This week’s edition (#125) of the Carnival of the Capitalists by Harish Keshwani can be found at Ideologic, LLC.

A selection of the CotC topics I found most interesting:

Business Advice
• Business at a Crossroads: Growth or Status Quo?
• Issues Entrepreneurs Face as their Businesses Grow

Personal Finance and Taxes
• Tax Shelters and the Pretensions Attached to Them
• Irrational Exuberance: The Next Great Bubble Burst
• The Impact of New Bankruptcy Laws
• Bankruptcy Risk Score - The Credit Score You Don’t Know About

Economics
• Open Source and Business Communities

Technology
• Storing Lightning in a Jar: Ultracapacitors

Ethics
• Business Ethics: Corporate Social Responsibility

Trends
• Discovering New Trends
• Trend Unit: Become a Better Trend Watcher

View the Carnival of the Capitalists 125

Next week’s CotC will be hosted by the Free Money Finance Blog.

About the Carnival of the Capitalists
What is a Blog Carnival?

Tags: Carnival of the Capitalists, Tax Shelters, Bankruptcy Laws, Open Source, Business Communities, Ultracapacitors, Business Ethics, Corporate Social Responsibility, Blog Carnival

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Carnival of Entrepreneurship 4 - February 23rd, 2006

This week’s CoE comes to us from Jack Yoest of Yoest.org.

Here are a few of my favorite topics from Jack’s selections:

• The Golden Rules of Business
• It Is Not OK To Steal
• Checklist to Internationalize a Product

View the Carnival of Entrepreneurship 4

• About the Carnival of Entrepreneurship
• What is a blog carnival?

Tags: Carnival of Entrepreneurship, blog carnival

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Inc.com has posted an excellent slideshow featuring photos and small writeups of self-made entrepeneurs.

These stories are an inspiration for anyone who is thinking of starting their own small business and even those who already own a small business and want to take it to greater heights.

From humble beginings, these entrepreneurs overcame obstacles to make it big. Will you be the next to make it big?

Featured entrepreneurs:

Mike Kittredge
Founder, Yankee Candle

Debbi Fields
Founder, Mrs. Fields Cookies

Roxanne Quimby
Cofounder, Burt’s Bees

John H. Johnson
Founder and Publisher, Ebony

Fred DeLuca
Founder, Subway

Ewing Marion Kauffman
Founder, Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation

Larry Ellison
Founder, Oracle

Russell Simmons
Founder, Rush Communications

Bill Strickland
Founder, Manchester Bidwell

Anita Roddick
Founder, The Body Shop

Tags: entrepeneurs, small business

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BusinessWeek Online has posted a very interesting interview with Lloyd Chapman, founder and president of the American Small Business League (ASBL), a federal small-business policy watchdog group based in Petaluma, Calif.

… last year he filed two lawsuits against the Small Business Administration for information pertaining to contracting fraud, and he’s gearing up to file two more.

Mr. Chapman speaks with Stacy Perman about what he views as a hostile environment toward small businesses as well as loopholes that give large corporations small business contracts.

• Read the entire interview at BusinessWeek.com
• Read SBA Administrator Hector Barreto’s response

Tags: Small Business Administration

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This Presidents’ Day edition (#124) of the Carnival of the Capistalists can be found at The Stalwart.

A selection of the CotC topics I found most interesting:

• How To Become a Better Business Decision Maker
• Business Ethics: Some CSR Communities Online
• The Many Functions of a Corporate Board
• 7 Steps in Making Money at Trade Shows
• Business Ideas: Does your company live in the past?
• Customers are not the enemy

View the Carnival of the Capitalists 124

Next week’s CotC will be hosted by Idedologic LLC.

• Carnival of the Capitalists home site
• What is a blog carnival?

Tags: Carnival of the Capistalists, Business Ethics, Corporate Board, Trade Shows, Business Ideas, Customers, blog carnival

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Carnival of Entrepreneurship 3 - February 16th, 2006

This week’s CoE comes to us from Australian blogger Leah Maclean of Working Solo. My recent post Adding Value to Your Business is featured as the #4 post! Thanks, Leah!

Here are a few of my favorite topics from Leah’s selections:

• 10 Steps to Marketing With No Money
• Things to Remember When Bootstrapping Your Start-Up
• 12 Rules of Time Management

View the Carnival of Entrepreneurship 3

Next week’s CoE will be hosted by Jack Yoest.

• About the Carnival of Entrepreneurship
• What is a blog carnival?

Tags: Carnival of Entrepreneurship, Marketing, Bootstrapping, Time Management, blog carnival

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This year, it’s estimated that millions of Americans will pay the Alternative Minimum Tax, also known as AMT. The AMT requires some people to pay more than regular income tax.

Congress enacted the AMT in 1969 following testimony by the Secretary of the Treasury that 155 people with adjusted gross income above $200,000 had paid zero federal income tax on their 1967 tax returns. In inflation-adjusted terms, those 1967 incomes would be roughly $1.17 million in today’s dollars. Source: TaxFoundation.org

11 things that may cause an AMT liability:

• Excessive Exemptions
• Standard Deductions
• State and Local Taxes
• Interest on Second Mortgage
• Medical Expenses
• Miscellaneous Itemized Deductions
• Various Tax Credits
• Incentive Stock Options
• Long-Term Capital Gains
• Tax-Exempt Interest
• Tax Shelters

Read more about these AMT liability factors

A major flaw in the AMT:

The Alternative Minimum Tax is NOT adjusted for inflation. This means that with each year that passes, more and more people will be affected by this double taxation. This includes people who were not originally targeted for this tax — middle and upper-middle income families.

