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5 things social media posts have in common

August 14, 2019 0

Last night, we had a discussion during our family dinner. The subject of discussion was how social media had turned the world into a global village. A message that could take a lifetime to be delivered would be delivered for you in seconds through Facebook. My sister; Helen, stated how through social media, she was able to reach through thousands of customers in seconds- something that would have been considered impossible in the 15th century.

Sadly, not everyone understands how to appropriate the use of social media when it comes to marketing. I have compiled some keynotes you should consider when posting stuff on social media platforms:

Have empathy

When it comes to brand promotion through the use of social media, you must possess the skill of understanding how others feel about what you are trying to promote. In other words, look through their eyes. If you were in their shoes, what portion of your content would you dislike? Which would you want more explanation for? But don’t just stop there. Go further by meeting their every desire.

Do more of visuals

Don’t bore me with a 1000-word article of how well your product would meet my need. Chill… don’t get me wrong. It is not out of place to be a little bit explanatory about the goods you sell or the services you provide; however, you should ensure you put something that draws the attention of your potential clients. Input pictures alongside your article to create a mental image of what you are trying to communicate across to your customers.

Use emojis

Come on…we live in the 21st century- an age where people get mood swings by just looking at emojis. If you want to keep your readers in tune with your content or what you are trying to pass across, use the suitable emojis. If a sad person looks through your content and a laughing emoji pops up, it would light up his mood. This way, your click-through rates improve. Surely, emojis will improve your engagement metrics.

Tell them about you.

Nobody wants to fall into the hands of fraudsters. Mentioning a little bit about yourself would let them feel safe. If you wish, pop in some photos of yourself. Your followers would see who is behind the scenes and learn about the person is running the company affairs. Go the extra mile by sharing pictures of your employees- without them; your business wouldn’t have survived.

Drop inspirational quotes.

Running out of ideas on what to post? Well, you can never be out of inspirational quotes. Run a simple google search. If you are a good writer, come up with lovely quotes. Doing this, you would make them feel more comfortable with your credibility. It steers up a feeling of confidence in them in the sense that you do not only care about them because you want to make money, but you do care about them. It’s simple- stronger interpersonal relationship attracts more engagement on your post.

Read more

How to get new accounting clients

August 12, 2019 0

The Wow Company
recently attended a London event for small businesses who didn’t have an
accountant. We spoke to twelve business owners there, and eventually signed
three as new clients.

We’ve always pitched ourselves as a
firm that’s good for young businesses. We want to work for them and we know how
to appeal to them. But Wow is 13 years old now. We’re an established business,
which means we have to continually ensure we relate well to younger
organisations. This was a great reminder of how to win their hearts and minds.


Understanding the
new-business headspace

When thinking about
how to get new accounting clients, it pays to try and understand their mindset.
Most businesses struggle into life as a small one or two person operation.
Their setup is simple and uncluttered, but there’s no budget for hiring help,
so the owners do everything – including bookkeeping. It’s a do-it-yourself
culture.  

As the business grows, the owners
come under pressure. There are more transactions happening and more records to
keep. Money flows in and out of the business faster, and they often lose track
of it. You can expect them to be feeling overworked, tired, and anxious.  


Owners will be
feeling some pain

As their workload
grows and they slip behind on their bookkeeping, business owners worry that:

·       
they’re not meeting their tax and compliance obligations

·       
they don’t really know how much money they’re making

·       
they’re making decisions about things they don’t fully understand (like
debt)

And they’ll feel
pressure to:

·       
work faster to meet growing demand for their goods and services

·       
catch up on business admin on their weekends

·       
try and fix their work-life balance

This is the state of mind of your
newest accounting client. Be ready to support them through this time.


Make an emotional
connection

Small business
owners can start to feel very lonely during the growing pains. As a result,
owners often feel isolated. The best thing you can do when meeting them for the
first time is show some empathy. Don’t focus on the debits and credits of
accounting. Try instead to give them a sense of comfort and understanding.

Being human isn’t
just a nice thing to do, it’s the right thing to do. It’s also a competitive
advantage. Business owners don’t expect it from an accountant, so it’ll set you
apart. At The Wow Company, we start by asking new accounting clients what keeps
them up at night, or what they wish for their business. They’re business
questions, but they’re framed in an emotional context.


What do they want
from an accountant?

Someone who doesn’t
have an accountant probably doesn’t know what an accountant can do. You’re not
going to educate them overnight so don’t try to. It’ll just overwhelm them.

Business owners in
these early stages aren’t looking for sophisticated services. If you can
address their short-term anxieties, they’ll be interested in talking some more.
Focus on these three things:

1.     Figuring out how
the business is doing
As businesses grow and speed up, owners generally lose track of their financial
situation. They may not know if they’re profitable, or how much they can
reinvest in the business. Tell them how you’ll put that information at their
fingertips.

2.     Taking away hassle
No one gets into business to do accounting. Build systems that reduce the
business owner’s bookkeeping commitments. For business owners who are
scrambling to do a thousand things at once, there’s no greater gift you can
give them than time.

3.     Being their go-to
person
Small business owners have a lot of questions. They probably worry some
of them are naive or stupid. Be the person they feel comfortable asking. As you
find out what they do and don’t know, you’ll be able to educate them. That will
make them more confident in themselves, their business, and in you.


Give them back
their life

It’s the sheer
volume of work that will often compel a business owner to find an accountant.
They’ll be sick of recording and reconciling transactions – or worrying about
their finances. Help them imagine a life where they don’t spend late nights or
weekends:

·       
punching data into a spreadsheet

·       
preparing and sending invoices

·       
wondering if they can afford new equipment, extra staff, or more
inventory


Services that will
hook small businesses

Explain how you’ll
take away the pain. Most new accounting clients won’t understand that modern
accounting tools can automate their:

·       
record keeping

·       
invoicing

·       
cash flow tracking

These three services alone will
relieve their work burden, give them certainty in their financial situation,
and help them understand their business. If you can promise to fix up these
areas of their business in the first couple of months, you’ll be in a strong
position to pick them up as new accounting clients.


