Planning Your Thanksgiving Party on a Budget

 

Are you hosting a Thanksgiving party this year?  If so, how much do you intend to spend on your party? 

Unfortunately, a large number of party hosts do not have as much money to spend on their party as they wish they had, but at the same time, often spend more than they wanted to. Whether you are looking at a personal party or a business party, budget can get you in over your head and make you regret the holidays if you aren’t careful.

While this may make you want to change your mind, about hosting a Thanksgiving party, it doesn’t have to. There are a number of different ways that you can go about planning a memorable Thanksgiving party while on a budget.

One of the best ways to plan a Thanksgiving party on a budget is to develop a plan for everything.

You will want to plan what types of foods you would like to serve at your party, how many guests you would like to invite, and what forms of entertainment you would like to have on hand. 

Making a detailed list of everything mentioned above is the best way to determine how much money you could expect to pay for everything that you want. 

Now, it is important to remember that what you could expect to pay might not necessarily be what you could afford to pay; that is where the budgeting comes in. 

After you have created a list of what you need to purchase, including food and other party supplies, you will need to determine exactly how much money you have to spend on your Thanksgiving party. 

If you notice a difference between what you want to spend and what you have to spend, you may find that you need to cut a few corners.  While it is nice to have the Thanksgiving party of your dreams, you will not want to go broke while doing so.

If you eliminate a certain type of food or a number of guests, to cut down your costs, you may easily be able to add them back on, depending on how much money you save when shopping for all of your needed Thanksgiving party supplies.

If you want to save money, when purchasing the supplies needed for your Thanksgiving party, as you likely do, there are a number of different steps that you can take to make that happen. 

Perhaps, the most important step to take is buying your food whenever you see it on sale, especially if you need to have a large amount of food.  Whether your party includes snacks or a full fledge Thanksgiving dinner, you can save yourself a fairly large amount of money by purchasing your food or drinks while they are on sale.  Typically, in the weeks leading up to Thanksgiving, you will find that many grocery stores lower the prices on their most popular Thanksgiving foods and cooking supplies.  This may be the best time to get your shopping done.

Since a party really isn’t complete without decorations, you may wish to purchase party decorations for your home.  For the largest selection of Thanksgiving decorations, it is advised that you purchase your decorations as soon as they hit the store shelves.  Unfortunately, it seems as if many retail stores skip Thanksgiving and jump right to Christmas.  This means that many retail stores are limited on the number of Thanksgiving decorations they carry and when they are gone, they are often gone. 

For the most affordable Thanksgiving decorations, you are advised to shop at discount stores, dollar stores, and department stores.  However, since there is a good chance that thousands of other shoppers are looking to get the same deals as you, it is important that you act fast, while you still have the chance. As I have often heard people like Brian Tracy say, “success loves speed’, and in this case speed can make or break the bank on supplies.

Along the lines of Thanksgiving party decorations is party seating.  Whether you are hosting a formal Thanksgiving party, complete with a sit-down dinner, or just a casual party, there is a good chance that you may need extra chairs and tables.

Your first impulse may be to buy them yourself, but you can save money by renting extra furniture from one of your local rental stores, particularly a party rental store.  You can also get extra tables and chairs, for free, by asking those that you know if they have any seating arrangements that you could borrow. 

The tips mentioned above are just a few of the many ways that you can plan a Thanksgiving party on a budget.  With the right amount of planning, it may be a well-kept secret that your party was not only easy to plan, but easy to afford.

Have a safe and happy holiday season.

(My favorite Recipe)

You Make The Money - Let Someone Else Sweat The Small Stuff

This one is for the control freaks reading my posts…come on, you know who you are.

Most people with an entrepreneurial spirit are looking for the right opportunity for them.  Many of them end up jumping from opportunity to opportunity, never really settling in on the system that will work well for them in their own particular circumstances. 

One of the main problems with these types of opportunities is that they look good on the outside but on the inside they are full of unrealistic dreams and just far too much work for the average person to be able to do. 

That is why in order for you to actually make money realistically in today's marketplace, it is necessary for you to be able to start up a business and let somebody else take care of most of the work for you.  It truly turns into a win-win situation.  But does such an opportunity actually exist?

15 years ago, nobody would've thought that you could sit at home, behind your own personal computer and reach an audience that was almost unlimited in size. 

Most people that do have a basic understanding of how business and the Internet work, realize that it is not only a possibility, it is truly a reality. 

