Find Hidden Money for Your Business Through Revenue Recovery

If you're searching for ways to increase your bottom line, starting a new venture or going after a new business opportunity might not be the answer. Your small business could have hidden money through overcharges that you're not aware of - and revenue recovery may be the answer.

Did you know that businesses lose approximately $250 billion per year through inefficient billing systems and practices? More than 80% of all businesses are overcharged annually without their knowledge! Your home business or small business could very well be within this percentage.

Don't become a victim of poor business management. Good business economics comes from smart management. Knowing about overcharges and how to prevent them will greatly improve your business finance management today and for the future.

What are Overcharges?

Overcharges are additional charges that you may have paid unawares on certain types of bills. These "additional" charges are often accounting or typing mistakes, hidden fees that you were not informed about, or even fees tacked onto bills by a dishonest company. There are many types of overcharges. Here are just a few that are common with businesses.

Workers Comp Overcharges

If you have workers compensation issues at your workplace, then you may also have mistakes that are costing you money each year. These mistakes are often discovered in payrolls, experience modifications, classifications, or NCCI rules applications. There may also be insurance company overcharges. These "mistakes" can cost your company thousands of dollars per year if not caught in time.

Telecom Overcharges

Some studies show that almost 80% of telephone bills contain errors that cost American businesses millions of dollars per year. Telecom overcharges have become a major problem because of the variety of telecom services offered today. Many corporate businesses and franchises must keep up with long distance calling and toll-free calls, cell phones, answering services, telemarketers, and customer service calls. It's no wonder telecom overcharges are so common.

Telephone bills have become so complicated to read that many ignore the details and just write a check for the bill! What's the result? Businesses lose hard-earned money.

Income Tax Overcharges

Businesses can also lose money through income tax overpayments. This can occur whether it's an individual who owns a small home-based business or a small business owner with 5 to 100 employees. The IRS rules change almost every year, so keeping up with income taxes can be a difficult task - even for a financial consultant or accountant!

Tax overcharges can and do occur every year for individuals and business owners. What many don't realize is that these overcharges can turn into hefty refunds if submitted to the IRS as amended tax returns. Your business could have tax overcharges waiting to be claimed!

Rent, Leases and Utilities

Other areas where overcharges can occur are with business offices or building rent, leases, or utilities. In cases where the landlord includes utilities with your rent or lease agreement, he may be getting a discount on utilities, but charging you, the tenant, full price. Therefore, you might possibly negotiate a better rate if this is found to be true. This could result in tremendous savings every month for your business.

Revenue Recovery Solutions

There are many ways to investigate and recover lost revenue; however, it can be very time-consuming to audit all of your business information and bills each month. Luckily, there are many companies such as AmCorp Management that specialize in revenue recovery. They keep up with business news and investigate your bills for you to find overcharges and recover them for you. They provide business services that save you time so you can test new business ideas and possibly increase your bottom line each year through revenue recovery.

Consider revenue recovery to be a lifesaver, not a waste of time. You might be surprised at the money that has been hidden in overcharges year after year.

Business Trip Or Vacation- Bed And Breakfasts Are A Hidden Treasure

Within the same city, across the country, or on the next continent to the East, you wont ever find two bed and breakfasts alike. They aren't chain enterprises where cookie-cutter-like consistency is a company rule. Rather, they often share the culture of their surrounding area, and reflect the taste and personality of the owner.

For the vacationer, they provide a refreshing, home-like setting to unwind from a day of site seeing and pounding the pavement shopping. For the business traveler, with many offering wireless internet and computer services, they provide a much more relaxing and productive environment than a tiny hotel room.

No matter the reason for your travels, you'll sleep better knowing you can go down to the kitchen in the middle of the night and have a glass of milk and cookies or take off your shoes, grab the newspaper and put your feet up on the couch!

The Host Advantage

Since your hosts usually own the home they are friendly and helpful people. You're invited in, not just a number to a minimum wage, behind the counter employee. Because you're not waiting in a stalled check-in line in a crowded lobby, your arrival is a welcome experience. Your hosts will take the extra time to guide you to where you want to go and introduce you to a new city.

That personal touch is much more helpful than having a map left in a hotel room for you to figure out on your own. B & B hosts know their cities well; they'll give you first hand tips on great restaurants, shopping, and local information about the city tourists and new visitors wouldn't otherwise know. Rely on them for safety tips while you're out in the strange and unfamiliar, and to help you understand the customs of the locals, like tipping or hailing a cab for example.

Find Your Perfect B & B Online

Most B & Bs are advertised on the Internet. You can find many choices by going to any search engine, like Google or MSN, and type in "Bed and Breakfast Toronto” for example. Their websites will have pictures of the home, the bedrooms, prices and information on amenities. Don't assume that every accommodation will have wireless Internet and parking available. Be sure to do your research.

