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I'll admit, I'm a dancing queen. That certainly doesn't imply i'm any good at it but I LOVE it. My friend Andrea and I have taken a couple of dance classes together – Hip Hop and Pole Dancing. The next natural progression is Step Dance. This year Project Safe is putting on an Event called “Stomp Out Domestic Violence” which pits teams of 10 or more step dancers against each other to vie for first place.

For Stomp Out Domestic Violence, they’re lining up ten teams from different business and community groups. Each team — as with Dancing with Athens Stars– will perform one routine to vie for Audience Favorite and Judges’ Favorite awards. The Audience Favorite award will be determined by voting during the show (at $1 per vote donated to Project Safe).

Each team will be paired with a volunteer instructor. This will happen around the end of August. We will have to rehearse 10-15 times during the fall to get ready for our premiere on December 4!

I’ve put together a superstar team, several of them alumni for Dancing with the Stars, and one of them the winner of last year’s event.

Presenting the Team

1. Myself (Team Captain)
2. Andrea Griffith
3. Tonya Dugas
4. Candice Coursey
5. Susanna Drennen
6. Abby Denham
7. Kelly Girtz
8. Mike Hamby
9. Ashley Epting
10. Mystery Man
11. Mystery Man

Andrea Griffith
Andrea is multi-talented: multimedia journalist, former news anchor/reporter, entrepreneur, videographer, web designer, writer, ex-radio disc jockey, blogger, and social networking addict, and DANCER whether she likes it or not. I consider her one of my best friends, and we have quite a bit of experience “dancing” together, which might be considered more of interesting gyrations from someone watching from the outside! Oh she was also in Dancing with the Athens Stars 2010.

Tonya Dugas
As far as I know Tonya is the only one with actual training in dance. This kind of dance might be outside of her comfort zone but I know she can pull it off. Plus when I asked her to do it, she said “only for you”. I must be one special person to her to get her to commit to this with her three children. I also owe a debt of gratitude to her husband, Pete Dugas, who also happens to be a very close friend of mine, for loaning her to me for a few months of rehearsals.

Candice Coursey
Candice owns a fabulous spa in the middle of Boulevard Historic District, Urban Sanctuary. She is also just a crazy energetic personality that is perfect for Step Dancing. I’m really looking forward to getting to know Candice all the much better during this experience. She has been a great support during my little battle with the Big C, making me Queen for a Day!

Susanna Drennen
Susanna owns Suska in Five points – a consignment boutique that I frequent often. She is also married to a close friend of mine that serves on a quasi-government board with me, Sam Drennen. Both of these two are a riot to hang with, and I know she would bring a ton of fun to this competition. I’m real sorry I have to take her away from her precious twins and husband for a few nights a month :)

Abby Denham
Abby is the owner of Pints and Paints in the Leather’s Building. My business, Plexus, is just a few doors down from Pints and Paints so I see Abby on a pretty regular basis, and I LOVE painting there. She is such a precious little ball of fire and spunk and not having her on the team would be a major faux pas. She is also a lawyer, in retirement…taking a break for something more interesting – running an Art Studio!

Kelly Girtz
Kelly is a Dancing with the Athens Stars Alumni and also serves as the District 9 Commissioner (super district) and he lives right down the road from Plexus. He is also the principal at Athens Career Academy. Kelly is involved in all aspects of the ACC community, and serves us well. And he is one of my closest friends….seems we are always scheming about something or another. I’m glad to know him.

Mike Hamby
Mike is a Dancing with the Athens Stars Alumni from 2010 and serves as the District 10 Commissioner (super district) for my side of town – sorry Kelly! Mike is a small business owner with his cleaning business. He is also a survivor of Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma so we have some things in common – we have both been bald in our 30′s – I barely made that milestone. And Mike is a great drinking buddy when you can get him to actually show up on time!

Ashley Epting
Well I needed a ringer and Ashley is the man. Ashley was the winner of the 2011 Dancing with the Athens Stars. I never knew he had the moves I witnessed that night. Check out his skills in this youtube video. I was like….I gotta get that dude on my step dance team. We probably won’t even need a trainer with that guy on the team. He is also the owner of Harry’s Pig Shop and other food and event planning businesses in Athens. Oh and he was also an executive producer of Not Since You

Mystery Man 1
This spot is in the works. Will post when we have confirmation.

Mystery Man 2
This spot is in the works. Will post when we have confirmation.

I leased 4 computers through Apple three years ago in September. To be honest, I couldn't remember what month I leased them because it was three years ago! I knew it was sometime in the 2nd half of the year so I was expecting some kind of notice via e-mail or snail mail. Maybe one of my invoices for the lease would be yellow or maybe there would be a notice on an invoice in red or heaven forbid bold print to remind me my lease was expiring and instruct me how to end the lease.

