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Money Series 1: Who Takes Your Money
Your business is making profits, but where is the cash? It seems that someone has taken away your money. Your bank account is still the same, and your personal wealth is still the same. There must be someone that took your money. Based on my over 18 years of professional experience and study, there are 8 persons that take away your money without your knowing... The First Person is YOU Yes, if you do not have accountability, you have taken away your own money! According to NLP experts, 95% of the people in this world live their live below the line. They blame others for their own problems, come up with excuses and worst of all, deny what they are doing is their fault. Sounds too common? Many people blame the government, blame the economy, and blame the VAT or GST (tax) increase etc for their business woes. The remaining 5% of the people (successful people) live their live above the line. They take ownership of their situation, take responsibility for their actions, and be accountable to themselves. The Second Person is Your Lack of Planning Yes, if you have no planning, or you are simply reacting to everyday challenges, you're simply taking away your own money! To take back your money, respond, don't react. You can choose to over-respond if you like. Like faced with a new competitor, you can simply react by cutting your price, or you can over-respond by always maintaining a USP so that there is no real competitor. The Third Person is Your Customers We all know that customers that don't pay are simply taking money from your pocket and putting it into their own bank account. The best is to have no credit policy, and even collect cash in advance. The Fourth Person is Your Suppliers Suppliers often take away your money by giving you lousy service, noncompetitive products and worst of all, sell you extra stocks! So have a JIT (just-in-time) system for purchasing and inventory, and you'll take the money back from your suppliers. The Fifth Person is your Staff If you only have staff and not team, you're working for your staff for free! Staffs are simply reactive people on your payroll that you need to continuously ensure that they do their work, especially when you're not around. Team are those that work as though they're working for their own company. You need to build winning teams or you'd end up with losing money. The Sixth Person is your Marketing If you are like most people who believe that marketing will generate you name recognition, and once you have name recognition, customers will come to you, you're throwing away money for good. Marketing must be Profitable Marketing, i.e. it generates you profit every time you do it. The Seventh Person is your Accounts (or your lack of understanding of accounts). Many people don't know how to read Balance Sheet, and can't figure out what is a cash flow Statement. Lack of understanding of accounting can pull you down as you could be doing things that wrong and not know it. The Eight Person is your Selling If you are like most people still relying on providing answers in your selling, you're missing a lot. The only way to sell is to ask questions. Jerry Ang is Business owner cum internet marketer. He is offering FREE Wealth Building Software for average person in creating Unlimited Streams Of Escalating Income
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Accounting is not stodgy. Accounting is exciting. Accounting is cool! My ambition is to become the "cool dude of accounting". (do they still say "dude", do they still say "cool". Remember that song: When I say, "cool, man, cool, I don't mean cool, man, cool, I mean you leave me cold, Jack") We were throwing some ideas around with some of our clients as we do from time to time, looking for that unique benefit that our firm gives to our clients. That unique something that distinguishes us from other accounting practices. One said, "You have helped me to improve my business. Not only am I making more profits and have more to spend, but I also have more time to spend away from the business. The more time I spend at home with my family the happier my life is. And the happier I am the happier my wife and children seem to be. When my wife is happy all sorts of good things happen ? even our sex life improves. That's it! You can advertise that using Kelvyn Peters CPA and Associates improves your sex life" I don't think so! Sorry, we haven't accepted his idea. You're completely on your own in that department, but we can help you improve your business and consequently your life. And your goal might not be extra profit but extra time for living! We know we can because we are doing it for others. We repeat ourselves so often because the truth is the truth and there is only a limited number of ways to tell it. You've heard this before. If you are spending every waking moment in a hassle about your business, there must be a better way. There is! Accountants have been ripping off their clients for years In 1973 I attended a workshop for accountants at the Finance Management Research Center then headed by Dr Keith Cleland. The workshop was intended to drag participants into the 20th century. "Accountants have been ripping off their clients for years", he told us. The 25 participants were shocked. These represented vibrant accounting firms from all around Australia, both large firms and small. They were at the cutting edge of the industry. Otherwise they would not have been at this kind of workshop. To a person they resented that comment and one fellow wanted to punch him on the nose. (It wasn't me, but I would have held his coat). By the week's end we discovered how we were charging high fees for things that our clients couldn't understand, couldn't use and didn't need. At the same time we were neglecting the information that they did need to increase their profits and safeguard their businesses. 20 Years Later what's Changed? I attended a week long seminar hosted by CPA Australia in 1993 which was to train us in "client based accounting". Dr Cleland presented the initial module. He did not openly criticize accountants this time, after all, it was the CPA's hosting it, but he gave almost the same speech (same jokes, too) as he had 20 years before. 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Each of these is a tool not an end in itself. It's like giving the client a hammer and saw and telling him to go build a house. He needs more than the tools, he needs to be shown how to use them. Of course the client will complain about fees whatever the level if all he receives are not useful to him. Accountants generally are flat out preparing financial statements and tax returns. Meeting dead-lines. They haven't the time to 'smell the roses'. Anything that doesn't help meet a dead-line has to wait until later. Often its too late. I may still look like an accountant, even the cool dude of accounting, but there is nothing I like more than talking with a business owner about his business. There's nothing a business owner likes more than discussing his business and planning to make more money. It's great fun and he loves to pay me for it. Want to Grow Your Business? 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