Take credits for research and development: Are you spending money doing research to discover new business components or gain tech knowledge? You can take 20% of your excess expenses as a credit, says Jackson. “The trick is that you have to be able to document the research and show accumulated costs,” he says.

If you’re exporting or thinking about it: You can set up a separate company as your sales agent and assign 50% of your profits to it as deemed commission. “If you’re qualified for foreign sales and you do this, your original business gets a deduction for half of its profits,” Jackson says. Your sales agent firm can then pay that profit out to you personally as a dividend, saving you up to 20% on your income tax liability.

There are some tax avoidance tactics like these that amaze me. Reducing taxes by up to 20% simply by creating a separate company to sell internationally? I need to make sure that we’re up to speed on all these tactics.

Many factors, including the threat of deeper rate cuts at home and stronger economic performance elsewhere, are piling up against the U.S. dollar

I sure hope that the dollar stops falling against every other currency.  We’re already paying 10% more for our products simply on currency rate changes.  That doesn’t even take into account the increases in raw materials and transportation that are eating into our margins.  I hope that whoever wins the presidential nomination focuses on real economic policies that are going to help everyone, not just special interest groups that happen to be in swing states.  If only Mitt Romney were still in the race, I’d feel a lot more confident.

What should we do when someone criticizes us? As long as the criticism isn’t petty, vicious, personal, or otherwise way off base, we should take it to heart. It’s only by carefully considering what a critic has to say that we’re able to become better. Of course it’s hard to do this, since we need to have both self-confidence and humility to acknowledge that we may be misguided. It’s understandable that our first reaction to criticism is a refusal to consider the critic’s points. Nevertheless even the most expert among us can have room for improvement. We can’t maintain excellence or hope to improve if we refuse to work on ourselves, which means, in part, taking criticism seriously.

Now I’m not perfect, but learning how to take criticism has made a big difference in my life.  Before I went on a mission for my church, I was 100% unable to even hear criticism, much less accept it and try to change myself because of it.  I had a leader that really brought some heat down on me, and I don’t know what changed, but I didn’t instinctively react defensively as I would have before that, probably because I knew that he only had the best of intentions.  Because I was able to listen, I became a much better person and a leader.

I still have a long ways to go, and it’s tough to accept criticism, but you’re always better off for it.  Now I find myself swinging almost too far on the pendulum the other way.  Now I can’t seem to get enough honest feedback from other people, though that’s partially because sometimes I come across as not wanting to hear it.  My current goal is to fix my non-verbal cues so that I’m more approachable.

Ultimate Golf Simulator - BusinessWeek

Beginning at $50,000, the Full Swing Golf simulator lets you play 50 of the world’s most famous courses

Full Swing has an impressive client install list, including Donald Trump, Michael Jordan and Curt Schilling. One day when I can spare the cash, I’m definitely going to invest in a sweet golf setup like this. For now however, I’m just going to keep playing cheap golf here in Utah.

It seems like a no-brainer, but taking the time to root out stupid routines can mean the difference between a company’s success and failure

Finding inefficiencies in my business is something that drives me nuts, but so often it doesn’t make sense to fix them.   One of the hardest things I’ve had to learn is that sometimes it’s ok if a business process doesn’t work perfectly.  There are so many things that we don’t do at all or that we don’t do well, so I try to focus my time on fixing the major problems.  Once we get other things working more smoothly, we’ll come back through and try and clean up the things that we missed on the first pass.  I know that’s how ’stupid routines’ get ingrained, but at this point in our company growth, I have to pick my battles.

Technical experts need to be viewed and developed as business professionals early in their careers; at the speed of business today, it’s essential to align every activity to strategy. Increasingly, areas such as information technology and R&D are moving from being cost centers to driving business strategy. Effective leaders in technical areas require an understanding of the business that extends beyond a single department or function.

Once again, I am glad for my Geek CEO background. I hope that with my programming and database background gained in previous ventures, I will be able to lead Seatability through tough times and stay nimble enough to stay ahead of our competition.

