Kakoschke gone into the field of home staging with the goal of getting a guaranteed job at $31.45 per hour, it’s safe to say things would have worked out much differently for her.

This Staging Diva Graduate and founder of Hunter Lake Home Staging and Design says of this, her second chance career, “I made more money in the first 10 months in my own staging business than I used to make in a whole year working for the government as a Contract Manager. And now I work half the hours that I used to!”

What Laura understood when she got into this field and some aspiring home stagers don’t, is that a promised job for $31.45 an hour is actually a complete devaluation of her talents. Laura did her research before signing up for a training program and learned that home stagers can actually earn between $250 and $700 for just a two-hour consultation. She realized what she needed were the skills to promote her services and market her own business so she could be in control of her own employment.

It certainly worked out for her. In her first 10 months as a home stager, Laura landed so many of her own projects that she ended up staging 12 vacant properties. When you consider that staging a vacant home can earn a stager anywhere from $3,000 to $10,000 profit per house (even if they don’t use their own inventory), having 12 of these in less than a full first year of a new business is significant.

The largest of Laura’s projects was a $2.5 million vacant estate home which she furnished from top to bottom. “This was an intense experience,” says Laura, “but an awesome opportunity to put my home staging training into practice.”

One of her recent projects saw Laura staging a house that had been sitting on the market for four months. Before Hunter Lake Home Staging and Design came in, the real estate agent was skeptical about staging. Her thinking completely changed after Laura finished staging the property. With new furniture and accessories, the house sold in only four days. “The change in the decor was like night and day,” says Laura, “and we didn’t even have to paint or replace brass fixtures.”

This mother of three children loves the freedom that comes along with being her own boss. “I can work my own hours, set my schedule, be at home to teach (home school) in the mornings and work my staging business in the afternoons,” reports Laura. “My three boys get a first-hand look at running a business. I hope that the courage I found to follow my dream will inspire them to follow theirs, and to know that anything is possible.”

Like many Staging Diva students, Laura approached her home staging career with the attitude that she wanted to finally use her natural talents to earn a living without having to spend 4 years in an interior design program.

“I’m 39 and if it weren’t for the opportunities available to a stager, I would have had to return for several years of post-secondary training and then work long hours for low pay for a design firm to fulfill my dream of decorating. This would never have happened,” says this mom with a degree in literature. “Staging Diva Training gave me the business tools and confidence to follow my lifelong passion for design.”

Debra Gould

So you’re starting a business, or thinking about it - congratulations! Entrepreneurship is one of the key elements of a thriving economy.

While you will likely hear from myriad sources around you that you should create a business entity, there are certain factors you need to consider when making this important decision. While a business entity - corporation or LLC (Limited Liability Company) - may indeed be what’s best for you, the standard reasoning is not always sound, and you need to do your homework.

You may be told that forming a business entity will protect you and your assets from litigation should something go wrong in your business, and to some extent this is true, depending on the business entity you have chosen. There are, however, some very important distinctions between the various business entity options available to you, and it is critical that you understand these, and choose the most appropriate entity to suit your current and future needs.

There is more than just liability involved; of course you want to be protected from lawsuits, but there are other issues to consider, such as your responsibilities to a potential board of directors, what will happen to the business assets in the event of your death or incapacitation, and even in the event of a lawsuit. What if you hold all your valuable assets in the business, and the business does, unfortunately, get sued? Having protected yourself from personal liability, you may still stand to lose everything you have worked so hard for. Is this really a good solution?

Also consider the people with whom you are involved, and what type of growth, acquisitions, etc. you may wish to to pursue in the future. The law holds very specific rules for different business entities as to what different partner- and business-types can and cannot do, for instance, and what happens when a partner wishes to secede or dies.

There are also tax consequences to consider, and they vary from entity to entity. You need to be clear about the operating circumstances of your business and what suits you best, as well as where you may want to take your fledgling company.

While these concepts are complex, they need not be overwhelming. You need to procure the the advice of professionals who can help you make the best decisions; namely lawyers and accountants.