Caring for your
clients isn’t just a marketing trick

Once you have a new
accounting client onboard, you need to keep working on the personal
relationship. Empathy is not just a show you put on to win the business.

It helps to have
compassionate people on staff, but there’s more to it than personalities. You
need to make relationship-building part of everyone’s workday. Keep a customer
relationship management system, and ensure everyone on staff buys into it. Use
it to record personal information about your clients, like:

·       
why they got into business

·       
what they want from the business

·       
who their family is

·       
what their interests are outside of work

This will ensure you never lose sight
of the personal connection that defined your relationship at the outset.


Young businesses
make great new accounting clients

Young businesses
can be excellent clients because:

·       
they’re often entering a growth curve when they become a client

·       
you can set up their accounting systems the way you like

·       
you can score quick wins by introducing modern accounting tools and
disciplines

It makes sense to go after these new
businesses. Just make sure you understand where they’re coming from, what they
need from you, and how to appeal to them.

Read more

Creating an accounting newsletter that works

August 12, 2019 0

Email newsletters
are loved by marketers

The first email was
sent in 1971, which makes it ancient technology in the digital world. You might
think messaging services and social media have supplanted it but, in business
at least, email is still the preferred communication channel for up to 80
percent of people. As a result, marketers say it offers the best return on
investment of all digital channels.

And yet we all have a lot of unopened
email newsletters in our inbox. So how do you create an accounting newsletter
that will get read? And can you do it without investing hours of your precious
time creating content?


Why would you send
a newsletter?

Before creating and
distributing an accounting newsletter, you need to be clear about what it will
and won’t achieve. You don’t want to go to the trouble if it’s not going to get
the results you want.

Don’t think, for example, that it
will go viral and get forwarded around town, bringing you a bunch of new leads.
It’s not a lead generation tool. Quite the opposite. You need leads before you
even get started on a newsletter. Newsletters are for nurture – helping you
build relationships with prospects and clients over time.


Warming up
prospects and reminding clients you’re there

As you know,
accounting has a long sales cycle. You don’t win new clients overnight. It’s
really hard for businesses to change accountant, so things move slowly. And new
businesses often don’t hire an accountant until they have to, which may be
around tax time. Either way, your leads will take months to mature into new
business. That’s where newsletters come in. They’re a way of staying on
someone’s radar until they’re ready to make a decision.

Additionally, an accounting
newsletter will also help you reinforce your value to existing clients, to keep
them happy and onboard.


Newsletters don’t
have to be a big production

Perhaps you think an accounting
newsletter would be a great idea, if you didn’t have to write it or design it.
Well, you don’t. You can create plain-text newsletters using mostly borrowed
(or curated) content that’s still valuable to your clients. Here are 11 tips to
help you get good results on a budget.


1. Send it to the
right people

It may be tempting
to buy a list of email addresses to get started, but try to avoid it. Such
lists are often of low quality, with many contacts who haven’t agreed to be on
them. Most of them will be irrelevant to your line of business. There’s no
point sending accounting newsletters to people who don’t need an accountant. If
you go down this route you might also be penalised by your ISP for sending spam
(unwanted) emails.

It will be slower,
but you’re better off building your own database of contacts. Most accountants
are good at collecting business cards, so send those people an email asking if
they’d like to receive your newsletter. Add the ones who opt in to your
database. You’ll be surprised how quickly your audience grows.

You can also invite
people to opt in for your newsletter by including a link on your:

·       
website

·       
email signatures

·       
social media profiles

·       
business cards and other marketing collateral


2. Segment your
audience 

As with all
communication, people respond better if it’s personalised. That’s tricky when
you’re sending mass communications but try to segment your audience and send
tailored versions of your newsletter.

You don’t want to
create too much work for yourself so keep it simple. Start by creating one list
for leads and another for existing clients. You’ll communicate slightly
different messages with each group, so create different versions of the
newsletter.

After a while, you may get more
sophisticated and split your list into industry categories for example. But
again, don’t over complicate your life or it will become onerous maintaining
different lists and creating many different versions of the newsletter.


3. What’s in it for
them?

Why should people
sign up to receive your accounting newsletter? Giving out their email address
is a risk, so you’ll need to convince them that the reward is worth it.

You’ll probably provide accounting
tips, tax updates, or maybe software advice. If your local laws allow it, you
may even offer spot prizes. Whenever you invite people to subscribe, briefly
explain what sort of content they’ll be getting. Don’t overhype it. Promotional
talk will just come across as pushy.


4. How polished
does it have to be?

Newsletters come in
many forms. In the days of print, they ranged from photocopied letters all the
way up to glossy, full-colour epics. You’ll find the same variation in digital
form. Some companies produce big, well-designed publications that are full of
images, charts and big feature stories, while others send plain-text emails.

There’s a reason why the plain-text
approach hasn’t died, even in the digital age. They work. If the content’s
relevant, well-written and easily readable, then the rest is mostly just window
dressing. In fact a modestly produced text-only email may come across as
genuine, less salesy and more personal. Plus it requires much less work to
produce.


5. How do you
create content?

The most effective
newsletter is the one that people read. You have to make the content
interesting and easy to digest, but you don’t want to spend hours crafting it.
There are agencies that will supply accounting content for you to copy and
paste into your newsletter, but it’s generic.

Your best bet is to
curate content. Find online articles that are relevant to your clients and
write a one-paragraph summary for your newsletter. Include a link to the
original article. Besides a summary, you might like to include a few personal
thoughts on the topic to add some extra value.

Tips for curating
content 
Bookmark 10 or 20 of your preferred online publications and check them during
the week. As you find interesting articles, paste the links into your draft
newsletter and write little summaries for each. Before you send it, go through
the accumulated content and weed out the weaker articles, until you’re left
with really strong content.

As a bonus, you can
also post the articles – and your comments – to LinkedIn. That way you’re
building a wider profile as a thought leader at the same time as creating a
newsletter.

