Your Life, Your Purpose

Planning Resources For Your Business

b160allen@gmail.com (Brandon Allen) — Wed, 12 Jan 2011 20:33:14 +0000

What are the resources that you have available to you? Do an assessment of where you are at with your business in terms of financial resources, mental capital and relationships. Today's episode is all about assessing these resources.

Why You Need A Mentor

b160allen@gmail.com (Brandon Allen) — Wed, 01 Dec 2010 21:25:01 +0000

Get A Mentor One of the most overlooked resources that we have available to us is human capital. We have all this access to human capital but we don't use it. A mentor relationship can be a powerful relationship to get you to the next level in business as well as life. Today I talk about some of the things you should consider in building this relationship to win.

What's The Right Entity Structure For My Business?

b160allen@gmail.com (Brandon Allen) — Mon, 11 Oct 2010 21:48:34 +0000

It's So Simple Yet So Overlooked As soon as you see a title like entity structure for your business, your next reaction might be to take a nap. Not so fast as this week, we give you some straightforward advice on setting up your business entity the right way. When your business entity isn't set up properly, the result is that you don't have the proper level of personal protection. The other important issue is that without the proper entity in place, you could be paying way too much money in taxes. If that doesn't get your attention I don't know what will!

Tax Myths for Business Owners

b160allen@gmail.com (Brandon Allen) — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 20:08:07 +0000

The Tax Myths That Business Owners Must Be Aware Of No one wants to get audited or find out later that they own a ton of money in back taxes. However, if you prescribe to some of the common myths out there about tax for your business, you may be putting yourself in a position to get audited and owe money to the IRS. I am joined again this week by Chris Anderson, resident tax expert, as he shares the most common mistakes that business owners make with regards to deductions on their taxes. Is your business making mistakes with regards to tax planning? Listen to the myths and find out.

What's The Best Way To Structure Your Entity

b160allen@gmail.com (Brandon Allen) — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 20:02:51 +0000

Set Your Business Up To Win One of the places where a business owner will get a little bit lax in their planning is in the structuring of their business entity. Many times they take the path a least resistance and just run their business as a sole proprietorship. While there isn't any one entity that is better than another, you could be paying way more money in taxes than you need to by not setting up your business entity properly. This week I bring in accounting expert, Chris Anderson, to talk about the various entities and why you would choose them to set up your business. This is a topic that every new business owner and many current business owners must understand.

The Cool By-Products Of Owning A Business

b160allen@gmail.com (Brandon Allen) — Mon, 05 Jul 2010 15:24:50 +0000

There are many fantastic by-products of owning a business. Enjoying the by-products of business ownership is OK, it just can't be the main focus of your business. Your business still needs to be rooted firmly in value creation for you to realize the other by-products. What are these other by-products to owning a business and why are they important? Listen to this week's episode and find out.

How Can You Best Serve?

b160allen@gmail.com (Brandon Allen) — Mon, 05 Jul 2010 15:17:33 +0000

How much can you give? This is the question that the best business owners ask. They aren't as concerned with what's in it for them, they are concerned with what's in it for their client base. This mindset can be difficult to stick with when there are times tough and/or challenging. It brings me to the mentality that many people prescribe to today that keeps us from being successful. It's the mentality of have-do-be. This mentality assumes that if you have something then you can do the things that you want to do and then ultimately you will be the person that you want to be. If you look at the average work place, the average worker has this mentality. The average worker thinks that if they just got paid more then they would give more effort and ultimately they would be the person they envision being. On the flip side, the exceptional person knows that you have to have a be-do-have mentality. In order to get paid more and achieve success, you have to be the kind of person who would warrant that. When you are being a high achiever, you act like a high achiever and then you get paid what a high achiever would get paid. This is the mentality of success. Listen to this week's episode as I give you specific examples of how this works in the marketplace.

Don't Start Your Business For These Reasons

b160allen@gmail.com (Brandon Allen) — Mon, 05 Jul 2010 14:45:01 +0000

There are many reasons that a new business fails. Most of these reasons for failure are things that we have control over. One reason that stands out is starting a business for the wrong reasons. When it comes down to it, there is one reason to start a business. Listen to this week's episode to find out what that is.