Well, none of this happened. What did happen is there was a two-line note (non-bold, and in the same font as everything else) on the invoice the month before my lease expired on the monthly invoice. When you've been processing invoices for three years, you begin to stop looking at the details of the invoice and just take an overview.

Needless to see I did not follow the "proper procedure" to end my lease. No biggie right? When it got to be October I started thinking that I better check to see when my lease expires. So we called Apple and were told the lease expired on September 24, 2010. I proceeded to apologize and asked if they could send me the paperwork I needed to properly end the lease. At this point I was told that because I didn't end the lease prior to September 24, 2010 the lease was automatically extended for three months. You understand this means that now I am paying an additional $520 for the same three year old computers than I actually had to. My lease had a certain number of payments and a 10% of cost buy out clause. These 4 IMACs were to cost a total of $6513 and $450 to buy them at the end of the lease. Because i missed the two line sentence on the invoice directly preceeding the lease term expiration I was basically penalized with three additional months so now those same computers cost me over $7000 + additional $450 for buyout.

The lesson is make sure you put a calendar event to remind you to end your lease ahead of schedule. You need to start about two weeks prior because you can't request an on demand lease buyout statement or a copy of your contract. You have to go to a web site that isn't even managed by Apple, request a payoff statement, and they will fax it or email it to you in about 48 hours. If you call Apple with any questions, or problems, they tell you they can put in a request but its a different company that manages it so it will be 48 hours before you get a response, and it will be in email - one you can't reply too.

Oh and by the way if you lease a laptop, you can't return the lease unless the laptop can still hold charge for one hour. If you have ever had an Apple Laptop, you know you are lucky if you haven't had to replace the battery once already, and the batteries have a number of problems so you will be lucky if your laptop can still hold a one hour charge.

Its a completely customer unfriendly system. You would be much better off using Best Buy's 0%, 24 MO financing if you are interested in purchasing an Apple.

If you are a business owner and are reading this blog post you are obviously trying to find out how to keep more of your company's revenue in the bank instead of turning it over to the state and federal tax coffers. This blog post is specific to Georgia companies and the Georgia Department of Revenue bills you get each year.

Georgia has 31 different tax credits and incentives, but the specific tax credit I want to talk about is the Georgia Retraining Tax Credit. Only 1% of companies take advantage of tax credits but most every business can take advantage of at least one tax credit. This tax credit is applicable to ALL for-profit businesses in Georgia. The premise of it is to reward employers for empowering and improving their workforce and expanding their businesses. Georgia has done a terrible job of educating small businesses about this valuable tool for increasing the return on their investments.

So what is the difference between a tax credit and a tax deduction and why should you care?
Here is a simple explanation.

Effect of $10,000 tax deduction
Adjusted Gross Income: $100,000
Deductions: $10,000
Taxable Income: $90,000
Georgia Tax Rate: 6%
Total Tax Due: $5,400

Effect of $10,000 tax credit
Adjusted Gross Income: $100,000
Taxable Income: $100,000
Georgia Tax Rate: 6%
Tax Due: $6,000
Minus Tax Credit: $10,000
Total Tax Due: $0
And as a bonus you get to carry forward that extra $4,000 for up to 10 years. That's money in the bank.

So instead of writing a check for $5,400 to the GDOR you get to keep that money. Tax credits are a dollar for dollar credit against your final tax liability. The extent of the effect of a tax deduction is only as large as your tax bracket. If your tax bracket is 6% you only get a 6% reduction in your tax liability. Tax credits are a 100% reduction in your tax liability.

The amount of the Georgia Retraining Tax Credit is based on the number of qualified employees that undergo training, and the amount of training costs you incur for each employee. For 2009, your tax credit may not exceed $1,250 per person. However it is important to note that you can file an amended return for three years in arrears until December 31, 2010 (which means you can go back and file a return for 2006, 2007 and 2008) and there is no limit to the amount of credit you can receive per employee! Next year you can file an amended return for only 2008 and 2009 and beginning January 1, 2011 you can only file an amended return for one year in arrears.

How do I know if my business qualifies?
Do you use accounting, payroll, internet or other proprietary software in your business?
Do you use a telephone system in your business?
Do you have a security system in your business?
Do you use copiers, fax machines, binding equipment, manufacturing equipment or any other equipment that requires human interaction in your business?
Do you have to train staff on how to use these items when you upgrade the software or equipment?
If you can answer yes to any of these questions then your business most likely qualifies for this tax credit. There are a few other requirements:

How do I know which employees qualify?
Retraining credit is only valid for employees that are Georgia residents.
These employees must be with your company for at least 16 weeks.
These employees must be employed atleast 25 hours or more per week.