You can produce original material too
If you have the time, or there’s a good writer on staff, go ahead and include
original content in your newsletter. The best approach in this instance is to
publish the article on your blog and link to it from the email
newsletter, rather than pasting the whole thing into your email.


6. Writing tips

When communicating
by email, you have a few main priorities:

·       
Avoid sounding spammy: Use clear,
descriptive subject lines that tell people what’s in the newsletter. Steer away
from promotional language.

·       
Keep it short: People read more slowly off a screen
than off a page. As a result, web writing has become more direct and concise.
That’s what people expect, so don’t waffle.

·       
Be warm: Write the newsletter as though all
recipients are old clients. It needs to be conversational and informal. If your
tone is too professional, it’ll come across as sterile.

More tips on the subject
line
Your subject line often determines whether or not someone opens the email.
Savvy marketers often test different subject lines to see which ones resonate
the most with an audience. You don’t have to be that scientific but it’s worth
taking some time over your choice of words.

The subject line
should be short and informative.

·       
Don’t waste your words on generic titles like “June newsletter”.

·       
Don’t feel like you have to give the newsletter a name. It’s there to
build your brand – not to have a brand of its own.

·       
Choose plain language over clever phrases. People are in a literal frame
of mind when looking at email, so jokes and puns can get lost or, even worse,
may cause confusion.

·       
Keep your subject line short, so recipients can see the whole thing in their
preview pane.


7. How long do I
make my newsletters?

The question should really be how
short? Try to keep your accounting newsletter to one or maybe two stories. For
starters, it will be quicker for you to produce, which means you’re more likely
to keep publishing. Even more importantly, it will make the newsletter easily
digestible. Subscribers will be more likely to open the email and explore the
content if they know they can do it quickly.


8. Don’t oversell

It might be tempting to try to add a
call to action (CTA) to every newsletter entry, but don’t overdo it. Where
newsletters are concerned, the hard sell gets old very fast. CTAs such as
“Click here to find out how we can help!” are unlikely to work well.
To avoid putting off your clients and prospects, limit the CTAs to rare
occasions.


9. Proofread what
you’ve written

It’s a truism that you spot the typo
in your email just as you hit the ‘Send’ button. So be sure to proofread your
newsletter before sending it – it’s easier to see errors if you read a printed
copy. Send it to a colleague first and have them take a look too. Sometimes a
fresh pair of eyes will spot mistakes that you missed.


10. Have a sensible
schedule

Sending newsletters
every day is a good way to annoy people. Weekly or every two weeks is better.
Monthly could work too, but recipients may lose interest if they come too
infrequently.

Whatever pattern
you choose, try to stick with it. People can be sensitive about email traffic
so maintain a consistent tempo that subscribers get used to. You can always
break the schedule if there’s fresh news that you have to share straight away.

Be realistic
When setting your schedule, it’s important not to be too ambitious. An
accounting newsletter is a slowburn approach to signing new clients so you’ll
have to keep publishing for a long time. Pick a sustainable tempo.

Sending weekly emails may seem like a
great idea when it’s fresh and new but imagine how you’ll feel when the
novelty’s worn off and you’re busy with other things. Start conservatively, by
sending something less often. If you’re getting good feedback or finding it
easy to do, you can always increase the frequency later.


11. Measure the
results

One of the big
reasons why marketers love email is that they can use tools to see:

·       
who opens it, and who doesn’t

·       
who clicks on the links, and who doesn’t

This sort of data
will help you see if people are engaging with the content. If they’re not, you
can try writing on different topics or using different subject lines to improve
the results.

You can also drill
down to individual contacts and see what content they’re opening and clicking
on. That information will help you when it’s time to have one-to-one
interactions.

Free email marketing tools will give
you data on open rates and click-through rates.


Free email
marketing tools for your accounting newsletter

You can use email marketing services
to help manage lists, send emails, and track how people engage with your
newsletter. There are a number of providers, such as MailChimp,
Campaign Monitor, and Benchmark.
Smaller businesses often get free use of these services, which means you could
potentially send and monitor the performance of your accounting newsletter
without spending anything.


Get started

Everything that
used to be hard about creating an accounting newsletter is easy now. You can
curate the content, forget about design, and send and monitor your emails for
free. Plus email marketing services will give you a lot of free advice on how
to write good emails. They’ll also tell you what sorts of open rates and
clickthrough rates you can expect.

If you want to test
it out this year, start by:

·       
researching email marketing services (and see what you can get for free)

·       
building a database of recipients

·       
thinking about how to segment those lists into sub-groups

·       
bookmarking good financial and business publications as sources for
content

And if the results
aren’t great initially, don’t give up. Use analytics tools to try and identify
where you can make improvements.

An accounting newsletter is a good
way to communicate with large numbers of prospects, with relatively little
effort. It’s worth exploring.

Read more

Doing it differently, keeping accounting simple

August 8, 2019 0

Bruce’s business Simple Accounting Services is headquartered in a funky urban corridor, where Wellington’s French cafes cluster. Clients enter the office up the stairs of a former wool store, through one of those cafes, which delivers a stream of flat whites to client meetings.

It’s a far cry from the tiny rural town of Tokomaru, New Zealand, where Bruce went to primary school with 120 other children. “It was a good life for a kid,” Bruce says. “We used to kick a rugby ball around, climb trees, make forts, and help out on the farm.”

Then when Bruce was about 12 years old, his dad moved to a job in town as a computer programmer and Bruce started at Palmerston North Boys High. “It was quite daunting on the first day. We were living by the river and had to ride our bikes all the way through town and through traffic lights. I’d never really seen traffic lights before, so that was a big change.”



Accounting seemed like a good backstop

At high school Bruce played rugby and studied economics, maths, English, science and accounting. He was interested in business and liked money. “My mum’s cousin was an accountant and apparently she was making lots of money, so I started studying accounting, though I wasn’t sure if that’s what I wanted to do.”

