The Business Bulletin
Welcome to The Business Bulletin - a weekly collection of useful articles covering all pillars of business created by leading experts in their field. Plus a "spotlight on" interview - gaining insights from small business owners.
In this week's edition:
Inheritance tax – that seven-year rule – what it’s all about? - Tim Mullock
Have you started thinking about estate planning? Let’s hope you have. If the answer’s ‘no’, then today is as good a time as any. And there’s no better way to start than by looking at the famous ‘seven-year rule.
Gifts and inheritance tax
Certain gifts can be subject to inheritance tax – usually at a rate of 40%. You might think that the simple way to avoid your beneficiaries having to pay inheritance tax is for you to give everything away before you die. Not so fast. HMRC has applied a set of rules to stop you from doing exactly that.
Some gifts are usually tax-free from the moment you make them. For example, gifts between you and your spouse or civil partner, or the first ￡3,000 you give in each tax year. However, other gifts can result in an immediate tax bill immediately or further down the line. To find out more about these, get in touch, and we’ll talk you through your options.
The seven-year rule
Let’s look now at gifts that aren’t immediately tax-free but which HMRC considers ‘potentially exempt transfers’. In other words, they’ll only be tax-free if you survive for at least seven years after making the gift. If you die within that time, your beneficiaries may find themselves paying inheritance tax.
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Ramping up your sales planning – the importance of a softly, softly approach to restarting your business - Julie Futcher
If you’ve been following mer for a while now, you’ll know that I spend a lot of time talking about planning and the importance of having a sales plan in place for your business. Now, regardless of your predictions, I can’t imagine your stats look much like those in your plans right now. Some industries have gone incredibly quiet while others have found themselves with higher than ever demand.?
It can be tempting to throw your original plan out the window and just go with the flow for the rest of the year.?
Please don’t do that!?It’s more important than ever, when things are looking a little hairy, to get some goals and plans in place. And now is the perfect time to do this.?But how?
Setting Goals
Goal setting doesn’t have to be scary. Start by really looking at where you’re at now and how your revenue has fluctuated over the last quarter, year and couple of years. What kind of growth do you typically achieve? Then take into consideration how your industry is faring under the current restrictions and how likely it is that you’ll be able to match previous levels of growth. Once you’ve got a sense of this, start laying down some targets. When you’re setting goals, always remember SMART:?
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Is branding important for your business? - Mark Coster
The short answer is yes. It’s a vital component to a successful business. So there you go, no need to read any further!
But if you’ve got questions or are not utterly convinced that branding is utterly central to your business success, then read on and I’ll explain…
The myths of branding
Myth 1 - “Branding doesn’t apply to me – I’m a small business/startup.“
Lots of small business owners think?a brand?is something you create when your company gets bigger, and so it doesn’t apply to them yet, but it’s relevant to?EVERY business,?not just the likes of?Apple and Nike,?and you’ll see why as we go on.
Myth 2 - “It’s just a logo and I can get one from the internet for a couple of quid.“
Yes, you can get a logo “designed” for a small fee, but that isn’t the whole story with branding – it has a much wider scope than that. And as for what result you’ll get from your bargain-basement logo website, well that’s another story…
Myth 3 - “Branding is what huge expensive agencies do – I can’t afford that!”
It doesn’t have to involve a swanky London agency with a name that sounds like a firm of solicitors, nor does it have to cost you a lot of money – just a bit of forethought.
So let’s deal with a key issue first of all – what do we mean when we say ‘branding’?
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Where to start when it comes to website hosting? - Eloise Idoine ????
If you’re a start-up attempting to launch your business, there will no doubt be a lot on you plate to prepare and consider. Even if you are already established and are in a position to further grow your business online, how do you go about deciding what type of hosting is going to be best suited?
No matter what type of company or organisation you run or work for, having an online presence is vital in this day and age, and for those who don’t have the IT expertise, it can be costly or tricky to know which option to choose.
Here is a simple guide to the different types of hosting available and how to choose the right plan for your business….
Web Hosting
For businesses who are just starting out and have simple requirements, shared hosting platforms tend to be the go-to-option as they are simple to get started with and very cost effective.
