Miserable Tax Season Review
Miserable Tax Season Review
“For the majority of taxpayers who filed their returns and did not require IRS assistance, the filing season was generally successful. For the segment of taxpayers who required help from the IRS, the filing season was by far the worst in memory.” – Nina Olson, Tax Payer Advocate
After all that we read about, experienced and warned you all about during Tax Season 2015, we shouldn’t be surprised at the recent National Taxpayer Advocate’s dismal review of the 2015 filing season. We heard about the upcoming “miserable tax” season and warned you all in our post “Warning: “Miserable” 2015 Tax Season is Here“and then I told you my terrible (more…)
Whitney Houston’s Estate Plan
Whitney Houston’s Estate Plan
We’ve written on this blog before about celebrities and their notoriously bad Estate Planning. Often times these super stars leave their billions, homes, cars, jewels, royalties and family members in a big huge state of confusion, read about some specific cases in this post.
With the recent passing of vocal icon Whitney Houston’s daughter Bobbi Kristina Brown, there has been quite a bit of media coverage regarding Houston’s estate. Whitney Houston’s Estate Plan was actually well in order and updated when she passed. She left everything in her estate in a spendthrift trust to her sole heir, her daughter Bobbi Nicole Brown. She was to get 10% of the large estate at age 21, 25% at 25 and the remainder of the estate at 30.
At the time of her death (more…)
Tips for Hiring Top Talent
Tips for Hiring Top Talent
Every business owner knows how difficult, time consuming and expensive the hiring process can be. And on the other hand, every business owner knows how powerful and impactful a great new hire can be for the business. For that reason Andre Lavoie, CEO and Co-Founder of ClearCompany offers his advice on hiring. Here are his five key points:
1. Avoid basic, run-of-the-mill searches.
“Generic skill or technical-based searches, while applicable, will result in people who simply mention those terms in their resumes. Instead, try including detailed terms that focus on responsibility, such as create, manage, administer, design and configure.”
2. Take advantage of multiple sources.
Searching social media, hosting open houses and getting involved in community events are fantastic ways to get closer to talent.
3. Dig a well before you’re thirsty.
“When sourcing for one position, keep quality talent in mind for future positions. Sourcing gives employers and hiring managers an opportunity to connect with talent long before the need ever arises, which makes filling job openings with qualified candidates that much easier.”
4. Leverage, but don’t depend on, your tracking system.
“A company’s applicant tracking system (ATS) isn’t just great for storing resumes and running reports, it’s also a valuable sourcing tool.” However, Andre continues that, “a good majority of resumes in an ATS are discarded for not containing the right keywords. But the one word an ATS can’t find? Potential.”
5. Don’t post and pray.
“According to LinkedIn’s 2015 Global Recruiting Trends Report, 75 percent of professionals consider themselves “passive” candidates — that’s an awful lot of potential candidates that job posts don’t cater to. But by incorporating some of the candidate sourcing best practices outlined above, employers and hiring managers can take a more proactive approach to find great talent for their company.”
Hiring shouldn’t be the drag it’s often made out to be. It should be a process of discovery and merits as much or more attention than your top or bottom lines. We wish you luck in finding and hiring the best!
Avoiding Credit Card Debt
Did you know that Attorney Gary Quackenbush of GQ Law is also a financial guru? Most recently he was featured on San Diego’s NBC 7 news with Consumer Bob Hansen in a segment about credit card debt.
Credit cards can be both a blessing and a curse. For some people and at some times in life they are a blessing, allowing you to buy things you need when cash is tight. They can be an even more beneficial financial blessing when you simply buy things you can already afford on credit, pay off the card and earn those lovely credit card points that can be traded in for goods, sky miles on various airlines or even cash. The curse comes when credit card spending gets away from us, interest adds up and balances due shoot through the roof. The average US household carry a credit card debt of $4410.
A recent creditcards.com story compares the debt burdens of people living in the top 25 cities in the US. They took the average credit card debt owed then considered that monthly payments would be 15 percent of the median household income for that city. They then compared the number of months it would take the average person in each city to pay off the average debt owed by its citizens. The people in the San Francisco metro area came in at the top with it taking them just 9 months to pay off their average credit card debt. San Diego came in the middle with the average consumer needing 13 months to pay off their debts. Rounding out the bottom of the ranks was San Antonio, Texas where the average person would need 16 months to pay off their average credit card debt. For more details and to get the full story follow this link to creditcards.com
To see what Consumer Bob found out about credit card debt in San Diego follow this link. You’ll also see our very own attorney Gary’s input about how to know when you’ve gone too far with your debt.
The “Founder’s Mentality”
The Founder’s Mentality
Remember the days where you woke up excited, energized and optimistic about your business? When there was vitality, innovation and agility? Now you wake up, slump through your morning routine and drag into work to face all of your day’s challenges. There are endless meetings, approvals to sign, phone calls to answer and emails to reply to. And you wonder how this is any different than the corporate job you so readily avoided when you began your own company.
The remedy? Bain & Company calls it the “Founder’s Mentality.” They teach:
“Young disruptive companies with ambitious founders know how to deliver on the front line. If they want to sustain growth in the long term, they will have to achieve scale without losing their insurgent mindset.”
The definition of insurgent from dictionary.com is, “rising in active revolt… a rebel or revolutionary.” Are you at war on behalf of your customer? You used to be!
It’s time to bring that back. To burn out the bureaucracy, bring back the innovation and start moving fast! When you think like a founder, you put it all on the line because every dollar is yours. Think back to the days when you started the company. What was it that made you passionate? What was it that got you up early and kept you up late? Write it down, put a note on your desk or picture on your wall but never forget what gave you the “Founder’s Mentality”!
