The Canadian Tax Calculator was a very useful tool for me to model different personal tax scenarios for myself. I tested out the difference between paying dividends and paying a bonus, adding it to the employment income I make from teaching at Camosun College. In addition, I calculated roughly what my tax bill would be inside the company if I paid out a bonus to reduce the corporation’s year-end profit, factoring in the employer’s share of EI and CPP. Then I looked at the difference between the scenarios, in terms of how much total moolah was being paid in income tax, and assessed my cash flow situation to determine whether my company could weather the strain of one big whopping tax bill, or a series of smaller payments in the last 4 months of the year.

The actual numbers are not the point of this… I’m not going to tell you what’s working for me, because that might be construed as tax advice and I am completely unqualified to do that. I just wanted to tell you about that super-handy link, and also demonstrate that when it comes to tax planning, there is SO much to take into consideration. I’m pretty ballsy when it comes to making assumptions that I know enough about taxes to do this math for myself. Your mileage may vary!

I haven’t yet begun actually doing my corporate taxes, but since I use Quickbooks and have it set up with each account mapping to a tax line (that’s a function in Quickbooks’ account setup form), I suspect it will not be hugely difficult. I have done corporate income taxes once before and with a program like Quicktax for Business, it’s not that much of a headache. Also, the marginal savings in taxes do not make up for the accountants’ fees. When ya make money, ya gotta pay a foundational level of tax. That’s all there is to it. If I wanted to be tax-free I’d go live in the Caymans.

Hmm. There’s an idea.

While we’re on the topic of taking action, you should register today for the DIY Strategic Planning seminar coming this Wednesday! Register here!

While I’ve managed to recover the situation with a quick stop at Staples, it made me think again about my plan to make myself a carrying bag which will accommodate two rolls of chart paper and my kit of markers etc., to make commuting to facilitation gigs easier and faster. I’m lucky to be good with my sewing machine, so I’m more inclined to puzzle my way through making such an item rather than buying one from off the Internet.

That led me to thinking about my habit of insisting on doing things myself, despite the fact there are usually vendors out there willing to take tasks off my hands for a fee. My website, for example, is the product of uncounted hours of clambering up the WordPress learning curve. This year I’m probably going to do my own taxes because paying the going rate for my accountant to do my year-end seems like a serious waste of money, for a one-person company. But where should I – or other business owners – draw the line when it comes to “do it yourself?”

This is a particularly relevant question considering I’m the pioneer of “Do It Yourself Strategic Planning” for my clients. Do I really mean that people should take their strategic planning into their own hands instead of hiring a consultant? Yes. Yes, I really do. Especially when you have a small business, like one or two people. Strategic planning is a discipline which can be explored from many starting points; you don’t have to be an expert, and in fact I defy anyone to prove they really are an “expert” at strategic planning. I have expertise in organizing and analyzing the process, but strategic planning is like golf – you’re always striving for the perfect game and if you ever actually play it, well you might as well just curl up and die. It helps to know a bit about SWOT analysis and industry analysis and competitive positioning, but that stuff is like icing on the cake of deep, abiding understanding of your work and your industry.

But when it comes to other things, like website design or bookkeeping, there are strong arguments for outsourcing instead of burning the midnight oil trying to do everything for your business. For me the distinction comes from enjoyment: I honestly did enjoy doing all that crazy stuff for this website, and I also enjoy my bookkeeping because it’s simple, light and keeps me in touch with my business cash flow. I also enjoy sewing things for myself because I have the ability and the tools. I don’t really enjoy taxes, but I do enjoy having an extra $grand or more in my pocket. The taxes is the one thing that holds a question mark for me – maybe I really should just suck-it-up and hire the accountant.

Where is your line for “do it yourself?” What do you do for your small business that others often outsource, but you consider part of your role? Do you do it because it’s fun, or because (as I say about myself) you’re too cheap to hire somebody else, and don’t want to be bothered to explain how you want it?

No wonder people think social media is too confusing. To do it well, really well, in a way that actually supports positive results for your business, is complex and a bit exhausting. I say this after spending the past three-four days preparing this website and (today) trying to get as many social media integration tools as I can set up to maximize my leverage from the site.

