ISmall-Business.net

Intelligent Business Solutions

  • Home
  • Strategy
    • Small Business Strategy
      • Combining Niches to Maximize Profit Potential
      • High Ticket Versus Volume Niche Selection
      • How to Know When to Cut a Business or Niche Loose
      • Never Put All Your Eggs in One Basket
    • Sales Strategy
      • Facebook Networking Versus Paid Advertising
      • Brainstorming a Successful Sales Funnel
      • Best Practices for Profitable List Building
      • Backend Sales Strategy Tips
      • A Better Way to Use Webinars for Profits
      • Creating a Welcome Email That Makes Money
    • Production Strategy
    • Human resource strategy
  • Management
    • Business action plan
      • 7 Things to Send JVs to Get Them Onboard
      • Don’t Make JV Promises You Can’t Keep
      • How to Host a Challenge and Maximize Profits
    • Small Business Management
      • Putting Profit Tasks First During Time Management
      • How Self Doubt Sabotages Your Financial Success
      • Repurpose Your Content to Save and Make Money
    • Business Management Topics
      • Fighting the Stigma of Failure
      • Figuring Out the Perfect Launch Date and Time
      • Bonus Creation That Catapults You to Leaderboard Domination
      • Do Customers Prefer Video or Text Courses
      • Minimize Your Risk of Refunds with These 5 Tips
      • How Often Should You Email Promo Material
      • Narrow Niche Domination
      • Perfecting the Launch Process for Increased Profits
    • Business Management Blogs
      • Nobody Expects a Perfect Expert
  • Ideas
    • Find business ideas
      • 5 Lucrative Non IM Niches
      • 6 Niches That Are Hot on Social Networks
      • Are PLR Stores a Viable Way to Make Money
      • How to Know If a Membership Site Is Right for You
    • Idea feasibility
      • How to Make Money Off a $7 Product
      • Recurring Income Options
    • 10 top business ideas
      • Could Coaching Bring in More Money Than Products
      • Individual Coaching Versus Group Coaching Profits
      • Building a Reputation as a Powerful Affiliate
      • Pinterest Profit Niches
    • Low cost business ideas
      • Making Money Off eBooks and Reports
  • Valuation
    • Business Valuation
    • Increase business valuation
      • Making Wise Investments in Tools to Further Your Business
    • Business Valuation Methods
    • Understand business valuation
  • About
    • About Me
    • Blog
    • Contact Us
    • Sitemap
    • Privacy Policy
  • Strategy
  • Supply Chain
  • Customer Focus
  • Entrepreneur
  • Biz Opportunities
You are here: Home / 2017 / Archives for April 2017

Archives for April 2017

Tax Deductions Your Small Business Can’t Afford to Miss

April 1, 2017 by Asif Nazeer Leave a Comment


As a small business owner, you’re always on the hunt to efficiently save money. Whether you’re a sole proprietor or you operate with a small team, you and your business can benefit from taking the tax deductions you qualify for. Unfortunately, many small business owners aren’t aware of what they’re able to deduct.

Related: 10 Free Online Tools Every Entrepreneur Should Know About

If you think you’ve paid too much in taxes this year, here are some of the top tax deductions you should keep in mind for the future. Knowing what your deductions will be ahead of time can help you properly prepare for tax season.

1. Property rentals and equipment rentals

Whether you rent an office, a workspace or a few desks in a co-working community, you’re able to deduct the rent during tax season. You can also deduct rent if you own a storefront, a factory or another brick and mortar facility related to your business. The entire cost of your rent is deductible.

The same rules apply if you rent machinery or equipment in your space. The full cost of your rental is deductible as a business expense.

2. Home office

A home office deduction is not the same as renting a space to do work. If you have an office in your home that you use for business purposes, you may be able to deduct a portion of that cost on your taxes. This is especially beneficial for sole proprietors.

However, if you’re going to use the home office deduction, be sure that you qualify. Your home office space must be used regularly and exclusively for business. This deduction includes all costs related to your home office.

3. Utilities and services

Whether you operate out of a store, an office or a home office, you’re able to deduct your utilities. This includes your internet, electricity, phone bills and any other utility or service you may need for your business.

Related: Tips for a Stress-Free Business Trip

If you use a home office, you can only deduct the bills that correspond to the amount you work. Unfortunately, you can’t get away with deducting your entire home electric bill or internet bill. This also goes if you’re using a personal cell phone. Figure out how many hours a month you use these utilities for strictly business purposes and deduct the appropriate amount.

