Up Market

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• What Moldy Vegetables Can Teach You About Your Productivity
• How to Survive a Tax Audit
• How Micro Businesses (Should) Save Money
• Creating Multi-Channel 1:1 Conversations

What Moldy Vegetables Can Teach You About Your Productivity Posted: 03 Feb 2012 08:30 AM PST Dear Kirsten, You know how you commented a few weeks back that the refrigerator deserved a post all of its own? Please write that post. The inside of my vegetable bin is tinged brown from all the fresh things I've bought, put in there, and forgotten about. Signed, What about that fridge? Dear Fridge, First off, pull that bin out and sprinkle some baking soda in the bottom, then pour in a bit of vinegar. That may help with the tinge, and it will definitely help get off any leftover gunk that might be lurking. Not casting any aspersions on your cleaning ability – just speaking from experience! Next, how to keep your veggies from growing fuzz? Ideally, clear drawers. But a fridge is a big investment, and unless it’s dying you have better things to spend your money on. Instead, let's create a new fridge hierarchy. There's no rule that vegetables have to go in the veggie drawer! Strong Fantastical types should reserve the front of the top shelf of their fridge for fruits and vegetables. This keeps them in plain sight and increases the chances that you'll eat them before they go bad. If your fridge door has wide enough shelves, consider putting cartons of berries or bags of grapes there instead of the bottles of condiments that typically occupy that space. Those rarely grow mold, so they can go behind the fresh stuff on the shelves, where you'll be able to find them when you have need of them. The second shelf should hold the foods that are slower to decompose – think cheeses, deli meats, etc. You'll also want to put fresh meats here, not because they go bad slowly, but because putting them on the top shelf means that they could drip on the foods below. I don't know about you, but salmonella strawberries are less than appealing! So what to do with those drawers? You've got a few options. The meat drawer can become the home of the butter, eggs, and other long lasting dairy products. Any condiments that don't fit on the shelves can go in the drawers. And you can put some veggies in the veggie drawer. I keep my onions in one, because they decompose reasonably slowly and I always know where they are when I'm cooking. Make sense? Now go find that bottle of wine and let's drink to actually eating those fruits and veggies you buy from the farmer's market! Cheers! Kirsten PS: When I submitted this column, the lovely Upmarket editor replied back with, “I love it, {but} we’re really trying to keep the focus on Upmarket toward business and business concerns, issues, inspiration, etc. Could you please tweak the piece so that people can clearly see how they could apply such organizational principles to their business life?” And I thought, “Well, the entire piece is structured around the refrigerator. How on earth will I make it business related?” So I mulled over it for a bit, and then it hit me – the fruits and veggies that go bad in drawers are the urgent tasks facing you in your business. A Fantastical in the office is just as visual as a Fantastical in the kitchen! When you store something in a filing cabinet or shove it at the bottom of a pile, you’re effectively leaving it there to mold – out of sight, out of mind. But if you make sure to keep your important tasks up front and easily visible, you guarantee that you’ll remember and finish them, thus moving you forward in your business. Tell me, what’s going moldy in your office? Got a productivity question? Send Kirsten an e-mail!

How to Survive a Tax Audit Posted: 03 Feb 2012 05:30 AM PST As we approach tax season, the fear of audit is on every business owner's mind—and for good reason. Audits can be stressful, expensive and extremely time consuming. But, should it happen to you, don't let the nightmare scenarios you've heard keep you awake at night. A recent article on Entrepeneur.com offers five tips to help minimize the pain of a tax audit. Here's an overview for you: Keep things in perspective.  "Often there is a math error, and the supporting documents such as 1099s don’t match the figures on a company’s return. Addressing the IRS’s concern could be as simple as supplying a missing document or fixing an incorrect 1099 and redoing the math on the tax form." Get help.  "Experienced tax lawyers and accountants can recognize when an issue isn’t as black-and-white as an agent might assert." Provide exactly what the agent asks for.  "Resist the urge to volunteer information. It’s ideal to provide no less, but no more than the IRS requests. The best way to get an IRS audit over with quickly is to keep it confined to the single issue initially raised." Don't assume the IRS is right.  "Agents can make mathematical errors or overlook important documents as easily as a taxpayer can. And when laws or financial values are open to interpretation, the auditor will take the stance that benefits the IRS, the experts say. That doesn’t mean you can’t successfully argue the opposite point of view." Decline requests to extend the IRS's deadline.  "Because of a backlog of cases, the IRS routinely asks owners of companies that are audit targets to waive the statute of limitations usually restricting probes to the three years previous….[T]he written request for a waiver might not read like a request and it might seem as if you have no choice but to agree. Rather than be intimidated by the legalese, check with a tax adviser before responding." You can read the article in its entirety at Entrepreneur.com. Have you ever been audited? If so, give us your insights! What do you recommend to help minimize the stress? Photo Credit: alancleaver_2000

How Micro Businesses (Should) Save Money Posted: 02 Feb 2012 03:00 PM PST Quit chasing profits and shift your business mind-set.

Creating Multi-Channel 1:1 Conversations Posted: 02 Feb 2012 12:30 PM PST “We’re not in Kansas anymore, Toto.” No, we are not. Gone are one-way messages — enter real-time 1:1 conversations and the multiplicity of ways we start or join one. For even savvy marketers, multi-channel messaging presents challenges.  These challenges often present themselves in three ways: Which channel/medium to invest time and energy in to build a brand and deliver results? The right frequency at which to use all or some in synchronicity. Content formatting and nuances of delivery that each medium introduces (i.e. Flash vs HTML5, video vs. 140-character tweets vs. email marketing). Let's be honest. Delivering a message via one or all or even some of the available channels we have today is cumbersome. And especially within a small business environment, resources are just too scarce to do everything. Scalability is a form factor for determining what can be done now versus later. Start by narrowing down. First – Remember you are just having a conversation. But a conversation (or topic) simply isn't as meaningful to everyone on every channel out there. Consider channel selection a work-life balance initiative. Make it personal to make hard calls on how you want to share information.  For example, unless you want or need a more diverse Twitter following, be selective about how and what you post. Instead, build audience through referrals (i.e. Follow @getscrappymktng) via business partners, via live Twitter APIs/feeds on your site and Facebook page, or email News.me-esque weekly round-ups of popular topics to your users without slaving 24/7, or hiring a robot to man your Twitter account. Second – Some marketing channels may require resources you cannot spare. Video is a good example of this. While Video SEO is an awesome organic inbound source of traffic and brand awareness, if it will distract you from something else you need to get done (i.e. like building your presence on Facebook), then by all means do not do it. Third – This last point is the precursor to everything you do. Know your users – new, past and those you aspire to attract.  If over 50% of your users access your product through an app, then build a messaging strategy  (i.e. email marketing, push notifications) around existing app users. And continue building out through channels that attract new app users, (i.e. app review portals, industry blogs) versus focusing energy on touch points where fewer users are engaged with your brand. Other Scrappy Resources For Multi-Channel Marketers: Hubspot Orange Soda Image Credit: Rosaura Ochoa

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