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Everyone needs a master plan.

Some people like to live by the “seat of their pants,” and no one would argue that a little spontaneity is great to have in your life.

But you do need to plan something at some point, or your life will simply be one reaction after another.

There is so much written on planning these days that it’s hard for nearly anyone to argue against the value of planning.

The non-planner will end up taking no proactive action to improve his or her life.

The most successful people plan their goals and are motivated to accomplish them.

Do you have one?

A master plan should include long term goals, short term goals, and objectives.

You may want to build in some rewards to motivate you to accomplish them as well.

Let’s look at each item that should appear in your master plan:

Lifetime goals:

The first things you should include in your master plan are your lifetime, or dream goals.

These are goals that you want to do at some point in your life and they shouldn’t be dependent on money, time, or skill.

If you’re afraid of heights but have the goal of someday being a professional pilot, write it down!

Create a long list by finishing this sentence: “If I had unlimited money, time and skill, I would want to…”

Short term and Long term goals: Once you have your lifetime goals list, you should break it down into things that you can realistically do in the short term and in the long term.

Short term goals might be anywhere from the present to the next five or ten years.

Long term goals are likely anything five or ten years and beyond. (Don’t worry yet about how you’ll accomplish them; we’ll get to that in a moment).

Put them in order from the things you want to do sooner to the things you want to do later.

Objectives:

Once you have developed your goals, now you need to create objectives for each one.

Objectives are the steps that you need to take to reach your goals.

If you’re afraid of heights but want to be a professional pilot some day, your objectives might be to…

1. Overcome your fear of heights,

2. Ride in an airplane,

3. Take flying lessons,

4. Get your commercial pilot’s license, and 5.

Buy an airplane.

You might look at this list and say “easier said than done!” but by breaking down all of your goals into smaller objectives; it does become easier to do.

You now have some small steps to work on to get you to the next level.

The more you break down the steps that need to be taken, the easier it will be to reach your goal.

What does all this have to do with e-business?

Simple: For many entrepreneurs, a long term goal might be financial freedom.

Building your e-business might be one of the objectives to reach that goal.

And within that “main” objective of building your business will be the smaller objectives that must be reached to do the building.

Saleem Rana would love to share his inspiring ideas His book Never Ever Give Up tells you how. It is offered at no cost as a way to help YOU succeed. The Empowered Soul

Do you realize that the only difference between your success and that of say a Donald Trump or a Bill Gates is the way that they think?

Whether they did it consciously or not, their thought patterns follow a set of guidelines that led them to the success that they enjoy. These patterns are burnt into their minds, and they will not alter them for anything. It is who they are. Like them or not, they are effective in their chosen fields.

Goal setting is a huge topic, and not quite as simple as described.

It is however very worthwhile, and just may make the difference between contentment and a life of frustration.

The biggest frustration amongst people seems to be not having what they want in life.

Yet they have exactly what they wished for.

Your mind is like a powerful computer. Much more powerful than anything man made that exists today. The purpose of your mind is to provide the outcome that is programmed into it, by you.

It will always give you the programmed result, which is a law of nature.

And this is where the trouble starts. Most of us have no idea how to effectively program this computer, and those that do, program it with ineffective programs more often than not.

So what does this have to do with you, and more importantly, can you use this knowledge for your own good.

Well, the short answer is “yes”.

You can use this knowledge, and are actually doing so every single day.

Your life is exactly as your mind thinks and reacts to circumstances on a continuous basis right now.

So the good news is that you are already doing it, you cannot help yourself, it is human nature.

The bad news is that the thought patterns you have running in your mind, are not giving you the results you consciously want.

They are giving you the results that you have programmed into your mind, mostly subconsciously.

This is why goal setting can be so important.

With a clear goal in mind, your thought processes will at least be aligned in some direction most of the time. This can and does make a huge difference to your results.

Lets use the computer program analogy once more.

A computer will process information based on a specific set of rules and criteria. That is basically what a computer software program does.

If you have a program that says if A happens, always do B, you get a predetermined predictable result. You know that a certain input will give you a specific output.

With our minds, not having a goal is like saying, if A happens, do B, or C or D or whatever strikes your fancy.

The result is confusion and wasted energy. Spinning around without going anywhere. Now life presents us with A today, B tomorrow, and C, D, A the next day.

If, however, you have a set of actions ready for whenever A happens (by having a set goal) you automatically move toward your desired outcome every time A occurs.

You might not have moved far, but you did move a small amount toward your goal, every time A happens.

So find out what you want, then work towards that goal. At least you are moving in a certain direction, that you have predetermined, by simply deciding what you actually want, and then setting a goal to get there.