Then a local firm that was looking for someone to work for them and asked the accounting teacher who was the best at accounting and computers. “He suggested me,” says Bruce, “which was interesting because I used to wag accounting and physical education classes, and go to work at the garden centre in the afternoons. I thought, well I’ll take the job, and if I don’t like it, then it’ll stand me in good stead for another role. And here I am – it’s just kept going.”

“A lot of my work centred around spreadsheets in the early days and I did some interesting things. Once I got sent to help open up a bar and teach them how to do the till reconciliations, and at the time I wasn’t even legally allowed to be in the bar because I was too young – I was 17!”

In that first job in Palmerston North, New Zealand, Bruce specialised in accounting systems. “I liked the challenges. If someone said, ‘No the software won’t do that,’ I would make it do what we wanted it to. I don’t like being told I can’t do something!”

After about six years, Bruce moved south to a job in Wellington. But when his marriage broke up he decided to move back to Palmerston North, closer to where his ex-wife and two children were now living. “I met Tash, my new wife, at my leaving drinks on the day I was leaving Wellington! So, I ended up only being in Palmerston North for about three months before moving back down.”



Going it alone from a windy garage

Balancing the demands of a big city accounting practice with having his children at the weekends proved exasperating. “I needed time off on Fridays to go and pick up my kids. So I went home to Tash and said ‘Let’s set up our own firm,’ and she said, ‘Let’s do it,’ and so we did  – even though I only had one client at the time.”

At first Bruce ran the business from an office in their garage at the top of a hill in Wellington, a city known for its wind. Bruce recounts how the southerly would often come whistling under the roller door and blow his papers off his desk.

That was the start of Simple Accounting Services – a name that reflects the focus of the business. “Our clients are IT contractors, small retail businesses, mums and dads with rental properties, and tradespeople. The bigger Wellington firms I worked for were interested in looking after bigger clients. It felt like there was a gap in the market, so that’s where we went. We try to do good service, fast, and for a good price.” 


The ups and downs along the way


Now Simple Accounting is a team of five including Bruce, co-director Peter Reweti, and Tash as business manager.


At one point, after acquiring another accounting firm and their city clients, there were 13 employees. But there were some issues with the different culture and focus of the two firms. Some of the newly acquired clients objected to being with a firm called Simple Accounting because they felt their accounts weren’t simple.


“I don’t think we handled the branding terribly well,” says Bruce. “Things had snowballed, so we pulled it back and we’re trying to focus on keeping things simple again.”


They let the staff numbers decline over time through natural attrition, and now when they recruit new staff, they’re looking for the right attitude. They like to hire people who are willing to adapt and do things differently.


For Bruce, the toughest times are with clients who are struggling. “There’ve been a few tears shed around this table with clients who are seriously in trouble, and sometimes it’s hard to divorce yourself from it.”

“Accounting systems are a speciality of mine so in the early days I picked up a lot of clients with QuickBooks and MYOB, but probably only about one in ten were doing it correctly. Most of the time, it was a complete mess. But fewer and fewer of our clients are on those systems now. And we do all of our end-of-year accounts in Xero, whether or not our clients use it.” 

Once, Bruce was advising a lady that she probably needed to liquidate her company, “I realised halfway through that it meant we weren’t going to get paid the money she owed us at the time! There’s been a lot of that in the last few years with the economy.”

On the other side of the coin, the biggest reward for Bruce is in helping clients sort out a shambles or get out of financial trouble.



Be unique, not a copycat

Though it’s been a rocky road, Bruce recommends going out on your own. He’s seen a lot of people set up their own small accounting firms, now that technology has made it so easy.

“My main advice is don’t do what everyone else is doing,” he says. “Don’t just copy what the successful firms have done. Be different.”  

Bruce also recommends working for an accountancy firm before setting out on your own. “You need someone to learn the ropes off. It’s a good idea to become a chartered accountant too – it gives you more options.”



Imagining a more relaxed future

Between them, Bruce and Tash have six children aged from 10 to 23. With five of them still at home, family life keeps them busy.

“Our youngest one is playing rugby this year, so we spend a bit of time in the club community,” says Bruce. “I go down for practises and run around with the boys. I keep getting pressured to play for a club team too but my knees are both stuffed.”

“And I like to do a lot of DIY work because I’m sitting down all day at work. I think that comes from my upbringing on the farm – if something needed to be fixed, Dad would fix it himself.”

When it comes to work, Bruce finds there’s still quite a lot of pressure. “It’d be nice to grow the firm a bit and get some more senior people so we could back off a little. Maybe I could just come in for client meetings 20 hours a week and have someone else doing the desk work.

“In 10 years’ time, I could see us having a little lifestyle block somewhere. Tash loves horses, and I can picture myself sitting on a beach. We’ll see where it goes.”

Read more

Brand yourself

July 22, 2019 0
Branding has become a concept relevant to the growth of every company over the years. This has got every company searching for the best marketing agencies to ensure that their branding is top-notch. 

However, the issue here is the fact that people have misunderstood a brand to be the logo, the graphics or the website put out there by a company. While these are essential aspects of branding, there are several companies with great logos, graphics and website, yet without the high ROI expected of a company with a great brand. This is because they do not have a great brand; instead just as mentioned earlier, all they have is their great logo, website and graphic. This is to say that these things don’t necessarily depict a great brand; they are only a portion of a great brand which supports branding. 

Brands are not set up merely based on how much you can spend on your visuals; they develop over time and are strongly determined by a company’s ethics. In essence, as the reputation of a company gets better, their brand gets better. To build a brand, a strong will to be transparent, authentic and to create an excellent service is highly necessary. These are qualities that are only noticed by users over time; hence, the company in question also needs a hefty dose of patience.  However, it pays off when a company has built a reputable brand such that any product they introduce to the market becomes acceptable. 

Branding is not an advertisement, but it makes adverts effective. Instead of asking people to buy a product (which is an advertisement), branding tells a narrative. This narrative is usually about the company and what it stands for. This is a clear indication that building a reliable and reputable brand is not about hiring the best marketing agency you can find. While agencies have their role, they can only play a part in branding. Without efforts from the company itself, branding would not be top-notch. 

