Brains of BusinessA collaborative business newsletter, focussing on practical and useful

information that benefits you and your business.

ISSN 1834-2728

Planning for success. Are you excited about you want to achieve? Take your vision for the future, roll up your sleeves and make a plan for the next 12 months.

By Clare Fountain, Sorted Business Administration Services....................................................................Page 7

Highlighting blank cells in Excel. The F5 button shines, when you know how to use it!

By Julie Misson, Simply Access.................................................................................................................Page 3

Preparing for end of financial year. Would you like to minimise the shock of a larger than expected tax bill?

By Jennifer Blainey, First Class Accounts..................................................................................................Page 8

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Are you better, different or just cheaper? It’s not who you’re better than, it’s what you’re better at!

By Paul Henshall, Master of Business .......................................................................................................Page 4

How to get paid to innovate. Would you like a valuable boost to your cash flow? Maybe R&D is for you.

By Dean Murphy, Valentini & Murphy.........................................................................................................Page 2

Issue 19, June 2011

Excited about the future? You bet. Inspiring examples of people reducing their environmental footprint.

By Ian McBurney, Live Ecological..............................................................................................................Page 5

A regular health check-up, and not just with your dentist...? Have you had your 10-point-health-check recently?

By Tim Gentle, Design Experts..............................................................................................................Page 6

How to get paid to innovateIn small business you often need to innovate to survive. Despite this, the level of research and development (R&D) claims by the small business community is minuscule. While small business employs about half the workforce, it only represents just over 10% of all R&D claimed.

Where a business seeks out innovation and is testing and trialing processes, and where there is an inherent risk that the test might fail then it is likely the work being carried out is R&D. It’s all about developing new products or product variations that can be commercialised to add value to your business.

There is a government incentive program for R&D work carried out by business. This is administered through Ausindustry but your claim is made through your tax return. To make a claim you need to be registered prior to lodging your tax return. Once your claim is submitted to Ausindustry, they will provide you with a claim number and this is included in your tax return. Your application to Ausindustry must be made by no later than 10 months after the end of the financial year. The two main concessions are:

125% R&D Tax Concession. This is a general concession allowing eligible companies to deduct 125% of eligible R&D expenditure incurred on eligible

WHAT WE OFFER:

• Business taxation returns

• Ensuring you understand the financial position of your business

• Strategic review of business structures & systems

• Budgeting & business planning

• Review & feasibility of new business acquisitions & start-ups

Valentini & Murphy For more information contact Dean Murphy

Address: 425 Hargreaves Street Phone: (03) 5443 0800

Bendigo 3550 Email: dmurphy@vandm.com.au

Valentini & Murphy

Australian-owned R&D activities in their annual tax returns.

R&D Tax Offset. This tax offset allows small companies who are in a tax loss to cash out their tax concession entitlements. The tax offset is paid at the rate of 30 cents for each dollar of deduction that would have otherwise been claimable. For early stage companies (or where you are in a tax loss position), this can be a valuable

boost to your cash flow. The basic requirements to be satisfied to access the R&D tax concessions are:

- The entity must be a company incorporated in Australia, not acting

in the capacity as a trustee.

- The activities must qualify as R&D activities, i.e. activities which are either ‘systematic, investigative and experimental activities involving innovation or high levels of technical risk’ (SIE activities), or activities which are directly related to carrying on the SIE activities.

- A R&D plan and adequate R&D records are maintained.

- A minimum of $20,000 R&D expenditure was incurred unless the R&D is contracted to an approved Registered Research Agency.

If you think your business may be eligible for the concessions, speak to us today. But, do it before April 30, 2012!

Top TipIn small business you often need to

innovate to survive.

Highlighting blank cells in ExcelSometimes in Excel, you may wish to highlight blank cells in a worksheet, column or row. I mostly need to do this to delete unwanted records (rows). E.g., I may have the following (Fig. 1):

and I want to delete all the names without an email address. What happens if you have 6,000 records to check? You could sort them by column C, this would put all the blank emails at the top and you could then highlight all the rows and delete them, however they may be in a particular order for a reason. Well this is where F5 shines.

Using the example above, highlight column C and then press the F5 key on your keyboard. A little pop-up window will appear. Click on the ‘Special…’ button, then select Blanks (Fig. 2).

