If you have access to the internet, you have access to literally hundreds of thousands of public records at your disposal. You can find basically anything you want if you are willing to search for it, including free public records such as marriage certificates, unclaimed money information, property deeds and criminal records.

When we began to do public records searches we were amazed at how much information showed up. We began by searching for public records and quickly realized that we would need to narrow the search before we could even begin to weed through all of the information available on the web.

Therefore, our first tip for anyone beginning to search for public records on the internet is to be as specific as possible. This means you need to specify what type of record you want, state, city, dates or years and first, middle and last names as they pertain to your record’s search. Even being that specific, you will still be given a large number of options to choose from. For instance, when we searched for “criminal records Dallas Texas 2005 John Michael Smith” over 500,000 websites were identified. Obviously, many of these sites were not specifically geared towards public records, but you get the picture that you need to be specific.

Because public records are free, stay clear of sites that try to charge money you for a search or want to charge you for access to the records once they are found. Most of the time you could simply just hop in your car and drive to the local courthouse or vital statistics department to get the free records so there is no reason that you would need to pay for free records. It must be noted that public records are different then searches for people or people locaters and it is not unusual to expect to pay a fee for that service.

There are many sites that will help you narrow down your search, such as Locatepublicrecords.com and publicrecords.com. This helps you avoid some of the junk sites, sites that charge money and sites that don’t really pertain to a public records search. WE would suggest that you start at one of these sites to do a speedier search.

The next time you need a public record, want information about public deeds or are just a concerned neighbor wanting to know who is living in your area, you can turn to the internet. With a little searching, you can find the public records you need without having to leave the comfort of your house and standing in line with everyone else.

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There are many pros and cons that must be considered by those thinking of hiring independent contractors, and if those are not factored into the hiring decision, there may well be legal consequences. Of course, it is always wise to go over your plans with your attorney, so this article is not to be construed as legal advice but rather some business alerts that need to be considered before making a decision.

Of course, the first thing to do is to consider the job that is to be done, the duration of the assignment, the pros and cons of choosing a permanent employee and the pros and cons of hiring an independent contractor. Then, you need to make certain that your classification decision will hold up if it is challenged by either your state’s or the federal auditors.

Why Would You Want to Hire an Independent Contractor?

The reason that drives most companies to decide to hire independent contractors is a simple one - money. There is no doubt that there is a definite financial advantage, and in most cases, the company does save money for a wide variety of reasons. Let’s consider some of the expenses that are almost always incurred when a regular employee holds a position.

Tags: contract, employee, employees, independent contractor, IRS, staffing guidecontract, employee, employees, independent contractor, IRS, staffing guide

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If you were to open a convenience store, you would think long and hard about the store’s location. It would not make much sense to open it in a remote area with few customers. When you start a website, every person with online access is a potential customer. Have you ever wondered how many people actually use the Internet? Is it a few hundred thousand, a few million or more?

According to the Internet World Stats website, out of a total 6.5 billion people on the planet, about 1/6-th of them go online. That is a staggering 1 billion people! Obviously those who could potentially access your website is less than that since for example not everyone speaks the same language. If you are developing a website in English then you have access to at least 330 million people considering just North America. Of course there are many more English speaking countries so that number is much larger (link).

In addition, consider that there is still the other 5 billion of the population that does not have online access. Every year more people get access to the Internet as the infrastructure is improving worldwide while the cost of access is decreasing. It might be that growth in North America is slowing down but it is increasing rapidly in less developed countries (link).

I hope these numbers help you realize a couple of important points. First, if your website does not get much traffic at first don’t give up. You just haven’t reached all of your potential customers. This brings me to my second point. Marketing is important to success and I hope that you now understand why. In a later article, I will discuss how to properly market your website in order to drive traffic to it. For the time being just take some time to comprehend what a vast economy the Internet really is and the opportunities that exist therein.

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Consistent and rapid changes are impacting the economy, and the small businesses that create approximately two-thirds of the nation’s new jobs. These changes are all around us and envelope all areas of business. The most obvious changes range from: telecommunications, manufacturing, distribution and natural resource management to evolving consumer needs and demands. Thus we see a tremendous growth in worldwide competition and making the road to success much more complex and difficult, especially for small businesses and entrepreneurs.

In a century that moved our transportation from horse trails to interplanetary trajectories, changed our communications tools from quill pens to computers, and took our culture from bacon and beans to sushi and burritos, some people think they’ve seen it all. Futurists say, the winds of change witnessed in the 1900s are a summer’s breeze compared to the hurricane that lies ahead. The 21st century, they claim, will bring unprecedented transformation to the world in which we live.

In the last decade alone, computers, fax machines and modems have brought the office into homes, cars, airplanes and hotel rooms. Future advances will unite the telephone, computer and television into one unit. In fact, telephones may become so portable that many people will have their own individual phone numbers where they can be reached anywhere in the world. The electronic economy is changing large corporations and small businesses alike. This same technology is greatly affecting the growth and increase of volume for home-based businesses and breaking down stereotypes of the home office. According to a 1993 study by the SBA’s Office of Advocacy, home businesses are not just the realm of people without “real” jobs who want to earn extra cash. On the contrary, the study found that while having fewer employees, the average home-based business owner had significantly higher net worth than their workplace-bound counterparts. In 1993, an estimated 41.1 million Americans were working from their homes, or more than a third of the adult work force, up from 26.8 million in 1989.

California leads the country in this alternative work style trend with an estimated four million home offices. The work-at-home segment has continued to grow rapidly.

Turn of the century journalist Ambrose Bierce defined the future as “the period of time in which our affairs prosper, our friends are true and our happiness is assured.” ealistically, however, the future may supply conditions no less competitive than the present, and companies of all sizes will continue to scramble to some degree to survive. By taking advantage of key trends that are changing the world as we know it, sending businesses around the globe and recreating the workplace, entrepreneurs will continue to fuel the nation’s economy through new job creation, creativity, and innovation.

