Archive for May, 2006
Health Insurance for Entrepreneurs (Part 1 of 5)
May 29th, 2006 | 
Author: One of the most important benefits employed people enjoy is health insurance coverage. It is also the single most costly expense for self-employed entrepreneurs. So what can you do to reduce ever increasing costs of health care coverage? Here are a few tips.
1. If a medical bill seems excessive, try negotiating
Your doctor or the office manager who handles billing will probably be flexible, provided you make a valid case. When one woman in Texas was charged $900 for surgery and “consultation,” she explained that she had visited the hospital just once, for surgery; her bill was promptly cut by $370.
2.. Contact a medical bill “auditor”
Several services have a medical bill “auditing” system that evaluates your medical bills to determine if errors occurred in the billing process. Considering that 97 percent of hospital medical bills contain errors, it’s no wonder why out-of-pocket medical expenses are on the rise for consumers. Because the typical hospital bill is extremely complicated, often containing several hundred line-item charges, there is ample opportunity for computer mistakes and accidental human error. Do a Google search for medical bill auditors to find companies offering this service.
3. You may get a tax break on your medical bills
Keep all your medical bills together and add them up at tax time. If they exceed 7.5 percent of your adjusted gross income, you may deduct the excess. Please note that these items also may be included in the total: the cost of eye glasses, contact lenses, physical therapy, x-rays, hearing aids, psychiatric care, insurance and transportation to the hospital or doctor’s office (at 30 cents a mile). There are phase-outs in some cases based on adjusted gross income. Check with your professional tax adviser.
4. Deduct 100% of your healthcare costs from your taxes
The IRS allows all self-employed to deduct 100% of health care costs from their taxes by using Section 105 of the Internal Revenue Code. To receive this deduction, you must do the following:
a) Hire your spouse as an employee of your business.
b) Have your spouse receive health insurance in his or her name, and include the family on the policy.
c) Pay your spouse a salary that will cover the costs of the insurance.
d) Talk to your tax professional about planning for Section 105 on your taxes.
We all know your spouse is active in your business. Now, you can equally recognize their contribution he or she makes – and get Uncle Sam to give you a tax break.
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Find Your Online Buyers
Marketing experts like Jay Conrad Levinson, Joe Sugarman and Jay Abraham agree perfectly on ONE THING: The first thing you must do to promote your product or service is to identify your exact potential buyer. Here’s one way to find your ideal buyer online:
1. Set up a free email account (hotmail, yahoo, etc.).
2. Sign up for all the e-zines that match your business or consumers’ market by using this new email account. This website lists all the big and little ezines: http://ezines.nettop20.com.
3. Compile a list of keywords for your business type in order to search out all potential ezines.
4. Go to the websites of your clients and competitors and subscribe to their newsletters using the new email account.
5. Read through the ezines each week to find out which ones are quality newsletters, who is writing articles for them, and how large each subscriber list is.
6. Contact the best ezines to ask if the publisher would review your website or service.
7. Post messages with your opinions and expertise to the subscribers.
8. Write articles to share with the ezine publishers. Remember, they have to produce new content for each issue, so your offer is greatly appreciated.
9. A great way to leverage other writers who are already contributing to these ezines is to email them and comment on their articles. Mention that their writing caught your eye because your expertise is in that business area and you respect their insights. You might create a great strategic alliance. Of course, visit the writers’ websites and sign up for the ezines.
10. Consider placing ads in the best ezines. If you can, contact other advertisers who said they make money from their ads.
Just begin investing time to communicate with others in your marketplace and you’ll find a herd of buyers. And don’t forget to stop and smell the roses. You just might be someone else’s buyer as well.
Til next time,
Coach Mo
P.S. I just want to make clear that while this is a great way to begin and grow your online marketing, it is by no means an exhaustive list. Your marketing plan should be more comprehensive and inclusive of all your initiatives. Check in later for more offline marketing strategies.
Coaches Get Coaching Too
You know, sometimes, a day off is a good thing. When people meet me and I tell them I am a business and leadership coach, it’s an unspoken but strong expectation of me to “always be on my p’s and q’s”. And then when they learn that one of my degrees is in Psychology, fuhgeddaboutit! They wonder if I’m analyzing them, or if everything that comes out of my mouth is some psychobabble Dr Phil gobbledigook (did I spell that right?).
Well, guess what, I am a spiritual being having a human experience just like you. I don’t have all the answers, and I certainly don’t have YOURS. But what I CAN do as a coach (and what we as human beings ideally will do for each other) is create the environment where you can find your own answers and implement them successfully.
I am a HUGE proponent of walking the talk. The people who know me well know that. I can’t teach what I don’t know, and can’t lead where I don’t go. But I also think that those who seek evidence of perfection are the ones paralyzed in their own inaction.
If you’re waiting for someone to lead the way perfectly before you make a move, you’ll be waiting a long time. I invite you to honor those who didn’t wait to have all the answers to dare to make a dream come true… those who didn’t procrastinate in the name of “it has to be perfect” in order to launch their business… those who never read a parenting book or took a marriage class in their life, but loved their spouses and children deeply and may have messed it up along the way. Honor them, and be one of them.
It’s part of being human, people! Being human is messy, it’s not a dress rehearsal, things slip through the cracks, opportunities are missed, pain is caused and received. But you know what, that’s what makes us so glorious: To be able to experience abject pain, rejection, failure, and yet get up and try again. You can’t walk the talk unless you stop talking and take a step… and then another… and then another… and when you fall, get up and keep walking. You might need to stay on your knees for a bit to catch your breath, but then you get up and keep walking.
My job as a coach is to be the one that dusts your knees off and helps you back up again so you can continue your journey. But YOU must walk it. It would be robbery if I or anybody took that experience away from you.
In the meantime, know that there are times when the coach falls on her knees too, and there are a few people around me that dust my knees off and help me back up again so I can continue walking MY talk. At the end of my life, I can confidently say that I didn’t spout off theories and suppositions. Instead, everything I ever shared was because I was a big player on the field of life, living fully entrenched in the human experience, not on the sidelines waiting for someone to make a foul so I can call it.
Wooo…. had to get that off my mind, y’all!!!