While the price for this advice may seem a high one to pay at the outset of your business, the price of forming the wrong entity (for you) and dealing with treacherous partners or clients, lawsuits which leave you unprotected, or the loss of your business, will be a much higher cost later. This later cost could also include the cost of any professional help you may need to hire to get you out of the mess you are in.

Best of luck with your business entity decision, and may you experience outrageous success!

SM Arthurs

You have decided to start your own business and have begun researching into, among other things, which business entity is right for you. There are partnerships, S-corps, C-corps, LLPs, LLCs, and PCs. Quite frankly, your research is starting to look like alphabet soup. So, which one is the right one for you? As always, it is imperative that you contact your attorney to aid you in making this important decision. However, if you are going to go into business by yourself or with your spouse, a LLC maybe right for you.

A Limited Liability Company, commonly known as a LLC, is a relatively new business entity that has rapidly become a popular choice for small business owners. A LLC is a hybrid of a corporation and a partnership.

Like a corporation, LLCs are a structured entity that has, among other things, an operating agreement, articles of organization, and managers, but it most importantly offers the benefit of limited liability. Limited liability limits the personal liability of the owners’ (called members) in the LLC’s transactions and interactions with other businesses and the public by acting as a shield between the owners’ personal assets and the LLC. For many small business owners, having this shield allows them to take greater risks and opportunities with their new business without jeopardizing their or their family’s personal assets. For example, if the LLC is sued or has an outstanding debt, the owner is normally only liable for the amount he or she has already put into the business and nothing more. The aggrieved party can only look to the LLC, and not the owner, to satisfy any judgment or debt. In order to obtain this protection, just like corporations, a LLC must register with the Illinois Secretary of State.

An LLC also has some characteristics of a partnership, namely flexibility, informality, and tax reporting options. If there is a single member, or a married couple who are the sole members, no separate income tax return needs to be filed for the LLC as it can be “disregarded” for tax purposes. Rather, the member simply reports the LLC’s income and deductions on their individual or joint tax returns on a Schedule C. This eliminates the headache associated with filing two tax returns. If there are two or more persons who are not married, a separate partnership tax return can be used, which uses pass-through taxation. The partnership return will pass though the income and expenses to be included on the individual’s income tax returns.

There are many more advantages, and some disadvantages, to forming a LLC. It is essential that you contact your attorney to help you decide which business entity is right for your business, and let him or her lead you through this confusing alphabet soup of business entities.

Carrie M. Buddingh

It seems that Ethics is a growth industry. There are even advertisements in the newspapers for “professional ethicists”.

Does this mean that we are getting more ethical? Are we at the place of which Plato dreamed, where “kings are philosophers and philosophers are kings”.

Alas, the opposite seems to be true. The fact that so-called “experts” have to be employed to say what is ethical is just one sign that many people are increasingly incapable of telling right from wrong for themselves.

Indeed, the “professional ethicists” are not really concerned with moral right and wrong. Rather they are a junior branch of the legal profession. Many sectors, especially those related to medicine and human services, now have “codes of ethics” or “codes of conduct”. A breach of these codes may have legal consequences. The purpose of the “professional ethicist” is to give a degree of protection from those legal consequences. Surely this is the very opposite of ethics.

The last century has seen an enormous expansion in the scope of the law in most jurisdictions. Activities which were previously left up to individual conscience are now regulated by the state.

This is particularly true of business.

Yet it has not made business more honest. To rely on force rather than conscience to get people to do what is right is to undermine conscience. When people are forced, rather than persuaded, they will do what they are forced to do and no more. They will feel no sense of obligation.

More and more, the business world is filled with people who are governed by the principle of “what can we get away with”, rather than by what is right.

It was not always so. We must not be so naive as to imagine that there was ever a Golden Age when everyone was always honest – but things certainly used to be better than they are today.

Previous generations were less likely to see a conflict between doing what was morally right and doing what was in their own best interests.