Setting Goals For Your Business and Your Life

b160allen@gmail.com (Brandon Allen) — Mon, 05 Jul 2010 14:37:04 +0000

Goal setting has always been a challenge. There are a lot of obstacles that get in the way of setting goals. Obstacles such as time, fear of failure, fear of success and creating the space to make goals happen. What are the right goals for you? What if you hit those goals? What if you fail? This week's episode illustrates how to handle these questions.

What Do You Know That You Don't Know

b160allen@gmail.com (Brandon Allen) — Fri, 21 May 2010 04:39:35 +0000

In business you know there are a number of activities and phases of your business that you are not comfortable doing and not that good at doing. Yet, we do them anyway. The attitude of rugged individualist holds us back in our business as we end up getting bogged down in activities that take time and energy off of the activities that create the most impact for our business.

Why Networking Is A Powerful Tool For Your Business

b160allen@gmail.com (Brandon Allen) — Fri, 21 May 2010 04:33:55 +0000

All of us have people in our lives that we talk with on a regular basis. Unfortunately, we sometimes forget to stop and have meaningful conversations with these people in our lives. Business owners have a lot of underutilized resources in their business particularly in the area of relationship capital. What areas can you do a better job in to make better connections and expand your reach?

How to Build Your Business Platform

b160allen@gmail.com (Brandon Allen) — Fri, 23 Apr 2010 23:04:06 +0000

Assuming that you are already know your Soul Purpose, you then have to start building a platform with which to deliver your Purpose with. It's overwhelming to think about how to build a business around your talents. It really comes down to asking what big problems you can solve in the marketplace and how do you want to go about delivering these solutions to create value the most value and play to your strengths.

How To Engage In Your Business

b160allen@gmail.com (Brandon Allen) — Fri, 23 Apr 2010 22:55:53 +0000

Utilizing someone else's Soul Purpose to help your business move forward is a great idea. There is a right and wrong way to do this. As a business owner it's important to stay engaged in your business. Business owners who are looking for help need to remember that ultimately their business is their business and that other people who work in or on your business are not going to care more about your business than you do. There is a fine line between delegation and negligence when it comes to running your business. Today's episode deals with walking that line the right way.

Location Matters No Matter What Your Business Is

b160allen@gmail.com (Brandon Allen) — Sat, 27 Mar 2010 19:31:51 +0000

Location is one of the primary reasons for business failures with brick and mortar locations. When we think of locations for business, we often think of physical store fronts and we don't spend enough time thinking about the virtual neighborhood our business is in. Even worse, many businesses still don't have a virtual/online presence at all. Having a solid web presence for your business is essential for today's small business owner. So, what does it take to be in a good online neighborhood and where are the good online neighborhood's? Listen this week and find out.

Should I Be A Business Entrepreneur?

b160allen@gmail.com (Brandon Allen) — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 18:36:23 +0000

To be or not to be an entrepreneur? That's the first question in the quest for becoming an entrepreneur. It's an important question to ask for obvious reason. We help you answer the question by examining the pros and cons of entrepreneurship vs working for someone else.

Building A Platform on Your Soul Purpose

b160allen@gmail.com (Brandon Allen) — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 22:19:36 +0000

Once you have a good idea of what your Soul Purpose is, the question then becomes, what do I do now? This episode is all about where to start in building a platform around your passion. We start the conversation with mindset. Often our minds are what keep us from success in business. We explore what tools and techniques you can use to improve in this area.

The Beginning

b160allen@gmail.com (Brandon Allen) — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 22:07:04 +0000

This is the inaugural episode of the Your Life, Your Purpose show. This episode touches on Soul Purpose and how we overcome playing small in our lives. My story was that of perpetually playing small and how I overcame that with the help of a sermon and a fortune cookie to live with more passion and pursue entrepreneurship. Coincidence? You decide.