My Blog

How Much Should You Pay Yourself

04/21/2012 11:23:00

As raises go, this was a doozy. Andy Meadows, founder and CEO of custom software company Live Oak 360 in Austin, Texas, decided to increase his salary in the summer of 2010. He didn't bump it up by 5 percent, or 10 percent, or even 25 percent. Instead, he doubled it -- to what he calculated an outsider would charge to do his job. It was a stretch for his then eight-year-old company, but Meadows is now convinced it was the right thing to do.

"Raising my salary to a market level forced me to look at my company from an investor's perspective," Meadows says. "It helped me better understand the value of my own time."

As he began looking at the hours he was devoting to different tasks, he explains, he began asking if they were really tasks he should be doing, based on what the company was paying him, or if they were better suited to one of his employees. Often, the latter was the case, and he learned to cede those tasks to others. "It allowed me to turn myself loose from a lot of digging and hunting for information, and spend more time finding new and better business," he says now.

The case for market-based wages
Meadows' epiphany resulted from his work with CPA and business consultant Greg Crabtree, founder of Crabtree, Rowe & Berger PC in Huntsville, Alabama, and author of "Simple Numbers, Straight Talk, Big Profits!" (Greenleaf Book Group Press, 2011). Meadows had hired him to help split Live Oak 360 into three distinct companies.

Crabtree helped with that restructuring, while also driving home his view that as many as 90 percent of entrepreneurs underpay themselves in what often proves to be a misguided attempt at thrift. It then skews their understanding of how well their companies are performing, and in some cases dilutes the incentive they need to make their companies more profitable. If their companies are structured as S corporations, it also can invite an audit from the Internal Revenue Service, which may see it as a ploy to avoid payroll taxes.

"If you're not paying yourself a market-based wage, the net income on your books is irrelevant -- it's a lie," Crabtree says. "Over time, you tend to forget that."

While acknowledging that some entrepreneurs can't afford to pay themselves a market-based wage, especially during their startup years, Crabtree recommends they at least maintain an extra set of pro forma books showing how their company would be performing if they did.

"If your market-based wage should be $100,000 and you're only paying yourself $50,000, I want you to book that $100,000 in this extra set of records and show that loss of $50,000," Crabtree says. "I want you to feel the pain. I want you to understand that until you've paid yourself a market-based wage and still turned a profit, you're losing money."

That brutally honest approach, Crabtree says, forces entrepreneurs to think about how long they're willing to accept below-market wages before they fix what's wrong or find something else to do for a living. "I can't help them succeed unless I have them look at reality," he says. He recalls working with one client, an engineer, who had switched careers and opened a bakery but simply wasn't able to replace his old salary. After taking a hard look at the numbers, he closed his business.

An incentive to grow your business faster
For Meadows, the outcome was much better. Forced to justify the higher paychecks he was cashing, he says, he became more intently focused on growing his company's business. Sales and profits rose. His employees began to grow, too, enhancing their career skills.

Small-business owners can arrive at a fairly good estimate of what their salary should be, Crabtree says, by visiting websites such as Salary.com or talking to their accountants, who probably do work for other small-business owners and can provide a general overview of what they're seeing in the marketplace.

In addition to incentivizing them to improve their company's operations, Crabtree says, taking a market-based wage can make it easier for entrepreneurs to appreciate what they must pay other key employees if they want to attract talented workers. After all, a business owner who cheats on his own salary is likely to find it hard to cough up a fair wage for those working under him.

"If you don't pay market-based wages to your team, you set into motion things that force employee turnover, and the expense of that is well documented," Crabtree says. "You also end up hiring people who are not that productive in the first place. If you pay a market-based wage, you can demand market-based performance."

In short, Crabtree says, paying yourself a fair wage is a powerful engine for driving business growth and building wealth. If you're not paying yourself what you're worth, you may be hurting, not helping, your small business.

Source: Entrepreneur

Wrestling with God

02/20/2012 12:47:00

Wrestling With God

"And Jacob was left alone; and there wrestled a man with him until the breaking of the day" (Gen. 32:24).