Any good business opportunity is going to make use of the Internet but not in the same way as many of the opportunity hopping systems make use of it.  The Internet is commercial in nature, and it certainly is possible for you to build a successful, long-term business by using it. 

By going with the proper system, you will be able to build your business by piggybacking on the strengths of those who both started and maintain the system to the benefit of everyone involved.

Automation is really the key when it comes to Internet marketing. 

Although there is some work involved, any good online home based business opportunity will take on the bulk of the work involved. 

There are so many different scripts and automated systems that can not only help you to understand how the business works, it can also put it on autopilot for you.  The true leaders in these businesses know that they must take on the bulk of the work in order for their members to be successful.

That helps you to be able to start your business and to maintain it in the time frame that you have available.  They will be able to take care of everything from getting new leads to selling to those leads for you.  Once you are in the system, the entire process should be fully automated.

Don't fall for the marketing tactics of fly-by-night online business opportunities.  Success can certainly be yours by choosing an opportunity that will not only fit in with your lifestyle; it will be able to help you with the process as you need it.

 In this way, you will be able to build yourself a successful business and to progressively grow it around your own existing schedule.  Small successes feel good, large successes feel great and so does build you a future that you can actually see.

 

Accounting Principles

Yep, another one on accounting, but trust me when I say that this is only going to help you to make a successful transition out of the rat race into a successful lifestyle that you want, deserve and will enjoy.

 If everyone involved in the process of accounting followed their own system (or no system at all) there would be no way to truly tell whether a company was profitable or not. Most companies follow what are called generally accepted accounting principles, or GAAP, and there are quite a few books in libraries and bookstores devoted to just this one topic. Unless a company states otherwise, anyone reading a financial statement can make the assumption that company has used GAAP.

If GAAP are not the principles used for preparing financial statements, then a business needs to make clear which other form of accounting they've used and are bound to avoid using titles in its financial statements that could mislead the person examining it. 

GAAP are the gold standard for preparing financial statement. Not disclosing that it has used principles other than GAAP makes a company legally liable for any misleading or misunderstood data. These principles have been fine-tuned over decades and have effectively governed accounting methods and the financial reporting systems of businesses. Different principles have been established for different types of business entities, such for-profit and not-for-profit companies, governments and other enterprises.

GAAP are not cut and dried, however. They're guidelines and as such are often open to interpretation. Estimates have to be made at times, and they require good faith efforts towards accuracy. You've surely heard the phrase "creative accounting" and this is when a company pushes the envelope a little (or a lot) to make their business look more profitable than it might actually be. This is also called massaging the numbers. This can get out of control and quickly turn into accounting fraud, which is also called cooking the books. The results of these practices can be devastating and ruin hundreds and thousands of lives, as in the cases of Enron, Rite Aid and others.

I promise, this will be the last dry post on accounting, but I cannot stress enough that proper accounting will keep you out of the hot seat.

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The Basics

Basic Accounting Principles

Going off of my last post, I have gotten some feedback that indicates that accounting is one of those areas of contention for new start ups, so I will hit on the subject in a little more detail.

Professor of Accounting at the University of Michigan, William A Paton, is defined as having one basic function: "facilitating the administration of economic activity. This function has two closely related phases:

1)      Measuring and arraying economic data;

2)      Communicating the results of this process to interested parties."

Ok, before you tune me out, I know that was a little dry, but I can’t stress that your business is going to comprise of many “dry” things that project your business forward.

As an example, a company's accountants (if you are a solo act, this is you) periodically measure the profit and loss for a month, a quarter or a fiscal year and publish these results in a statement of profit and loss that's called an income statement.  These statements include elements such as accounts receivable (what's owed to the company) and accounts payable (what the company owes). It can also get pretty complicated with subjects like retained earnings and accelerated depreciation.

Much of accounting though, especially if you are just starting out, is mostly concerned with basic bookkeeping. This is the process that records every transaction; every bill paid, every dime owed, every dollar and cent spent and accumulated. 

But the owners of the company, which can be individual owners or millions of shareholders are most concerned with the summaries of these transactions, contained in the financial statement.

The financial statement summarizes a company's assets. A value of an asset is what it cost when it was first acquired. The financial statement also records what the sources of the assets were. Some assets are in the form of loans that have to be paid back. Profits are also an asset of the business.

Where this comes into play in the very beginning is when you are trying to create business accounts at a bank, get loans, or lines of credit from suppliers.

