Announcing Huge Savings on Our Formation Packages
Filed Under: HBS Announcements
Tags: HBS Announcements, News
Harvard Business Services, Inc. is happy to celebrate July as Business Independence Month and we are offering unprecedented savings on all formations in Delaware. Never in our history have we offered such quality and value for such a reduced rate. We want to support the entrepreneurs and business people across America by helping them incorporate in the best state possible – Delaware.
Starting on July 1, 2010 at 9am EST, ALL of our prices on formation packages will be reduced by $30.00! Both the Domestic and International packages are included. Top quality and unsurpassed service have never been cheaper, NOW is the time to file!
- Basic Domestic Service is now $299.00
- Basic International Service is now $420.00
- Standard Domestic Service is now $399.00
- Standard International Service is now $620.00
- Premium Domestic Service is now $569.00
- Premium International Service is now $820.00
To take advantage of these savings online – simply start your order at www.delawareinc.com and enter the discount code “summer” to apply the discount. To apply by phone – just call one of our friendly and knowledgeable incorporation specialists at 800-345-2677 and the discount will be applied to any DE Filing Package. With every filing you will receive the best agent service rate in DE at just $50.00 per year and the best lifetime customer support possible. Please call or visit us online today.
The Best Revenge: Make More Money
Filed Under: Founder's Forum
Tags: Entrepreneurs, Government, Money, Taxes
American entrepreneurs really are a whole different breed. They don’t expect anyone to give them a break or a pat on the butt. They get their satisfaction from scoring, not praise. They take pride in doing something better than mankind ever did it before, not just their competitors. They pay their taxes to the local, state and federal governments without resentment, and then they pay for useless but mandatory insurance of all different varieties, interest on borrowed capital necessary to grow and merchant charges for credit card sales that scoop off a clean 2 – 4 percent right from the point of sale. For the credit card companies this is like a private tax that they get first, at the time of the sale, before anyone else gets a chance to cannibalize the entrepreneur’s “gross sales”.
Question: How many congressional Representatives and Senators can you buy with 2% of America’s retail gross sales? Answer: Just about all of them. Credit card companies ARE the BANKS. If you think banks make money lending money you are falling for the image of them THEY want you to have. Banks lend money, sure they do but it’s the credit card income that keeps them floating in a sea of money coming in everyday – NOT the interest they earn off your line of credit or your mortgage. They can shut down those sources of income instantly and still make gigantic profits. It USED to be that banks made money serving your capital needs, but times have changed.
So when the banks caved in to the federal government and made real estate loans that went sour because they never should have been approved in the first place, they didn’t need to go begging to Congress for a handout, because they’d already bought the Congressional Representatives and Senators they needed to patch things up with special legislation for them and billions of dollars of quick money to solve the problem. That’s how the biggest bailout in the history of man happened, which became a stimulus package so gargantuan that it staggered everyone in the world who read about it, and numbed even those Americans who repeated the words, “785 Billion” as though it was just another big number. But the money’s gone now, with no apparent impact on the economy as seen by the American entrepreneur, the progenitor of global prosperity.
American entrepreneurs brush it off, but now with a great deal of resentment. What will their strategy be for 2010 and beyond assuming the federal government aims to feed off them and piles on the fees and taxes and increased costs of staying in business? Will they organize politically? Will they re-organize their companies to be more efficient? Will they sharpen their focus on ROI? Or all of the above? I believe they’ll figure out how to make more money, pour themselves a scotch at 5 p.m. as usual and reinvent the world economy again.
Made in the USA
Now is a great time to start a manufacturing company in America.
I bought two Flexible Flyer sleds recently to have some fun in Switzerland when I go there next week. Having used them as a kid, as my personal vehicle in wintertime, I know every inch of the sled’s anatomy and how it performs even in extreme conditions. The sleds I received from my internet order were JUNK. Made to look like the real thing, with the same familiar logo. The metal parts were re-engineered to look like a sled but they were weak and even flimsy. The wooden slats that you lie on were the same quality wood as a pallet, not a craftsman-built sled like I used as a kid. The pins used to hold the steering mechanism together arrived with one snapped in two from shipping it. I wonder how it will hold up under my sledding on it! 200 pounds of me bumping up and down as I careen down a 600 foot hill in the mountains. The sleds were broken upon receipt, but I fixed them up with four bolts, duct tape and sandpaper. A sticker on the underneath side said MADE IN CHINA and DO NOT REMOVE THIS STICKER, but it was peeling off upon arrival and fell off during my repacking them for the trip to the alps. Yes, I’m going to try them out, but I wish I had a sturdy ol’ Flexible Flyer, made in the USA like I had years ago.
I can’t tell you how many things I’ve purchased the past year that looked like the real thing, but almost immediately fell apart or rusted or broke or never worked out of the box. All made in China. I’m sure you’re noticing the same thing. A toaster lasts a year, tops. My mother’s GE lasted my whole childhood. All of a sudden, we look around and we’re replacing everything all the time. The world calls us a consumerist society, because we have to buy everything new again every year or two because nothing lasts longer than that anymore.
Nothing, that is, except things still actually made in America. We’re still the best at manufacturing almost anything. But we can’t manufacture it cheaper than the Chinese can make it AND ship it to America. Free Trade, and the perception that the lower priced item is the one to buy, has forced most American manufacturers to produce in China or face extinction. We all know that.
What’s worse is GREAT American brands like Schwinn and Flexible Flyer have been bought up by the Chinese for peanuts and the products coming out under those brands are just plain junk.
