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Quarterly snapshot for business owners who want to be in the know September 2019
How telling your story can help you
outshine your competitors
You might think story telling is something you do to get kids to sleep, with them heavy eyed tucked up warm in bed, while you read them pages from a colourful book in different voices to make it come alive …
In listening to his speech, where he spoke in short, thought through, sentences like he writes in his book, I found that he has sold more books than The Beatles have sold records.
But story telling is also crucial to help your business to grow.
To me that just seems incomprehensible .. but its true.
I recently met one of my heroes at a business convention, Jeffrey Archer, and I’m slightly embarrassed to say I was more star struck by him than I have been meeting any film, TV or Music star. I think he is one of the most talented men alive today. Why?? … Because his stories come to life when you read them.
He also told how, in the beginning, with “Kane and Able” he had to fight in different publicity venues to make his story heard to get his book sold.
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This made me think of all the times, as small businesses, we have to fight to make our story heard, to get our business airtime to www.tiaccountancy.co.uk
How telling your story can help you outshine your competitors... help sell our service or product. Having people become empathetic with your story means you will have loyal customers who will become your sales team by sharing your story with others. How many of us overlook how crucial this is in our marketing? The easy part is finding our story, all businesses have one, finding a compelling way to tell it is where we often come stuck. Spend some time to really think about what your story is … what is it that makes your business unique? Once you have your story, here are some tips on making it fascinating to your target market: BE Concise Only tell the necessary parts of the story, no one will keep their full attention through War and Peace. Having one clear message in your story telling will help with ease of understanding. BE Stimulating Not everyone has to start at the beginning. Starting in the middle of the story can sometimes help to grab the listeners attention as this section is often much more enticing. BE Personal Use dialogue in your stories. This brings people to life in the same way that putting voices on when telling kids stories, the variation keeps interest. Also people relate to people, so by having characters in your story will help with empathy.
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BE Consistent As with your Logo you need to be consistent with your story, it is part of your brand. If you tell it in different scenarios and you start adding or changing parts, even slightly, people will become sceptical of it’s authenticity. Consistency builds trust. BE Authentic You need it to be real. It doesn’t need to be elaborate and earth-shattering to make customers buy from you. It’s needs to be genuine and connect with your audience. BE Emotional If you are anything like me then you cry more at happy endings that you do at sad ones. Use people’s emotion to connect with them. Whether it be of fear, strength, happiness, sadness. BE Comical Put humour in your stories if possible. If you think about stand-up comedians, all they do is tell stories for a living and it’s all in the way they tell them. BE Inclusive Get customers involved – if they have been part of your story then get them to do a short testimonial to say how they benefitted. You know they say what someone else says about you is worth so much more that what you can say about yourself.
Tracy x
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Can I claim my lunch as a business expense?
Claiming for the amount you spend on food is allowed when you’re self-employed, however, you can’t just claim for everything you eat. So, what’s the deal? HMRC’s general rule is that you can only claim for expenses that are “wholly and exclusively” for the purposes of trade, this makes food and drink expenses a tricky one, since everyone needs food and drink to survive. There are certain situations where you can claim for food and drink expenses, but it has to be outside of your normal working routine. So, if you’re based at the same workplace every day, it’s unlikely that you can claim any food and drink as an allowable expense. HMRC’s rules about whether a workplace is permanent or temporary (and whether expenses can be claimed) are complex. HMRC says that if a period of continuous work lasts for more than 24 months at the same workplace, that workplace isn’t temporary, and you can’t claim for any
expenses incurred. A period of continuous work means 40% or more of your time is spent there. If attendance at a workplace follows a ‘pattern’, e.g. you attend the same workplace on the same day each week for more than 24 months, then HMRC may decide the workplace is permanent and no expenses can be claimed. So, if you spend more than 40% of your time at a workplace, you can only claim expenses, subsistence and tax relief for a period of 24 months. After 24 months, or when you become aware that you’ll be spending more than 24 months at the workplace, your workplace is classed as permanent and you can no longer claim expenses. If you would like any further clarification please do not hesitate to contact us.
Lucy www.tiaccountancy.co.uk
A Company Profile
ARBONNE Network Marketing gives Jade the freedom to earn what she desires. Five years ago Jade Docherty joined the team at Arbonne International to benefit long term from the flexibility and extra income it could give her. Arbonne International is an ultra-premium brand of health, wellness and personal care products that started 39 years ago. Arbonne are a highly regarded member of the Direct Selling Association that supports companies to distribute products directly from a company to a consultant, to a customer over the traditional retail route. Jade said with Arbonne’s high performing products and price point, the products sell themselves. She explains you receive income based on recommendation, helping others start a social marketing business, and you will only get paid for the effort and time put into both aspects of the business model.
