Five small businesses will be recognized for their best practices and accomplishments in the following areas: Customer Service, Green Business, Human Resources & Leadership, Marketing & Sales, and Technology. New for 2010, the “Best of the Year Awards” will be awarded in the following categories: Social Responsibility Program of the Year, International Operations Program of the Year, Non Profit of the Year and Diverse Supplier of the Year.

Nominations are available at www.thesmallbizawards.com.

Step One: Build Your Budget

The following graph is a suggested percentage breakdown of your monthly expenses. Sticking to these guidelines will help you live within a budget:

Food includes groceries, eating out at restaurants, and alcohol. Food should be about 14.1% of your monthly income.

Transportation should be about 19.1% of your monthly budget and includes a car payment, expenses related to a car, such as gasoline and oil changes, as well as other forms of transportation such as taxis, subways, and buses.

Housing, about 32.9% of your monthly budget, includes the cost of rent or mortgage plus utilities such as electricity, water, and cable.

Insurance and healthcare should be about 15.8% of monthly budgeted expenses and consists of insurance premiums for health, life, disability, and long-term care insurance. This category also includes pensions.

Entertainment, about 6.0% of your monthly budget, includes books, music, magazines, movies, shows, sporting events, and gifts.

Personal care includes clothes, shoes, cosmetics, dry cleaning, and laundry related expenses and should be about 5.3% of your monthly income.

Last, but certainly not least, savings and miscellaneous is whatever money is leftover, but hopefully about 6.8%. This category includes expenses towards debt reduction, loan payments, investments, and charitable contributions.

By budgeting based on these guidelines, you will find that you are living more within your means and will be well on your way to financial freedom in no time!

Remember: These percentages are merely suggestions. You might spend more in one area, but less in another. And that’s why step two is so important to the success of your budget.

Step Two: Monitor Your Spending

After you’ve established the guidelines for your budget, you need to monitor what you actually spend versus what was allocated in your budget.

I heard on the radio today that the average Starbucks customer spends close to $6 per visit, 18 times per month. That adds up to a whopping $1,296 per year, which he or she otherwise could have invested. Now, this is not a Starbucks rant (I’m a huge fan), but rather an attempt to make you aware that the small expenses really do add up. In the metropolitan areas of the States, it is not unusual that lunch runs $10+ per person, not including tax and gratuity. Five lunches per week at those rates come up to $50+ per week, or more than $2,600 per year.

If you are serious about your financial future – especially if you strive for financial independence – then your small expenses provide an excellent starting point. If your goal is to save another $3,000 per year, chances are you can do this quite easily by bringing your own lunch or making your own morning coffee. Or you can compromise and cut back rather than exclude. Cutting back is usually the best way to go anyway as abstinence typically causes nothing but cravings.

So keep a spreadsheet or a notebook or a list in your iPhone – whatever works for you – and write down every purchase you make over the next month, no matter how small. Exclude nothing, not even parking, gas, and other things you hardly consider “spending.” You’ll be surprised at all the corners you can cut and all the room in your budget you never would have thought of.

When you take charge of your finances, you can align your life and future accordingly.

I ran into repeated problems when trying to get my original website up and running (have you ever heard of a website being done on time and under budget?).  First, the company that I hired closed its doors. Then, the designer who took over the project fed me one excuse after another for non-completion (including—can you believe it?—the dog got sick).  One year later, the site was useless. Search engines couldn’t read its programming language; the shopping cart and ezine signup were totally “user un-friendly”.  So I scrapped the site and started all over again, pretty much from scratch.  Ouch! went the strings of my purse.

Here’s what I learned from that situation:

1.  Have a written budget.

Because I had written contracts both times, I knew what it would cost me.  But I heard of a hair salon owner in Texas who got slapped with a $20,000 bill for her website – and for what? All she wanted was a brochure-type site with a modest shopping cart feature.  How did that happen?  She got dragged into meeting after meeting with the designer, all of which showed up on the bill. The result: A whopper (of a bill), with a cheesy site, to boot. Know your budget and stick to it!!

2. Know what you want.

What do you really want the vendor to do for you?  If it’s a website, do you need to get noticed? Capture visitors? Create a community?  And what do you really need now?  Give careful thought to the essentials versus the sexy extras (which can wait until your budget is more robust).

3. Ride herd on time frames.

With my original site, I fell down on the job here.  I had smartly negotiated the legal terms, but didn’t focus as carefully on the business terms. I should have (and did, the second time around) negotiated deadlines at various stages. If the designer failed to meet them (through no fault of mine), I could cancel the contract, or give the designer a modest time to shape up. An easy exit from a lousy situation can save you thousands of dollars!

4. Always have a “Plan B”.

When you have a contract with a corporate vendor, it’s hard to tell just how many people sit behind the “veil.”  What happens if the person performing the work gets sick?  Or get swamped with other projects?  What will the vendor do to get back on track? For that matter, what will you do if they don’t?  What’s your contingency plan?

5. Good enough is good enough.

The surest path to a leaky wallet is to demand absolute perfection.  Yes, you want the project (say, website), done competently, creatively, timely, and according to plan. But if you hold to the mythic ideal of the “perfect result,” you’ll find yourself spending vast amounts of needless time, money, and energy on tweaking something that really is “good enough.”  Like buying a $500 bottle of wine when you have a $50 palate: will you really appreciate the subtle differences between the two?  Is now really the time for that extra expense?  As the author John Updike wrote, “Perfectionism is the enemy of creation.”  Hanging on to achieving the perfect result can prevent you from moving forward with more important and productive areas of your business.

Case in point, a couple of years ago – with very few exceptions – I stopped speaking for free. No ego; there just comes a point in your career where you have to take things to the next level. What’s more, if you charge one organization a speaker’s fee and then don’t charge a similar organization (word gets around), you lose cool points and integrity.