Boost Your Brain Power
Boost Your Brain Power
The mind is a muscle and according to a recent article published in Success Magazine, our brains start to power down in our early 40s! I imagine that like me, everyone wants to hang on to that brain power and do whatever it takes to make that “mind muscle” work for you. Lets identify some of the things that contribute to this mind weakening and talk about how to avoid them.
Strong brain
Contributors to diminished brain power:
- Frequently and quickly switching back and forth between tasks
- Over focusing, remembering every little detail
- The need to instantly respond to emails, text messages, etc.
Here are a few tips to boost your brain power from the Center for Brain Health at the University of Texas at Dallas:
- Rest your brain: Give yourself some quiet time each day. Even just a few minutes of mental rest can help your decision making, problem solving and productivity.
- Take things one task at a time: Focus on one task at a time. Finish one thing before starting the rest. This is easier said than done in a fast paced workplace that puts high value on multi-tasking but its essential to improving accuracy and productivity as less focus shifting helps you spend less time on each task in the long run.
- Prioritize: Make and to do list and tackle the most crucial items first before moving on to less important tasks. This will help improve your productivity and efficiency.
- Mix it up: Just say no to the status quo! Mix it up. The more creative you are at work the more your brain is stretched and grown in turn producing even more creative solutions and ideas.
We hope that with these few tips you’ll be better able to boost your brain power and run your business. Being an entrepreneur is no easy task and we all can use a little boost in the brain game!
Market Disruption and How to Confront It
Market Disruption and How to Confront It
So you’ve owned your business for five, ten maybe twenty years and things are going along just fine. Then suddenly a new way of doing things comes along. The internet, mobile devices, a new type of forklift that’s ten times lighter, but just as strong as yours—whatever it may be—and now things have changed. People don’t want to come to your office for an initial consultation, they want to pick you from your website, and now they want the work done twice as fast for the same cost. Welcome to the world of disruptive technologies—new developments that have the power to change the pace of customer demand and that if left alone, could take away the majority of your business, if not all.
Clayton Christensen entrepreneur, professor of business administration at Harvard University and author of many books on disruption and other topics, has spent the majority of his professional career studying these situations. In his bestseller, “The Innovator’s Dilemma,” he describes in detail this situation in various industries and provides “how to” advice in order to adapt and stay competitive. Today we’re going to touch at a very high level just one principle: Separate the business.
In studying great firms that were once industry leaders and then later failed due to disruptive technologies, there was one common theme among that survived—They set up a completely separate business that adopted the change and kept the original business but made some adaptations. The idea is that if you try to make a huge shift in the way you do business, you’ll lose a large portion of your current customer base and die from lack of income, but if you don’t make changes, you won’t be able to acquire the new type of customer and in the future you’ll be out of luck. The solution is to build a separate company with separate processes, separate employees, and separate financials that can rigorously adopt the disruptive changes taking place.
While this is easier said than done, it is a must do. For more on the subject, see “The Innovator’s Dilemma” or other sources of literature that discuss this process. In a world of fast changes, you’ve got to change fast!
– Your financial, legal and tax professionals at GQ Law.
Accidentally Self-Employed E-book
Accidentally Self-Employed E-book
Need help starting your new business? Not sure if your business is set up properly?
We can help! Having worked with entrepreneurs just like you and being an entrepreneur himself, Attorney Gary Quackenbush is a small business expert. Inspired by Gary’s own experience ending up “accidentally self-employed” and starting up a law practice on his own after his firm dissolved, his user friendly ebook is just the thing to get you and your business started on the right foot.
Gary’s E-Book Accidentally Self Employed gives answers to the most common new business questions. Read your free copy to learn what type of business is best for you and your business goals. Click on the link above or image below to request your FREE copy. It’ll be sent to your email inbox right away.
The book clearly explains the ins and outs of the various business entities available, guiding you as you make one of the biggest decisions in starting a business- what type of business to form. With details about sole proprietorships, limited partnerships, limited liability companies (LLC) and California corporations, this book is a must read on your journey through the business formation process.
Click on the image below to request your FREE copy today!
Optimistic Entrepreneurs
Optimistic Entrepreneurs
San Diego is home to many optimistic entrepreneurs- why not join them! San Diego entrepreneur and San Diego business attorney Gary Quackenbush can help!
According to a recent Union Tribune article, San Diego entrepreneurs have hit an all time high in optimism. The article references the Union Bank Small Business Economy Survey, a survey of 631 entrepreneurs on the West Coast. The survey found that (more…)
Living Trust Basics: Gary’s NEW E-Book
Living Trust Basics
He’s done it again!
We all know and love Gary’s first e-book Accidentally Self-Employed and now he’s published a new e-book, Living Trust Basics.
Simple and easy to read, Living Trust Basics is a must read for EVERYONE! Gary answers some of your most pressing Estate Planning questions and teaches you how to make sure your future, your loved ones and your assets are properly protected in case something happens to you.
Do I need an Estate Plan?
How do I avoid Probate/Conservatorship?
What causes Probate?
What are Power of Attorneys and do I need them?
What is the difference between a trustor and a trustee?
What is a beneficiary?
How does trust funding work?
Gary’s goal in writing this e-book is to provide lively, informative, and comprehensive information about personal estate planning.
All of us want to avoid death, disability, and taxes. Not one of us can avoid death, but each one of us can minimize the effects of death or disability on our families, and avoid taxes if we know how. The purpose of this ebook is to tell you how.
Gary A. Quackenbush
Click on the links above to request your FREE copy today! Also tune in to 1210AM radio in San Diego from 5-6pm tomorrow, Tuesday April 28th, to hear Gary LIVE on the radio talking about his new book. You can also listen live online at www.kprz.com you won’t want to miss it!