“Made in America” is going to make a comeback. Sooner or later American consumers, now facing a loss of disposable income and only long-term prospects to return to affluence again will choose to buy what lasts and they will turn back to American made goods. To find products still made in America look at http://www.stillmadeinusa.com/.
The world will react when this happens. The “American Consumer” is the most powerful group of individuals on the face of this Earth, in the whole history of this Earth, and it extends across all religious, political and ethnic groups. When American consumers begin to DEMAND products made in America the recession will take care of itself.
As long as we’re willing to buy the cheapest and keep China in business instead of our neighbors, we have no hope of real recovery from the deep financial reversal we’ve had thrust upon us over the past ten years by corrupt financial services companies and our needy, greedy, seedy Congress.
Happy New Year! 2010
Filed Under: Essays, Founder's Forum
Tags: Entrepreneurs, Startup
If you’re just starting a business now, or thinking of it, your timing couldn’t be better. Starting a small LLC during an economic slump greatly increases your chances of success in so many ways. If you already run a successful small business, 2010 will challenge your ability to adapt.
For a start-up, you succeed or you die. That’s a strong incentive. During boom times you can always go back to your old profession or find another job even better than the last one. Any business – fundamentally — is only successful if the “money in” is greater than the “money out”. The more “money in” compared to the “money out” is the primary measurement in business success. That may seem simple, but it can become foggy in boom times when “early losses” can be tolerated for future success. If you keep it simple and work out of your home, how much do you really need to successfully take care of the “overhead” including the home and family expenses?
Actually, the list of advantages to starting a private little LLC now could go on and on. The internet advantage, the small computer advantage, the smart phone advantage, the low overhead advantage, the overnight shipping advantage, the changing climate advantage… the list goes on and on. It all boils down to this: because you can take advantage of being small, you have the advantage over businesses that have been successful and are established for a decade or more.
In contrast, successful small business owners that have been through the tough times in the beginning and then experienced growth and expansion due to increased demand and excellent performance in their field are vulnerable right now — perhaps more vulnerable than any period in the past 80 years.
Established small businesses have acquired increased administrative costs, increased government fees and expenses, increased energy costs, increased medical insurance costs, increased payroll costs, increased rent costs, increased insurance costs etc. etc. etc. The bottom line is, the bottom line isn’t what it used to be, and all indications are that this trend will continue. When the “money-in” becomes LESS than the “money-out” the small business has a problem.
The government term for a small business in this situation is “Too Small To Save”. Doesn’t that make you feel special? Seven hundred and eighty five BILLION dollars for failing bankers and insurance companies to give multimillion dollar bonuses to themselves and nothing for small companies hit hardest by the fraud the government and the bankers perpetrated upon them and the whole global economy.
All last year, our congress dished out billions to a few big companies and became fixated on taking over our health care industry, even while they run V.A. hospitals so badly already. Only one thing is certain about the new health care plan, it will cost small businesses more and it will introduce new taxes that will become part of our increasing costs of providing our goods and services to our customers.
Almost as bad as what Congress DID last year is what they DIDN’T DO. Congress ignored working on a new tax law. This is important because many current tax incentives for small businesses expired on December 31, 2009. At the last minute they threw some extensions into the Health Care bill, but the House and the Senate couldn’t agree upon it so, officially, many incentives that have kept American small businesses competitive in a global marketplace and growing for the past three decades expired December 31, 2009.
Currently, successful companies that want to stay successful will be the ones proactively raising their prices, producing less more profitably, investing in energy efficiency, doing more with fewer people and testing new products and services that afford them a higher margin.
In either situation, start-up or established company, small businesses are the backbone of the American economy and the American economy fuels the world economy. When it comes to ending the recession and returning to prosperity everyone’s counting on you!
Small Business Tax Breaks
Small business tax breaks may expire soon. As the year 2009 comes to an end, Americans who run small businesses are scratching their heads. While the federal government seems hell-bent on nationalizing health care – at a great cost, but little benefit, to currently successful businesses – it is ignoring the elephant in the room: THE TAX LAW.
On December 31, 2009, less than two weeks from this posting, NUMEROUS tax breaks for small businesses will automatically expire as we ring in the new year. INCREASED TAXES will result automatically. In other words, instead of raising taxes by NEW TAX LAWS, the taxes that small businesses pay will go up next year dramatically due to the expiration of tax incentives many small businesses have depended upon for years. These incentives were carefully crafted – by a prior and much wiser congress — to stimulate economic growth and incentivize entrepreneurs to invest in technology and new equipment, while at the same time, providing the maximum gross tax revenue for government.
During tough times businesses fall into two categories, those that make it and those that don’t. Those that don’t make it fall either quickly or slowly. Both are painful, for everybody involved: the owners, the employees, the vendors, the lenders, the chauffeur, the gardeners and the cook. Failure trickles down just as prosperity does, contributing to the downward spiral.
The ones that make it fall into three categories: Those who have saved and have adequate resources to make it through, those who make strategic improvements quick enough on every level that turn out to be correct, and those who can take advantage of an unusual uptrend in the storm that drowns out the others. For example, if you’re in the business of installing or producing solar and/or wind energy systems right now, you’re not concerned about the current recession.
At Harvard Business Services, we reacted early to reduce costs across the board. When the State of Delaware DOUBLED many of its filing fees, we were forced to raise our prices to customers.
Survival in 2009 is one thing. Survival next year is another. Those of us who think we KNOW how to adapt to what’s coming in the way of new and increased costs of doing business are just BS-ing. We’re scratching our heads. Sure, we’ll have to increase prices; sure, we’ll have to trim the staff by another 15%; sure we’ll grow at the same time… requiring more people. Sure. Hmmmmmm. Scratch-scratch.