In the past few weeks, I’ve received a couple of speaking requests from organizations that for whatever reason (economy, etc.), have decided they would love to have me speak, but could not do so due to lack of funding.

What bugs me most is not that the organizations don’t have the money, but that they don’t bother to offer other forms of currency. If you’re reading this, and you’d like to bring in a speaker whom you don’t think you can afford, here are a few things you can offer a speaker that might make up for your lack of cash flow (it doesn’t mean they’ll accept it, but you can try):

• BORS (Back of the Room Sales) – this means information product sales and book signings and sales
• Opted-in attendee list complete with email addresses (ethical speakers know better than to spam your list)
• Fee-based laser consulting/”hot seat” sessions – this sets the stage for possible new client scenarios
• Key meeting set-up – if your members fit in the target market for the speaker (which they should), why not offer to set up a few one-on-one meetings for them while they’re in town? This could also lead to a potential client scenario.
• Arrange for media coverage – if you can’t pay me, at least help secure media coverage and a one-on-one interview for the event.

I’m sure there are many other ways to compensate speakers. The main point is, there’s more than one way to “pay” a qualified speaker and if you know your budget is tight, plan on offering one or more of the above options to help sweeten the pot so you can pay for what you NEED.

——————–

Lena L. West is the CEO of xynoMedia http://www.xynoMedia.com a company that helps growing companies profit from the power of social media & the Internet.

In just 5 minutes you can buy a domain name for $10 a year, sign up for a hosting company for $10 a month, start your blog for free and start posting to promote your products or services.

You don’t need a fancy blog, you just need good content. It is always ideal to have a fancy design or a custom made website, but in the meantime there are so many free themes and templates available today that you will probably find one that you want without investing a dime. You can always invest later on a customized design.

The only thing you will really need to start is a squeeze page or landing page and a blog. You can invest on a website later. Signing up to social media sites like Facebook, LinkedIn, Plaxo, Twitter and others are free and get you exposure, allowing you to reach new friends, prospects and clients. Your friends are some of your greatest allies. With your squeeze page, blog and profile on various social media sites you can start promoting your business or services right away. Build your list of targeted potential clients and make sure to follow-up by email. To follow up most efficiently you will need an autoresponder starting at $15 a month. You now have most of your marketing tools in place for less than a $50 a month.

Once your online presence is set up, you will need to face the world and attend networking events. Select the event that caters to your target market. Otherwise, you will be paying to attend events that will never result in clients.

The one marketing tool you can’t skimp on is your business card. Even if you are on a meager budget do not print your business card on your own. It won’t look professional at all. Remember, you only have 10 to 30 seconds to make the right impression so don’t ruin those precious seconds with a haphazard business card. If people see that you can’t invest a few dollars or a few hours of your time on a professional representation of yourself, they will not invest, trust or do business with you.

There are plenty of resources online that offer 250 business cards for roughly $30. I don’t suggest that you buy more than 250 cards at a time, because you want to use the back of your cards as a promotional tool also, and change the message on the back on a regular basis. Last but not least, don’t try to do everything on your own, because you will end up doing very little during the day and not having enough time to promote your business.

Having a virtual assistant, even when just starting off, will help you tremendously. If you hire somebody even just for 5 hours a month to start that’s 5 hours you can concentrate on your core business instead of on paperwork. You can check online on Craigslist for example to find a virtual assistant for $10 an hour. Don’t see this as an expense but as an investment. The $100 that you will invest in your assistant will allow you to bring a lot more money since you will have more time for your clients.

You definitely can start your business on a shoestring, but be careful, this is just a temporary situation, if you want your business to grow fast, you will need to invest more at some point, in material, a new website, nicer promotional marketing tools as postcards or brochures and last but not least in continuing education. Only 10% of small business owners invest in classes, programs or coaching programs to take their business to the next level. If you are not ready to reach that goal at some point, you won’t run a successful business but just a hobby.

Do you want to learn more about how I attract clients with networking and social media? I have just recorded a 60-minute audio Networking Mastery Secrets.
Download it free here www.networkingmasterysecrets.com.

Before you start building or talking to web development firms you need to do 3 very important steps:

• Define the vision
• Create a budget
• Outline a plan

Defining the Vision

What is the big picture for your website?  This is more about functionality than design.  How many sections do you want on your website?  What will each section contain for content? Will some content display differently or have a sorting feature?  If you’re building an ecommerce site, what do you need to show when you first launch? What features do you want to eventually have? For example, customer reviews or login area for wholesalers. Defining your vision will help you focus on the needs of your customers. You should also take some time to understand the trends related to your industry and how they relate to updates and changes in your website.

Creating a Budget

Now that you have defined the big vision for your website be realistic about what you can afford for the first six months of the build and launch.  Other than pre-packaged websites it will take some time to build it.  What can you afford to invest in the website for your launch?  By knowing where you want to end up you can discuss today’s budget with tomorrow’s vision.

Outlining a Plan

Planning is an important part of getting what you want for what you can afford.  Take your vision and budget and break things out into phases. The foundation is the most important part of building a website.  The technology you invest in will allow you to grow.  The right content management system or the right shopping cart framework can give you all the tools to budget for growth.  Next, set target deadlines for each new feature to be added. This will give you an idea from a budgetary point of view to properly plan for allocating funds as your business grows.  I would also recommend trying to tie in marketing initiatives to the new feature launches that you are planning.  This is a great way to get more bang for your development and gives you additional ideas to market to your customers.

You may have heard the phrase a “website is never done”. When you think about designing or redesigning you should keep this approach in mind.  Building with phases can alleviate the pressures of having to invest your entire budget at once. You would not rent a 2,000 square foot office if you were just starting out.  Think about your website the same way and save money.