Partly this was due to the greater emphasis that was placed on Reputation in those days. Business communities tended to be smaller, either because they were geographically isolated or because there might be a small number of specialists in very close correspondence. If a man did anything dishonest, it would soon be known by everyone and his chances of remaining in business would be negligible. Today, the global market is so big that it is unlikely that everyone will hear if someone has a bad reputation.

Mainly, however, it was because business communities usually had shared religious values.

Max Weber described the “Protestant Work Ethic”. The same principle which encouraged people to work hard to succeed in business – a desire to please God – also imposed strict honesty on those business dealings. Protestant devotional works sometimes recommend standards that seem laughable today – like not taking advantage of information that was unknown to the other party in a deal and not charging market price where the profit is excessive. Yet the people who read those works often became very wealthy, not least because they had a reputation for fair dealing.

In the same way, Jewish bankers were able to do business, even if the face of virulent Anti-Semitism, because they built a reputation for scrupulous honesty. This only irritated the Anti-Semites even more.

Even today, an entrepreneur is better off if he deals with someone who is concerned about his reputation for honesty – and who possibly believes that there is an Accounting beyond the balance sheets of this life – than relying on any number of laws and regulations and artificial codes for protection.

Guy Kingston

If you’re a small business owner, your list of worries seems never-ending. For starters, consumer confidence is down and your sales are starting to reflect that reality. And as experts predict a deep recession, it’s doubtful things will start looking up anytime soon. Yes, you’ve been wringing your hands and obsessing over the financial news for months, while simultaneously scrambling to keep your customers happy and your business strong. But action is the best antidote for agonizing—and now is the perfect time to create a recession contingency plan that will help you guide your business through any future rough patches.

Too often, when the economy goes south, a small business owner is paralyzed by anxiety and isn’t able to act quickly enough to save his or her company. Having a well conceived contingency plan in place gives you peace of mind when trouble hits and enables you to act quickly.

For small business owners, contingency planning is one of the best and most effective preventive actions you can take in a down economy.

Contingency planning will allow you to make the best possible decisions for your business if things continue to get worse before they get better. Even if you are an eternal optimist—after all, many of us entrepreneurs are—you’ll be wise to have a contingency plan in place if, say, one of your biggest clients succumbs to the bad economy, or if you have to face the difficult decision of whether or not to lay off an employee.
If you’re unsure where to start when it comes to crafting your contingency plan, here is an explanation of the critical elements you’ll want to include:

A People Plan. For small business owners, employees are often like family. That means the most difficult decisions you’ll have to make will probably pertain to them. That said, it’s important that you remain objective when creating the “People” section of your contingency plan:

1. What people assets are critical for you to keep? Why?

2. Who can “afford” a salary cut?

3. Who could undertake more responsibility?

4. Who are your definite keepers?

5. If you had to cut 10 percent of your workforce, what would your severance policy be?

6. How would you treat departing people so as to engender trust, respect, and loyalty of those remaining?

7. How would you implement a people “cut”?

By answering these questions truthfully and thoroughly, it will be much easier for you to make decisions concerning what to do with your workforce during the slow economy. Sometimes cutting back on your workforce, at least temporarily, is a necessary evil. Knowing that when you do so you are simply following a plan will help you manage some of the guilt that will come if you have to let someone go or reduce employee pay.

A Key Customer Plan. It’s likely that your customers are feeling just as much anxiety as you are right now, so it’s best to handle them with kid gloves. Fail to do so and you risk damaging a relationship that will not only help get you through these hard times but which could prove very profitable when things pick back up. Here are a few things to consider when developing the customer section of your contingency plan:

1. Who are your most profitable customers?

2. Who are the most loyal?

3. Who must you keep long-term at all costs?

4. How is the downturn affecting each of your customers?

5. How can you get closer to them?

6. Which customers have pressures of their own that will force them to ask you to cut prices? And how should you respond? Should you extend credit, put them on an agreed-upon payment plan, etc.?

