Even Business Owner’s Need A Toolkit Once In A While

When something is broken and it needs fixed, what do you do? You have 2 choices, call someone in to fix it or do the work on your own. Ironically, it’s not that much different in business. You could either call someone in to help answer your questions and do the work, or learn the necessary materials on your own.

Since 1995, The Business Owners Toolkit has helped small businesses gather the information they need to be successful. While a lot of the information can be accessed directly, they also have a members section and it’s free. Unlike most resources, their website offers over 5000 pages of content to help small business owners get their questions answered.

Karen Kobelski, the owner of the Business Owner’s Toolkit, took the time to answer a few of our questions about the toolkit and what it has to offer for small business owners.

What was the inspiration behind the Business Owners Toolkit?

The idea came about at the beginning of the Internet in the mid 90’s. CCH was a publishing company that developed and sold significant content for professionals like lawyers and accountants. The leader of CCH at the time had the idea that that same content would be very valuable for entrepreneurs and small business owners if it could be written in a way that was accessible to the general public versus the professional audience that CCH usually served. The idea was CCH could use the Internet as a channel to reach a new audience with content that it already had that was rewritten to be accessible to that audience.

When someone stops into your website, what will they find?

The Toolkit has multiple components:

  • There is a small business guide which is over 5000 pages of indexed content which provides “how to” information for small business owners on how to start, run and grow that business.
  • There are also thousands of tools and templates for business owners to use to implement the tactics recommended in the business guide. These range from tax forms to sample business plans to HR policies.
  • We also have helpful webinars on various topics of interest to business owners such as picking a legal structure to bookkeeping basics.
  • We publish daily news updates when there are any changes to laws and policies that might affect business owners. These include tax law changes, changes to unemployment benefits and news about components of federal economic packages that might affect business owners.
  • We publish a feature called “Ask Alice” where business owners can e-mail their business questions to a business expert we have on staff. Alice answers every e-mail personally and publishes a weekly column with a topic raised in her questions that might be of interest to a broader audience.
  • We broadcast a weekly radio show on topics of interest to business owners and we have copies of each broadcast available for visitors to the site to listen to using our audio player.
  • We have several companies that sponsor the content of the Toolkit, and we have a section of the Toolkit that has special offers from these sponsors.
  • We have a business card exchange center
  • We offer access to a program called Start Me Up which provides step by step counseling for an entrepreneur who needs assistance with the early phases of establishing a new business.

We also have upcoming features including a Toolkit store which will offer products and services that small business owners need to support growth and expansion and paid Toolkit membership where members who pay a modest annual fee will have access to premium content, how-to books, webinars and special events.

Why should someone become a Toolkit member? What does the membership include? How much does it cost?

Our current membership is free, but you must become a member to access the business tools, special offers, webinars, Ask Alice, radio show and special offers. We offer a drawing for a free laptop/month to people who register to become members. If you elect not to become a member, you can still access the small business guide, but you must become a member to access the more robust features of the site.

We will be adding a paid membership option that I describe above in the next few months. The Ask Alice e-mail interaction feature will likely move to the paid membership section, but the Ask Alice column will remain available to anyone who comes to the site.

How do we find out when you’ll be hosting a webinar? What are some of the topics that are generally covered?

The webinars are pre-recorded, self-guided and available to our free members for listening at any time. The current roster of webinars includes:
· Bookkeeping Basics
· Building a Business Plan
· Choosing a Legal Structure
· Doing Your Payroll
· Finding Money to Start a Business
· Home Business Basics
· Paying Your Employees
· Small Business Tax Workshop
· Taking Your Business Online
· Understanding Cash Flow
We also have a queue of webinars we will be releasing to the site in 2009 so people should check back often as they are added. Paid membership in 2009 will include some webinars hosted by leading business experts. More details about this will be published on the Toolkit soon.

How long have you had your nationally syndicated weekly radio show? Do you know where we need to tune in if we want to listen to it? What is normally talked about during the show?

We’ve had the show since May 2008 and you can find the link to the stations and times they broadcast the show at www.toolkit.com/stationlisting.aspx. We also upload every show to the Toolkit itself where members can listen to them at their leisure. Finally, they are available as podcasts on iTunes. The topics on the show range from: “How to Value Your Business”, “The Power of PR” to Healthcare Coverage for Small Business”. A complete list of shows and topics is available at www.toolkit.com/radio/player.html

Would you mind telling us a little more about the Startup Toolkit? What will it include? Would you mind sharing a small bit of information on the topics that will be covered?

The Startup Toolkit is a CD mailer that will be sent to every new business formed in the U.S. in 2009. On the CD, there will be webinars, courses and workshops from the Toolkit staff, access to links about laws and regulations that affect new business owners, consulting and training programs provided by companies that serve small businesses, and discounts and giveaways from these companies. Anyone who forms a business in 2009 should expect to receive this CD free in their mailbox. Of course, we hope people use the information on the CD to help grow their business, but that they also take the time to register to become a member of the Business Owner’s Toolkit as then they will have access to a far broader set of information than can be provided in a CD.

What has the feedback been like from the members of your website?

We have had nothing but positive feedback. To find a free resource like this that can guide you every step of the way through all of the complexities of running a business is invaluable. We are grateful to our sponsors that we can continue to provide this resource. Generally, people are thirsty for even more information so we constantly take suggestions from our membership as we develop our annual content plans. We add new content, webinars and tools every year which is driven by requests from our members from surveys we take. For example, the webinars and the whole section on Internet Marketing were added in 2008 as a result of requests from our members.

Since the launch of the Business Owners Toolkit in 1995, how has it changed?

Well, the content has exploded over the years. We now have 9 published books that represent the material on the Toolkit. New features added over the years include the radio show, the webinars, the business card exchange, membership, and thousands of new tools and templates. Our annual tax updates provide significant value as Congress enacts tax code changes year after year.

If you had to take all of your advice and compact it into one sentence, what would you tell someone who is starting a new business?

Before you do anything, incorporate or form an llc so that you can separate your personal assets and credit from that of your business.

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