4. Office supplies and equipment

Running a small business means you go through a lot of supplies. Luckily, you’re able to fully deduct the cost of the supplies you use to do business. This includes paper, pens, pencils, ink and more.

You’re also able to deduct the cost of the equipment you use to do business. If you need to purchase new computers, printers or other forms of technology to get the job done, you can deduct these expenses come tax season.

5. Advertising and marketing software

Advertising can quickly become expensive. While digital marketing makes it easier to create an inexpensive marketing plan, you still want to ensure you’re deducting the full cost of anything related to marketing and advertising.

This cost includes the subscriptions you have to any software to automate or produce your marketing materials. Any ordinary costs for advertising are fully deductible.

6. Professional fees

If you use an accountant or attorney, you’re able to deduct the costs associated with those services from your business taxes. In fact, hiring a CPA to help with your small business taxes can actually help you save money, even if you need to pay a higher price up front.

Professional fees associated with hiring an attorney can also be a tax deduction. If you cross multiple states with your business and therefore need to pay taxes in multiple states, hiring a tax attorney can help you cover all your bases when tax season comes.

7. Travel, meals and entertainment

If you or an employee is traveling for work, you may be able to deduct the costs related to that trip. Those costs can include meals while you’re gone, the transportation to get there and lodging while you’re away. If you’re traveling for an event or conference, you can also deduct the cost of your ticket.

Related: 4 Easy Steps to Increase Sales Through LinkedIn

Unfortunately, local transportation costs usually aren’t deductible. If you’re meeting with a client for lunch or treating your employees to lunch, you can deduct half of the bill.

8. Taxes

It may seem strange to deduct taxes on your taxes, but there are certain taxes you’re able to claim. If you have to pay taxes on the products you sell, you’re able to deduct that amount on your federal taxes.

You’re also able to deduct taxes on your property related to the business. Any fees you need to pay for licenses of property ownership can also be deducted on your taxes.

Even though it may be too late to claim these deductions on this year’s taxes, think about what you may qualify for in the years to come. What deductions have you been missing? Keep this list handy so you don’t miss them again next year.


Sarah Landrum

Sarah Landrum is a freelance writer and Digital Marketing Specialist. She is also the founder of Punched Clocks, a site dedicated to sharing advice on navigating the work world. 

Read more



Source link

Filed Under: Entrepreneur

Can Artificial Intelligence Identify Pictures Better than Humans?

April 1, 2017 by Asif Nazeer Leave a Comment


Computer-based artificial intelligence (AI) has been around since the 1940s, but the current innovation boom around everything from virtual personal assistants and visual search engines to real-time translation and driverless cars has led to new milestones in the field. And ever since IBM’s Deep Blue beat Russian chess champion Garry Kasparov in 1997, machine versus human milestones inevitably bring up the question of whether or not AI can do things better than humans (it’s the the inevitable fear around Ray Kurzweil’s singularity).

As image recognition experiments have shown, computers can easily and accurately identify hundreds of breeds of cats and dogs faster and more accurately than humans, but does that mean that machines are better than us at recognizing what’s in a picture? As with most comparisons of this sort, at least for now, the answer is little bit yes and plenty of no.

Less than a decade ago, image recognition was a relatively sleepy subset of computer vision and AI, found mostly in photo organization apps, search engines and assembly line inspection. It ran on a mix of keywords attached to pictures and engineer-programmed algorithms. As far as the average user was concerned, it worked as advertised: Searching for donuts under “Images” in Google delivered page after page of doughy pastry-filled pictures.  But getting those results was enabled only by laborious human intervention in the form of manually inputting said identifying keyword tags for each and every picture and feeding a definition of the properties of said donut into an algorithm. It wasn’t something that could easily scale.

More recently, however, advances using an AI training technology known as deep learning are making it possible for computers to find, analyze and categorize images without the need for additional human programming. Loosely based on human brain processes, deep learning implements large artificial neural networks — hierarchical layers of interconnected nodes — that rearrange themselves as new information comes in, enabling computers to literally teach themselves.  