God is wrestling with Jacob more than Jacob is wrestling with God. It was the Son of man, the Angel of the Covenant. It was God in human form pressing down and pressing out the old Jacob life; and ere the morning broke, God had prevailed and Jacob fell with his thigh dislocated. But as he fell, he fell into the arms of God, and there he clung and wrestled, too, until the blessing came; and the new life was born and he arose from the earthly to the heavenly, the human to the divine, the natural to the supernatural. And as he went forth that morning he was a weak and broken man, but God was there instead; and the heavenly voice proclaimed, "Thy name shall be called no more Jacob, but Israel; for as a prince hast thou power with God and with men, and hast prevailed."

Beloved, this must ever be a typical scene in every transformed life. There comes a crisis-hour to each of us, if God has called us to the highest and best, when all resources fail; when we face either ruin or something higher than we ever dreamed; when we must have infinite help from God and yet, ere we can have it, we must let something go; we must surrender completely; we must cease from our own wisdom. strength, and righteousness, and become crucified with Christ and alive in Him. God knows how to lead us up to this crisis, and He knows how to lead us through.

Is He leading you thus? Is this the meaning of your deep trial, or your difficult surroundings, or that impossible situation. or that trying place through which you cannot go without Him, and yet you have not enough of Him to give you the victory?Oh, turn to Jacob's God! Cast yourself helplessly at His feet. Die to your strength and wisdom in His loving arms and rise, like Jacob, into His strength and all-sufficiency. There is no way out of your hard and narrow place but at the top. You must get deliverance by rising higher and coming into a new experience with God.

Oh, may it bring you into all that is meant by the revelation of the Mighty One of Jacob!
--But God

Adapted from

Streams in the Desert- Mrs. Charles Cowan

New Life

12/19/2011 20:24:00

Newness

One of the greatest things about Christianity is new life. The moment a person become a Christian the old, sinful life passes away. A new life and a new start begins. While the spiritual aspect of new life will be discussed in other devotions, there is a physical new life that begins as well.

Like in Ezra, new life does not mean that everything is perfect. The people were still under the rule of another nation. But God had given them a chance to begin again. Likewise with our new life, we may still have to deal with consequences of things in the past.

The great thing about new life is that the future is ours to shape however we want and God will be with us to help us conform to His will.

Whatever is in the past is past and can't be changed. We are make all of our choices from the present into the future however and we can make new and better choices than those in the past.

New life means giving up the ways of the past. Sometimes it means leaving friends that were bad influences on us and staying away from areas that tempted us and caused us to fall into sin. We can start life anew with God's help however.

Some things to be thankful about

10/23/2011 19:32:00

Some things to be thankful about

In case you are thinking that the year is coming to a close and you have not accomplished a single thing, therefore you have nothing to be thankful for, here are a few things:

You made it to this point in the year.
You were not told that you have a terminal disease- Aids, Cancer in any form, etc…
You were told you have a terminal disease, BUT you have not been terminated.
You didn’t lose a loved one to death, prison, or unknown.
You lost some loved ones, but in the process you gained a few friends and well-wishers·
You were given another chance to make right some wrongs, and to learn to be thankful.
You passed through a storm in every sense of the word, but you are still standing.

Why don’t you add your own things to be thankful about? Make a list.

Wisdom - Proverbs

08/31/2011 21:44:00

September is back to school time. The reason we go to school is to gain knowledge and wisdom. God has given us a book of wisdom that provides guidance for how to live our lives.

The book of Proverbs is meant as a guideline for living. The advice that is given is often true but not a guarantee to occur. Proverbs 22:6 states "Train a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not turn from it." This is what we should do but certainly there are some children who were raised properly and end up making poor decisions as adults.

We should consider Proverbs to be "truisms" rather than absolute truth. What is shared in Proverbs will be true probably 95%-98% of the time. When it doesn't hold true however it's not because we failed or God failed.

Proverbs still gives us better advice on living our lives than any self help book or life coach. These words are inspired by God and we can't do better than to listen to what God advises us to do.

See our daily devotions on more of Proverbs.

From Survival Mode to Growth

07/30/2011 18:58:00

Financial consultant John Gillespie compares companies in "survival mode" to critical-care patients: They are ailing, unstable and prone to wild, unpredictable ups and downs.Survival mode is a state of being familiar to most startups that have weathered the recession and to entrepreneurs who kept their companies afloat by postponing spending, hiring and long-term goal-making to focus on staying alive another day.Gillespie, founder and president of financial consulting firm Beyond the Bottom Line , says that while survival mode is a necessary evil during tough financial times, businesses that maintain a reactionary mindset for too long risk missing out on new revenue streams and losing market share. But shifting into growth mode too soon can jeopardize everything the company worked to save.