Bed and Breakfasts, like hotels, will range from opulent 5 star mansions to quaint, little simple places for the budget conscious. Fine tune your search to a specific search like “Bed and Breakfast Downtown Toronto”. Some good websites that list and compare many B & Bs are:

www.lanierbb.com
www.tripadvisor.com
www.bedandbreakfasts.ca
www.bbcanada.com
www.globalbedandbreakfastlinks.com

Different Places, Different Policies

Hosts have different policies for their establishments, and it's always best to ask questions about things important to you before you book. Do you need parking? Does it cost extra? Is there a curfew? Some other things that vary are cancellation policies, if they have internet use for you, laundry facilities, air conditioning – neither you or the host wants a surprise if there is something that you need that they don't have it to offer.

Remember, these are people's homes and a good host wants to provide all the services you would expect at a hotel, except for the hotel atmosphere. They're relying on their charm and the warmth of their home to make your stay an exciting, fun, welcoming and comfortable experience for you.

Breakfast Has Many Definitions

The breakfasts themselves differ as much as the decors, locations and house types. The owners normally prepare them so you'll have a home-made, personal touch to your first meal of the day. I've stayed in B & B's that have a self-serve style, continental breakfast. These can be a tasty variety of homemade breads and jellies and treats, or they could be fruit, cereals, yogurts etc, a common standard for the continental breakfast. Don't be afraid to ask for details on the phone. I've expected a delightful morning meal and sadly had to force down commercially bought, frozen, fattening and salty unfulfilling snack.

Others make a wonderful morning event, providing a menu of hot breakfast standards including pancakes, French toast, home fries and eggs. These are my personal favorites because you can bet the owner has their unique flair or a family recipe that you're not going to find anywhere else. In fact, I visited one B & B where they grew their omelet vegetables right outside in the garden, and the jams and jellies were homemade right on site.

What to Expect

I have found that if a B & B has five or more rooms, they usually have staff to help out the owners. Just like a hotel, you'll get your beds made and plenty of fresh towels. Personally I like the larger establishments because the house is usually more mansion-like and bursting with character, and normally they can then afford to provide a few more amenities. If you like interacting with people from all over the globe, this would be definitely for you.

I've met people from North and South America, Europe, Asia – basically the world. Bed and Breakfast travelers tend to be friendlier, happier and easy-going types that seem more extroverted and genuinely glad to meet each other and enjoy good company and conversation – it's always a pleasure to compare stories and learn new things about people's homelands.

After my first stay in a Bed & Breakfast, I was hooked. If you've never stayed in one, give it a try. You might be pleasantly surprised… I loved being a guest so much I decided to become an owner!

Grow Your Business By Finding Your “Hidden” Organization

Have you ever wondered what enables some entrepreneurs to exponentially grow their businesses while others go flat, or worse? Their secret lies in their ability to find and lead what I call their “hidden” organization. You may think you don’t have an organization, hidden or otherwise, especially if your business consists of a “gang of one” or there are only a few employees on staff. But the fact is that even the smallest businesses have an organization, and your success or failure is determined by your ability to find it and then lead it in a way that gives you more of the results you want.

This may be a totally new concept to consider. It’s easy to think of giant corporations as having organizations. These are the “internal stakeholders” consisting of employees, departments and committees on the payroll. However, large companies are realizing that independent consultants, suppliers, outsource providers, alliance partners, customers and other “external stakeholders” also play a critical role in their organization’s ability to achieve high performance results.

Just as your business is part of your customers’ external organization, it also has external stakeholders of its own that make up your hidden organization. The better you become at recognizing and leveraging the power of these many relationships, the more likely it is that you’ll survive unexpected twists and turns in the economy, minimize problems, and take your business to the next level of growth.

Who makes up your hidden organization?

It can be challenging to identify the many stakeholders who impact your business. While some of these relationships are obvious, it’s easy to overlook and underestimate the impact of others. However, if you think of an external stakeholder as any person, group or organization that has a stake (whether they recognize it or not) in the success of your business, your organization includes, but is not limited to:

•Customers
•Suppliers
•Outsource providers (payroll services, virtual assistants, etc.)
•Advisors (attorneys, accountants, bankers, business coaches, consultants, etc.)
•Alliance partners
•Subcontractors
•Competitors
•Business and trade associations to which you belong
•Advisory boards

When you uncover the wide variety of support, knowledge, skills, capabilities, and resources that are available through your stakeholders, you can offer services and products in ways that you may never have considered before. For example, a specialty-clothing designer with one store location teamed up with an online distributor so that she now runs a global business, reaching customers around the world. Even competitors have found that there are a number of ways to benefit through limited collaborations. The possibilities for growth are there if you look for them.