WHAT WE OFFER:

• Individual database development

• Microsoft Access problem solving

• Data management

• Client management systems

• Microsoft Access training

Simply Access For more information contact Julie Misson

Phone: 0400 906 942

URL Address: www.simply-access.com Email: info@simply-access.com

Then click on OK. You will see Column C (Fig. 3) name is highlighted, along with rows 4 & 6. The blank cells will be highlighted blue. Note 4C is selected, that is why the blue is not showing (Fig. 3).

To delete all the rows with a blank email, in our case rows 4 & 6, click on Edit on the toolbar, then Delete, then select ‘Entire Row’ (Fig. 4):

Click on the OK button. The two rows with the blank email will be gone.

Top Tip

One of the secrets of F5 in Excel.

(Fig. 3)

(Fig. 2)

(Fig. 4)

(Fig. 1)

Are you better, different or just cheaper? I recently received a blog from the guru of modern marketing, Seth Godin. In it he posed that a business can only adopt one of three market positions...Be Better, Be Different or Be Cheaper - and the last one isn’t much fun. I thought it a topic worthy of further discussion.

Firstly, we see that all three expressions are comparatives. That means, one business is better, different or cheaper compared to another, and that ‘other’ is of course your closest competition.

Let’s explore being BETTER. It’s actually not who you’re better than, it’s what you’re better at or better in. So often I ask a business owner what the basis of their competitive advantage is and they say “our customer service”. Sorry, but that’s just a motherhood statement. What aspect of customer service are you better at? The answer should be different for every Industry and relevant to the consumer. Surely a definition of great customer service for a plumber may be to ‘arrive on time’, whereas for a dentist it might be a ‘painless process’. Or perhaps the ‘better’ refers to wider product range or higher quality product. If that’s the case you’ll need exclusivity to that brand or range, or your competitive advantage would be at risk.

WHAT WE OFFER:

• Results based one-to-one business coaching

• Intensive “group” sessions

• 2 day business “boot” camps

• 1 day Workshops in marketing, sales, team building, & customer service

• One off business “boost” sessions for any size business

Paul Henshall, Master of Business For more information contact Paul Henshall

Address: 196 High Street, Bendigo 3550 Phone: 5441 6740 / 0418 302 057

URL Address: www.pauhenshall.com.au Email: paulhenshall@paulhenshall.com.au

Paul Henshall, Master of Business

What about being DIFFERENT? Is your difference plainly discernable by the clients and prospects and more importantly, is that difference a feature that is valued by them? How well it’s defined and how much the difference is worth to the prospect will determine the appeal of your brand and the amount of price difference you’re able to hold. Are you telling your prospects HOW you’re different in all of your marketing or just telling them your name, rank and serial number. If you think the name,

rank and serial thing doesn’t happen, open up the telephone directory now and see how many ‘ads’ actually define their difference.....sadly, not too many.

So if you couldn’t really nail how you’re better, or how you’re different, then you’ve only got cheaper to work with. Sadly, that’s the position of those business owners that tell me that their Industry is only about price. I guess if you suck with the other two aspects, then it probably is. It’s not the Industry that’s determining it, it’s YOU. Remember, when there’s no other way to decide, most people will choose the lowest price. Your challenge then is to find the aspect that will create a perception of ‘better’ or ‘different’, or you’ll be left to fight amongst the cheapest and as Seth said, that’s not much fun.

Top TipHow well your difference is defined and, how much that difference is

worth to the prospect, will determine the appeal of your brand.

Excited about the future? You bet!Albert Einstein once said that we can’t solve a problem using the mindset that created it. But it’s hard to have a different mindset when all that we see around us is yesterdays thinking. We are currently living in a seriously unsustainable society. Following are three examples that inspire me. As you’re reading have a go at imagining your business in this future...How will you fit?

Biomimicry - a new science putting biologists at the design table. They use natures 3.8 million years of design perfection to find cures for diseases (25% of drugs are plant-based) or biomimetic glues (like Muscles), organic solar cells (like leaves), super light and strong structural designs (spider silk is stronger than our bullet proof vests), super fast computer hardware, self cleaning paints, biodegradable packaging, stronger and self-assembling ceramics (Mother of Pearl), more effective transport (the bullet train is now shaped like a kingfisher beak), colour through shape rather than pigment (peacock feather) and bacteria that mine metals from waste streams. Nature uses energy from sunlight, small amounts of local materials, has no concept of waste and operates in community. Other species make amazing things better than us while looking after the place that looks

WHAT WE OFFER:

• Business Mentor program

• Speaker/Master of Ceremonies

• Business Green Team training/Culture Change workshops

• Local expert for your project, event, etc.

