Oregon’s unemployment rate is now up to 7.3%.

I had the oppurtonity to speak at the Oregon Hearing Society’s fall education seminar.  I spoke on the basics of limiting risk in a small business.  I’ve posted the outline I used for the seminar below.
The Basics of limiting liability in Business
Kevin Spence

Types of business entities

Type
Liability Protection
Tax
Ease of Use

Sole Proprietorship
None
Self-Employment
easiest

Partnership
None for general [...]

If anyone would like to write about technology and its use in the small to medium sized business, I’d be all for it.  I occassionaly get asked about different POS systems or inventory management systems and I really have no clue about most of it.  If this is something you would be interested in, send [...]

In Oregon, and most of the rest of the United States, the Limited Liability Company (LLC) is the most popular entity for a new business. The LLC has quickly become the most popular because of the numerous advantages it has over a Corporation, Partnership or a Sole Proprietor. In most instances, a small [...]

The Portland City Council voted yesterday to remove the exemptions of real estate agents from the city’s business license. There is also talk about removing a similar exemption from insurance agents.
Also changed was requiring new businesses to pay a $100 registration fee.
I haven’t read the text of the new provisions so I’m not sure what [...]

How cheating on your taxes can impact business sale price Portland Business Broker Thoughts
Yet another reason why you should be honest. Small understatements in revenue can have tremendous impacts on future valuations of your company.
Office in Home Depreciation PDX CPA: Tax & Accounting Advice for Portland Small Businesses
The potential pitfalls of depreciating your [...]

It is often the overlooked, mundane facts of life that give us the biggest problems in the end.   A friend of mine nearly saw the destruction of his business this past weekend not because of the failure of his business model or weaking credit markets.  His landlord notified him that his lease would be terminated [...]

Incorporation Break Even Point?

Brian Germer discusses the “breakeven point” for small businesses incorporating as an S-corporation.

PDX Coffee–Review of Juniper Java

Ben drinks some coffee and tells you about it. I like the idea and hope he can keep [...]

playing with ZoHo CRM #
@ahockley I’ve never used highrise. the only other crm i’ve used is sugar. So far, zoho appears to meet my needs #

I wish I was shorting some banks now #
@jabancroft No, but Intel is a little big for me #
Sorry about all of the tweets. I forgot that the twitter plugin was activated while moving old posts around #
@dswiese thanks. I’m still struggling to make the site pretty and to move the archives over [...]