7. What can you do to attract new customers?

You and your customers are in the same boat. They face the same struggles as you. In your dealings with them, it’s important that you strike a safe balance between managing their best interests and managing your own. The contingency plan will help you do that and help you make decisions that will allow you to strengthen your customer relationships now. When things pick back up, your customers will remember the way you treated them and will want to do even more business with you.

A Cost-Cutting Plan. When deciding where you could cut expenses, it’s important to consider what you could do to cut costs immediately by 10-15 percent. You should also go through your expenses line by line and consider which expenses are not necessary for your survival. Be sure to involve your employees when creating this section of the plan. Because they are on the front lines every day, they may have a better idea of what can be cut. For example, maybe they’ve noticed that you have an incoming paper supply that could be reduced. You should also include in your plan what to do if the amount you pay to lease office or warehouse space becomes unmanageable.

Naturally the decision to cut certain expenses will be easier to make than others. Just remember that now is the time to get back to the basics. You don’t need lots of bells and whistles to run a successful business, and taking a look at your expenses will help you separate the necessities from the frills.

A Cash Flow Plan. Cash flow is key to running any small business, and managing yours is never more important than in a tough economic period. That’s why you should include cash flow management in your contingency plan. There are two specific groups to consider: your customers and your vendors. First, think about how you can get delinquent customers to pay up. Talk with your customers and help them set up a payment plan with you so that you know you will be getting paid when you need it most. Also, consider giving a discount to those customers who agree to pay in cash. You should also think about how you can defer your cash outflows such as payments to vendors. Ask if you can go to a 60- or 90-day payment cycle.

Keeping up a healthy cash flow is vital during a slow economy. You might have to have tough conversations with customers who need to pay up or a vendor who you’d like to defer a payment to, but if these conversations help you keep cash in your business when you need it most, they will be worth it.

A Financial Safety Net Plan. So what do you do when all of your customers have paid up and you’ve extended your payments to vendors, and you are still having cash flow problems? Quite simply, you consider more drastic ways of putting cash into your business. It’s time to fall back on the financial safety net that you’ve created for your company. What will your safety net be? Will you draw on your home equity? Stop taking a salary? Ask friends or family for a cash infusion? Sell off some of the company’s assets? Reduce employee salaries? Apply for a small business loan?

You don’t want to be making these decisions when you are already in desperate need of cash. While you are still in good shape, plan out the first three ways you could immediately increase your cash flow. And do everything to ensure that you are protecting your credit so that if you do need a small business loan you can get one. Make certain to pay your bills on time. Don’t let anything fall through the cracks. If you are having trouble making a payment, let the company or bank know why. If there is a dispute on a payment, get something in writing that says you aren’t to blame. Being turned in to a collection agency will tank your credit score. You absolutely can’t risk it.

An Exit Plan. There are some situations you simply can’t plan for. You can’t know for sure how your industry will be affected by the down economy. It’s possible that no matter what you do the slow economy will make it too difficult for you to keep your doors open or too difficult for you to navigate on your own.

The exit plan is the hardest for any small business owner to put together. No entrepreneur wants to give up on a venture, but sometimes you have to face reality. So, think about what lengths you are willing to go to in order to keep your doors open. If you are open to taking on a partner, what kind of person is going to add the necessary skills to the business to help you keep the doors open? Or if you decide to sell the business, would you want to stay on and keep working for the company or would you want to go your separate ways?

Of course, keep in mind how long these transitions will take to make. As a small business owner you naturally have a strong attachment to your business. When you put so much blood, sweat, and tears into your business, it can be difficult to pull the plug at the right time. If you decide what your exit strategy will be before you are experiencing serious problems, you can take your emotions out of the decision-making process and come up with a clear-headed solution that protects your best interests.

Creating a contingency plan will help you minimize the risk of any surprises that pop up—and they will!—during a slow economy. But keep in mind there are some basic things that you absolutely can’t lose focus on during a recession.

You should be aggressively going after new customers, marketing your business nonstop, and giving your customers world-class service. Yes, these are trying times for small business owners, but the obstacles are not insurmountable. With the right plan in place, you can create strong, long-lasting relationships with your customers and a business that can weather any storm.