We all want success, health, prosperity, and we all want to be happy. We want it now. We all want to be self-disciplined and find an easy formula for success and high achievement. There are ways to maintain this excitement and enthusiasm about goals and ambitions we want to accomplish. There are ways to stay committed to do the things we know we want to be doing. There are several ways to keep the energy, desire, drive and make the feeling last! There is a formula, a recipe or a road map for lasting success and motivation. In certain areas of our life we have the desire but find a lack of long-term motivation.

What Stifles Inspiration

1. Lack of defined goals

2. Letting others pull you down

3. Lack of personal development

4. Lack of responsibility for your life and shifting the blame

5. Poor health

6. Overwhelmed

7. Waiting for better order in your life, or for things to be perfect

8. Don’t see your reward or visualize what you want to accomplish

9. Poor self-esteem

10. Creature of habit

Top Ten Ways to Find Your Internal Inspiration

1. Find what you love to do and form a game plan to do it.

2. Review your goals and objectives daily. How are you going to get there?

3. Develop a sense of urgency. How and when you are going to get there?

4. Develop courage to do what you really want.

5. Read inspirational material about how and where you want to go.

6. Find others who are successful and discover how they accomplished their goals.

7. Develop a vision.

8. What are the reasons you want to get there? List them.

9. Find a support group.

10. Find and develop a great attitude!

When we use inspiration, we are enthusiastic about ourselves and what we are going to accomplish. How do we find that inspiration? We find it by discovering the reasons that inspire us to improve ourselves and our lives. What is our purpose? What are the reasons behind our goals and objectives? When you use desperation as a motivator, you are moved by logic. For example, you go to work, because if you don’t you will be fired.

Emotionally you do not want to go, but logically you must go to work. When you use inspiration as a motivator, you are using your emotions. Sure, there may be some logic to your motivation, but the inspiration to act is emotional. Wanting to become the best in your field is a desire, and this emotion and will drive you further than basing your motivation on logic.

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We all know the saying in business, “It’s not what you know but who you know”, right? This saying is definitely true when it comes to small business and on occasion, the same can be said in media relations. However, what you know can sometimes get you just as far - especially if you’re trying to tell your story to the local press.

Some time ago, a small-business client approached me about handling public relations for her firm. She had been writing her own press releases and submitting them to the press but all of her efforts had generated no press. She asked me to critique her work to discover what she might be doing wrong. Upon reviewing her press releases, I found that her writing skills were outstanding but the problem came when I began to investigate the methods by which she was submitting her releases. The five rules below illustrate the lessons that she learned about distributing press releases to the media.

Rule #1: Do your homework on reporters. You can start with the Bacons’ Media Directory, which serves as the public relations practioner’s Bible. If you don’t know what it is, basically it lists the name, address, phone number, fax number, e-mail, beat (issue or specific type of story to cover), deadlines, and story preferences and angles for most every reporter and news producer anywhere in the world. There are five volumes of books: Newspapers, Magazines, TV/Cable, Radio and International. You can purchase the books or get the same information from Bacons’ in CD-Rom format or through an online subscription. These books are invaluable but unfortunately are also very expensive. Here’s a tip: You can access them for free usually at your local public library or a college library. Use these books to help you narrow down the reporters that you think would be helpful for launching your story. If Bacon’s is completely out of your budget, just follow your favorite local newspaper to determine which reporters cover which stories.

Rule #2: Verify your sources. Just because you found information on reporters in Bacons’ doesn’t mean that your work is done. Most reporters are assigned a beat but those beats change from time to time and as a result, reporters tend to move around a lot. Because the Bacons’ books and their competitors are only published once per year with occasional updates, it’s very important that you call media outlets and verify that you can still reach the reporter you would like to talk to. More importantly, find out if the reporter still covers the beat that is important to your story. If for some reason there is a new reporter covering that beat, make note of those changes in a database or spreadsheet, and always call before sending out a new release.

Rules #3: Know where to call for information. Most people are afraid to just call up a reporter (they can be scary people) to find out this information, however if you want to avoid that aspect of the job, then simply call the News Assignment Desk - the nerve center of news operation. It is here that you can verify the reporter information and also get a sense for the types of stories that an editor might find interesting enough to assign to an individual reporter.

Rules #4: Know how a reporter likes to receive information. When it comes to distributing press releases or letters, all reporters are different. It’s your job to find out how a reporter wants to receive his or her information on a potential story. For example, some reporters only read faxes while others only look at releases sent by mail. Still others will only read e-mail, and yet others will only accept a story idea over the phone. This is important because if you violate the reporter’s rule for receiving information, then your release likely will never be read. It will get a one-way trip to the trashcan.

Rules #5: Adhere to a reporter’s deadline. Just as you can find out the name and e-mail address of a specific reporter, you can also find out their writing deadline. This is very important because the last thing anyone wants to experience is being on the line with a reporter when he or she is on deadline. Here’s another tip: Most daily newspapers are put to bed at 5pm. Call the reporter between 8am and 9am because you might catch them before they go their morning editorial meeting. When calling up a reporter directly, always asks the reporter if he or she is currently on deadline as a courtesy. They will respect you for it and this will give you an indication as to how long you have to speak with that particular reporter on the phone. If you’re nervous about speaking with the reporter, then create a short script that you can state comfortably in 60 seconds.

While it’s always great to know a reporter personally, few small-business owners will ever have that luxury. However, if you know what to do and whom to contact when the time comes to tell your story, your chances of coverage are just as good as anyone else’s. After all when it comes to media relations, it’s not just who you know but what you know - plus a little luck never hurts either.

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