LinkedIn is hewing closely to the Web economy’s new motto on initial public offerings: Easy does it. Founded in 2003, LinkedIn may not sell shares until some time next year. Likewise, social networking site Facebook, worth $15 billion on paper, may not go public until 2010, a company board member says. People close to Facebook previously suggested an IPO could come as soon as 2009.

Mark Zuckerberg - Forbes - Net Worth: $1.5 billion

I’m impressed with how Mark Zuckerberg is dealing with the explosive growth of Facebook.  I can certainly understand how attached he is to his company, but does he really think that Facebook will still be valued at near $15 billion?  As much as I’d want to grow my company and as much as I don’t want to sell out, I don’t think that I’d be able to turn down any amount that can be expressed in terms of billions.  I wish him the best of luck and I hope that he doesn’t end up with another piece of worthless bubbledom.

Despite a slowing U.S. economy, online retail sales will continue to grow at double-digit rates for the next several years, but it will begin to take a turn toward maturity by 2012, according to new research from JupiterResearch.

U.S. online retail sales are expected to reach $148 billion in 2008, up 19 percent from sales in 2007 and comprising about 6.4 percent of total retail sales. That figure will grow to $166 billion in 2009 and $215 billion by 2012, for a compounded annual growth rate of about 11 percent, according to JupiterResearch analyst Patti Freeman Evans.

With so many customers flocking to the web to purchase products, the question is how to translate the experience of a great retail location to bits and bytes. Right now most internet retail sites are servicing the price sensitive, but do a poor job at attracting and selling to people that need advice. Those sales are transacted in the real world, mainly with salespeople that the customer trusts.

For many things, especially electronics, I reached a point long ago where I stopped listening to the CompUSA salesman harassing me because they just spouted out worthless drivel that they heard from someone else. 90% of all my purchases now go through Amazon.com mainly because of their collection of product reviews, which I feel that I can trust because they are unbiased.

That still doesn’t really get me to the point where I feel comfortable purchasing something that I don’t know much about. When I go to a restaurant, I always ask the waitress what the best or most popular items are, because that is my only way to gauge the food. Similarly, when I have limited info, I want to trust someone, but often I just have no idea where to turn.

On the web, I think there is a huge potential for websites targeting niche vertical markets, not just as a catalog of products, but to give advice on the products that are the most relevant, then step back and let the customer decide. There are a number of these companies being built, including www.csnstores.com and www.ivgstores.com amongst many others, but they still don’t go deep enough into the teaching aspect that I think most consumers are interested in.

The site that has done the best job that I have found is www.massage-chair-relief.com. I signed up for their free white paper and they had a series of articles that were automatically sent to me, helping me to feel comfortable that I had a basic understanding of the market and product offerings. I was looking at a big ticket purchase for my mother’s birthday, and not knowing a lot about massage chairs, their content and automated delivery did a fantastic job. All it took for them to do that was a little time creating the content and then setting up the automation, but I don’t doubt that it has dramatically impacted their sales and conversion ratios.

There’s a wealth of sales out there not being closed on the internet because even with all the Web 2.0 buzz, most sites have yet to understand how to gain consumer trust. Any aspiring entrepreneurs out there willing to take on the challenge?

…an outfit such as Penguin Books might well be positioned to teach a high-tech company how to outsource intellectual capital more effectively. After all, a publisher’s entire business rests on this model. There are insights to be gleaned, as well, from peeking inside hospitals, theaters, and arts organizations. “Too many companies benchmark themselves against others in their industry,” says Handy. “They should be comparing themselves to totally different organizations.”

I 100% agree with this article. Some of my best ideas have come when I’ve been reading news about other industries or things completely outside of the business realm. Like I posted previously about Geek CEOs, I think that having well rounded interests, especially with my nerdy predilections, will play a major role in helping me to stay ahead of the competition.

My dad is one of the coolest guys I know and I respect him a ton.  That being said, I now know that he has ‘made it’, since he is the proud owner of a Wikipedia entry on himself.  Wikipedia is incredible.  Hopefully someday I will be worthy of my own entry.