C. Hand

The site rush review and bonus. A frenzied swarm of eager buyers have now began to look for an honest review of the site rush. They are also searching for the site rush bonus. Why is this buzz so tremendous?

If you have been trying to make money online for any length of time, then you have no doubt heard of “4 Tier Annihilation Method” and “Affiliate Payload”. These are recent products of Saj P., and the infamous Alex Goad. Well, these two have done it again, and teamed up to create the next big product to take the internet by storm “The Site Rush”.

So you have to be wondering what the site rush is all about. The Site rush is about website flipping to put it bluntly. This is just the practice of buying websites and then re-selling them for a huge profit. Or it can be creating a new website and quickly selling it off for a LARGE profit margin. This method can be insanely profitable when you know what you are doing, or are shown the ropes by someone who is already successful doing it.

This is where the site rush comes in. It will take you by the hand and show you exactly how you can be making over 5 figures a month in six months time. If you have tried to make money online and failed, it doesn’t matter. If you have never tried making money online, it doesn’t matter. If you don’t know the first thing about website design, it doesn’t matter.

The Site Rush is the ultimate course of it’s kind. This product is truly massive and is way underpriced for the value that it is going to deliver. It will truly shock you when you see it.

Elvin Dean

Highly successful Home Based Business owners, people who make 6 and even 7 figures from home have follow these 3 golden rules.

Rule No 1: Become an Extrovert!

Believe in yourself. When you don’t, believe me… people KNOW IT! Likewise, when you are in a home based business people need to know it. Don’t be a “secret agent” someone who is a part of a business but never talks about it to anyone they know.

If you want people to be interested in your business… you have to let them know about it. You don’t have to go shouting it from the rooftops but you do have to put it out there as much as you can, they do call it network MARKETING after all. So go out there and market yourself!

Become a MASTER MARKTER and to be truly successful in any home based business that’s what you will have to become. So don’t be shy, be confident in your business. Chances are more people will be open to it than you think.

Rule No 2: Disregard What Negative People Say!

Listen closely because this is a huge! If you really want to be successful you have GOT to stop listening to the negative people in your life. You can create an empire for yourself by ignoring those naysayers.

Look, negative people are everywhere and they will stop at nothing to steal your joy and your dreams…. DON’T LET THEM! Stand by what you believe in, keep on working and have the last laugh by having a huge amount of success.

You have two choices: do nothing and let the “Negative Josephines” of this work be right, or work hard, make money and prove them wrong! The choice is really up to you!

At the end of the day, it is what you make it. By marketing yourself in a smarter savvier way you can start to have success sooner rather than later…”.

Rule No 3: Create a Trademark for Yourself

One thing that very few network marketers ever do is find a niche and brand themselves as the experts in that particular area.

Most network marketers want to go after EVERYONE when they market. However, what works best for the smartest marketers is choosing a small area or niche and then making sure everyone knows they are the experts in that particular area.

Find a niche that you can relate to like “Atlanta Stay at Home Dads” and brand yourself to be the expert. So that people know when they are looking to become a stay at home dad in Atlanta YOU are the one to go to.

By Branding yourself as an expert in your niche and then marketing yourself, people will know that if they want to be a part of your particular business YOU are the person to go to. This makes you the HUNTED not the HUNTER people will literally be TRACKING YOU DOWN! What do you think of that?!

Wang Githuku

I am a certified travel agent with Traverus Travel, the company that is changing the travel industry! This opportunity has been available to work at home agents since November 2006 and is becoming “the company” for professional independent travel agents. This company provides free, 24/7 basic agent training, as well as extensive trtaining for Certified Travel Agents.

“TraVerus Travel is a network of worldwide independent travel agents working with licensed and bonded certified travel agencies approved by the International Airlines Travel Agent Network and Cruise Lines International Association approved by the world’s major airlines and travel suppliers.