Saleem Rana would love to share his inspiring ideas His book Never Ever Give Up tells you how. It is offered at no cost as a way to help YOU succeed. The Empowered Soul

If you are not well on your way to achieving your goal for 2007, then pay attention to these words: “Dream big dreams; Only big dreams have the power to move men’s souls. How many times have you set goals, only to see them remain incomplete?”

Stop whatever you are doing and write these words on a piece of paper that you can keep with you at all times.

It is a quote from Napoleon Hill.

By following a simple daily technique you can achieve everything you want in life.

What stops you from achieving everything you want in life?

Here are a couple of things for your consideration.

Procrastination – is one main reason people do not achieve their goals.

Nearly everyone is guilty of procrastination from time to time(although we sometimes use other names for it – well excuses really) even the most motivated are subject to it on occasions.

Stop yourself in your tracks and ask of yourself ‘Is what you are doing at this precise moment taking to toward or away from the goal you have set?’

Possibly your procrastination has come about because the goal you have set is too small.

Your thought processes are – well that can be achieved that at any time at a drop of a hat so I will do it later.

You are procrastinating nothing less.

If it is a goal on your list it is a vital part of your major overall goal, and when achieved it will take you to the next stage of your main goal, the one that gives you motivation.

The second reason you procrastinate is the BELIEF you have in achieving the goal.

This is such a large subject that requires discussion in another article.

It’s just too easy to put off something that doesn’t have a lot of appeal even if you were to achieve it.

BIG goals drive you to do things you would never do for major goals — in many ways they almost pull you through the obstacles you are likely to meet on the way to achieving them.

Because with big goals you plan and also want to achieve them so much they become part of your being.

For example say your major goal is to move to a four-bedroom house in a better part of town.

A minor goal you may set is a new suite of furniture for your new house.

Compared to your main goal it is easy to dismiss the minor goal as insignificant – yet let look at it a different way.

Achieving the goal of the new suite of furniture, having it in your home now and sitting on it helps to bring your major goal into sharper focus.

Just sit there and imagine it as if you were in your new house and you are enjoying the confort of the new suite, suddenly it will become an integral part of your overall goal.

What is one of the main secrets of high goal achievers?

First they write their goals down.

The fact is that writing goals down is so powerful it increases your chance of success by at least 1000%.

Their second secret is that their goals are always BIG.

There’s no power at all in small goals.

When the goal isn’t big enough, it’s too easy to give in to the obstacles that appear in your life.

It’s very difficult to maintain the persistence that all great achievement requires when the goal is small and ordinary.

How big is BIG?

If it doesn’t make you a little nervous, you know that feeling in the pit of your stomach; if it doesn’t take your breath away the first time you think about it, it probably isn’t big enough.

These physical symptoms are the result of a chemical change in your body caused by your thoughts.

When your goal is big enough that the thought of it causes your body to undergo physical changes then you are on the right path.

Even more when the thought of MISSING the goal causes a feeling a nausea in the pit of your stomach you are pitching it just right.

Set yourself time to sit down on your own and with pad and pencil ask yourself what do you want in every part of your life for the next 12 months to 5 years.

No matter what you think of just write it down without questioning your ability to achieve it, that is the subject of another article.

I’ll bet you have have heard all these ideas before!
But have you put them into practice. You can still make 2007 your favorite year!

Saleem Rana would love to share his inspiring ideas His book Never Ever Give Up tells you how. It is offered at no cost as a way to help YOU succeed. The Empowered Soul

A goal setting activity can be one of the most stressful and sometimes futile things you ever do in your life.

Each new year brings new resolutions. People make unrealistic promises to themselves knowing that many of them are sure to be broken. But we do it anyway, because it is a tradition that has been passed down through many generations.

There are several ways to plan for reaching your goals that can greatly increases your chances for success and reduce the amount of stress involved.

First, you must understand that while goals should be written down, they need not be etched in stone. For instance, say that you want to lose 20 pounds in the next two months, and two months later, you have only lost 15 pounds.

Many people would see this as a failure, get depressed, and go back to their unhealthy habits. The results are predictable. They gain back the weight they lost (or more) and end up back at square one.

Achieving a goal is like driving to a different city. You never travel in a straight line. You make turns, take detours, and sometimes get lost (although most men would never admit to this). Do you go back home and start over? Of course not. You just make adjustments from your current location.

Taking the above example once again, losing 15 pounds instead of 20 is not failure! Absolutely not. You simply need to make the necessary adjustments in your goal and continue on. Instead of dwelling on your inability to lose 20 pounds, consider that you now only need to lose five pounds. Since you just lost 15 pounds in two months, losing five more in the next month should be a snap. But if you do not, you simply make the necessary adjusts once again from that point. Each goal gets easier and easier.