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Jade feels the main challenge of being a business owner in social marketing is helping people to understand the business concept for what it is vs illegal pyramid selling. Jade chose to work with Arbonne due to their ethics, residual income and that her income will be willed to her family when she passes. She loves that the company promotes building strong relationships for longevity over persuading people to sign up for a quick buck. Jade said it’s so hard to find authentic companies with transparency and a strong culture and community, but she believes she found this in Arbonne. Jade’s long-term goal is to continue to build a solid team of business partners and clients. Her passion is to help others build networks from nothing and support current business owners develop multiple income streams. Jade is always looking to get to know people that
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4 questions share her desire to have more out of life and simply build relationships with like minded people. Jade is very passionate about helping others and she 100% believes that the government should make it mandatory to teach entrepreneurship in schools/colleges and universities. Jade works a lot with young people in her day job and she sees so many of them that do not conform to the current schooling system. Watching too many of them start to fail and then become scared of education.
to ask yourself before you do your own payroll
She feels teaching entrepreneurships to our young people would encourage them to flourish, think outside the box and take other avenues into achieving job satisfaction and financial stability. Equally Jade has also seen first hand the financial support social marketing can bring to people whilst studying their main passion. Jade feels that TI Accountancy has massively helped her to run her business. She said they are always on the end of the phone and are happy to answer any questions, even ones that she could have googled herself. Jade feels she gets a more understandable and reassured answer from the TI Accountancy team and feels she is an important and a valued customer. Jade said she recommends TI Accountancy to all new business partners and her network of business owners to receive support in self-assessment tax returns due to their friendliness, support and reciprocity of her business when it was appropriate.
As a new employer you may be wondering if it’s better for your business to operate your payroll in-house or outsource it to a payroll provider. Here are four questions you need to ask yourself before doing the payroll yourself and not outsourcing your payroll to a professional: Will you worry about deadlines? There are several legislation deadlines in payroll management and as an employer taking on payroll in-house you could add pressure to your workload with all the other business-related work you already have to deal with.
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4 questions to ask yourself before you do your own payroll If the payroll is late not only will you get fines from HMRC but you will have unhappy employees. Outsourcing your payroll will have peace of mind as the providers will be responsible for running the payroll on time and for the payroll provider this is their only focus. Will you have time to keeping up to date with HMRC legislation? Government laws change constantly, and it means making changes in your payroll systems. This can be both worrying and time consuming. If you outsource your payroll to a professional payroll provider the stress of keeping up to date with legislation is taken away. Could running your payroll yourself cost you time and money? Professional payroll providers run many payrolls a week so they know the systems inside and out. Doing the payroll yourself could cause risk of mistakes which then take up valuable time to sort out and can cause upsets with you employees. It can also incur HMRC fines. Having a payroll provider will mean no more expensive computer software and no more printing & posting payslips. Most businesses find an outsourced payroll service saves them money. Do you understand the Pension auto enrolment Scheme? All employers must have a suitable pension auto enrolment scheme in place, running as
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part of their payroll. If this is an area you are unsure of then having a professional payroll provider could really help as they would also deal with all pension related services. If these are all questions you have asked yourself TI Accountancy may be able to help relieve the pressure and take control of your payroll for you. If you would like more information on our payroll services, please get in touch.
Kelly
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For the benefit of ‘employers’ liability insurance’ who ‘works for me’ ? You are required by law to have employers’ liability insurance for people who you employ under a contract of service or apprenticeship. Whether or not you need employers’ liability insurance for someone who works for you depends on the terms of your contract with them. This contract can be spoken, written or implied. It does not matter whether you usually call someone an employee or self-employed or what their tax status is. Whether you choose to call your contract a contract of employment or a contract for services is largely irrelevant. What matters is the real nature of your relationship with the people who work for you and the nature and degree of control that you have over the work they do. The following may help give you some indication of whether or not a person is an employee under the Employers’ Liability (Compulsory Insurance) Act. However, it is for you to satisfy yourself of the status of the persons working for you and if you have any doubts, you should seek legal advice. You may need employers’ liability insurance for someone who works for you where: • you deduct national insurance and income tax from the money you pay them;
• you require that person only to deliver the service and they cannot employ a substitute if they are unable to do the work; or they are treated in the same way as other employees, for example, they do the same work under the same conditions as someone else you employ. You may not need employers’ liability insurance for people who work for you where: • they do not work exclusively for you (for example, if they operate as an independent contractor); • they supply most of the equipment and materials they need to do the job; • they can employ a substitute when they are unable to do the work themselves; What happens if I do not have employers’ liability insurance? The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) enforces the law on employers’ liability insurance and HSE inspectors can check that you have employers’ liability insurance with an approved insurer for at least £5 million. They may ask to see your certificate of insurance and other insurance details. You can be fined up to £2500 for any day which you are without suitable insurance. If you do not display the certificate of insurance or refuse to make it available to HSE inspectors when they ask, you can be fined up to £1000.
• you have the right to control where and when they work and how they do it; • you supply their work materials and equipment; • you have a right to any profit your workers make although you may choose to share this with them through commission, performance pay or shares in the company;
Sarah www.tiaccountancy.co.uk
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