If left unchanged, the AMT is estimated to penalize nearly 15 percent of taxpayers by 2010—some 12 million Americans in total.

Recommended Reading:

• IRS.gov - AMT Assistant
• Fairmark.com - Alternative Minimum Tax Guide
• Smartmoney.com - The Alternative Minimum Tax
• TurboTax.com - Alternative Minimum Tax FAQ

Image Source: National Center for Policy Analysis

Tags: Alternative Minimum Tax, AMT, income tax, Capital Gains, Tax Shelters, inflation, IRS

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The latest edition (#123) of the Carnival of the Capistalists can be found at Frugal Underground.

Here are a few of the CotC selections I found most interesting:

• Copyright Tutorial
• New Investment Opportunity? Person to Person Lending
• Is Sweden Moving From Socialism to Capitalism?
• Mortgage Pre-Payments at Slowest Pace Since 2003
• Effective Interest
• Business problems: Seek them out

Next week’s CotC will be hosted by The Stalwart.

Carnival of the Capitalists Home Site

What is a blog carnival?

Tags: Carnival of the Capistalists, blog carnival

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Image Source: VR Business Brokers

I believe that there are two types of entrepreneurs:

1) The owner who plans to keep their company in the family, often passing it down to children or a trusted protege.

2) The owner who envisions selling the business for a large profit to another entrepreneur or to a larger corporation.

I will focus on entrepreneur #2, the seller.

In order to sell your company at maximum profit, you have to provide a maximum value to the buyer. After all, who wants to spend a ton of money on a company with financial woes offering shady products labeled with a terrible brand?

While there may be a few rogue investors out there who might jump on board, chances are you won’t get even close to the offer you hope for.

What can you do now to add value to your business?

1) Take care of the finances. Hire a professional to audit your books for three years worth of accuracy. Audited financials are golden and can bring a quicker close to the sale with limited investigation.

2) Reposition your reputation as the owner to emphasize the reputation of the company. A brand can be worth more than the business itself! (See #18, Louis Vuitton - bottler of Moët champagne and Hennessy cognac, producer of designer fashion and luxury cosmetics… a brand worth more than giants like Honda, Ford, Dell, Pepsi, Sony, Nike, etc.)

3) Brainstorm new proprietary products or services that fulfill a need of your customers. Even if they are not released, the raw data for these new ideas could serve as extra incentive for a buyer.

4) Build extensive customer lists and operation manuals if you do not already. Customer data can be a goldmine for someone buying your company. Operation manuals ensure the next person will have an idea of how everything works.

5) If you contract anything, make sure that it is short-term and does not require your involvement once the sale is complete. If long-term contracts are already in place, make sure they are fully transferable to the next owner.

These steps take time to execute which is why a decision to sell should be made long before the actual sale takes place.

Bottom line: prospective buyers want to see profit and value. With a strong combination of both, you will get closer to selling for what you really think your business is worth.

Recommended Reading:

• Entreprenuer.com - Growing a Business to Sell
• Powerhomebiz.com - Selling Your Small Business
• About.com Small Business - Selling Your Business Nest Egg
• Business Info Zone - Adding Value to Your Business Before You Sell It

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Carnival of Entrepreneurship 2 - February 9th, 2006

This week’s CoE comes to us from Anita Campbell of SmallBizTrends.com. Anita did a great job at selecting a well rounded series of topics including:

• Six Steps to Learning From Your Successes and Failures
• Ten Steps to a Business Turnaround
• Seven Important Business Books

View the Carnival of Entrepreneurship II

I am proud to have been named host of the Carnival of Entrepreneurship 13 to be featured here on April 27th, 2006.

What is the Carnival of Entrepreneurship?

Tags: Carnival of Entrepreneurship, Business

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Starting this year, business owners will be able to pay employment taxes — Forms 940 and 941 — with plastic.

For the first time this tax season, business owners who paid $1,500 or more in wages in any quarter of the previous year will be able to make federal business-tax payments on their American Express, Discover, MasterCard, or Visa, the Internal Revenue Service announced on Jan. 5.

On top of collecting air miles and other bonus points on their cards, small-business owners could cover employment taxes with a credit card payment, then — depending on cash flow — could hold-off on paying the balance on the cards until later in the month.

Tags: employment taxes, Internal Revenue Service

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Scott Allen, About.com’s guide for entrepreneurs has started a new blog carnival similar to the Carnival of Capitalists called Carnival of Entrepreneurship.

View the Carnival of Entrepreneurship’s first edition dated February 2nd.

If you are unfamiliar with these carnivals:

… a traveling weekly blog carnival featuring the best of the [topic] blogosphere. Each week, a host blogger reviews submitted posts and selects and posts the seven best, in their opinion, along with their editorial commentary.

As a reader, this is an easy way for you to view the best posts from blogs around the Internet in one place, without having to browse through dozens of sites to find them.

Other blog carnivals of interest:

Carnival of Marketing
Carnival of the Capitalists
Carnival of Personal Finance
Carnival of Investing
Carnival of Debt Reduction

The Blog Carnival Master List
The Blog Carnival FAQ

Tags: blog carnival, blogosphere, blogs

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