Here’s a list (as far as I can remember) of all the ways this website is, or will be, integrated into social media:

• AddThis social marketing tool at bottom of each content piece – this is a WordPress plugin, easily installed, but you have to sign up for an AddThis account to track when/how people are using the little gadget. Another account.
• WP-to-Twitter plugin installed to allow me to instantly tweet about blog posts on this site, from selected/limited categories.
• MailChimp and AutoChimp plugins. The first is the sign-up widget for the newsletter, and the second is a script which automatically adds anyone who signs up for membership on this website (to download premium content, for example) to my newsletter list. I didn’t have this set up on the previous website and it was kind of a dead-end for making connections with people who are obviously interested in what I have to say.
• Set up Twitter account just for Directis, to keep work tweets separate from personal tweets, and so I can better analyze the business ROI from my Twitter activities. I use Hootsuite for tweeting so I can push content to both Twitter accounts simultaneously, if I so choose, or reserve content for just one account.
• Put Facebook and Twitter badges on the Contact Us page sidebar.
• Set up Feedburner to provide an RSS feed and stats for posts just from the blog categories on the site, not the other categories. This involved just a little bit of re-coding of the link on Feedburner, as there didn’t seem to be a WordPress plugin for controlling which categories go into your RSS feed.
• Set up Google Analytics tracking code on the new site – I am having problems with this as Google Analytics doesn’t seem to recognize the tracking code on this site, even though I have triple-checked it is the right stuff in the right place. I’m going to sleep on that one, I think.
• Still to do: figure out how to tie in LinkedIn and Meetup to the site, if applicable.
• Still to do: make sure Facebook is importing my blog posts from the new site properly (it was importing PictureYourMeeting.com before)
• Still to do: Set up a proper 301 redirect for PictureYourMeeting, which is being retired.

I’m not just doing this all randomly, either, which is a good thing because it’d be a darn fine waste of time if I was. See, back in July I did a wee strategic planning session for myself (a visual planning retreat, in fact) and created a map of how all my conversations with the world (in a business sense) fit into various levels of engagement and interactions, with the ultimate goal of engaging the right kinds of customers in a business relationship which will provide value for both of us.

What I recognized was that I had a lot of the pieces of social media, but they weren’t connected to each other, and there isn’t enough time in the day for me to handle everything manually. So hopefully this website redesign and overhaul will improve a few aspects that were weak, and give me a platform to do more effective marketing (both traditional and social media).

A short laundry list of the things I’ve been working through:

• Set up Advanced Events Registration plugin, and then hacked it like crazy to make it Canadian (it was all states and zipcodes) and include an attendee’s company name in their registration. Sure I could have paid for the pro version, but still had no reassurance it would do what I wanted, so I just dove into the code and rewrote the event registration form, the way it listed attendees, the way it presented a list of events in a category. Still to do: change how it shows upcoming events in the sidebar widget.
• Created various custom post types to try to get testimonials and featured projects to show the way I want them to.
• Re-installed Download Manager to handle my premium content (easy!)
• Installed Pie-Register and configured it to accept more fields on the user registration form.
• Changed my newsletter hosting over to MailChimp because of the availability of scripts to automate subscriptions
• Moved this whole site from the working directory where I was testing and working all weekend, to the main directis.ca site where you see it now. Boy was that nervewracking!

There is much more I want to do with the site, and tell you about in terms of why I’ve done all these changes and what’s coming in the future. However it’s now 11pm and I have to rise at 5am for rowing practice tomorrow.

Start Date: Nov 18, 2010 - Start Time: 11:45 AM
End Date: Nov 18, 2010 - End Time: 1:00 PM

Description:

How do you decide what customers to target? How much do you charge for your products/services? What effect does pricing have on your sales? How do you use social media as part of an overall marketing strategy? What is marketing ROI and how does a small business track it? These and many other questions make up the process of defining and implementing a marketing strategy.

Come and explore the wild world of marketing strategy in the small business world, in this focused seminar from the mind that came up with the popular "DIY Strategic Planning" series. Attendance at a previous DIY Strategic Planning seminar is recommended but not necessary.

Come and join me for a lunch at the Victoria Executive Centre and find out how you can "Do It Yourself" and build a great marketing strategy!

Cost includes $4.80 HST - sorry folks!