While large companies have organizational charts that map out functions of departments and roles of employees, you can also create your own “organizational chart” to map out how external stakeholders fill essential functions and roles that are essential for conducting business. For instance, your accountant, attorney, and insurance agent are important parts of your “executive team.” Your organization also includes your customers, along with the alliance partners, outsource providers, and sub-contractors who may work with you to deliver products and services.

As you continue to identify stakeholders, be sure to update your organization chart on a regular basis. Depending upon, your own goals, customers’ objectives and needs, new technology and shifts in the economy, some stakeholders will take on increased importance while others play a less important role for a period of time.

Realigning your vision of your organization so it includes these and other external stakeholders will enable you to think about new ways to reach your customers, expand your capabilities, and discover new opportunities for increased revenue and profitability.

Leading and managing your hidden organization
Now that you’ve discovered your hidden organization, the next challenge is to lead and manage it so that you are achieving your growth objectives.

Clients often tell me that unexpected and persistent problems seem to come out of nowhere (this is what I call “strategic gridlock”). However, when we look back, it’s possible to trace the source of problems to one or more common but mistaken assumptions that we all make about our organizations, based upon our individual perceptions of reality.

As you lead and manage your hidden organization, here are three questions to ask yourself on a regular basis to begin to uncover assumptions, avoid gridlock, and grow your business:

• What is the uniqueness of each stakeholder? Just as no two people are alike; no two stakeholders are alike. Yet it’s easy to adopt an approach to dealing with others that doesn’t allow for these variations. This can lead to persistent problems, especially if their values and practices are different from yours. Understanding the uniqueness of each stakeholder will help everyone get the most out of each relationship.

• Are my stakeholders capable of doing what I want? Since external stakeholders have other priorities outside of yours, unexpected changes in direction can easily happen. Consistent communication with your external stakeholders minimizes the risk of being blindsided by these issues, and allows you to make contingency plans. It also alerts you to developments that could result in new opportunities for your growth.

• Are my stakeholders willing to do what I want? External stakeholders don’t always share your objectives or sense of urgency. The more that you understand how they perceive your objectives and what their needs are in relationship to yours, the more likely it is that you can head off conflicts, improve decision making, and negotiate solutions that represent a “win” for everyone.

To fully meet organizational challenges and lead your organization to high performance results, it’s essential to know not only who your stakeholders are, but also what issues they face and the impact those issues may have on you. When you seek out the perceptions of your stakeholders on a regular basis, you’ll be able to address any potential challenges from a position of organizational reality, not individual assumption.

Discover the power of your hidden organization

Many entrepreneurs, especially those who are used to working as “gangs of one”, overlook and underestimate the many ways that they can leverage and grow their businesses by working in collaboration with their external stakeholders. .

Once you recognize that you are the architect of your own organization, the issues of leading and managing organizations of all sizes are the same; the same organizational principles apply to mega-corporations as well as to solo entrepreneurs, because even the very smallest businesses have “hidden” organizations within them.

Harnessing the power of your hidden organization will help you to discover untapped opportunities, avoid organizational jams, and grow to new heights of success.

Business Development And Self Hypnosis: The Hidden Link

Very few people know that there is a hidden relationship between the success of a business venture and hypnosis. While this may not be that evident, it is actually an integral part of every successful business venture. You may think that hypnotherapy, self-hypnosis and hypnosis in general is only used in treating psychological problems like fear and such, but it can actually be used to help your business flourish. How?

Imagine that you have a great idea for a business and it may take a lot of planning to achieve it. Unless you have infinite patience and already have a set plan to put in motion, then get ready for a pretty big headache. Getting a business off the ground and up and running takes a lot of doing and without the help of certain mind setting techniques, you may very well give up on this plan before you are halfway through it.

The first step to getting your business successfully on-track is to have the proper mindset for it. Picturing yourself achieving your goal of having that business idea of yours becoming a reality and flourishing can do wonders for your plans. Visualization is a self-hypnosis trick where you get yourself to believing that your business will be what it is and will look the way it will look once you are done with it.

When you visualize, you will have to set limitations to these dreams so that your plans and your visions are rooted to reality and you do not end up disappointing yourself in the end. This means that, yes, you may dream up an ideal scenario for your business development plans, but you have to make sure that these are not castles-in-the-air dreams that are highly improbable and would take a miracle to achieve. Dreaming about your inherent success coupled with hard work will get your business plans on track towards realization.

You also need to acclimatize your brain to the possible drawbacks that may emerge and to acclimatize yourself to the possible feelings of disappointment once these obstacles appear. If you have control over how you will feel once these problems emerge, you will not easily succumb to the need to give up should the going get tough. This will only serve to strengthen your resolve to see your project through no matter what.

Hypnotherapy, self-hypnosis and hypnosis can indeed play a positive role in your business development plans. Knowing how to use these tools in your future business ventures can be had with a little reading and research to better understand how you can self motivate yourself towards success.