once humbling and exhilarating in its composition. Surrounding this work are sculptures by more than 20 artists in a variety of other mediums.

There's one in acrylic, bone, and concrete; another in diamonds, gold, and granite; and yet another made from motorcycle parts and mousetraps. Lisa Elias's metalwork is included, as are pieces by the larger-than-life Zoran Mojsilov, queen of bits and bling Judy Onofrio, and clay sculptor Aldo Moroni. The artists' aesthetic concerns are as varied as their mediums, approaches, and inspiration. In total, the show is a terrific representation of sculpture made — and celebrated — here. There will be a public panel and reception from 6 to 9 p.m. Thursday, January 23. (Pictured: Work by John Ilg)

— By Camille LeFevre

Price: free

Source: http://www.citypages.com

Your Time Is Money, So Stop Wasting It

How much is a work hour really worth?

Studies show that employees spend about 31 hours per month in meetings, and spend less than 60 percent of time actually working productively.

Having gone to work for a major public relations firm right out of college, I came to understand the value of an hour very early on in my career. While I made far less than my billable rate, clients paid just over $100 an hour for time I spent working on their account. For each 15-minute increment I billed, I had to justify the work I did. If a project gave me difficulty, or I was just having a particularly unproductive day, I’d adjust my hours accordingly.

Though I no longer have to enter my time and match it up with billing codes at the end of the day, the mindset has served me exceptionally well. I’ve found that it’s incredibly helpful in any workplace -- even in the nonprofit sector, where making money isn’t even part of the objective. The hours of the day are finite and intrinsically valuable, and the most successful managers and entrepreneurs are those who not only properly manage their own time, but the time of others.

I’ve since left the world of public relations firms, but I continue to assign a dollar amount to my hours, and I recommend that anyone else who regularly juggles tasks do the same. If you look at the first hour of the day as, say, $100 instead of 9 to 10 a.m. on your calendar, it becomes easier to prioritize important tasks by planning your hours, days and weeks around major objectives. It can also help you cut back on time-sucking activities that you might have thought were worth your time, but in a new light, simply aren’t worth the money.

As a manager, it’s equally important to place a value on the time of your colleagues and employees. My time is worth more than my staff’s, and their time is worth more than an intern’s. Everyone understands this dynamic and plans accordingly. It helps them to decide whether a task is better left to an intern or if it might be better to manage up and ask me to take something off their plate. By determining the relative importance -- and time-sensitivity -- of tasks, it makes it much easier to assign and complete them in the most productive manner possible.

Assigning monetary value to both tasks and employees helps clear schedules of time-sucking activities that drag on production. An hour-long, 20-person meeting where only 10 people really need to be in attendance translates to more than a full workday’s worth of wasted time.

For workplace veterans, this line of thinking may be second nature, but for young professionals, the value of an hour wasted doesn’t always ring true. Regardless of whether the billable hour is on its way out as a billing mechanism, it’s a valuable mental model to apply to almost any career. If we all treated our minutes a little more like dollars, there might be less time spent on Facebook and fantasy football and more spent moving our organizations forward.




Source: http://www.entrepreneur.com