We’re refining and expanding our TaxLoopholes brand.  That will probably be a 3 month project that I’ll keep you posted on.

For BusinessToInvestment (B-I), the Million Dollar Journey, I’ve gotten side-tracked with all the changes in the tax world and with launching my tax practice last month.  Even though, this isn’t a B-I subject, it is an interesting sidenote. Typically I’ve found that my CPA practice grows in times of recession. When people are making money too fast, they don’t care about tax savings.

It happened during the dot com days and it happened again during the crazy real estate appreciation days.  I actually had one lady tell me that she was so busy making money that she didn’t have time for a one hour appt with me so we could finalize her plan to save $150,000 per year.  She said she made more than that per hour and she’d just go make more money.  She didn’t care about paying taxes.  Not sure where she is now…..  So typically recessions are very good for me.  June was a horrible month.  It’s the slowest month I’ve EVER had in my entire career.  I think people were just plain shocked by what was happened and they just froze.  July, though, is more than making up for June.  That seems to be happening across the boards.  Megan Hughes, Business First Formations, told me last night that last week was her best month ever.  LOL  I love that.

That’s part of why B-I has been stuck.  I’ve been focussing on keeping the earned income stream coming in.  It’s back on track and I’m back here now.  My two projects are:

(1)  Launching some affiliate marketing sites.  I have been doing intensive study on search words, SEO, buying traffic, picking trends, you name it.   I’ll keep you posted, but there is definitely a learning curve on this for me.  I hope to have the first sites up within a month.  

(2)  This is the one that I am most excited about.  My husband and I have started a new “High Touch” philosophy in our business.  One of the things I did was give out my personal email account.  I hope I can keep it spam free.  That was the one drawback that I see to posting it.  That email, if you don’t have it, is Diane@TaxLoopholes.com.  One suggestion I got was to send people to Facebook instead, that would at least slow down the spammers.  But it does give me one more place to check everyday.  

The other part of the High Touch philosophy is creating a relationship with our clients, customers and prospects.  In fact, I don’t even like using the term “prospect”.  These are really just visitors who are deciding what level of involvement they want with us.   Richard and I have started a challenge between us to send out 2 cards per each per day, 5 days a week.  We’ve seen in study after study, that if you do this for 6 months, you will increase your business by a minimum of 20%!  That’s the power of relationship marketing. Instead of looking for more customers, create better relationships with people who already know you.  They’ll send you better prospects and people more in line with who you and your business are.

Figure a card costs about $3.50 to buy and mail.  So, we’d be looking at a cost of about $35/week.  This is the cool part - we’ve found a way to do it for $10/week.  And at the same time there is an opportunity to get paid for referrals so that you don’t even end up paying the $10/week and actually make money.  

I’m going to do a webinar about this probably within the next month.  But rather than making you wait that long, I have an offer for any of you that read this blog.  You can go to www.SendOutCards.com/DK  and see how easy it is to send a card.  It’s my gift to you.  Click through on “send a card” and select from over 10,000 designs, customize your message and make someone’s day when they receive the card that gets mailed from the printing presses in Salt Lake City that very day. By the way, this works in 9 other English speaking countries as well - including Australia, UK, Canada and Singapore.

If you’d like to do what I’m doing, you can either sign up on that same page (www.SendOutCards.com/DK) at Sign Up or drop me an email at Diane@TaxLoopholes.com and I can walk you through the process.

It will cost you $398 for the initial package (and that lets you send 100 cards), but then after that it is just a little over a dollar, with postage, out the door.  You can also send postcards, invitations and gifts.  But more on that later.

Here’s the unexpected bonus that just happened for us.  I gave our teenage son David his own account.  He sent out Thank You cards without any prompting at all.  In fact, he sent me a beautiful card (with personal inscription) that I got yesterday.  He says it’s just like sending a text message, but of course, the impact is much greater  

Check it out and let me know what you think.  By the way, when I get the webinar done, I’m going to have some bonuses that include the 4 card, 6 card and 12 card programs that we’re using to increase our relationship with our clients and I’ll even give you a pretty amazing money-back guarantee.  

There is something wonderful that happens when you reach out and just say “thank you” or “nice meeting you” or even “I’m sorry” to the people in your personal and business life.  Take a second and send out a free card on me - it could be for personal or it could be for business.  Either way, getting a card with a personal message is a great way to just spread a little happiness.