By becoming an Associate of Traverus Travel you will be able to book travel for yourself, while enjoying discounts on special Member Trips and vacation packages. By enrolling as an Agent, you get many more additional benefits and education tools.

Through these tools, educational services, and online booking engines, Agents can learn how to become Independent Home-based Travel Agents who can book travel for friends, business associates and themselves.

This allows them to earn huge commissions on travel while they are learning how to prosper as a Home-based Travel Agent. In addition, links are provided to most of the online consolidator’s for air, hotel, and rental cars, vacation packages, cruise specials and more, for your convenience in booking these items.

The Independent Travel Agents benefit from exclusive relationships with preferred suppliers, allowing even better savings and discounts from regularly priced premiums. In addition, our agents earn a percentage of any trips they create and have the ability to market them through the Travel Portal and Online Radio Show!”

A brand new line of travel products has just been announced at TraVerus, which will add another profit source for all agents invloved. I urge you to give this opportunity some notice to learn more about the benefits of becoming a Certified Travel Agent with TraVerus Travel

Larry Buhrandt

If you could replace your present income by working a few extra hours a week…and eventually be in a position to leave Corporate America, and your 40 to 60 hour a week job…would you do it??

Then…welcome to the world of Traverus Travel !! We have a worldwide network of independent travel agents. We work with licensed bonded certified travel agencies approved by (IATAN) and (CLIA), and endorsed by the world\’s major airlines and travel suppliers.

The day you join TraVerus Travel you can be booking travel for yourself, your family, friends, and others. And you can start enjoying awesome discounts on special member trips and vacation packages…all provided by Traverus Travel.

You will have access to all the tools, our free training, and online booking engines, to effectively become a successful home-based travel agent. You will have the opportunity to earn 75% commissions, or more, from all the activity bookings on your personal website.

And there\’s so much more to this company!! You have an awesome opportunity to earn huge commissions, weekly bonuses, and monthly residual income that could last you a lifetime, when you begin to recruit other agents into your travel business.

Did you know that 85% of the people yearn for the opportunity to travel? And even more people are searching for their own financial independence. You have the unique opportunity to help yourself, your family, your friends, your neighbors, your co-workers when you introduce them to the TraVerus Travel home business.

Don’t miss out on the opportunity of your lifetime!! In these rough economic times we are living in right now, you need to control your own destiny! With unemployment at a record high, what will you do if you are the next one without a job? I urge you to consider Traverus Travel.

Larry Buhrandt

When I evaluate an online business to become involved with, I look for several key points. Keep in mind, when I join a company, my #1 goal is to make money and to do it legitimately. I do not want to hurt anyone, trick anyone, or rip anyone off. This is what I’ve learned and these guidelines will help you determine what business and which company is right for you.

If the company you are working with makes the majority of the commission when you make a sale, forget it. This means that you are doing all the work and the company and/or the person above you is just using you, and keeping all the money for themself.

If you have to have 1000, 10,000 or 20,000 people in your organization before you make any real money. Don\’t get near them. do not join. Most people will NEVER get to that point.

If this company have a sales pitch 2-3 times a day and only 2-3 training classes per week. It means that the company is more interested in selling you than training you how to make money long term. They only wanted you for your start up fee.

If you can’t break even or get into profit by your third sale, forget it, pass on this opportunity.

If you can’t speak with the owners or the corporate office via phone or webinar, Forget it.You need to know who you are going to be doing business with, before I will do business with them.

If there isn\’t a way to research the company, forget it. The chances of the company becoming the next Amway is about as good as winning the lottery. At least with the lottery, you have a chance to win once or twice a week. Vegas anyone? At least in Vegas you can blow your money on a good time, and you’ll have some great memoriesl.

These are not all the rules for success on the internet, but this is a great guideline to follow when evaluating an internet company. Use these guidelines to help you narrow down your choices for choosing a company that best fits yours goals. The program I have choosen surpasses all the elements listed above. This is rare among the opportunities available on the internet at the present time. I am happy to have found such a loyal company to be a part of. And new members are welcome!

Larry Buhrandt