Save Your Business Miles! It Can Save You Thousands!

If you have to travel for business, you may know that you are allowed to deduct your business miles traveled. Some companies have a system setup for their employees to enter their trips and it will calculate it for them.

However, if you own your own business or you are not compensated by your employer for business miles traveled, then you have to track your miles on your own. When it comes to showing proof for tax deductions, it becomes difficult to show if you did not track every time you traveled for business.

Luckily, with new technology on smartphones an app can be used to track your miles and save them. This will let you know how much you are traveling and how much you would be able to write off when it comes to your taxes. It is more efficient than writing it on paper and will not be lost as easily.

Blue Ocean Strategy-What is the Next Big Idea?

For many business owners, their focus is how to compete in their competitive industries. For the restaurant industry there are endless amounts of competitors that provide similar products. For other industries, they might be trying to sell the exact same product.

The question that is then asked is how to differentiate from the competitors? What can be done to become the better option? For many businesses it becomes the customer service or extra amenities offered. While this may separate the business from the below average industry competitors, these types of things should be a given of what to do when trying to run a good business.

Then what can really differentiate your business from competitors?

To help answer this question, consider a blue ocean strategy.  This strategy created by W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne states that most businesses operate in red oceans. These red oceans are described as shark infested waters filled with blood from countless competitors fighting for scraps of market share. What they suggest for businesses who want to prosper is to create their own new blue oceans. These oceans are uncontested and creates new demand for a new market. 
Why fight a for small share of profits against so many competitors when you could create your own market contesting against no one else? 

This may seem hard, but this progressive thinking about your business could be what gets you to where you want your business to go.