The trap I keep falling into when I look at creating affiliate marketing sites is I realize how poorly I’ve done IM for my own businesses - primarily TaxLoopholes and DKTax Services.  So, the landing pages that we put up tend to be focussd on these companies.  There is profit, without a doubt, but it’s slower to build than I thought.  Add to that an uncertain economy and we have a steep learning curve impacted by extraordinary outside forces.  Bottomline, I’m a big one on testing data but these are such strange and unusual economic times that I don’t know if any test is really valid for normal times.

And in the middle of all of this confusion, I got one of those big smacks upside the head that life gives me every once in a while.  I call it a “blinding flash of the obvious”.  In other words, d’oh!  You’ve heard me talk about investigating different MLMs in previous posts.  That’s because the blinding flash was when I was talking to a friend and he experienced a couple of months ago something I’ve seen again and again.  He got a sudden jump in income from an MLM he joined 2 1/2 years ago.

I often say I’m a CPA so I get to see the truth.  I wish you could all sit where I sit for a week.  I have clients, or have had clients, who are some of the big names out there with best-selling books and wildly popular seminars.  Some of the guys are brilliant with their investing and really are the millionaires and multi-millionaires they say they are.  A lot are not.  So, when I say that I know one thing for certain with MLMs, please believe me that I’ve seen the data and know this is true.

If the company is solid and has a solid business premise, and if you join and work the plan diligently through the first few beginning years, you will make money.  If you keep on through that magic 4-5 year mark, your income will suddenly “pop” up.  

Until a few weeks ago, I thought it always took 4-5 years, so I was surprised when my friend did it in 2 1/2 years.  And he told me about another guy in the company who hit the mark in just 18 months.  (By the way, when I saw “pop” up - the number I’m talking about is $30,000 - $50,000 per month.  This number seems to be true no matter what the MLM opportunity as long as the business premise is good.)

So, that is my next big project.  I’m having a mastermind at my office this Thursday.  I have two projects:  (1) Some brand identity solidification for TaxLoopholes, and adding another identity - more on that (2) outlining a business plan with strong SEO and IM for the MLM.  

I know, someone is going to ask “Which MLM?”  I don’t mean to tease this out. This post is getting too long and I’ll add another one later to outline what I’m doing and why.

It’s fascinating to me, to be honest.  Why do so many degenerate like that?  Have we fostered a culture where it is better to criticize and hurt then it is to build up and encourage?  Is it the anonymous nature of the Internet that makes it happen?  Or is it a symptom of our nastier, meaner times?   

One of the rules I’ve always had in my business is that there are three levels of comm:  (1) email, (2) phone and (3) in person.  Email is best when you want precision and there are little or no emotional matters going on.  If there is a problem, or a miscomm, pick up the phone.  It’s too easy to misinterpret quickly written emails.  And ever so often you need a face-to-face with your team.  That’s why I schedule regular seminars for my clients.  I hope they can attend so we all get a chance to reconnect.

One exception to the rule regarding writing instead of phone:  I do believe a heartfelt note that is well-thought-out is really high up the chain though.  It’s amazing what a little card can do to soothe troubled waters or to create a great business connection.  

So back to the issue with forums and blogs that degenerate.  There is an inherent problem when you can’t see someone else.  Unless you WANT to be a bully, in which case I’m sure there is a forum already for you, I think it’s better to err on the side of being meticulous in your comments.  Humor doesn’t always come off right on the Internet.  And if you tell a joke that makes fun of someone’s age, gender, race, beliefs or anything else that is unique and important to another human being, you’re going to insult someone. 

I’ve worked with bullies before and I’ve seen that one of the secrets is to get the crowd on their side. They do it through little things… “Oh, they are too sensitive”  ”They can’t take a joke” etc…  and the crowd laughs nervously because they don’t want the bully targetting them next.  But it never feels right.  I’ve been one of those people caught laughing nervously and NEVER AGAIN.  It is something I am not proud of and view as one of the lowest points in my life as a human being.

So, this is my rant for the day.  I promise you, I will do everything I can to keep this and all of my other sites free of bullying comments and “jokes” that aren’t funny and instead demean and hurt others.  And, I’m going to work, every single day, to add a touch of graciousness (as my assistant Carolyn says) to my businesses.  

Face it, we’re all getting beaten up in these tense economic times.  We need a place where it’s still okay to dream and try new things.  That’s what my job is, I think, to protect and create an environment both here and in my live seminars, where it’s okay to dream again, where magic can happen and where we can venture out of our little self-created boxes into the sunlight again.