As with human brains, artificial neural networks enable computers to get smarter the more data they process. And, when you’re running these deep learning techniques on supercomputers such as Baidu’s Minwa, which has 72 processors and 144 graphics processors (GPUs), you can input a phenomenal amount of data. Considering that more than three billion images are shared across the internet every day — Google Photos alone saw uploads of 50 billion photos in its first four months of existence — it’s safe to say that the amount of data available for training these days is phenomenal. So, is all this computing power and data making machines better than humans at image recognition?

There’s no doubt that recent advances in computer vision have been impressive . . . and rapid. As recently as 2011, humans beat computers by a wide margin when identifying images, in a test featuring approximately 50,000 images that needed to be categorized into one of 10 categories (“dogs,” “trucks” and others). Researchers at Stanford University developed software to take the test: It was correct about 80 percent of the time, whereas the human opponent, Stanford PhD candidate and researcher Andrej Karpathy, scored 94 percent.

Then, in 2012, a team at the Google X research lab approached the task a different way, by feeding 10 million randomly selected thumbnail images from YouTube videos into an artificial neural network with more than 1 billion connections spread over 16,000 CPUs. After this three-day training period was over, the researchers gave the machine 20,000 randomly selected images with no identifying information. The computer looked for the most recurring images and accurately identified ones that contained faces 81.7 percent of the time, human body parts 76.7 percent of the time, and cats 74.8 percent of the time.

At the 2014 ImageNet Large Scale Visual Recognition Challenge (ILSVRC) in 2014, Google came in first place with a convolutional neural network approach that resulted in just a 6.6 percent error rate, almost half the previous year’s rate of 11.7 percent. The accomplishment was not simply correctly identifying images containing dogs, but correctly identifying around 200 different dog breeds in images, something that only the most computer-savvy canine experts might be able to accomplish in a speedy fashion. Once again, Karpathy, a dedicated human labeler who trained on 500 images and identified 1,500 images, beat the computer with a 5.1 percent error rate.

This record lasted until February 2015, when Microsoft announced it had beat the human record with a 4.94 percent error rate. And then just a few months later, in December, Microsoft beat its own record with a 3.5 percent classification error rate at the most recent ImageNet challenge.

Deep learning algorithms are helping computers beat humans in other visual formats. Last year, a team of researchers at Queen Mary University London developed a program called Sketch-a-Net, which identifies objects in sketches. The program correctly identified 74.9 percent of the sketches it analyzed, while the humans participating in the study only correctly identified objects in sketches 73.1 percent of the time. Not that impressive, but as in the previous example with dog breeds, the computer was able to correctly identify which type of bird was drawn in the sketch 42.5 percent of the time, an accuracy rate nearly twice that of the people in the study, with 24.8 percent.

These numbers are impressive, but they don’t tell the whole story. “Even the smartest machines are still blind,” said computer vision expert Fei-Fei Li at a 2015 TED Talk on image recognition. Yes, convolutional neural networks and deep learning have helped improve accuracy rates in computer vision – they’ve even enabled machines to write surprisingly accurate captions to images — but machines still stumble in plenty of situations, especially when more context, backstory, or proportional relationships are required. Computers struggle when, say, only part of an object is in the picture – a scenario known as occlusion – and may have trouble telling the difference between an elephant’s head and trunk and a teapot. Similarly, they stumble when distinguishing between a statue of a man on a horse and a real man on a horse, or mistake a toothbrush being held by a baby for a baseball bat. And let’s not forget, we’re just talking about identification of basic everyday objects – cats, dogs, and so on — in images.

Computers still aren’t able to identify some seemingly simple (to humans) pictures such as this picture of yellow and black stripes, which computers seem to think is a school bus. This technology is, unsurprisingly, still in its infant stage. After all, it took the human brain 540 million years to evolve into its highly capable current form.

What computers are better at is sorting through vast amounts of data and processing it quickly, which comes in handy when, say, a radiologist needs to narrow down a list of x-rays with potential medical maladies or a marketer wants to find all the images relevant to his brand on social media. The things a computer is identifying may still be basic — a cavity, a logo — but it’s identifying it from a much larger pool of pictures and it’s doing it quickly without getting bored as a human might.

Humans still get nuance better, and can probably tell you more a given picture due to basic common sense. For everyday tasks, humans still have significantly better visual capabilities than computers.