Gillespie and Elizabeth Gasper, Beyond the Bottom Line's managing director of West Coast operations, offer tips on when, how and why entrepreneurs should position themselves for the future by shifting from survival mode to growth mode.

Know Where You Stand
Survival mode means cutting costs, laying off employees, tightening profit margins and saving cash, in stark contrast to growth mode, during which a company reinvests profits, expands operations and brainstorms growth strategies with long-term payoffs.

Gillespie says the first and most important step in determining whether or not it's time to shift out of survival mode is knowing where your company falls on the survival-growth continuum.

"You've got to first figure out whether the patient is stabilized," Gillespie says. "Self-reflection and reality checks are important before you proceed, and you want to make sure you can calm down and get your bearings so you can honestly assess where you stand."

He offers the following checklist to determine whether your company is stable enough to consider new growth initiatives:

Is the company at cash-flow break-even?
Can you tackle your growth initiatives with existing staff?
Does your company have existing cash or credit lines that can be used for growth?

Focus on Human Resources
When considering whether your company can tackle new projects with its existing staff, it's important to consider not only your employees' capabilities, but their collective mindset, Gasper says. Shifting into growth mode means shedding reactionary thinking and adopting a proactive attitude, which employees may not be up for after a long slump.

"Depending on how long a company has been in that survival mode, you may have very good people who are very tired," Gasper says. "In turnarounds I've dealt with, it's been important to have some honest conversations with existing staff members to find out if they have the stomach to focus on new initiatives, or if they're tired and out interviewing someplace else."

Gasper says many CEOs often either fail to notice that kind of companywide exhaustion, or they "ignore it or see it in a negative light rather than just accepting it and dealing with it."

Simply conducting one-on-one meetings with employees can help determine whether they're ready to embrace the cultural changes that come with growth initiatives, Gasper says.

Know Why You're Surviving
The recession is reason enough for any startup to end up in survival mode. But Gillespie says it's important to determine whether the economic downturn is the sole source of trouble, and to address other possible issues, such as erratic management or uncontrolled growth, before turning to new projects.

Gillespie and Gasper both say entrepreneurs should engage their board members to help assess their company's strengths and weaknesses, as their educated opinions can provide important reality checks.

"One of the biggest problems I see with entrepreneurial CEOs or CEOs of emerging companies is that they don't know how to leverage and use their board members and other advisors," Gasper says. "Getting their input about whether this is a good time for the company to shift gears can be invaluable."

Gillespie says this can be especially helpful when it comes to honestly assessing a company's leadership.

"Management might be overly optimistic about its own ability to change the economic conditions of a company," he says. "Luckily, management has a team of people it can count on to serve as mentors and coaches."

Plan for Transition
Gillespie compares this phase of transition to "transferring the patient from surgery to a gurney," or to pausing at a traffic light when it's yellow, with the red light being survival mode and the green light being growth mode.

Preparations could include connecting with staff members to make sure they're planning to stay with your company, talking to key customers about their anticipated needs in the coming months, conducting market research, or lining up new lines of credit.

Mitigate Risk
Whether it's expanding internationally or pitching to new customers, moving out of survival mode and into growth mode can be risky.

"You have to ask yourself if you're ready to ride that roller coaster of pursuing a new venture, and understand that there may be stumbles you hit in the road," Gillespie says.
According to Gillespie, entrepreneurs should devise backup plans to address possible risks and pursue strategies that allow their companies to remain nimble.

For example, Gillespie suggests hiring consultants rather than full-time employees to fulfill staff needs to facilitate quicker growth and to reduce risk. "When you want to grow quickly, you want to be able to pull people in from the marketplace without taking on a lot more fixed costs," he says.

While new ventures can be risky, Gasper says, so can staying in survival mode indefinitely. "If you're always focused on preserving the assets you have, and are afraid to commit to future plans, you're going to miss opportunities," Gasper says. "If you're in firefighting mode, and every day you're stepping back and saying, 'Phew, I'm glad we solved that crisis,' you're never going to grow."

DCI Success Story: Christian Lifestyle Magazine

06/29/2011 20:10:00

DCI Success Story: Christian Lifestyle Magazine

Karen Chin - Editor and Creator,

Christian Lifestyle Magazine

Karen is the creator and editor of Christian Lifestyle Magazine, a family based publication available free of charge island wide.

