University of La Verne SBDC Small Biz Blog

  In this webinar, we will be covering the common forms of ownership for small businesses and their filing requirements: Sole proprietorships General partnerships Limited Liability Company Corporations Our Guest Speaker, Lucius C. Davis III is the Small Business Liaison in the Taxpayers’ Rights Advocate’s Office. He assists with the development of small business education and outreach programs in order to help business owners better understand their income tax requirements and responsibilities. He also provides information about the Franchise Tax Board’s (FTB) programs and services that are available to them. Prior to becoming the Small Business Liaison, Lucius worked in Collections and in Filing in the Business Entities Section as an analyst at FTB. In the private sector, Lucius owned a small business for 10+ years. Prior to that, he played professional basketball overseas for 13 years. The Forms of Ownership presentation is a discussion of the most common forms of business owners...

www.ACRAtech.net   ACRAtech, Inc.  2502 Supply St Pomona, CA 91767 Scott Dordick is the CEO of Acratech, inc., which designs and manufactures photographic tripods and equipment. Scott became a client of the University of La Verne SBDC and Malcolm Geffen for help with automating and managing their accounting systems for the business.  The photography industry was in decline due to the improvement in cellphone picture quality. Cameras had been getting incrementally better years before but had gotten to the point where consumers were upgrading their cameras less often. "We were looking at our sales numbers over the years and they were just declining. We would go to the trades shows and it was doom and gloom...The writing was one the wall that we needed to do something," explained Scott.  Scott continued to work with Malcolm to help with declining sales and increasing production costs. Malcolm advised to established strategic alliances with major competitors and Acratech...

by Joshua Botello Using video for creating content and growing your business is the most powerful way to reach your customers. 86% of marketers say video has helped them generate leads for their business. Here at the SBDC, we create all kinds of content that most SBDCs don’t and have seen an increase in clients due to our video strategies.  In this video, I'll show you my process for creating this video and how long it takes me. I’ll show what tools I use and some tips if you are just getting started. Lights, Cameras, and action.   Pre Production At the very beginning of the process and before I even set up my tripod, I create a huge list of ideas to work with. I start with one or two-word subject titles that a video might be about but not every idea is a winner or will work at that time. I do this about once or twice a year. This gives me a huge list that I can write in a doc, spreadsheet, or anything else you use to record your ideas. Check out my video on blogging since mo...

by Joshua Botello A question we get from many B2B small businesses is “how do I get customers?” We typically refer them to LinkedIn because it's the biggest professional social network for engineers, buyers, and manufacturers. Our clients might be on the platform and don't know how to find the right people to interact with. So in this video, I’ll show you a simple 3 step process to finding prospects and customers on Linkedin.  Step 1: Know Your Customer Step 1 is to know your customer. You’ll ultimately need to create a list of people to contact and send them messages but you need to know who to target. Here is the information you need. Industry You first need to know what industry your prospects are in. If you are an IT consultant you need to know what kinds of businesses you work with. This could be financial services or the hospitality space, whatever your niche or industries are you need to identify those.  Company Now that you have your industries down it's time to nar...