It is time for companies to start branding themselves, as the part the company plays in making itself reputable is about 70% of the job. This is not to say that the other 30% is not essential. 

Hence, instead of waiting for marketing agencies to do the work, it is time for companies to start branding themselves. 

If you are all out for branding yourself, first off, you have to get your whole team involved. Every single person; from the receptionist at the front desk to your managers has a role to play in reflecting the reputation you want for your brand. Therefore, intimate them on this. Interactions with customers also go a long way, so you have to pay special attention to intimating the people that play a significant role in customer relations on the company’s objective. 

In the end, based on the experience each user in your industry wants to have, your ideal customers will locate you and stand by you. However, this is still based on the reputation you create. Each time the public gets to interact with your company, the impression you leave builds a reputation. This implies that your reputation is established by your company’s website, sales and marketing representatives, your website, affiliate marketers, customer service team members, and anyone you have employed to represent your company. 

Final Thoughts

Although you cannot dictate what users should think each time they hear about you, you can influence their opinion of you by ensuring that you are not found lacking in any way. Brand yourself and let your potential customers always see you in a positive light.

Read more

Dealing with abusive emails

July 22, 2019 0

First, what are abusive emails?

Abusive emails are spiteful and thoughtless emails a user may receive from time to time. These emails are typically annoying and getting a whole lot of them is enough to cause someone to have a nasty day. Whether or not you have received this kind of mail, it is wise to learn how to deal with them appropriately. There is nothing wrong in preparing for a future case of such, as you can never be too prepared.
When many people get these emails, they get so pissed that they do not know how to react. They do not know how to deal with them or prevent a recurrence. This article will be focused on how users can deal with cases of abusive emails. 

Tip #1: Create a Special Folder 

For most email setups, it is usually possible to create a different folder for emails from certain people. Therefore, after taking necessary steps like talking to people, you give your email address about how you don’t enjoy receiving abusive emails; creating a particular folder is a step you can take. It also works for people for whom you have set boundaries, but won’t just act appropriately. 

You can set your mail up in a way that those abusive mails from certain people go into that folder. This way, it doesn’t pop in your general inbox and get you feeling some way.  When such emails catch you off guard, you may say or do something you wouldn’t ordinarily have said or done. The name of this folder can sort of alert you of the kind of mail you are about to receive. It could be named, “Incoming Abusive Emails—Beware” or something of such sort. You can ask someone you trust enough to look into the emails for you or avoid them altogether. This is a tested and trusted method. 


Tip #2: Delete Stuff

Delete everything toxic in the mail and avoid having the person drag you down to his/her level. Start by deleting the name of the sender, so you don’t get super angry, send a mail by mistake or begin to reply immediately. Then, go on to delete all the lies. Right from the first statement, remove all those hurtful things said about you. It could be ranting, misconstrued opinions, half-truths, distorted truths or attacks that are just too personal and hurtful. 

You can avoid deleting any actual question asked by the person. It could be something as simple as “when did you drop her off?” Take a deep breath and keep your reply as simple as possible. Let your response be as simple as “I dropped her off at 6:30 p.m”. Reply to any other relevant parts of the mail as well.
As you delete them, also imagine removing them in your mind. This way, you won’t be offended much.



Tip #3: Choose to Show Compassion

Many of the people sending these emails are going through stuff, and it reflects in their attitude towards others in no small extent. Try to look beneath the exterior and see the part of these people that need to be shown, love. By doing this, it would become easier to treat such people with compassion; one that would be seen even in the way you respond to their mails. However, you can only show kindness to such people if you are intentional about it.

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8 Funny and relatable experiences that all entrepreneurs go through

July 21, 2019 0

The road to becoming an entrepreneur
is often difficult, treacherous and filled with unexpected roadblocks and
detours. Those who embark on this journey do so because they are driven,
independent-minded and probably a little crazy. In a good way, of course!

The most successful entrepreneurs
have a clever mind, strong business acumen and a deep and abiding sense of
humor that keeps them going when they hit the inevitable rough patches that
come with any business.

If you’ve ever hit a tough spot, know
that you aren’t alone. Here are 8 experiences showing that all entrepreneurs go
through challenges. The trick is to keep your head up and keep moving forward.



1. Taking an
all-important phone call from a weird place.

If you’ve ever taken a conference
call from a truck-stop bathroom, from a friend’s wedding reception or while
vacationing at the beach, there’s a good chance you’re a hard-working
entrepreneur doing whatever it takes to make it happen. There’s no doubt that
mobile conferencing has changed the way we work and connect with one another,
and when you’re an entrepreneur trying to launch your business, you’ll take
full advantage of all the tools at your disposal.

According to data released by
InterCall, 65 percent of respondents said they had done other work while on a
conference call, including 47 percent who said they used the bathroom while on
the line.

We all have busy lives, and many of
us value flexibility and adaptability in our workday and schedule. So embrace
the nonstandard office space, and recognize that wherever you’re at can be your
temporary place of business.



2. Scrambling for
financing.

As a new entrepreneur, you’re
starting from scratch and are learning to bet on yourself. One of your first
orders of business will be to put together the necessary seed money to get your
business off the ground. This is often a difficult task, and one that nearly
every entrepreneur can relate to. Do you have personal financial resources you
can tap into? Can you find venture capital funding or an angel investor who
will back you? What about a bank loan?

Alternatively, if you’re like David
Daneshgar, you can use your talent for poker to fund your startup.
Daneshgar and two friends, Farbod Shoraka and Gregg Weisstein, started the
company BloomNation after Daneshgar won more than $25,000 playing in the 2008
World Series of Poker tournament.

When it came down to the final hand, Weisstein said he was sure they had
lost, until Daneshgar looked him straight in the eye and pronounced, “It’s
flower time!”



3. Your end product
is very different from the idea you started with.

You have what you think is a
brilliant idea for a business and you’re sure your product or service will
sell. Except it doesn’t. The timing is off, or it doesn’t resonate with
customers. But don’t lose hope — most entrepreneurs end up rethinking their
original business model.

