HAVE MORE MEETINGS - NOT FEWER
The common wisdom is that meetings waste time and end up with little achieved. This may be true for large organisations, corporates etc. but one key to small business success is to meet regularly with your team.
The Fatal Error is to not have an agenda, not to have a stated outcome.
Start the meeting with just one or two key items on the agenda. State the purpose of the meeting and what the desired outcome is. Put a time clock on the table (from Briscoes for $20.00), set it for say 15-20 minutes and summarise progress when the bell rings. Set it for another 10 minutes maximum to state the meeting outcome and the tasks or action steps resulting from the meeting.
Your team will enjoy meetings run to this formula and won't grumble when invited to the next meeting. Every meeting needs a clearly stated outcome or goal and if it's not headed in the right direction within the first 15-20 minutes, stop the meeting and start again another day.
Small agenda, regular, focused meetings are great for small business success.
KEEP YOUR FINANCIAL RATIOS SIMPLE
Set some very simple financial goals for 2011. Relate all your ratios back to the total value of sales and stick with just three key ratios.
Start by selecting a bottom line profit target in percentage terms. My target EBIT% is going to be (say) 20% of sales. My target overheads/expenses are going to be (say) 30% of sales. Therefore my target cost of sale is going to have to be 50% of sales making my GP% also 50%.
Simple stuff to start the year. No matter how complex or complicated you believe your business is from an operational point of view, getting these three ratios under control is key to a successful business.
GET FAMILIAR WITH THE NEW GST FRACTION
Converting a sum from GST inclusive to GST exclusive need not be a mathematical nightmare. It can be done in two ways:
1. Take the GST inclusive amount and multiply by 3 and divide by 23. This gives you the GST content of the payment.
2. Divide the amount by 7.66666666. You need 8 decimal points to get complete accuracy.
TAX TIP TWO
CHEAP RENTAL FOR FAMILY - tax danger
If you supply cheap rental to a member of your family, don't claim any tax losses. It could be seen by IRD as tax avoidance.
Sometimes the family member may earn the cheaper rental by agreeing to maintain the property, mow the lawns etc, in which case a loss can be claimed so long as the net effect is still to achieve a market rental
FIXED PRICE ACCOUNTING DELIVERED ON A FIXED DATE - GUARANTEED
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I read somewhere (can't remember where) that if you eat fish once per week it cuts the risk of Alzheimer's by 60%.
Riddle
In this list of animals - ant, bird, zebra, spider, ......... which of the following should be next and why? Monkey, elephant, giraffe, dog, beetle? Answer at bottom of this column.
You burn more calories sleeping than you do watching television. Begs the question - what about sleeping in front of the television?
Celery has negative calories. It takes more calories to digest a piece of celery than it contains. What we need is chocolate coated celery to keep things neutral.
Riddle solution
Giraffe should be next because it has seven letters. The number of letters is increasing by one in each word.
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