How much is the tax credit?
For 2009 the credit is for 50% of your costs up to $500 per training program and $1,250 per employee per year. Remember in previous years there was no cap so filing amended returns is a great idea to re-capture past years taxes paid. There is one moe stipulation - you can only use your retraining tax credit to offset up to 50% of your tax liability. So if your tax liability is $5,000 and your tax credit is $7,500 you can only use $2,500 of your tax credit this year. You can carry forward the remaining $5,000 for 10 years.

Didn't I already get a deduction for all of these costs?
This is where the wow factor comes in. This is the only true legal double dip.

Lets say you have 5 employees and you sent each of them to one conference to learn updated software or equipment a year. Lets say this conference had a registration cost of $500 for each employee. Additionally you had to fly each of the employees to the conference at the cost of $400 each. The hotel stay for 2 days was $300 each. And the conference was during a work week. Lets say each employee cost the company $30000 in gross salary expense. Here is how much of a tax credit you would get for this training.

Each Employee Costs: $500 registration fee, $400 airline ticket, $300 hotel stay, 16 hours of missed work at $19.23 hour cost.
Deduction for cost of training for each employee: $1,507.68
Total Tax Deduction for Training: $7,538.40
50% tax credit allowance: $500 per employee (since 50% of $1,507.58 is more than $500 you can only take $500)
Total Tax Credit for Training: $2,500
So you get an additional tax credit of $2,500 on top of your deduction!

So lets apply this simple example to your tax return

Adjusted Gross Income: $100,000
Deductions: $7,538
Taxable Income: $92,462
Tax Rate: 6%
Tax due before credit: $5,448
*Minus Tax Credit: $2500
TOTAL Tax Due: $2,948

* you can use the entire tax credit in this case because it is less than half of your tax liability

This one training cut your taxes due by almost half!

How do I do this?
Well filing for the Georgia Retraining Tax Credit is actually pretty intimidating which is why I had never looked into it before and why 99% of companies don't bother. Nothing to do with taxes is ever easy. BUT....luckily there are companies whose sole line of business is to file for tax credits for businesses! I was very fortunate to get introduced to McMillian and Associates. The work for you is simple. Keep an attendance sheet for each training session you conduct or your employees attend, get a trainers bio for the training and turn the paperwork in. Oh and by the way Internet training like webex and podcasts are completely legitimate training tools. Employees don't actually have to travel to outside training. You can do any of your training in your own office at your own computers.

How much does it cost?
Well it doesn't cost you anything if they don't find a tax credit for you? Where else can you have a company work their hind ends off for you and not charge you if they aren't successful except for lawyers? The way they get paid is they keep a percentage of the tax credit they find for you. So for example, lets say you contract with McMillian and Associates to file your tax credits, and they find $10,000 in tax credits for you for your 2009 return. You pay them $2,000. But remember you are keeping $10,000 of the taxes you would have handed over to the State of Georgia so you are still $8,000 ahead. And that $2,000 you pay them for their services is deductible as a business expense next year.

How do I get started?
Call me at (706) 353-2048 or email me at ssharp@plexusweb.com and i'll make the introduction to McMillian and Associates. There is a free one day training seminar at McMillian and Associates and it includes lunch. You can send a staff member if you, the business owner, can't attend. At this session you will learn to identify when a qualified training has occured and will be given the proper forms to keep on each training session. It is really very easy to maintain the records once you have participated in the training. Remember there is no cost unless you actually get tax credits!

Inspired by my two precious little girls - Emma Violet and Erin Rose Sharp.

Each order is custom gift wrapped to give to the special person in your life.

If your small business doesn't have a budget to hire a PR agency...don't despair, HARO is there.

HARO was the brainchild of Peter Shankman. In less than two years, the website has quickly become the go-to resource for reporters who are on a tight deadline and need sources. Shankman originally set up HARO as a Facebook page, but when things took off and he maxed out at 1,200 followers, Shankman launched the website HelpAReportOut.com

The concept is simple and the web site is even simpler. There is a small form to fill out - 4 fields. Fill out the form and you are hit with three daily emails full of reporters looking for an "expert" to consult with for their story.

Plexus has been using it for just a few weeks and we already have a hit. American Express sent out a query looking for small businesses using Software as a Service (SaaS). We responded quickly and they bit. We will be quoted on the American Express Open site with our review of how SaaS can improve a small business's bottom line with our real world example.

There are five rules of HARO:

• You will get three emails a day, M-F, with reporter queries from reporters and outlets from all over the world. Scan the emails, and if you're knowledgeable about any of the topics, answer the reporter directly.
• Don't SPAM reporters with off-topic pitches in response to their queries.
• You MAY forward queries to friends, but DO NOT post them on blogs or anywhere on the web.
• You're not allowed to harvest the reporter email addresses in the HARO emails for any reason.
• Be excellent to each other.

Spend two minutes by visiting HelpAReportOut.com, give them your first name, last name, company name and e-mail address and you are on your way to starting your own in-house PR campaign.