You should also make reasonably achievable goals. If you need to lose 100 pounds, do not plan to lose it in the next six months. That is not only unreasonable, it can be dangerous to your health. However, losing 100 pounds in 12 months breaks down to slightly less that two pounds per week. That is certainly within reason.

If your goal is to earn a million dollars in the next year, that is admirable. But have you thought about how you are going to do that? If you are starting from scratch, that may not be a reasonable goal. Perhaps you should start by building a foundation first and shooting for your first million dollars next year.

All goal setting activities point you in the direction you want to go…but it does take constant finessing of your aim to hit the target.

Saleem Rana would love to share his inspiring ideas His book Never Ever Give Up tells you how. It is offered at no cost as a way to help YOU succeed. The Empowered Soul

First, unless you are planning on going public or have hundreds of stockholders do not form a C Corp to begin with. Use an S Corp or an LLC. If you currently are a C Corp ask your attorney or tax advisor about converting to an S Corp. If you sell your company within a 10 year period of converting to an S Corp the sale can be taxed as if you were still a C Corp.

Here is what happens when there is an asset sale of a C Corp. The assets that are sold are compared to their depreciated basis and the difference is treated as ordinary income to the C Corp. Any good will is a 100% gain and again is treated as ordinary income. This new found income drives up your corporate tax rate, often to the maximum rate of around 34%. You are not done yet. The corporation pays this tax bill and then there is a distribution of the remaining funds to the shareholders. They are taxed a second time at their long term capital gains rate.

Compare this to a C Corp stock sale. The stock is sold and there is no tax to the corporation. The distribution is made to the shareholders and they pay only their long term capital gain on the change in value over their basis. The difference can be hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Secondly, keep all assets that may appreciate in value outside the C Corp and in an LLC. Your real estate, patents, intellectual property, etc. should be held in a pass through entity so you avoid the potential high C Corp corporate tax rate and the double taxation if you do an asset sale.

Let’s say that you are a C Corp and the buyer refuses to do a stock sale. If you can get the buyer to move as much of the transaction value to a covenant not to compete, you will be much better off. That will be taxed to you personally at the long term capital gains rate and not the corporate tax rate and the gain can be spread out over the non-compete period.

Another approach you can use is “Personal Good Will”. This is where the seller’s reputation, expertise, and relationships are in effect separated from the assets of the company and account for as much of the good will value as possible from the business. So let’s say that the company sells for $8 million dollars and the amount allocated to the hard assets is $6 million. That leaves $2 million that can be classified as good will. If that good will is assigned to the C Corp, it will be taxed at the 34% rate and then taxed again when it is distributed to the shareholders at 15%.

If you can move that amount to personal goodwill for the owner, it is paid directly to him and he gets taxed at the 15% rate only. The calculation looks like this: If the good will is $2 million and is allocated to the C Corp. They pay $680,000 in corporate income taxes. The $1,320,000 remaining gets distributed to the shareholders and an additional 15% tax is paid or $198,000 for a total tax on that $2 million of $878,000. Moving it all to personal goodwill results in a total tax on that $2 million of $300,000, a savings of $578,000. This approach was pioneered in a classic IRS case called the Martin Ice Cream Case.

There is a built in bias on the part of buyers with the advice of their attorneys to avoid doing stock sales because you buy everything including any hidden liabilities. You as the seller want to convince the buyer to do a stock sale by demonstrating that there are no hidden liabilities. Another argument you can use is that most contracts are not assignable without the consent of the other party. In an asset sale it could be problematic to get assignments of a large quantity of contracts. An example is if your company is in a favorable long-term property lease the landlord will never agree to an assignment of that lease. If you have a long-term contract with a government entity, a change in ownership can trigger a contract end. In a stock sale these are not issues.

There are many variables in a business sale negotiation. Price, Cash at close, Stock versus Asset Sale, and allocation of purchase price. The IRS does not allow the buyer’s allocation of purchase price to be different than the seller’s. It also must be noted that from a tax standpoint, something favorable for the seller is correspondingly less favorable for the buyer. An experienced buyer will structure the deal in the most favorable way for himself. Sellers must get good advisors to help them negotiate to achieve the maximum after tax proceeds.

href=”http://www.midmarkcap.com/SellerResources.cfm” target=”_blank”>Dave Kauppi is a Merger and Acquisition Advisor and President of MidMarket Capital, representing owners in the sale of privately held businesses. We provide Wall Street style investment banking services to lower mid market companies at a size appropriate fee structure.