Cost C $44.80

Spaces Available: 30

Event Registration Powered by Smart Website Solutions

Start Date: Oct 24, 2010 - Start Time: 1:30 PM
End Date: Oct 24, 2010 - End Time: 4:30 PM

Description:

This is a weekend afternoon event, by special request!

Strategic planning takes on a different role in businesses with an established track record, and the increased complexity of 5+ employees. With start-ups the strategic plan is usually compiled as a more formal “business plan” and in a micro-business, the strategic plan functions mostly as a focusing/marketing tool for the owner. In a larger company, the strategic plan is a key method for organizing and coordinating the efforts of many people towards a common goal. Implementation plans and budgets have to handle more complexity, and the plan itself has to motivate and inspire people with differing interests or values.

The Strategic Planning for CEOs workshop is a three-hour session exclusively for business leaders with established sales/revenues and multi-person workplaces. We cover the basic structure of the strategic plan quickly, then move in to in-depth exercises to help identify, organize and prioritize the areas of action required in your business. We discuss the different types of strategic planning methods that apply in different situations, such as rapid growth, family business, succession planning and crisis turnaround. You will learn things from the presenter as well as your fellow participants in this confidential session.

The venue for this event is the Victoria Executive Centre. The address is 915 Fort St., 3rd Floor, Victoria BC. Visit their website for location and parking information.

Cost includes $19.20 HST.

Cost C $180.00

Spaces Available: 12

Event Registration Powered by Smart Website Solutions

Start Date: Sep 29, 2010 - Start Time: 8:30 AM
End Date: Sep 29, 2010 - End Time: 11:30 AM

Description:

Strategic planning takes on a different role in businesses with an established track record, and the increased complexity of 5+ employees. With start-ups the strategic plan is usually compiled as a more formal “business plan” and in a micro-business, the strategic plan functions mostly as a focusing/marketing tool for the owner. In a larger company, the strategic plan is a key method for organizing and coordinating the efforts of many people towards a common goal. Implementation plans and budgets have to handle more complexity, and the plan itself has to motivate and inspire people with differing interests or values.

The Strategic Planning for CEOs workshop is a three-hour session exclusively for business leaders with established sales/revenues and multi-person workplaces. We cover the basic structure of the strategic plan quickly, then move in to in-depth exercises to help identify, organize and prioritize the areas of action required in your business. We discuss the different types of strategic planning methods that apply in different situations, such as rapid growth, family business, succession planning and crisis turnaround. You will learn things from the presenter as well as your fellow participants in this confidential session.

The venue for this event is the Victoria Executive Centre. The address is 915 Fort St., 3rd Floor, Victoria BC. Visit their website for location and parking information.

Cost includes $19.20 HST.

Cost C $180.00

Spaces Available: 12

Event Registration Powered by Smart Website Solutions

One of the attendees, Vyvyan Rousseaux, wrote a lovely email to me and encouraged me to share it:

Thank you so very much for the excellent seminar today.  You presented your material in a lively, and interesting format.  I especially liked the white board exercises.  Power Point is fine, but everybody does that. I like the ‘on the blackboard, kids’ approach.  Watch the teacher.  Probably a generational ‘thing’.

Ohmigosh, no wonder so few businesses survive to the 3 year mark.  How many people know all this info that you taught us today.  How many people would carry through and do it, even though not to do it means ‘down the tube’.

I went into your seminar not knowing what to expect, and I came away thinking, “That was the best $35.00 I ever invested”.

I’ve started a Meetup Group for people who have attended (or want to attend) a DIY Strategic Planning seminar. Head on over and join up!

Today I’d just like to say I’m incredibly grateful for Michael Port, author of Book Yourself Solid. His book was a little hard to get through, as it was choc-a-block with ideas that really forced me to rethink marketing, and I felt panicked that I couldn’t implement all those ideas at once. Over the past year and a half I’ve been receiving his email newsletters and recently they have been particularly useful. He’s getting good at putting very relevant, actionable suggestions into his newsletter. Every month I add another idea or two into my marketing strategy, shaped around my own personal strengths. If you’re building a professional services practice, then you really need to be familiar with Michael Port’s stuff, and working on how to use some of his ideas in your own way.