That said, the promise of image recognition and computer vision at large is massive, especially when seen as part of the larger AI pie. Computers may not have common sense, but they do have direct access to real-time big data, sensors, GPS, cameras and the internet to name just a few technologies. From robot disaster relief and large-object avoidance in cars to high-tech criminal investigations and augmented reality (AR) gaming leaps and bounds beyond Pokemon GO, computer vision’s future may well lie in things that humans simply can’t (or won’t) do. One thing we can be certain of is this: It won’t take 540 million years to get there.


Ophir Tanz

Ophir Tanz is an entrepreneur, technologist and the CEO and founder of GumGum, a digital-marketing platform for the visual web. Tanz is an active member of the Los Angeles startup and advertising community, serving as a mentor and…

Read more



Source link

Filed Under: Entrepreneur

The Network Imperative Shines a Light on Business Model Innovation

April 1, 2017 by Asif Nazeer Leave a Comment


Usefulness


Content


Freshness


Understanding how to thrive in a disruptive nature is the “secret sauce” most business leaders are looking for, but finding actionable advice is extremely difficult. Backed by extensive research, “The Network Imperative: How to Survive and Grow in the Age of Digital Business Models” offers an actional recipe for businesses to create their “secret sauce” for thriving in the unpredictable age to come.

Most business owners accept that they need an online presence to survive in the digital age. Most business owners also accept the call to provide better service in this digital age. Most business owners, however, have not figured out how to powerfully connect technology at their disposal with a powerfully adaptive customer-focused business.

That’s where The Network Imperative: How to Survive and Grow in the Age of Digital Business Models promises to fill in the gap.

The book promises to help business owners transition into a powerful digital-based business designed for a rapidly changing digital age.

What is The Network Imperative About?

“Since 2000, 52 percent of the Fortune 500 companies have been acquired, merged, gone bankrupt, or fallen off the list.”
– – The Network Imperative

We are in a new age of business. We live in an age where the fastest growing and most profitable companies don’t focus on making physical things. They focus on making connections. We live in an age of Facebook, Google, Apple and Uber.

Despite all of the rhetoric about “preparing to be innovative and disruptive”, the authors of The Network Imperative found that most business owners still try to do business the old way (silos, incremental improvements, internally focused). This old way of doing business creates the paradox where businesses that are good at what they do end up stuck in their own success. Blockbuster, Kodak and Nokia didn’t fall because of what they did wrong. They failed because they focused exclusively on what they did right, assuming that the world would always follow their lead.

Getting out of this paradox by slowly and consistently transforming how you do business is the core message of The Network Imperative. The message, however, is much deeper than “Just start a Facebook page”. Instead, it is a reassessment of the assumptions behind your entire business model (how you measure assets, who makes decisions. what leaders are chosen, etc.) to slowly make that transition. For those businesses which have already made the commitment to “go digital”, the book helps readers determine the gaps between their current performance and their potential. (For those in the “already digital” the “Enterprise” case study might prove especially helpful.)

Co-authors Barry Libert, Megan Beck and Yoram (Jerry) Wind all know about the necessity of a new business model  for the digital age.

Libert is an investor, executive level consultant, digital board member and speaker. He is the CEO of Open Matters, a data science company.

Beck is the Chief Insights Officer at Open Matters and a consultant for the Wharton SEI center, an industry think tank.

Wind is the founding director of the Wharton SEI Center, a marketing professor, multi-book author and founding editor of Wharton School Publishing. His book Beyond Advertising: Creating Value Through All Customer Touchpoints was recently reviewed on Small Business Trends.

What Was Best About The Network Imperative?

The Network Imperative deserves a lot of credit for shining a light on the “business model” aspects of innovation. Conversation on innovation tends to focus on the external aspects (like the new app or money raised) with minimal attention to the internal business model. That focus stems from the authors’ in-depth business research which gives them a unique perspective. The perspective leads to a startling, but powerful statement: It isn’t the age of the business that determines their ability to innovate (although it is a factor), it’s the people inside that business.

What Could Have Been Done Differently?

The Network Imperative isn’t designed for really small businesses, although the principles can be applied to a small business. It works best for businesses that have dedicated departments and resources to plan for innovation while keeping the current business running. The focus in The Network Imperative isn’t on capitalizing on a short-term success (the “scale your startup in 7 days using this app” approach) which could be conducted by a very small business. The focus is on building a sustainable system to withstand and thrive.

Why Read The Network Imperative?