My next challenge is putting it all into place.  At this point, I have this site, which has turned into a blog more than a blog & a forum.  I have a number of landing pages which are designed to sell a product and/or get someone to join my database.  I haven’t done a lens yet.  As near I can discern a lens (Squidoo) is basically a website that is very content rich.  Pick a subject, and then pull together information on it.  Monetize it with an affiliate program.  Squidoo is very picky on their lenses.  They can’t be spammy and have to provide good information.  And then there is the “website” which, I think has turned into the generic term for blogs, landing pages, lens, and anything else I have forgotten.

They all work as long as two things happen:  (1)  People show up and (2) People buy.  

There seem to be two schools of thought on how to accomplish these two amazing feats of commerce.  One is to keep casting your net further and further out there.  In other words, add to your database every way you can.  I have to admit, this is engrained into my DNA.  ”Build database” is my default setting for every venture I start.  My question is always “How can I add to my database?”

Lately, though, I’ve had a different perspective from talking to some very successful business clients and from reading one of my favorite authors Seth Godin.  (Author of “Purple Cow” “Meatball Sundae” and bunch more books).  The message from them is clear:  Listen and serve your customers.  Your business then grows by referrals.   

Marketing becomes less advertising and more promotion.  For example “Does it blend?”, my all time favorite YouTube video series, is sponsored by Blendtec, maker of blenders.  The question for all of us perhaps is: How can we create a brand that is unique enough that it could be part of a YouTube video series?  Or is the answer to create a friendly, resource rich site like www.AllBusiness.com, to attract 3 million visitors a month?  

Then once we got ‘em, what do we sell them?  Another lesson from “Meatball Sundae”, the typical bell curve of product sales is gone. It’s been replaced by a valley.  People buy cheap or they buy custom.  They don’t buy in the middle in the niche world that has been created.

I used to think I understood marketing.  But, wow, everything changed and I was almost caught asleep at the wheel.

A while ago I started researching direct sales companies.  I’ve seen the model work, again and again.  For people who work the plan for 4-5 years, income suddenly jumps to $30,000 - $50,000 per month.  I just saw it again for a friend of mine.  Only he did it in 2 1/2 years.  That in and of itself was unusual.  I’ve never seen anyone jump that fast and I’ve known some very powerful marketers.  My friend is good, no doubt about it, I’ve known other guys who are good.

Here’s the other issue for me on the direct sale companies.  I don’t want to have to talk someone into using the product.  The nightmare biz opp for me would be having to convince people why this magic potion was the best thing ever and after fighting all the initial resistance, then seeing it for sale at Costco for half the price.  

We’ve had a comment to that effect in other blog posts.  In cases like that, the only way the biz opp works is if you recruit someone.  And then even if you’re legally not a pyramid scheme, it sure feels icky like one.

I want to find something that I can support and that works even if you never sell a single person on the plan.  Then you WILL sell people on the plan because it works without selling them.  Not sure if that circular argument made sense - basically if you have to spend all your time trying to overcome objections you might just have the wrong thing that you’re pitching.

So I checked out my friend’s direct sale company.  I talked to the founder.  (One of my rules - I want to get through and ask some very direct due diligence questions.  I’ve done tough due diligence for some of my hundred-millionaire clients and trust me, I know the hard questions.)  He passed that test.  The product is something every person needs AND it’s 1/3 of the cost that you could buy it at Walmart.  (I don’t think Costco sells it, or I’d use that as the benchmark).  

And one more thing - one of the guys came up with a challenge that if you followed this program for 6 months, you’d get 20% more business - guaranteed.  No one is really promoting that challenge anymore.  But I love that!  

So, here’s what I’m asking you.  I want to do one more test.  My husband and I started this program this Monday.  If after one month, I see the jump, I’ll do a webinar on the program.  If this works, I’ll show you exactly what I did and I’ll share my own spin on how we did it.  You can follow along step by step and it won’t cost you a dime.

Are you okay with waiting a few more weeks?

The more High Tech we become, the more High Touch we crave.

I’ve been really pondering what that means for my new tax firm, Diane Kennedy’s Tax Services.  Part of the reason that the model works so well is that we’re able to hire much better than average CPAs.  You might not know this, but there has been a shortage of CPAs for years.  If you have a CPA firm, you have to either settle for less experienced or less qualified or pay more money.  And of course, if you pay more, you have to pass that on to your clients.  

I’ve struggled with how to make money with a CPA firm for years.  But then I started moving to a more virtual, commoditized way of providing services.  Clients have clear understanding of what things will cost.  There is a flat monthly amount - no matter if you have 1 question a month or 1 question a day or no deals to analyze or a dozen to analyze.  You pay the same.  Most people like no surprises.  Plus, we value bill.  In other words, we don’t bill you by the hour.  If you ask a question that takes us 100 hours to research, it’ll still cost you the same flat fee.

