Aside from the obvious benefits of donating our time and money to a cause we believe in, there are tax benefits as well.  What most people don't realize is how to offer a larger contribution without using money at all.

Bartering your excess time or inventory and donating some of that credit is a great way to keep more of your money instead of giving it to Uncle Sam needlessly.  I'm not saying that taxes are all bad, I'm saying we get the chance to keep more of our money depending on how many expenses we have for that tax year.  We get the opportunity to write-off losses, list expenses and contributions and it's all legal.  This applies to all small business & entrepreneurs as well as large corporations.

Many Tradia® Members have taken advantage of this concept.  Some members donate large sums of Tradia® Dollars to various 501c3 corporations and the IRS allows a dollar-for-dollar contribution if you use barter dollars from a legitimate barter / trade exchange system.  This is one of the many advantages of maintaining a barter account with a trade exchange.

A small hotel chain could barter unsold rooms accumulating Tradia® Dollars into their Tradia® account.  As a separate transaction, that same hotel chain can make a charitable contributuion and list the entire amount on their tax records.  The hotel fills several empty rooms, finds new clients and uses some of the barter currency to help a charity bringing more good media exposure to the hotel chain.  Everyone wins and it is all made possible due to the trade exchange and a hotel with more empty rooms than they would wish for.  Barter allows the hotel to fill empty rooms as they see fit.

There are 5 reasons that a small business or entrepreneur would open a Tradia® account.

1) Immediate New Barter Customers.

2) New Cash Referrals from the New Barter Customers.

3) Additional Advertising Budget using New Barter Dollars.

4) New Cash Customers from New Advertising Budget & Campaign

5) Every Time You Use Tradia® Dollars to buy something, Your Money Stays in Your Pocket.

We found it necessary to assume the operations of 3 Tradia® Franchises across the USA.  By taking them over and reorganizing the staff and operations, we anticipate a smooth transition and steady growth of both membership and monthly trade volumes.  Sometimes, you have to step back before you leap forward.  As a franchise system, Tradia® can not allow inconsistency or the value of each Tradia® Franchise suffers.

Tradia® Corporate saw the need to step-in on these franchises in an effort to better serve the Tradia® members, build our brand and produce profits on a consistent basis.  In the past we merged existing barter groups into Tradia® and inherited all kinds of pre-existing personalities and attitudes.  Tradia® no longer seeks to merge other barter groups without a franchise fee to reduce the turnaround of staff members and franchisees.  With a monetary investment, the quality of franchise candidates improves.

We realize it takes all kinds of people to populate a world.  Tradia® is looking for a specific model from a time-tested system.  We want the Tradia® experience to be fantastic regardless of what city, state or country you visit.  With these franchise acquisitions, Tradia® has taken a giant step in the right direction.  We would rather have less offices and a great experience than be a large company with mediocre customer satisfaction.  We have a long way to go to meet our own expectations.  Our pace just got faster.

We've had 3 meetings with investors and key marketing people in Florida over the past five months in an effort to dramatically increase the number of Tradia ® Franchise Operations in the USA and Canada.  We're almost complete in our negotiations and feel certain that Tradia ® will be the largest Barter Exchange Franchise in North America.  There's always room at the top and we expect to be there in 2 short years.

In mid-April of this year, we video taped a key portion of our Franchise / Trade Director training that will play a huge role in our Franchise & staff training efforts.  Franchisee's will use our training system to teach their growing staff members how to do the Tradia ® business.  You can be in all places at all times when you use the technology available to us today.  On-line training as well as weekly web-conference training will add to our vast training system and make it possible that every single Tradia ® representative will speak from the same platform based on a systematic and readily available training format.  If you buy a Tradia ® Franchise, you expect to get more results and our training does deliver that at every level.

We have the name, the marketing materials, the training system, a trained corporate staff, a targeted business plan with 6 levels of profitability and a dynamic business opportunity aimed at small business, all ready for this expansion.  We're ready for the wave of growth and we're excited.  Tradia ® is a cash-less alternative to banks, credit cards and debt.  People can literally trade what they have to get what they want using the Tradia ® Barter Exchange & Database.

 After a lot of preparation and testing, Tradia ® is ready to set the pace and take the lead in the Barter industry.

George Wells, a veteran barter exchange owner has decided to ride off into the sunset.  At the young age of 78, George has sold his Tradia ® Franchise to newcomer; Ron Paul and his wife Katie.  Ron has a ton of sales and customer service experience and we're excited to see this transition.  It's always a little scary when we go through a change like this but it usually brings new energy and growth with the change-over.

We're always looking for a true entreprenuer and we are certain to have found it in Ron.  Tradia ® in Boise will be hard to beat with the addition of the Pauls as franchise owner / operators.

Ron & Katie Paul will be trained as a Tradia ® Franchise in the month of May 2008.  We'll see them in Portland and then schedule the first of 2 in-field trainings.  Tradia ® has recently increased the amount of training offered to a new Tradia Franchise.  The more a franchisee knows about Tradia ®, the faster and stronger they grow as a business.  This is a very positive step in the growth of Tradia ® in Idaho.