In what's called double-entry bookkeeping, the liabilities are also summarized. Obviously, a company wants to show a higher amount of assets to offset the liabilities and show a profit. The management of these two elements is the essence of accounting. javascript:void(0);

There is a system for doing this; not every company or individual can devise their own systems for accounting; the result would be chaos!

I know, I know, it bores me at times too. I just noticed that this was an area that new business start ups have a problem with, so I am doing what I do best, informing the masses. If you can use this information, great, if not, keep reading future posts they aren’t all this dry.

I have actually had a few start ups and when I first created my business, it lasted about three years, all because of not keeping accurate accounting records, so I can’t stress enough that if you haven’t got a good accounting system in place, start one immediately.

The shoe box of receipts in the bottom of the closet doesn’t work when your business actually starts bringing in revenue.

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Love Your Accountant

 

Even if you are great with numbers, you should still have an accountant or CPA go over your numbers just to double check. Remember, these people are trained to find things that you may overlook.

The accountant is the person that generally gets overlooked in a business until tax time comes, but a good relationship with a great accountant all year round can and will be an asset to your business.

It doesn’t matter if your business is just you and a computer working from the library, (My business model for almost a year) or if you run a corporation with multiple employees, your accountant will help keep the numbers straight and the IRS off of your back.

What Is Accounting Anyway?

Anyone who's worked in an office at some point or another has had to go to accounting. They're the people who pay and send out the bills that keep the business running.

They do a lot more than that, though. Sometimes referred to as "bean counters" they also keep their eye on profits, costs and losses. Unless you're running your own business and acting as your own accountant, you'd have no way of knowing just how profitable - or not - your business is without some form of accounting system in place.

No matter what business you're in, even if all you do is balance a checkbook, that's still accounting. It's part of even a kid's life. Saving an allowance, spending it all at once - these are accounting principles.

Every business and every individual needs to have some kind of accounting system in place. Otherwise, the finances can get away from you; we wouldn’t know what we've spent, or whether we can expect a profit or a loss from the business.

Staying on top of accounting, whether it's for a multi-billion dollar business or for a personal checking account is a necessary activity on a daily basis if you're smart. Not doing so can mean anything from a bounced check or posting a loss to a company's shareholders. Both scenarios can be equally devastating.

Accounting is basically information, and this information is published periodically in business as a profit and loss statement, or an income statement.

I, myself, have always had issues with numbers; long story going back to 7^th grade and a teacher that didn’t like me much…but I digress. Anyway, in business, it is important to know the numbers but it is also one of those jobs in your business that you can turn over to a professional and concentrate on whatever it is that you do that makes your business money.

Remember that anytime you are doing something in your business that takes you away from what it is that brings in the money, you are losing money.

That being said, the next few posts are going to be about accounting, because even if you have the best accountant in the world, you still want to have an idea of where every dollar goes.

You Never Get A Second Chance To Make A First Impression

 

 

In many cases, your website is the first thing your new potential customers will see when they meet you. Are you making a good first impression? Meeting someone online is little different than meeting them in person; unfortunately, you have less than a minute to catch their attention and keep them reading.

Do they like how you look? Are you saying what your customers are looking to hear? With the future of your online business riding on your words, are you making a good impression? Here are five ideas to have your customers staying longer and remember you long after the encounter ends:

l. Dress nicely and be well groomed. Have you ever been to a website you were ready to leave as soon as you got there? I have. Chances are things were too loud and too busy.

Though there may have been something there of interest to you, you weren't likely to have found it because there was just way too much stuff going on.

So what is the well groomed website wearing this season? Not too many loud flashing headlines. Instead, make sure your site is calm and confident. Your headline and first paragraph should be a summarization of the website theme. Who you are, what you're going to share with them and why you decided to do so.

No one likes to read half a page only to find the site didn't deal with his or her issue of interest. No flashing lights, no neon headlines, no blaring music or boisterous sales pitches blasting away.

2. Have a nice voice; be friendly and pleasant. Have you ever met someone you initially thought you'd like to get to know... and then they opened their mouth and you realized you knew all you needed to? Your website should speak to your readers like a good friend might. Be easy to understand. Write in short sentences, with short paragraphs.

Each paragraph should have a theme, stated in the first sentence, and elaborated on through its conclusion. And though it's so tempting to put some fancy font on your website, you have no idea what they'll see based on how their browser may be set up, which browser they are using, or if they are reading your site on a laptop, desktop or smart phone.

Stick to the basic Arial, Helvetica, and other Sans-serif fonts. They're easy on the eye.

3. Talk just to them; treat them like they're the only one. Rather than talking to the masses as a whole, write to a particular person. Picture them in your mind and write as though you are having a private conversation with them.