Christian Lifestyle Magazine is published every 2 months and is available at about 100 sites island-wide including restaurants, hospitals, churches and supermarkets. The publication informs and educates readers on topics of community interest including spiritual health, social health, and community activities.

Karen has been a client of the DCI for approximately 2 years and has gained valuable insight and knowledge for her business. Her advisor, Shannon Francis helped her assess and refine the business model to take the business to the next level. The development of a business plan was a welcomed but challenging task and an entirely new process to Karen. With her advisor's help and guidance, she completed the business plan and regularly refers to it as a tool to review the business. She adds, "In order to chart your path, you'll need to define long-term goals. The DCI helped me set goals and stay on target."

Karen is extremely pleased with the guidance received in a number of areas. She looks forward to a continued relationship with the DCI and is a regular attendee at the department's workshops and small business seminars. Her company was most recently featured at Inspiring Women's Entrepreneurs' mini-expo.

Christian Lifestyle Magazine is available on island or online at www.christianlifestylemagazine.com . The office is located at Countryside Shopping Centre, Unit 3, Building G.

Can God brag about you?

06/11/2011 23:00:00

Then the LORD said to Satan, "Have you considered my servant Job? There is no one on earth like him; he is blameless and upright, a man who fears God and shuns evil." (Job 1:8 NLT). Some see this passage or verse as a question from a God that should know all things.

But don't ever make the mistake to think God doesn’t know. There is no question that He could ask that He doesn't know the answer.

So, why did He ask Satan that question? Why would the All-knowing God and the creator of all things need to ask a question like that? And to go another step, why did Satan gave an answer? His response was, "Job has good reason to fear you... You put a Hedge around him." (1:9-10)

Wow, he walked right into that one didn’t he?! In our efforts to be the first one with the answer, we sometime missed the obvious. The question God put to Satan was more of a statement (He [God] knows all things). He knew Satan was fencing around Job (Satan gave himself away with his response "You have placed a hedge around him.” He had to be in the vicinity to see the ‘hedge’ and may have tried a few times to breach it.

God took the opportunity to let Satan knows He saw him. He saw him going around trying to find a way into the circle of Job. But what Satan didn’t realize is, in serving God faithfully, giving Him thanks for everything, Job opened a trust account with God; a trust account where even if today he forgot to make a deposit, God would allow him to make a withdrawal (or a little overdrawn account).

“Satan desire is to sift” separate/isolate us. The NIV states, “Simon, Simon, Satan has asked to sift you as wheat.” He wants to destroy us. Place us before a firing squad. Keep our minds bothered with the cares of life. But remember, “I have already prayed for you… that your faith should not fail.” (Luke 22:32) “When the enemy shall come in like a flood, the Spirit of the LORD shall lift up a standard against him” (Isa 59:19b KJV).

Could God brag about us the way He brags about Job? Can He trust us not to give up or give in if He lifts the hedge from around us? It is quite possible to answer yes when all is going well. What about when the bills are just a day late in paying? Just a day! Some of us want to give up our salvation already. The funds promised to us didn’t come at the time it was promised and we falter and don’t want to trust God anymore.

If you feel you are at your ‘last straw’, trust Him some more. Wait another minute before you call it quits. Read one more line of His promise. “For ever O Lord thy word is settled in Heaven.” Psalm 119-89

Acknowledge Him today- even in a whisper. “For we have not a high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities (lack of strength); but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin. Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need. (Heb. 4:15-16)

Our time for consideration will come. There will be a time in your Christian walk that Satan will ask permission to prove your love for God. His job is to try and show us up. Let him do his job, just don't let him succeed.

Ideas on writing

06/03/2011 21:55:00

So, you've set aside a day to write. Canceled all appointments, turn the phone off and poised with your notebook and ready to write. Wow, if only it was that easy. Or is it? Can you command your mind to rid itself of the void it suddenly developed? Think. (clock is keeping timing with you: tick tick tick tock.....). Okay, I know what to write about, but where to begin. What had inspired me to believe I can do this. What do I need to make this possible? There is so much inspiration, but can I do this?

"Ideas are everywhere, you just need to learn how to spot them." For many of us, ideas are a lot like buses. You wait ages for one to come along and when it finally does it breaks down. Then, when you're walking seven miles home in the rain three more flash past you even though they're empty and drench you from the gutter." Of course you may be one of the lucky ones, and already be nurturing the seed of an idea. But for the majority of writers, it's a difficult truth that it takes more than motivation alone to produce a masterpiece.