Consider the story of how PayPal got
started. It began as a company called Confinity, which produced security
software for handheld devices such as PalmPilots (remember those?). Max
Levchin, one of PayPal’s co-founders, explained that the original business
model wasn’t terribly successful, so he and his colleagues focused on
developing an electronic wallet. They found that people were using a small part
of their service to pay for goods purchased through eBay. It turned out there
was a huge need for people to make online payments, and ultimately that need
shaped their business model.



4. You find
yourself doing something crazy to get noticed.

It’s a struggle to find ways to stand
out in a crowded market. Sometimes you need to resort to unconventional or
eccentric tactics to get noticed and draw attention to your business. The trick
is to do so in a way that gains you the right kind of attention, and sometimes
that’s hard to gauge.

Marc Benioff, a co-founder of
Salesforce.com, is known for his crazy marketing stunts —
in particular for turning other companies’ events into stunts that spotlight
his own company. For example, he once hired fake protesters to disrupt a
rival’s conference and commandeered all the taxis at the event to deliver a
45-minute pitch about his own product.

In another instance, he canceled his
keynote at an Oracle conference and drew crowds to his own speech at a nearby
restaurant.



5. Realizing you
need to fire yourself.

Firing someone is always hard. Not
only does it mean someone is losing their job; it also means a mistake was made
in hiring the person in the first place. The person wasn’t the great fit you
thought they would be. This is an experience most entrepreneurs have to go
through at some point.

But just imagine if the person you
had to fire was yourself! This is what happened to Tucker Max, author of the bestseller I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell, and
founder and one-time CEO of Book in a Box (now Scribe Writing).

As Max explained on the James Altucher Show podcast, he was terrible at his job as CEO. A
self-described “difficult and overpowering” person, it took having a client ask
him why he was yelling at his colleagues to make him realize it was time to go.
Ultimately he realized he was going to ruin what would otherwise be a
successful business.

Max still owns the majority of the
company and has a role as director of product. But the company revenues have
multiplied since he stepped down as CEO.



6. Trying to find
work/life balance.

All entrepreneurs struggle to find
ways to balance their home and personal lives with the ever-demanding needs of
growing a business. If you’re passionate about what you’re doing, it’s easy to
become consumed with your job. Many entrepreneurs look around at some point and
realize that they have alienated themselves from loved ones.

Even a mega-successful billionaire
entrepreneur such as Elon Musk
struggles with this. He once infamously said, “I
would like to allocate more time to dating, though. I need to find a
girlfriend. That’s why I need to carve out just a little more time. I think
maybe even another five to 10 — how much time does a woman want a week? Maybe
10 hours? That’s kind of the minimum? I don’t know.”

Note to self: finding balance
probably requires more than 10 hours a week.



7. Learning how to
team-build.

So you’ve successfully launched your
business and you’re growing fast to keep up with a changing market. You’ve got
a great team of people, but maybe you could all gel a little better. A great
team-building exercise may be just the thing to whip you all into shape! Or
not. It turns out not all teambuilding exercises serve their purpose.

Consider the tale of the trust fall fail — where a marketing intern was so busy videoing his
colleagues falling during the trust exercise that he neglected to actually
catch them as he was supposed to.

Or the juice cleanse from hell, where
one corporate office found their employees’ commitment to the cleanse program
left them all scrambling for bathroom time — and ultimately woefully behind on
their deadlines that week.



8. We all need a
sounding board.

Many entrepreneurs begin their
business working alone, but it’s important to remember that we all need a
sounding board once in a while to bounce ideas off of. We also need to be
willing to hear others out and consider ideas that aren’t our own. And this
goes for even the most brilliant entrepreneurs among us.

Consider Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, who has been hailed as the richest man in the
world. When he first launched Amazon in 1995, he and his tiny crew of employees
would spend many uncomfortable hours on the floor, packaging products for
shipping. At one point, Bezos turned to an employee who was working alongside
him and declared that the company needed to buy kneepads to make it easier to
kneel on the ground.

His employee responded with his own
brilliant idea: they should buy tables so they could work standing up. And the
next day, that’s exactly what they did.

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What is an audit report and what are the types?

July 21, 2019 0



Following the completion of duty of an auditor within a company, it is only reasonable to give a report. This report is referred to as an audit report; one in which the auditor provides to express his opinion following auditing.

An audit report could be either summarized or lengthy. It may also be in a letter or a statement form. Irrespective of the structure, the auditor addresses the audit report to the shareholders of the company in question. As the shareholders of a company usually hire auditors, they are answerable to the shareholders of the company, and they must safeguard the interest of the shareholders.

A standard audit report should be made up of matters in Section 227 of Companies Act, 1956. While you may be wondering what is in Section 227 of Companies Act, 1956, we have solved the problem in the next section.

 

Contents of
Audit Report

In line with
Section 227 of Companies Act, 1956, the audit report should have the following:

·        If the company is keeping proper books
and records or not.

·        If financial explanations are being
received from the company staff or not.

·        If the balance sheet gives a fair and
true view or not.

·        If the profit and loss account gives a
fair and true view or not.

·        If statements from branch auditors
under Sec. 228 are being received properly or not (in a case where the company
has branches)

·        If financial statements are being
prepared in line with the requirements of companies act or not.

 

Types of Audit
Reports

There are two
types of audit reports—clean report (unconditional report) and qualified report
(conditional report). In a case where there are no forms of dis-satisfactory
points, an auditor simply issues a clean report. In a case where there are
dis-satisfactory points, the auditor gives a qualified report. 

Here are some
conditions that will make an auditor give a qualified report:

·       When the concepts of accounting are not
rightly followed

·       When the provision for bad and doubtful
debt is not sufficient

·       When the provision for case of
depreciation is not sufficient.

·       When the company does not act in line
with the provisions made by the companies’ act.