Be their friend - This is something for 'you', not just anyone. They'll feel like you really like them and like they have your undivided attention. Always use active voice rather than passive.   It will make them feel as though you're speaking directly to them.

4. Always focus on their needs rather than being pushy and trying to move too fast. Nobody likes to be around someone who pushes the relationship too quickly. You want to get to know someone before you get too emotionally involved. There was a reason this person chose to visit your website. Address that need. How can you solve their problem? Don't tell them what you have; tell them what problem of theirs you can solve. Making a purchase is an emotional decision. If you move too quickly, they won't be ready to commit emotionally. Get to know them first.

5. Give them a reason to stick around or come back. Give them something they can't get anywhere else. While yes, they probably won't feel as special at any other website, but on the off chance the competition is also following these five steps, give them a free mini-course. Let them see you care about their success and about them. Show them you value the relationship. Give them a free report; something to help them reach their goal.

If you follow these guidelines, you'll make a wonderful impression and your new friends won't want to leave. They'll appreciate your thoughtfulness and stick around long enough to see what an absolute 'peach' you really are.

 

 

Boo Activities

OK, A little away from business success here; Halloween is one of my favorite holidays, so I won’t apologize for creating a post that has a little Halloween fun in it. Use your knowledge of leadership (keep an eye out for my next post series that discusses this very topic) to get this started in your neighborhood, workplace, etc.

If you want to get your neighbors or co-workers in the Halloween spirit, be sure to engage them in a little game known as "Boo!" It's a popular game in some parts of the country, while in others, nobody has heard of it.

You might live in a neighborhood where you think nobody will participate in a round robin type of event as this, but you might be surprised. Sometimes during the holidays people will step up and get involved where before they wouldn't. It's possible, anyway and with you being the successful leader that you are, it shouldn’t be that big of a deal for you to get this going.

The game goes something like this, and then I will be described in more detail later. You print up a few poems and instructions on colorful paper (likely, orange). You get a treat bucket, or bowl or something and fill it with candy. You can also "Boo" people with candles, Halloween socks, and really whatever your imagination comes up with. You "Boo" two people at a time, leaving the items anonymously on their doorstep, desk, etc. You leave it with the instructions and the poem and hope they "Boo" other neighbors, co-workers, etc. Once you are done, you tape up a large "Boo!" on your door or desk so they know not to hit you up again.

Specifically, here's how it's done. Start this game around the very end of September or very beginning of October. If you want until everyone is decorated for Halloween, you're probably too late. You want this to spread around the neighborhood and that takes time, so you want to start it right as the season starts (or a little before, perhaps) and just as people are starting to think about Halloween. If you start too early, however, you might be out of luck as far as being able to purchase items.

So, it's the right time of the year and you're ready to go. Find a "Boo" poem and photocopy it. There are many variations of the poem. Here is a sampling:

 

"Boo!

To our good friends on the street;

Our homes' locations made us meet;

You now have been Boo'd, but who would we be?

We'll never tell, it's a secret, you see.

We placed these goodies for you and yours;

Then we ran fast, after knocking the door!

Happy Halloween!"

Or it might be a bit longer, something like this:

 

"The air is cool, the season fall

Soon Halloween will come to all;

The neighbors are after things to do

In fact, a neighbor brought this to you;

"Boo" is a sign of friendship power

Just hang it up and watch it double by hour;

On your front door is where it works

It wards off solicitors and scary jerks;

The treat that came with friendly note

Are yours to keep; enjoy them both;

The power comes when friends like you

Copy this and make it two;

Then others here among our friends

Will give warm fuzzies that will not end;

We'll all have smiles upon our face

No one will know who "boo'ed" whose place;

Just one short day to share your Boo

You must be quick so they don't know who;

And don't forget a nifty treat

Like something cute or something sweet;

Please join the fun, let's really hear it

And spread some "Boos" and neighborhood spirit!

 

 

Be sure to include a cute graphic of a ghost or something else that looks like it might say "Boo!" You might want to include some details on the flyer about what should be done next, in case you think the poem itself won't be clear enough. Then attach the poem to the goodie bag, basket, whatever you have created, and run out one night dropping your goodies on peoples' doorsteps. If you are just getting this started in your neighborhood, be sure to do more than 2 houses. You might find that some people don't participate and in that case, you want to have "Boo"ed enough people that you will get adequate participation.

What you're striving for is a neighborhood or office full of "Boo" doors by Halloween.