If you have been inspired, don't ignore it. A great many writers turn away the ideas that flit around in the back of their head because the idea may not fit in with the image they want to present, or because they would like to write something more 'literary'. If you do this you may be passing up a good thing. Don't ignore that persistent tug; go with it and see where it leads.

The ideas that flutter in the half-light of our conscious mind are those that make us think, that make us laugh, or cry, or scream. (Otherwise you would have forgotten them long ago.) These ideas may be nothing more than a scene, a single character, perhaps something as small as a phrase. Or they might be an entire plot line, an epic journey that you have been mentally planning for years. But whether large or small, these threads are important to you, and because of this you can weave them into a work of art.

Some writers we have worked with have passed up these faint cries for attention and then gone on to pen strained and sterile work because the ideas they eventually work with don't engage them. Chances are the ideas you already possess, even if they are barely visible, have a personal significance. If you give them a chance, you will be able to draw on a wealth of personal emotion and experience in order to produce a literary work that truly connects with its readers.

Here's a great tip if you're stuck for something to write about. Open your eyes and look around you. There is material everywhere. Read old diaries or browse through your notebooks. Read newspapers and magazines for fascinating stories. Sit in a café and gaze out of the window. Listen to conversations, invent stories for the people who walk past and write them down. It may take a while, but if you pay attention to the world around you, then inspiration will come. The trick is not to go looking for the idea of a lifetime. Sit back, relax, soak up your surroundings, listen to the scraps of thought that flutter through your brain and before you know it you'll be running round the block screaming 'Eureka!' At least when they let you out of hospital you'll have something to write about :-).

(Some materials are sourced from the Internet).

Attract more money

05/19/2011 18:48:00

In order to gain, we must let go.We all want more money and more peace of mind in our lives, especially given all the uncertainties in the world today. The more chaotic the environment, the more we naturally want security and peace. We can have this and more. However, it means giving up old familiar ways of how we think about security. Letting go of what we know can be a tall order for some of us; even if it is the key to getting what we want. The last couple of years have been a chaotic time economically. Chaos can bring with it new understanding and awareness, though. It has been a time to weigh decisions about money more deeply. We have all been directly impacted on some level by the current economic situation whether it is from increased prices at the grocery store, a drop in our 401Ks or having to make different choices about what we purchase and when.

No matter how we look at it, the current economic climate has raised our consciousness about money, how we spend it and our relationship with it. Some of us are tightening our belts while others are jumping in on the bargains to be had in real estate and the stock market. An optimist will see the current “crisis” as an opportunity; a pessimist will see it as a bleak and dreary time.

If I said that there is an abundance of all we need right now, many people would probably think I was living in a different country. However, there really is an abundance of all we need; it’s a universal truth. It is just a matter of changing perspectives. Generally, we tend to view abundance and prosperity in terms of quantity not quality. We have been conditioned to believe that the more we have or own the more abundant and prosperous we are. Prosperity and abundance are not about having more money or things. Prosperity and abundance are a way of being, a consciousness and a connection to the wholeness of creation. We all have the potential for prosperity and abundance in our lives; it is the natural order.

Here is how you can incorporate this powerful law into your life today:

Unclutter your life. Taking the time to clear out and organize all the physical spaces in your environment, even the car and the shed, will do wonders for opening up the flow.
Complete unfinished tasks.
Release things quickly instead of holding on to them. Put a smile on someone else’s face by donating your stuff.
Organize your finances. Talk to a financial planner if you can. Learn more about financial matters. Make a monthly budget. Clean out your brief case, purse or wallet. Open an “Unexpected Money” account at the bank.
Do a good deed, anonymously.
Set clear goals for the future. Be specific!
Create a vision board. Use magazines, pictures and words to visualize your goals.
Volunteer your time, talent or money to a worthy cause.
Let go of resentments and worry.

We can have more money and a greater sense of peacefulness in our lives—in any economy. If we are ready to develop a new relationship with money, stop clinging and let go of lack mentality, we can begin to view life from an optimist’s perspective. From that perspective we will be able to find gratitude in everything and have faith in the Divine Order of life. Prosperity can be our reality.

Read more: http://www.beliefnet.com/Inspiration/2009/01/Attract-More-Money.aspx#ixzz1MqRDoM1E