 

Sample of Clean
Report

 

To

The Share
holders,

XYZ Ltd.,

After having
audited the balance sheet of the above named company as on _________________
and Profit and Loss account of the same for the period ended _________________
and we hereby report the following:


1. The company
is keeping proper books.

2. We received
proper explanations from staff of the company.

3. Financial
statements are prepared in line with the requirements of the companies act.

4. Balance
sheet gives true and fair view.

5. Profit and
Loss account gives true and fair view.

 

Location:

Date:

(Signature)

Chartered
Accountant

 

Sample of
Qualified Report

 

To

The Share
holders,

XYZ Ltd.,

After having
audited the balance sheet of the above named company as on _________________
and Profit and Loss account of the same for the period ended _________________
and we hereby report the following:


1. The company
is keeping proper books.

2. We received
proper explanations from staff of the company.

3. Financial
statements are prepared in line with the requirements of the companies act.

4. Balance
sheet gives true and fair view.

5. Profit and
Loss account gives true and fair view. 

However, the
above stated report is subject to following conditions:

·        The provision for depreciation on the
factory equipment was insufficient.

·        Provision made for bad and doubtful
debts was not sufficient.

·        Stock was valued at market price which
was above the cost price.

·        The factory manager has received an
allowance from the company without the permission of the company’s Central
Government. 


Location:

Date:

(Signature)

Chartered
Accountant

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The three forms of business activities in accounting

July 21, 2019 0

Business activities
are essentially activities done in business. Any activity done in business is
directed at one thing—profit making. Therefore “Business activities” is a
general term used in the description of all the economic-related activities in
which a company gets involved in the course of their business.

The three major forms
of business activities are financing, investing and operating. These activities
have to do with the the flow of money. However, the essence of the money will
determine the category under which the money is grouped. It is essential to
understand how to look at every transaction and identify what type of activity
under which every action in business will be grouped. On the overall, these
activities have the ultimate target of creating value for shareholders.

The cash flows that
each of these activities create will be recorded under its own segment of the
annual report in the financial statement called the cash flow statement.

 

The Three Forms of
Business Activities Explained



Financing Activities

Financing activities are
transactions that have to do with individual customer financing and/or
financing the company. Transactions such as loans, credit transactions, debt
financing, secondary offerings and initial public offerings fall under this
category. Dividends, stock repurchases as well as interest also belong here. In
fact, any business activity that has to do with fundraising or financing will
be found here.


These activities will be
recorded under the section of the Statement of Cash Flows that has to do with
financing activities.


Investing Activities

Investing transactions
are business activities that have to do with the long-term use of cash. These
kinds of activities are not under the usual daily operations of the company and
are used to refer to activities that have to do with investments. These are
business activities capitalized over the space of at least a year. It also
involves the purchase of long-term assets. If it has to do with investing into
something, then it is referred to as “the use of cash” under this category. If
it has to do with dividends from investment or the sale of real estate, then it
is referred to as a source of cash. Generally, purchase of land, property or
equipment of value fall under this category.

Small term investments
would be considered obviously, but any loans made to customers or other
entities would also be considered an investing transaction. Dividends and
interest earned on investments would also qualify under the investing category
for Statement of Cash Flows. 

Operating Activities

As the name connotes,
operating activities has to do with the various business practices done by a
company on a daily basis. This involves things ranging from paying for running
costs to paying employees’ salaries. Delivery cost and product cost are also
basic activities to e classified under the operating activities of a company.

 It also has to do with all expenditures made
to keep the company running. The sales and income accrued from operations also
fall under the operation section of the paper work.

 

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The nine most important things I have learned about investing over the past 35 years

July 17, 2019 0


Introduction


I have been working in and around investment markets for 35 years now. A lot has happened over that time. The 1987 crash, the recession Australia had to have, the Asian crisis, the tech boom/tech wreck, the mining boom, the Global Financial Crisis, the Eurozone crisis. Financial deregulation, financial reregulation. The end of the cold war, US domination, the rise of Asia and then China. And so on.  But as someone once observed the more things change the more they stay the same. And this is particularly true in relation to investing. So, what I have done here is put some thought into the nine most important things I have learned over the past 35 years.


# 1 There is always a cycle


Droll as it sounds, the one big thing I have seen over and over in the past 35 years is that investment markets constantly go through cyclical phases of good times and bad. Some are short term, such as those that relate to the 3 to 5 year business cycle. Some are longer, such as the secular swings seen over 10 to 20 year periods in shares. Some get stuck in certain phases for long periods. Debate is endless about what drives cycles, but they continue. But all eventually contain the seeds of their own reversal. Ultimately there is no such thing as new eras, new paradigms and new normal as all things must pass. What’s more share markets often lead economic cycles, so economic data is often of no use in timing turning points in shares.


# 2 The crowd gets it wrong at extremes


What’s more is that these cycles in markets get magnified by bouts of investor irrationality that take them well away from fundamentally justified levels. This is rooted in investor psychology and flows from a range of behavioural biases investors suffer from. These include the tendency to project the current state of the world into the future, the tendency to look for evidence that confirms your views, overconfidence and a lower tolerance for losses than gains. So, while fundamentals may be at the core of cyclical swings in markets, they are often magnified by investor psychology if enough people suffer from the same irrational biases at the same time. From this it follows that what the investor crowd is doing is often not good for you to do too. We often feel safest when investing in an asset when neighbours and friends are doing the same and media commentary is reinforcing the message that it’s the right thing to do. This “safety in numbers” approach is often doomed to failure. Whether its investors piling into Japanese shares at the end of the 1980s, Asian shares into the mid 1990s, IT stocks in the late 1990s, US housing and dodgy credit in the mid 2000s or Bitcoin in 2017.  The problem is that when everyone is bullish and has bought into an asset in euphoria there is no one left to buy but lots of people who can sell on bad news. So, the point of maximum opportunity is when the crowd is pessimistic, and the point of maximum risk is when the crowd is euphoric.