Shared hosting is ideal for blog sites, test-sites, and sites which have less than 1000 visitors per day. With this type of hosting, you are sharing the resources of the server with other sites so there could potentially be 100’s of other sites sharing the same pool of resource and storage. That’s why shared hosting isn’t a viable option for e-commerce sites as a serge in traffic could affect the performance of your site.
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Terms & conditions – are they really important? - Kerry Gibbs
Getting your terms and conditions drafted professionally is never a top priority when starting a new business. Many may steal from competitors, ex employers or use templated documents instead of getting their own documents drafted, which is dangerous and not effective.
Every business no matter the industry should have a standard set of terms that they use for each transaction. If they are written correctly they are written with your business in mind and the way your business operates from start to finish must be considered. No two businesses are the same, the sales process, the way you invoice, the term of the contract, what is expected from the other party can all be very different and it is important to mirror all these processes in your terms.
I often hear that businesses are concerned about ‘scaring customers off’ with terms and conditions. It is actually quite the opposite, having a clear, direct and understandable document attached with any proposal or quotation will show you off in a professional light not a daunting one. They should be clear and easy to understand and of course make sense. If you have copied them from another business and you don’t understand them, chances are your customers won’t either. You do not need to even attach the document if you don’t want to just make sure you make reference to them on your proposal.
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Strategic thinking in stages - Jacky Sherman
My favourite definition of strategy is one I learnt early in my time as a consultant and it’s stuck with me ever since. It’s this: “Strategy is about marshalling your resources to achieve your objective” …
Time to exercise and strengthen those neural pathways with some strategic thinking!
We usually think of these resources as all the external things we need. Finance, infrastructure, systems, process, other people in the business, our contacts and their contacts and so on and so forth. In this blog post, I want to focus on the internal resource we all have, but rarely use to its full capability when devising our strategies.
“I’m talking, of course, about your brain!”
In order to explain, I need to digress a little. We are all familiar with the concept of handedness. People are either right-handed or left-handed. This is an example of our brain’s preference for one set of pathways over another.
Recent research demonstrates that these preferred pathways can be 100 times more efficient than the alternatives. Think of how difficult and tiring it is to write with your left hand if you are right-handed…it’s the same with your thinking.
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The what and how of delegation - Mhairi Ramsay
As an owner of a growing business, one of the greatest challenges can be delegating. After all you started the business, you know how best to do things and you want everyone to do the things the way you do, right?
I know your pain and I meet people every day who are struggling with the same issues. Through my experience, I can fully appreciate the concerns and reluctance to delegate and it took me years to be able to do it well and I would say that I still could have been better at it. However, I did learn a few tips along the way and these are the things that made it easier for me and the people who worked for me.
You need more time, you are struggling to get everything done and you know you need help so what do you do? Whether you decide to employ some extra people or outsource some work you are still going to be giving up an element of your control. And that is a scary thought!
You start thinking; ‘Do I really want to take the time to explain this to someone else?’ ‘Or would it just be faster to do it myself?’ ‘It’s so complicated will they be able to pick it up?’ ‘I love doing social media posts and engagement won’t I will miss it if I give it up?’
To one extent or another we all have these feelings and the reason, you feel like this is primarily that it often involves giving a colleague or outsourced contractor the right to make decisions that are officially tied to your business and for which you are ultimately responsible. It matters to you but you also know that you need to find a balance between working in the business (and the 18 hour days) and working strategically on the business and looking at ways to grow and improve.
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Spotlight on: Eleri Haf Cosslett LLM
Eleri is a serial entrepreneur. An international corporate lawyer by trade, speaking five languages, including Russian and Welsh, her mother tongue, following a stint at Her Majesty’s Pleasure, she has re-focused and dedicated her life to create businesses which focus on making the ordinary extraordinary, the beleaguered brilliant and the down-trodden de facto success stories.
A powerful energy vortex, knowing no boundaries, her strength, determination and hope coalesce to supercharge businesses and those wanting to set them up to horizons beyond their wildest dreams.
Watch the video to learn more about her business journey.