It’s time to move beyond the typical “Just do whatever the current best-performing business is doing” advice. As The Network Imperative proves, this advice is riddled with problems. Many of the top-performing businesses of the past are no longer in business (or have merged) and many of the current top-performing businesses will not survive into the near future. A better approach for confronting the uncertain future of business is to develop a thriving system based on principles. Despite the kind of change business owners face, the principles of a thriving business won’t. The Network Imperative shows how to adapt the timeless principles of the past for the uncertain nature of the future.




Source link

Filed Under: Strategy

11 Tips to Stay Productive When You’re Tired (Infographic)

April 1, 2017 by Asif Nazeer Leave a Comment


Feeling tired can kill your productivity, but it doesn’t have to.

There are certain things you can do to increase your energy levels and get to work. Simple activities such as a quick desk stretch or a five minute break can help you focus even when you’re exhausted.

Related: 5 Daily Habits That Will Increase Your Productivity Levels

To tackle your day and push through fatigue, start by writing a list of all the tasks you need to get done and do the most important ones first. Also, deactivate email and phone notifications so they don’t take bite into your focus, but just be sure to check email every 30 minutes so you don’t miss anything important.

From changing up your work environment to drinking enough water, there are a number of easy things you can do to be productive even when you’re exhausted.

Check out Microsoft Training’s infographic below for more tips.


Rose Leadem

Rose Leadem

Rose Leadem is an online editorial assistant at Entrepreneur Media Inc. 

Read more



Source link

Filed Under: Entrepreneur

  • « Previous Page
  • 1
  • …
  • 21
  • 22
  • 23

Find it

Blog By

Small Business Consultant and Accountant helping grow your small business Read More…

Follow us online

  • Email
  • Google+
  • Linkedin
  • Twitter

Recent Posts

Customer Service – The Disney Way

We had been there a number of times. Ever since our first trip there in 1980 - … [Read More...]

  • Plan Your Business Trip Effortlessly. Here Are 4 Ways How — and the Apps You Need to Know
  • Defining the Business Environment – A Thorough Analysis of External and Internal Environment!
  • Need Some Productivity Hacks? Here are 11 to Consider

Archives

  • April 2018 (73)
  • March 2018 (122)
  • February 2018 (77)
  • January 2018 (53)
  • December 2017 (57)
  • November 2017 (61)
  • October 2017 (60)
  • September 2017 (58)
  • August 2017 (67)
  • July 2017 (77)
  • June 2017 (202)
  • May 2017 (226)
  • April 2017 (224)
  • March 2017 (226)
  • February 2017 (195)
  • January 2017 (340)
  • December 2016 (440)
  • November 2016 (407)
  • October 2016 (353)
  • September 2016 (388)
  • February 2003 (1)

Topics Covered

business ideas business strategy CCC CEO Cloudtalk DFGives Dreamforce dreampitch DreamReal endAIDShttps fashion4climate ff0000 FunFactFriday gallery GetCloser girlbosses Gmail Ham4Ham Headache IBMLearningLab iconset IndustrialInternet main MeetAstro MeetEinstein photo Predix PurpleDreams Rich20Something RLTW Salesforce SalesforceGROW SalesforceLIVE SalesforceOhana SalesforceTour ServiceTrailblazers Slacklash Slackmash small business SmallWinsBigImpact strategy Success tncms TwitterSmarter Veteran

Biz Opps

Multilingual Website: Reasons Why Your Business … [Read More...]

Light + Building 2018: Here’s Everything You Need … [Read More...]

What Is the WordPress 503 Error and How Does One … [Read More...]

Customer Focus

We had been there a number of times. Ever since … [Read More...]

THINGS TO ASK WHEN HIRING A PET PHOTOGRAPHER:1. … [Read More...]

With the ever changing face of the economy based … [Read More...]

Entrepreneurs

April 19, 2018 7 min … [Read More...]

Here's how we use metaphor to unlock positive … [Read More...]

My book made it to No. 1 on Amazon's self-help, … [Read More...]

Strategy

Most of the time, being more productive means … [Read More...]

Learning entrepreneurial skills at a young age can … [Read More...]

If you want to advance in your job and find … [Read More...]

Supply Chain

Business firms wishing to adopt an open system of … [Read More...]

Operating in a global market and a networked … [Read More...]

Optimizing the supply chain involves satisficing … [Read More...]

© Copyright 2015 iSmall-Business.net · All Rights Reserved · Powered by ISmall-Business.net · Admin