Biz Opportunities On 05/01/2008

  • Bert McClure, the founder of the Home Business Executive, has spoken to many people who have struggled and failed when starting a home-based business. “It is painful to see what happens to people,” McClure says. “They launch a business based on some ebook they purchased from an Internet Marketing Guru or because they went to a three-day seminar. They base their understanding often on a formula for success that may not apply to their business or perhaps doesn’t really apply to any other business. What they need to find is someone who actually knows what they are doing and has actually built a successful business.”

    So when one approaches such a person as a prospective mentor, it is valuable to really find out what their experience is, checking references whenever possible, seeing if they can give you an accounting of their track record in business. Since you, as a potential home-based businessperson, are treading in a dark forest, you want to know that your mentor has cleared his or her own path.

    Bert McClure, owner of The Home Business Executive, spent many years seeking out of the insurance game, hoping that his dreams of a home-based business could find grounding in reality instead of in a silly pipe dream. “The problem with many would-be home-based business owners is that there is a lot of deception out there. One needs a lot of guidance to find it. I remember a Greek myth about how Jason, trapped in the cave of a terrible beast, the Minotaur, is given a golden thread by Ariadne, a princess, to help him out of the cave The Internet is like a cave haunted by the beast of small business failure. A home business mentor is the golden thread one really needs. An unguided start-up is too dangerous to risk.”

    tags: home business, Bert McClure, marketing, guru

  • Oh joy! There are only eight more pressure-filled days of punishing paperwork before income taxes are due. Because of the W-2s, 1099s, figuring of formulas, tangled tax credits and must-be-documented deductions, the April 15 tax deadline earns my title as “The Most Dreadful Rite of Spring” - when compared to the gem and mineral show, the professional golfers’ match play championship, the rodeo, spring training, blooming wildflowers or allergies.

    For as tedious as taxes are for us individuals, it’s even more so for businesses. Corporate tax returns are so complex, big companies have full-time staff to crunch the numbers.

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    For an entire year, these specialists run through a marathon of financial spreadsheets. We individuals, however, typically sprint to the finish line in less than a week because we have the luxury of procrastinating.

    To this day, my favorite tax tale involves a $21 million check.

    tags: tax credit, taxes, financial, accountant

Biz Opportunities On 04/30/2008

  • For much of this school year, Fabienne Bruneau spent three hours a day compiling summaries of major financial news stories, preparing for a competitive recruiting process for internships at major Wall Street banks.

    After a 4½-hour interview with Bear Stearns earlier this semester, the New York University junior landed a summer position in its global equities division with the sales and trading team. This month, she was notified she had lost her internship, a casualty of JPMorgan’s recent purchase of Bear Stearns to prevent it from going bankrupt.

    “You feel like you won the lottery, and now someone stole it away from you,” she says.

    tags: Bear Sterns, financial, news, internships

  • New York’s billionaire mayor Michael Bloomberg will offer business and political advice in a book entitled “Do the Hard Things First” due out in September, the publisher said on Tuesday.

    The book, written in collaboration with Margaret Carlson, is subtitled “(And Other Bloomberg Rules for Business and Politics)” and will be published by Vanguard Press, a member of the Perseus Book Group.

    Bloomberg plans to donate all proceeds from the book to the World Trade Center Memorial Foundation, he said in a statement.

    The mayor is the author of 1997’s “Bloomberg by Bloomberg,” which told the story of how he founded his own company with the $10 million settlement he received after being fired from the Wall Street firm Salomon Brothers in 1981.

    Bloomberg became a billionaire by creating his news and information company, Bloomberg LP, a competitor to Thomson Reuters Corp.

    tags: mayor, reuters, bloomberg