# 3 What you pay for an investment matters a lot


The cheaper you buy an asset the higher its prospective return. Guides to this are price to earnings ratios for share markets (the lower the better – see the next chart) and yields, ie the ratio of dividends, rents or interest payments to the value of the asset (the higher the better). Flowing from this it follows that yesterdays winners are often tomorrows losers – because they became overvalued and over loved and vice versa.  But while this seems obvious, the reality is that many find it easier to buy after shares have had a strong run because confidence is high and sell when they have had a big fall because confidence is low. But the key point is that the more you pay for an asset the lower its potential return and vice versa.

# 4 Getting markets right is not as easy as you think


In hindsight it all looks easy. Looking back, it always looks obvious that a particular boom would go bust when it did. But that’s just Harry hindsight talking! Looking forward no-one has a perfect crystal ball. As JK Galbraith observed “there are two kinds of forecasters: those who don’t know, and those who don’t know they don’t know.” Usually the grander the forecast – calls for “great booms” or “great crashes ahead” – the greater the need for scepticism as such calls invariably get the timing wrong (in which case you lose before it comes right) or are dead wrong. Market prognosticators suffer from the same psychological biases as everyone else. If getting markets right were easy, then the prognosticators would be mega rich and would have stopped doing it long ago. Related to this many get it wrong by letting blind faith – “there is too much debt”, “house prices are too high and are guaranteed to crash”, “the Eurozone will break up” – get in the way of good investment decisions. They may be right one day, but an investor can lose a lot of money in the interim. The problem for ordinary investors is that it’s not getting easier as the world is getting noisier as the flow of information and opinion has turned from a trickle to a flood and the prognosticators have had to get shriller to get heard.

# 5 Investment markets don’t learn


A key lesson from the history of investment markets is that they don’t seem to learn. The same mistakes are repeated over and over as markets lurch from one extreme to another. This is even though after each bust many say it will never happen again and the regulators move in to try and make sure it doesn’t. But it does! Often just somewhere else. Sure, the details change but the pattern doesn’t. As Mark Twain is said to have said: “history doesn’t repeat, but it rhymes.” Sure, individuals learn and the bigger the blow up the longer the learning lasts. But there’s always a fresh stream of newcomers to markets and in time collective memory dims.

# 6 Compound interest is like magic


This one goes way back to my good friend Dr Don Stammer. One dollar invested in Australian cash in 1900 would today be worth $240 and if it had been invested in bonds it would be worth $950, but if it was allocated to Australian shares it would be worth $593,169. Although the average annual return on Australian shares (11.8% pa) is just double that on Australian bonds (5.9% pa) over the last 119 years, the magic of compounding higher returns leads to a substantially higher balance over long periods. Yes, there were lots of rough periods along the way for shares as highlighted by arrows on the chart, but the impact of compounding at a higher long-term return is huge over long periods of time. The same applies to other growth-related assets such as property.

# 7 It pays to be optimistic


The well-known advocate of value investing Benjamin Graham observed that “To be an investor you must be a believer in a better tomorrow.” If you don’t believe the bank will look after your deposits, that most borrowers will pay their debts, that most companies will grow their profits, that properties will earn rents, etc then you should not invest. Since 1900 the Australian share market has had a positive return in roughly eight years out of ten and for the US share market it’s roughly seven years out of 10. So getting too hung up worrying about the next two or three years in 10 that the market will fall risks missing out on the seven or eight years out of 10 when it rises.

# 8 Keep it simple stupid


Investing should be simple, but we have a knack for overcomplicating it. And it’s getting worse with more options, more information, more apps and platforms, more opportunities for gearing and more rules & regulations around investing. But when we overcomplicate investments we can’t see the wood for the trees. You spend too much time on second order issues like this share versus that share or this fund manager versus that fund manager, so you end up ignoring the key driver of your portfolio’s performance – which is its high-level asset allocation across shares, bonds, property, etc. Or you have investments you don’t understand or get too highly geared. So, it’s best to keep it simple, don’t fret the small stuff, keep the gearing manageable and don’t invest in products you don’t understand.

# 9 You need to know yourself to succeed at investing


We all suffer from the psychological weaknesses referred to earlier. But smart investors are aware of them and seek to manage them. One way to do this is to take a long-term approach to investing. But this is also about knowing what you want to do. If you want to take a day to day role in managing your investments then regular trading and/or a self managed super fund (SMSF) may work, but you need to recognise that will require a lot of effort to get right and will need a rigorous process. If you don’t have the time and would rather do other things like sailing, working at your day job, or having fun with the kids then it may be best to use managed funds. It’s also about knowing how you would react if your investment suddenly dropped 20% in value. If your reaction were to be to want to get out then you will either have to find a way to avoid that as you would just be selling low and locking in a loss or if you can’t then you may have to consider an investment strategy offering greater stability over time (which would probably mean accepting lower returns).

So what does all this mean for investors?


All of this underpins what I call the Nine Keys to Successful Investing which are:

1.  Make the most of the power of compound interest. This is one of the best ways to build wealth and this means making sure you have the right asset mix.

2. Don’t get thrown off by the cycle. The trouble is that cycles can throw investors out of a well thought out investment strategy. But they also create opportunities.

3.  Invest for the long term. Given the difficulty in getting market and stock moves right in the short-term, for most it’s best to get a long-term plan that suits your level of wealth, age, tolerance of volatility, etc, and stick to it.

4.  Diversify. Don’t put all your eggs in one basket. But also, don’t over diversify as this will just complicate for no benefit.

5. Turn down the noise. After having worked out a strategy thats right for you, it’s important to turn down the noise on the information flow and prognosticating babble now surrounding investment markets and stay focussed. In the digital world we now live in this is getting harder.

6.  Buy low, sell high. The cheaper you buy an asset, the higher its prospective return will likely be and vice versa.

7. Beware the crowd at extremes. Don’t get sucked into the euphoria or doom and gloom around an asset.

8.  Focus on investments that you understand and that offer sustainable cash flow. If it looks dodgy, hard to understand or has to be based on odd valuation measures or lots of debt to stack up then it’s best to stay away.

9. Seek advice. Given the psychological traps we are all susceptible too and the fact that investing is not easy, a good approach is to seek advice.

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