When you decided to start a business, it probably wasn’t the fun of keeping up with the latest employment regulations, tax issues, and OSHA requirements that lit your fire. Nevertheless, if you have even a single employee, you’re stuck with all that and more. You’re not alone and fortunately, where there is opportunity there are generally entrepreneurs with a solution. Enter the world of professional employer organizations (PEOs).

According to the National Association of Professional Employer Organizations, while the industry is relatively young—less than 30 years old—there are more than 700 PEOs across the U.S. So how do you pick a good one? Here are some questions to get you started on your search.

People often live by the saying: if you want to get something done right, you need to do it yourself. While I have heard people toss this phrase around like a badge of honor, there is no philosophy more toxic for an organization, especially small businesses. Businesses of any size are complex and it is unrealistic to think that a small number of individuals will have all of the necessary expertise. So how do you determine where to focus your attention?

Start by making a list of all of the activities that your business needs to do. Go to whatever level of granularity feels right. Then, for each activity, rate its passions, skills and value quotient from low to high: high passion activities are those you love to do; high skills activities are those where you have the necessary expertise to execute effectively; and high value activities are those that are strategic to your business.

The result gives you seven different targeting strategies.

I’ve found that it is helpful to break the planning process down into separate topics, and then look at how they fit together in the overall business plan. It’s also a good idea to think of yourself as an investor in your business and review what you come up with from that point of view. Here are the business planning topics that I believe are important, presented in the order in which you should approach them.

It’s a good idea for small business owners to put agreements in writing. Here are three agreements that you should definitely consider getting in writing.

Business planning advocates will tell you that every business needs a full-fledged business plan, which is certainly true if you’re going to seek outside investors or a small business loan. While it’s beneficial to have one even if you don't seek outside funding, the reality is that many successful businesses launch and grow without a full, formal business plan. However, few businesses succeed without any planning whatsoever.

Planning isn’t something you do just to say you’ve done it and have paper proof. Done properly, planning is an absolutely essential part of business operations. Below are some of the plans every business owner should have, even if informal, and some quick instructions on how to create them. I also recommend you do them in this order, as each one builds on the one before.

There are a lot of numbers in a small business. Most entrepreneurs do a lousy job of reviewing their financial statements while simultaneously trying to manage with the production, sales and delivery of their product. However, numbers are a very powerful tool in business. Without knowing how a business has performed financially, it is impossible to predict where it should go. If as a small business owner, you can’t do a detailed review of your income statement, balance sheet and cash flow statement every month, then here is a short cut. Here are the only five numbers that matter in your small business.

Your financial statements may not make the bestseller list, but they do tell an intriguing story—at least to a banker. Unfortunately, the tale they tell may be misleading. Since finance is no place for fiction, you need to make sure your statements tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.



To do that, the first thing you need to know is that lenders read an abridged version of your balance sheet and income statement. Their credit department crunches your numbers to generate key ratios that make it easy to quickly assess your financial health. The more you understand about the ratios they care about and how they're derived, the better you'll be at making the story they tell a good one.

An entrepreneur's guide to offering trade credit, crafting a credit application, and evaluating a customer's credit-worthiness.

The basic spreadsheet and accounting programs you've relied on 'til now won't help your growing business eliminate decision-making bottlenecks, reduce IT costs, increase productivity, or improve the customer experience. To do all that requires an enterprise-wide, integrated software system. Learn how an integrated system can help take your business to the next level, and how to ensure you get the right system for you.

Existing strategy frameworks are designed for bigger firms with plentiful resources. They should not be liberally borrowed and advanced as solutions for SMEs, who face resource constraint. This very lack of resources impacts the competitive strategies that are feasible to SMEs. What’s more, the current literature in SME strategy fails to take into consideration potential competitive reactions from market incumbents in prescribing competitive strategies for SMEs. By ignoring competitive reactions, the literature therefore has no answers to questions about how bigger incumbent firms will respond when the market niches served by SMEs grow to a substantial size or become very lucrative. Nor does the current literature provide any strategic prescriptions for SMEs as to how they could compete successfully against bigger rivals who possess superior resources. [Hat tip to TheManager.org]

Too much money is worse than too little for most organizations. Until that day comes, the key to success for most organizations is bootstrapping. The term bootstrapping comes from the German legend of Baron von Munchhausen pulling himself out of the sea by pulling on his own bootstraps. That’s essentially what you’ll have to do, too.

Guy Kawasaki provides a list of ten things that every small business owner should do in the new year, though you will likely find the list applies to larger businesses as well.

You probably lend your customers more money than you realize. Have you checked lately?

Leasing new space is an event that can have major implications for any business. If a company leases space that ultimately turns out to be unsuitable for all its operations, or if the lease does not allow for expansion, the growth of the company can be unduly hindered. If too much space is leased, the company will end up wasting limited cash resources.

Lease documents can be sophisticated and complicated contracts. A great number of points beyond rent and square feet can directly and adversely affect a business tenant down the road. Conversely, a lease that provides a tenant with the right type of space and flexibility as the tenant's needs change can become an asset and provide a competitive advantage.

A prospective tenant might want to consider the following when entering into a lease.

Jay Abraham offers 21 principles to help businesses jump-start their sales and profits.

To many guerrilla marketers, technology is to be lauded because it has put them online -- giving them access to the speed of email, the power of fresh information, the warmth of closely connected people, and the marketing muscle of the World Wide Web. To others, technology is the hero because it allows them to flourish in a home-based business. This article examines 25 areas where technology adds potency to marketing.

Strategy formulation and implementation are critical elements of the small firm's process of adapting to a changing world. The CEO who hopes to adapt his/her small firm to a changing environment must focus on strategy formulation and implementation. This paper presents theories, concepts, and models that can be used to improve the process of formulating strategies, to determine the content of specific strategies and, to implement the selected strategy. [BNET Annotation]

Every business has a magic number. By employing his, our columnist didn't overstaff this year.

Knowledge is power, and knowledge of your company's value is the ultimate power tool. Here's what you need to calculate your own magic number.

Editor's Note: check out the online-only companion to this article, "Priced to Sell" at
http://www.inc.com/articles/2003/07/pricedtosellpkg.html

There's a lot that can go right and wrong in a business. A lot of it out of your control. But the extent of your personal financial liability for what goes wrong is one thing you can and should control.

Here Inc.com presents homegrown marketing ploys to jump-start sales, increase your customer base, and help get new products to market. Topics include:
- Acquiring Customers
- Product Sales
- Word of Mouth
- Partnerships
- Trade Shows
- More Original Approaches

Here's a quick primer of the various methodologies commonly used for valuing businesses (for purposes of imminent sale or otherwise).

"This guide is a checklist for the owner/manager of a business enterprise or for one contemplating going into business for the first time. The questions concentrate on areas you must consider seriously to determine if your idea represents a real business opportunity and if you can really know what you are getting into. You can use it to evaluate a completely new venture proposal or an apparent opportunity in your existing business."

By understanding what the Small Business Adminstration does and doesn't do, business owners can be in a better position to take advantage of this often misunderstood government program.

A look at the breakdown of women and minority owned businesses.