And the other part that works is that we went completely virtual.  Our people all work from their own homes.  We’ve been able to attract a better experienced, more entrepreneurial CPA that way.  And that means we’ve got happier people for our clients.

But it also means that we’ve gone High Tech.  So, how do we add the High Touch back into our business?

These are some of the things we’re doing immediately:

-  Publish my email address.  I’m at Diane@TaxLoopholes.com.

-  Starting after the seminar, do regular coaching calls for my clients.  I’m thinking that we’ll do that weekly, but need to see if that makes sense.  We’ll tape them if someone can’t make it.

-  Send at least 2 cards per day out - a thank you, nice talking to you, how’s the weather, whatever type of unexpected card.  

My husband, not to be outdone, has started to do this as well.  

Now here is the amazing thing.  I have done a lot of research on the results when you put a campaign like this in place.   If you spend $10/week on 2 cards/day for 5 days/week for 6 months, you’ll increase your business income by AT LEAST 20%.   Most of the cases I saw were actually higher than that.

I’ll keep you posted on the results.  One thing I’ve noticed, though, is that RIchard and I are having a lot of fun sending cards out.  I’ll give you a link in a few days for the source we found.  I’m having trouble with the link right now and don’t want to post it until I know it’s working right.

The first two magazines that I had a column set for went under in January.  One of them “Medical Economics” I remember from back when I first worked in a CPA firm - almost 30 years ago.  It was shocking to think of it going under.  I guess that’s part of the change that is occurring in the way we do business.

Carolyn, my assistant, found me a bi-weekly blog at PFNLive.com.  Everything was going great and then I submitted an entry and didn’t hear anything back.  Strange, because I always get a note back.  So I followed up.  Nothing.  I followed up again.  Nothing.  (I can be persistent.  :-)  )  Then Carolyn tried.  She didn’t have any more success.  Meanwhile my same old blog post was now in its 4th week.

Then last week my post was gone and there was nothing new in its place.  In fact, shudder, another CPA had an article.  But the article was very generic and actually looked dated.  

I searched the online editor addresses and noticed that the guy I’d been emailing wasn’t listed.  I didn’t know any of the other guys.  Hmmmm….looks like there had been a change at the top.  I sent an email to the guys listed and had a response within 4 hours.

We spoke today and he apologized for not getting to me.  He had taken over the site and it was a mess, he said.  Then he asked me if I had been paid currently for all of my article.  ”Hmmmm…,” I replied, “Well this is probably the worst negotiation tactic ever, but I’ve never been paid.”  I didn’t tell him, but I was sure he knew.  I did the blog to get in front of thousands of doctors every month.    He went on to explain that he wanted to get me paid.  

So, now I am a paid blogger PLUS I get good leads.  You’ve got to celebrate the little wins!  

#1:  Businesses spend hundreds of thousands of dollars trying to reach consumers who don’t want to hear from them.  The old direct mail campaigns are more like “warm body” campaigns.  There is nothing directed about them at all.  The secret to success is trying to trick your prospect into thinking you aren’t junk.   Instead, build a business based on people who WANT to talk to you.   This is one of those blinding flashes of the obvious to me.  Most busy professionals and business owners put multiple screening in place and don’t ever give out their personal numbers.  Hey, I”m one of those guys too! The first “chink” in that was when I heard Bill Shopoff (founder of the HUGE Shopoff REIT) give out his personal office number and extension and his private email address.  Huh?  This guy is huge!  He made $85 mill over the past 3 years (that’s net profit, guys) and he gives out his personal contact info. Then

Seth Godin in his book said that until Forbes “outed” Bill Gates, he did the same thing.  BillG@Microsoft.com got you a direct connection to Bill.   These are the people who WANT to talk to you, WANT to become your clients and most questions, complaints, inquiries, never even get a response from the average company.  Yet, these companies will spend tons of money trying to get the attention of brand new people that they will eventually ignore as well.

You’ll start seeing my email address on a lot of things.  I’ll block out the spam and I’ll block out the threats (yes, I’ve even had a stalker), but otherwise, let me know if you have something you want to hear about or learn about.  I’m not going to do private consultation for free, but I will tell you how you can get answers to questions easily and how you can have a private consultation.    Oh, by the way, my email address is Diane@TaxLoopholes.com.  (It wasn’t even that hard to figure out.  I probably wasn’t fooling anyone.)

