Archive for Administrative
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Yesterday my new toll free number (1-877-7SLV-BAK) has been activated giving my company a central caller switch board. The service I chose was Gotvmail and it give Silverback Apparel a full caller dispatching system for less than $10/month. Not only will it allow me to add lines once employees are hired, it saves me the cost of having to buy a fax machine and $20 per month for a dedicated line. So my consumers and business clients are now able to phone and fax free of cost giving them to opportunity to communicate with a real person if they have any concerns.
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BEWARE THEY ARE VERY VERY SOPHISTICATED. When I posted the Google Apps: An Office And Email Solution Every Company Should Use 2 days ago I did not think that spam would be a problem. Considering that I average at the moment only 80 users per day I never thought that this would affect me. Well I would just like to say that within those 2 days spam bots have gotten a hold of my email address and I have received and influx of spam emails. If I did not have the protection of the Gmail/Google Apps spam filter this of course would be a huge problem and it would annoy the hell out of me. I did a little research and I suggest that if you are ever going to post your email address somewhere do so under either a secondary address or replace the ‘@’ symbol with ‘[at]’. I recently discovered that with Google Apps has a feature that lets you assign email ‘Nicknames’ (nickname@yourDomain.com) that are an extension of your email address. If a nickname is getting too many email then all you have to do is create a new one and remove the old one.
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Today I setup Google Apps on SilverbackApparel.com and I have to say that I have been amazed by Google once again. Google Apps essentially plugs Gmail, Gcalendar, Gtalk, iGoogle and Gdocs into your website and allows you to manage those under you own domain name. I for example am using [Edit: Removed Email Address Because of Spam] (one of my corporate email addresses) and instead of using some third rate email solution to manage my emails, I get to manage everything from withing a Gmail interface. I personally love using gmail because it has made email so simple, reliable (unlike hotmail), fast and junk mail free. Not only this, you get 2 GB of storage and POP3 access for Outlook as well just like Gmail. What makes this all the better is that all of these benefits apply to Google Apps for a very Googlish price: $0. With Microsoft you’d pay maybe hundreds, but at Google yes it’s free…And here is the kicker…You can them everything to fit you corporate image.
Check out the pages I have setup and branded with my corporate logo
start.silverbackapparel.com
mail.silverbackapparel.com
docs.silverbackapparel.com
If there is any interest and you want a step by step of how I did it just post a comment and I’ll go through it.
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Writing To Get Your Readers Attention: Key Points
- Create a strong subject line that is clear and descriptive of the content.
- Sculpt the message body to make it easily scannable.
- Make the nuggets of information easy to find.
- Your introductory paragraph is vital: Your first impression counts for everything.
Important information in writing attention grabbing emails and posts. Spending time developing an email’s subject line and body is vital in getting your message across. If you are like me and get 30 or more emails per day you probably just quickly skimmed over emails unless something grabs your attention. I only make an exception if I am specifically expecting an email, if not I will generally read less than 20% of an email. Another problem is when I receive an email with a one word subject line such as “Hey” or “Hi” I will generally only refer to it once and then usually never visit it again. The reason is because when an email’s subject line is very descriptive of its content I immediately qualify the content either as desirable or not depending on whether I’m currently seeking information on what the subject describes. In a world where humans are getting increasingly efficient at filtering information, if the subject line describing the email is not clear and concise we automatically tune it out as irrelevant.
The reason I bring this up is because I was reading the July/August issue of Fast Company and on page 46 I came across an article called “Email Is Dead…”. In one of the case studies this article sites the author talks about how Capital One over the last 3 years has put its employees through workshops in order to “reduce email strain by writing better messages”. What they have found is that by writing “stronger subject lines” a recipient knows why they are receiving an email and in the future it makes it easier to refer back to emails. The little blurb about Capital One further expands on clarity by saying that a sculpted email body helps the reader scan through the main body of the message.
I believe that it is vital that companies teach their employees proper email etiquette and that doing so will save the company money and resources in the long run. Doing so will reduce redundancy in email communications and decrease employee stress. Also it should assist the clients in retrieving information efficiently and give them a reason to read entire emails if they pertain to something that they currently need to address. I am reminded of a couple years ago when I sent an email to my university advisor with a weak subject line, and in response she replied: “Remember to send e-mails with identifying headings to get a fast response. That’s how I file them”.
Clarity in the Subject line is not the only thing that you should worry about, because if the body is not easily scannable then your readers will end up ignoring the content and your message. What is important as my as one of my friends and associates stated last week is to make the nuggets of valuable information easily found and make your text easily scannable. Doing so will guarantee that readers will end up drilling more deeply into content and retrieve more value from your writings.
The final thing I have to say is that the introductory sentence of your body need to captivate your audience and grab its attention right away. You have very little time to peak the readers interest before they tune out. So make sure that the first sentence is your strongest and most captivating, because if it isn’t then you are not giving your reader a reason to keep reading.
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Employer Identification Number “EIN” - This is what any US corporation needs in order to open up a bank account, hire employees and do a multitude of other business related activities.
So today I dialed the IRS in order to get an EIN for Silverback Apparel Inc with a lot of reservations about having to deal with the “BIG” and “ScArY” IRS. Well I do have to say that things did not turn out the way I had expected they would have. I did start off by dialing the wrong IRS department, but this was quickly rectified by being transfered over the the Business department, where I was quickly connected to an agent. I am astounded at how friendly, informative, and curtious the gentleman who helped me out was. I was even more amazed by the fact that he told me that I would have my EIN number within 10 minutes. He asked me all the questions that you find on the SS-4 form (the form needed to apply for an EIN) and within 5 minutes of having answered those he had my number. He informed me that an official document (needed to open a bank account) will be sent to Canada for my records and the it would arrive within 2 weeks. All in all I have to say that so far dealing with the US government so far has really been a lot quicker and less painful than I thought it would be. My advice to Canadian business men wanting to do business in the US is to actually phone the IRS because they will help answer your questions right away, as well as expedite you EIN application.
Internal Revenue Service
irs.gov
Telephone Assistance for Businesses
Toll-Free 1-800-829-4933
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At about 10:45 PM I received and email on my Blackberry indicating that I was officially incorporated, and that all the documentation was in transit. To incorporate I decided that I did not want to go through the hassle of filing for incorporation myself for 2 reasons. First, because I am currently living in Toronto and wanted to open a US corporation, not having a US address would make the whole process much more difficult, time consuming and expensive for me. Secondly, the opportunity costs were much less if I were to hire a document filing service company and so I chose to deal with MyCorporation and purchase their expedited service. Intuit as I hope most of you have heard of, is the owner of this company and also the reason that I decided to choose MyCorporation rather than their competitor Corporate.com. I was amazed at how easy and seamless the whole process was and how helpful the rep who helped me was (Marvin, who also gave be a $25 discount). All it took was a quick 30 minute call to their call center and 1 signature on a piece of paper they sent me via UPS (which I returned the very same day). Then two and a half weeks later (today) I received my incorporation package with all my corporate documents. It even comes with a CD that takes you through the whole package and explains everything about its contents and a copy of Intuit’s Quickbooks. I am just so impress by how well put together this program is and how easy they made it for me to open up a company. I would definitely suggest to anyone wanting to open an American corporation, that they check into using this company’s services.
There is only two things that I need to do before I am ready to do business and that is open up a back account and get a mailing address. It will be a bit of a hassle to open up the bank account because to do so I need to get an Employer Identification Number which I need a social security number to get. This will force me to deal with the IRS which I doubt will be nearly as easy as dealing with MyCorporation. At least opening a mailbox with mail forwarding should be easy (2 words: Mailboxes Etc).
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