Live Ecological For more information contact Ian McBurney

URL Address: http://www.liveecological.com.au Phone: 0408 512 234

Linkedin: http://au.linkedin.com/in/ianmcburney Email: ianmcburney@impulse.net.au

after their children. “Life creates the conditions conducive to life” - Janine Benyus.

Cradle to Cradle. “How do we love all of the children of all species for all time?” This is the starting point for William McDonough and Michael Braungart, who design shoes, buildings, carpets and more. What a beautiful intention for human design. Instead of starting with the outputs (like the waste bin), they start with values and end up with no

bin. Indeed, they say “we can’t throw stuff away - away has gone away. There is no away”. In one carpet factory they worked, the water leaving the plant ended up cleaner than the water coming in. Their latest project

is the new NASA headquarters which will create more renewable energy than it uses and use 90% less water and energy than a comparable building.

Interface Carpets. In 1990, Interface CEO Ray Anderson was asked by customers and staff about his view on ecological sustainability. This prompted him to read and 21 years later Interface is half-way to having zero environmental footprint. As a result costs are down (saving $400 million), sales increasing, goodwill skyrocketing, marketing spending decreasing, their product improving and the best staff wanting to come and stay to be part of a higher purpose.

Want to read more? Go to www.ted.com.

Top Tip ”Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I

can hear her breathing.”- Arundhati Roy

A regular health check-up, and not just with your dentist…? If you skipped your cars 100,000 km service would you be surprised if it broke down? What about ignoring regular health checks only to miss the opportunity for early diagnosis? Would you expect your team to keep hitting their KPIs without an annual performance review? Putting your on-line marketing under the microscope for a regular health check will make sure it keeps getting you where you need to go, shows you problems before they happen and keep you kicking goals.

When looking at your on-line marketing don’t just stop at your website. An effective internet presence can take many forms – email marketing, social media, even phone apps. There are so many on-line tools available to deliver results for your business.

At Design Experts, we love working in such a fast-paced industry. We love the challenge of keeping up with innovation and working out how to harness new developments to enhance our on-line solutions. We also love watching our client’s businesses grow and thrive once we have helped them understand the potential of the internet. Our 10-point-health-check review is rapidly becoming a standard part of our client service process. Take a moment to put your on-line marketing through

WHAT WE OFFER:

• eBusiness strategy

• Website & eCommerce solutions

• Graphic design & printing

• Social media & eMail marketing

• Online learning & eBusiness workshops

• SEO, social media & eMail marketing

• Mobile websites & apps

Design Experts For more information contact Tim Gentle

Address: 175 Lyttleton Terrace Phone: 0422 900 858

Bendigo 3550 Email: studio@designexperts.com.au

URL Address: www.designexperts.com.au

our 10-point-health-check to see where you can improve your on-line marketing performance.

Website. Do you have one? Can you update it yourself?

Website Design. Is it consistent with your brand? Can your clients find the information they want quickly?

Website Interactivity. Do all your links work? Is your website quick to load?

eMail Marketing. Do you have a client database, a subscription box on your website? Do you monitor the response to your email marketing?

Social Media. Are you engaged with it? Are you monitoring what is

being said about you?

Search Engine Optimisation. Do the words that a potential customer would use to find you in Google occur regularly throughout your website?

Apps & Mobile Websites. Can you read your website on a mobile phone. Do you know what an App is?

eCommerce. Can you accept payments, deposits and donations online?

Statistics. Do you have Google Analytics on your website?

Research. Do you know what your competitors’ eMarketing strategy is?

What are the overseas online trends?

Design ExperteBusiness Solutions

Top TipGoing online is more than just having a website. An effective

internet presence can take many forms – email marketing, social

media, mobile devices…

Planning for success Plan = a scheme, program, or method worked out beforehand for the accomplishment of an objective: a plan of attack.

In 2000-01 small businesses made up 97% of all private sector businesses in Australia (www.abs.gov.au). A small business is defined as a business employing less than 20 people. Small businesses tend to have the following management or organisational characteristics:

• independent ownership and operations;

• close control by owners/managers who also contribute most, if not all the operating capital; and

• principal decision-making by the owners/managers.