#2 Ah-ha!  We’re used to see the traditional bell curve graph.  It’s the graph that looks like a hill.  When it comes to sales, it means that we sell more of the middle.  But that’s not true anymore.  In fact, I’ve noticed a trend at TaxLoopholes that I just realized was actually because of this change.  Now the hill looks like a valley.  People buy cheap and they buy expensive.  Nobody wants middle-class mediocrity anymore.   That makes me rethink my model on a lot of things.  

Tomorrow I’m going to talk about another book that hit me upside the head.  

I was surprised to get it for $200.  I had followed most 4 letter domain sales and they typically went for more.  Of course, there are no vowels, so it’s not “ebay” or “beer” or some other high dollar name.

A week ago I couldn’t figure out what to do next for a B-I project and now I’ve got more ideas than I know what to do with.  It’s funny how things just suddenly show up.   

Tomorrow I’ll post on my next project for B-I, specifically taking one of my TaxLoopholes assets and finding a brand new niche.  I’m excited about that one!

Oh, and if anyone has some suggestions for DKDB, I’d love to hear them!  

For me, I’m a 6-3-8-2, which means out of 10, I’m a mid-range fact finder, a low range follow through, an insistent quickstart and a pathetic implementor.    My husband is the oil on the troubled seas - mid range - 6-6-4-5.  David is 3-5-7-7.   The combination of Quickstart and Implementor indicates that you will be a model builder.  I’m an idea person, who backs it up with research.  (Which is why I love tax strategies so much.  What would you like the answer to be?  THEN we’ll go figure out how to do it)  And my husband is able to talk to anyone and just smooths out the rough edges.  For those of you who struggle with focus as well, it could very well be that you have a high Quickstart and low followthrough like I do.

The tax world is going through major changes.  There are tax law changes, new acts from Congress with unintended results and the IRS is on the attack.  I’ve been a real estate investor and real estate investment fan for years, but I’m not as convinced about it for a wealth-building strategy these days.  Can you make money at it?  Sure.  But I always watch the tax loopholes.  And the real estate investors are losing them right and left.  In fact, the best way to make money and KEEP IT these days is if you are a real estate dealer  In other words, you have a business and it just happens that your commodity is real estate.

It seems that the government continues to find ways to tax any venture that a middle-class W-2 employee could be involved in.  They largely took away all the investment expense deductions for the stock investors and now they’re taking away the real estate loopholes.  And it looks like personal income taxes are going to really jump up while corporate tax rates are going to really drop.  The secret is to have a business.

My other random topic is regarding my son David.  David is now 17 1/2.  We homeschooled him, largely because of his circumstances when we adopted him 3 1/2 years ago.  He had only had 2 1/2 years of school, English was his second language and we felt he needed to understand what a family was like as much as he could.  He was enrolled in an online high school and last month, took his final exams and graduated!  That’s actually a year earlier than if he had been in a traditional high school.  But, now what? One thing we knew about older adoptive kids when we got them is that they are very reluctant to leave home.  Our local paper had the story of a family that is challenging the Arizona adoption laws to allow them to adopt the girl who has been with them for 2 years.  She’s now 18, but she wants a family and they want her.  The part that struck me was that she said she was never leaving home.  David says the same thing.  

So, now he’s planning the next chapter in his life.  He is taking a software course (pretty technical video editing) and just got a sales job at a high end kitchen store.  They have 3 days of sales training starting next week.  Some of the other new hires were complaining that they have to attend the training and are not being paid for it.  I got a kick out of David. He came home and said he got to go to the 3 days of training and it wasn’t going to cost him a dime!  I’m sure he’s not going to work at this place forever.  But, I’m so proud that he understands that getting 3 days of sales training IS a gift.  And it’s cool that he doesn’t have to pay for it.  Forget being paid to be there.  The knowledge and training is something that will help him the rest of his life.  How much is that worth?

And just in general about life - I’ve never seen an economy like this.  Some told me it was a “Starbucks” slowdown.  We have record number of foreclosures and that is definitely impacting a lot of people.  Other than that, the biggest challenge is consumer confidence, or rather the lack of it.  Our economy is based on spending and people aren’t spending as much.  That’s rippling everywhere.  But the problem isn’t really tangible, it’s psychological.  

This is the time when leaders are born.  For me personally, I can’t let the negative forecasts get to me.  I want to be the person I want my son to become.  And that means stepping up everyday, taking responsibility and creating a vision of the future that is better than it is today.