Business Advice – Page 2

What information do you need to value a business for sale?

There are many different methods of valuing a business. Some investors use discounted cash flow, others use a multiple of earnings, some look at appraised assets. If you are in the same business as the business for sale that you are looking to acquire, what synergies exist between the two companies?

The amount of savings that can be generated needs to be factored into the purchase price. If you are looking to acquire a competitor who keeps low balling the prices, if you were to acquire them, that gets rid of a competitor which will result in higher prices, you need to factor that into the amount that you will offer for the business for sale.

Here is a list of items which you should have when doing your valuation

three years financial statements prepared by an external accountant. If the accountant has a designation, ie. CA, CGA, CPA, the accountant may have issued an opinion, a Notice to Reader, Review Engagement or Audit. Please read the opinion to determine how much reliance on the financial statements, if any, that you should make.
internal financial statements from the last year end up to current normalize income for the last three years. Normalized income starts with the net income reported for tax purposes and removes all personal and non reoccuring expenses which would not exist under the new owner.

How To Hide Stains In Your Office Carpet Until The Pros Can Remove Them

Ok, it is confession time. We are going to teach you how to cheat. Now, far from this meaning that we have fallen from grace and gone over to the dark side, instead, it will mean that you can keep your business premises looking great for as long as possible. Specifically what we are going to do is teach you how to hide or reduce stains in your office carpets, until you can hire professional carpet cleaners to get rid of them for you properly.

You might be thinking, “Why don’t I just call the pros in today?”, and we would answer that by telling you to go for it. However, commercial carpet cleaning is a highly popular service, so there is the likelihood that you may have to wait a few days before they can confirm an appointment. Meanwhile, your carpets remain dirty or stained which is hardly the image you want to project to prospective clients and other visitors to your business premises.

So, whilst you are waiting patiently for your professional commercial carpet cleaners to work their magic, here are some ways in which you can hide the offending areas of your dirty carpets from view, or minimise the effect of the stains which exist.

Fire Safety Tips for Businesses

As a business owner, you’ve likely got enough to worry about in your daily operations without needing to give any spare time to fire protection. However, as inconvenient as it might be to dedicate time to something that probably won’t happen, it’s essential to be prepared.

Not only can it be a legal requirement, but it could also save lives. Here are some fire safety tips from fire services that could be important while you’re putting your workplace fire safety plan into action.

Have An Evacuation Plan

Most people know that they should leave the building immediately if they see, hear, or smell fire. However, how they leave the building and what they should do next isn’t always clear. It can be if you put an evacuation plan into place and train your staff on what’s involved in it.

Five reasons you shouldn’t design your own website

In the modern world, there are countless website builders and other platforms that target beginners who want to create their own new website. The main draw of these tools is that they require little to no technical experience to use, they don’t require any coding knowledge, and they are affordable and enable rapid site creation.

However, it’s not always a good idea to create your own site. Just because a platform advertises that you can “get online in minutes” doesn’t mean you really will be able to. And even if you can get online fast, there’s every chance that you will make mistakes and run into problems down the track.

Need more convincing? Here are five reasons why you should engage an experienced Perth website designer and never try to design your own website.

It Takes Time

Despite the platforms advertising rapid website creation, the reality is that you can expect to spend at least a few days creating anything more than the most basic site. This is because web design isn’t as easy as it may appear, and there’s a lot more to it than you might realise. Employing an experienced web designer will save you time, enabling you to focus on the things you’re actually good at.

Reforms To Unfair Contract Terms Laws

Consumer law in Australia is constantly evolving, sometimes for the worse, but mostly for the better. One area of consumer law which affects both businesses and consumers is contract law, and in this area, the government has made some significant proposals recently, and particularly concerning unfair contracts. We preface this, with recommending that if you seek legal advice, you should contact a commercial lawyer.

Definition Of Unfair Contracts

As it stands a contract relating to a consumer or a small business will be deemed unfair if any terms or conditions within that contract cause any of the three scenarios below to be created.

How Commercial Law Defines Misleading Or Deceptive Conduct By A Business

It is a sad fact of the commercial world that some businesses cross to the wrong side of the line relating to honesty and proper conduct when it comes to how they communicate and act. For some businesses, their conduct might have been a result of errors and misunderstandings, but even then, it may still result in an unacceptable outcome. A point here is that even unintentional actions can result in repercussions under consumer law.

Most at fault are those businesses whose actions are deliberate attempts to give themselves a financial gain, whilst at the same time misleading and in some cases, cheating those customers who purchase their goods and services. Thankfully, commercial law has remedies for unacceptable conduct by businesses, and one area, in particular, is where a business acts misleadingly or deceptively.

The applicable legislation can be found in Section 18 of the Australian Consumer Law (ACL). The ACL applies across the entire country and thus means businesses in every state must comply with it and should not attempt any contravention of its consumer protections.

Definitions Of Misleading Or Deceptive Conduct By Businesses

There are three main ways in which misleading or deceptive conduct by businesses can be defined. They are:

#1: Future Predictions

This is classified as a business making forecasts or projections about the future which it simply cannot back up or prove with any credible evidence. Worse, it applies where a business deliberately makes false or misleading predictions. Countless examples might apply such as:

5 Core Metrics For Home Building Company’s Digital Marketing

Any digital marketing campaign which is set up to promote your new home building company needs to be measured in several ways to establish its viability and your return on investment. Many business owners believe that all they have to do to assess their marketing is check how much revenue is being created but the digital marketing experts will tell you that does not paint the full picture with regards to a campaign’s success.

There are multiple metrics and measures which can give you an indication of how much your digital marketing efforts are succeeding and building a complete picture from each of these metrics, is how you will be can arrive at a definitive answer. Here, we are going to cover 5 of these metrics, and they are the ones which every business owner, including those who own new home building companies should regard as the most indicative of their digital marketing’s performance.

Metric #1: Cost Per Prospect/Lead

Cost per prospect or cost per lead is how to calculate the cost of bringing each individual into your sales funnel. Each business may have a different definition of what they would classify as a lead, but for most, it will be someone who has effectively raised their hand and asked for more information about a product or service. Take the total marketing spend and divide by the number of individual prospects. $5,000 spent to acquire 200 prospects is a cost per lead of $25.

Should I use a business broker to sell my business?

You would like to sell your business and you are debating should you business a business broker or should you sell your business by yourself. Which option should you use? Do you sell the business on The Business Place website or do you hire a business broker? There are no wrong choices, there are advances of listing the business yourself and there are advantages of using a broker.

If you list your business for sale yourself, you will save commissions. You will also be able to control who is told your that your business is for sale. You have much more control of this feature if you are concerned about your customers finding out about your business for sale.

How is your business affected when your spouse wants a divorce?

You have been operating your business for many years and you have been having marriage problems for years. One day your spouse wants finality to the relationship and wants a divorce. How do you cope? Do you have lines of credit that still can be drawn? Is the spouse working for you. I spoke to a person the other day and they split up 4 years ago, live in the same house on two floors and still worked in the business.

No arrangement was made for closure because neither wanted to pay for a lawyer. It is difficult for a married couple to split up however there are two ways to do it, the friendly way or the non friendly way.

When you are using divorce lawyers and are fighting, the only person who wins are the lawyers. The two spouses and their family loses. I saw one spouse who was very vindictive cause the husband to lose 50% of his net worth due to fighting. The kids see the fighting and no one wins.