Most small business owners carry the financial risk for their business AND they make the key decisions. The pressure is on to make it work and a plan can make it much easier.

Start with a blank page. Write down where you would like to see your business in 10 years time. What will your customers be experiencing? What will your role be (managing from the beach maybe?). How much money will you be making – turnover, profit, & wages? Will you sell the business, duplicate, expand, franchise? Make sure your business plan supports your life

WHAT WE OFFER:

• Practical workshops - Time Management; Find Your Desk Under the Mess; Roles & Goals

• In-house training

• Consulting

• We get your business organised so you can enjoy the important things in life

Sorted Business Administration Services For more information contact Clare Fountain

Phone: 1300 667 554 URL Address: www.clarefountain.com

Email: clare@sorted4business.com.au

Sorted Business Administration Services

plans. Get excited about what you want to achieve! If you struggle with planning 10 years ahead, start with 5, or even 1 year, if that works better for you.

Take your vision for the future and compare where you are now for each outcome. Have a look at what is missing as this is what you can focus on. The decision making comes down to you so roll up your sleeves and make a plan for the next 12 months. If you ‘are the

business’, make your targets a stretch but still achievable. If you have a team, set them smaller targets to work towards over the year so they support you to reach your goals, and remain motivated.

If you are unsure how to grow your business to meet your targets then ask for help. Look at what works, what doesn’t work and what needs to change. Sometimes it is the business owner that needs to change so make sure you shine the spotlight on yourself as well as team members! Surround yourself with people who are successful, read books, join industry groups and don’t be afraid to ask for support.

My golden rule is to take time out for yourself so you have the energy to make smart choices and take the business to the next level.

So make a plan for the 2011/12 financial year, include down time and remember to make it fun – we only live once!

Top Tip“Are we there yet?” “How much

further?” Know what ‘there’ looks like in your business then focus until you

arrive, then do it all over again!

Preparing for end of financial yearMay is the perfect time to make preparations for the end of the financial year. When your financial position is analysed and decisions made now, you actually have time to implement them before 30th June, which can sometimes make a big difference to your tax bill.

There are a number of areas that may require attention, including payroll, debtors, creditors and legitimate tax minimisation transactions. Payroll is an area that needs attention at this time as you prepare to issue payment summaries and reconcile your payments to the tax office. For all employees you have had during the year you will need to make sure that you have a valid tax file number and current address (postal and email if you send electronically). The date for giving out payment summaries is 14th July so there are only two weeks to get them out to employees. If you use a computer payroll you may need to do these before you can run the first pay for the new financial year, placing further time pressure on having the old year reconciled and cleared. By doing the groundwork now, the amount to be done after June 30 will be quite manageable. Once your figures have been done and summaries given to staff it is a good idea to send it off to the tax office straight

WHAT WE OFFER:

• Installation, training & support of MYOB & QuickBooks software

• Regular bookkeeping maintenance services

• Regular management reporting

• Payroll, incl. PAYG & superannuation requirements

• BAS & End of Year preparation of books for Accountant

First Class Accounts Bendigo For more information contact Jennifer Blainey

Address: 196 High Street Phone: 03 5441 6261

Bendigo 3550 Email: bendigo@firstclassaccounts.com

URL Address: www.firstclassaccounts.com/bendigo

First Class Accounts Bendigo

away so you don’t forget, and miss the August deadline.

End of the year is also a good time to go through your debtors and creditors, clearing up any unapplied credits and payments, and checking whether any debts need to be written off or sent through to debt collectors. This is not strictly only an end of year job, but if you don’t do it more regularly, May is a good time to at least do it once for the year.

Accountants love to see their clients before the end of the tax year so they can assess what your likely tax position will be at the end of the year. They can then suggest strategies

such as prepaying loan interest or some expenses where appropriate, or investing in equipment to get some tax benefits from it. Of course, for your accountant to make some suggestions, your figures need to be up-to-date and ready for him/her, to be able to advise you. Any time after you have completed the March BAS is a good time to get advice that could save you plenty of money at tax time, or at least minimise the shock of a larger than expected tax bill. It is a worthwhile investment of time and money to do this every year.

So get busy now, get everything up-to-date and visit your accountant for advice before the end of the financial year, it is sure to reduce stress and worry at tax time.

Top TipBe prepared before the end of the financial year so that you minimise

stress and financial shock attax time.