Startups are ‘en vogue’ around the world – and celebrities have definitely jumped on the bandwagon. Whether it’s a lifestyle brand, a media empire or a line of headphones, celebs are putting their names out there and starting businesses.
Of course, celebrity entrepreneurs are a bit of a mixed bag. Some of them are loved by the masses. Martha Stewart, for example, in spite of everything. Others, like Kim Kardashian, get a much different reaction. The media, in particular, has been extremely reluctant to brand Kim as a successful ‘entrepreneur’. What do ‘regular’ small businesses think of the celebrity entrepreneur trend? In honor of World Entrepreneurs’ Day, we polled small business owners across the globe to find out which celebrity entrepreneurs most inspire them. And which they’d least like to work with. The overall winner? Oprah Winfrey came out on top around the world. While Kim Kardashian hit a new kind of bottom. Who would you most like to go into business with? Securing almost 40 percent of the popular vote, Oprah Winfrey tops the charts as the celebrity entrepreneur small business owners most want to work with. She has a net worth of more than $3 billion, and a diverse list of business ventures. She owns a TV production company, a publishing company and has numerous philanthropic interests. Oprah is living proof that pursuing multiple endeavors can make good business sense. How did Oprah break down against other celebrities globally? Here are the rankings: Global Results celebrity-survey-results-global US Results celebrity-survey-results-US UK Results celebrity-survey-results-UK Australian Results celebrity-survey-results-AU Who do you least admire? Proving that not all publicity is good publicity, reality TV star and serial entrepreneur Kim Kardashian is resoundingly the ‘least admired’ celebrity entrepreneur by a landslide (56 percent). Donald Trump should seriously consider focusing on being a TV personality and real estate developer. If our stats are any indication his Presidential run isn’t looking too hot with 27 percent of those surveyed voting him as least admired. Homemaker and publisher, Martha Stewart, came in third place followed by Ashton Kutcher in last place. Kutcher wins first place as “least likely to not be admired.” Who should pursue their side-gig full-time? celebrity-survey-dr-dre Like many entrepreneurs, celebrities often start their business ventures as a ‘side-gig’. 28 percent of small business owners felt that Dr. Dre should retire from the spotlight and focus on Beats by Dre, which he sold to Apple for $3billion. No word on whether this is a reaction to his new album, Compton. Actress Jessica Alba, who has been gaining notoriety for The Honest Co., came in second place with nearly 27 percent of the vote. Ashton Kutcher came in third with nearly a quarter of respondents around the world believing he should step away from the screen and focus on his side-gig of investing in early stage tech companies and restaurants. Trailing the pack, with 18 percent, was Blake Lively. It’s all about “The Donald” Although Donald Trump has a net worth of $4 billion, his corporations have, in fact, filed for bankruptcy four times. Our small business owners are keen to offer up advice on how this presidential hopeful can stay solvent: Reconcile your business bank accounts (57 percent) Reduce alimony expenses (23 percent) Get a new hairdo (14 percent) Don’t forget Stringfellow A little-known fact is that three of Peter Stringfellow’s US nightclubs ended up in liquidation and he was ultimately declared bankrupt. UK small business owners have a bit of advice for him: reconcile your business bank accounts (68 percent) wear less leopard print (14 percent). World Entrepreneur Day is an annual event. It’s designed to celebrate and create awareness for entrepreneurship, innovation and leadership throughout the world. Rugby’s coming home this autumn as the World Cup returns to England’s pleasant pastures. To celebrate, Xero is giving our UK-based accounting and bookkeeping partners the chance to win tickets to the big matches, with full hospitality and the best seats in the house!
Try for semi-final tickets We’re giving away six full hospitality tickets to each of the Rugby World Cup semi-final matches, taking place at Twickenham Stadium on Saturday 24th October and Sunday 25th October, 2015. Every certified partner that adds 10 clients on Xero Business Edition between the start of August and the end of September will get one entry into the prize draw. Plus for every ten additional organisations added on Xero Business Edition, you’ll receive an additional entry into the prize draw. Each winning practice will receive one ticket to attend the game with full hospitality as a guest of Xero. Entry is automatic – so the more successful you are, the better your chance of winning a ticket! Join the scrum for the final Be a top-performing partner and win a ticket to the Rugby World Cup final on Saturday 31st October at Twickenham Stadium. The top two Silver, Gold and Platinum partners that add the most Xero Business Edition clients between 1st August and 30th September will each win one ticket to attend the Rugby World Cup final, with full hospitality as a guest of Xero. Winners will be notified by their Xero account managers in the first week of October, and we’ll publish the full list of winners here on the blog. For more information, check out the terms and conditions. Good luck! We were fortunate enough to have the Minister for Small Business, the Hon Bruce Billson MP, join us at Xerocon. He came on to discuss what the Australian Government is doing to help small businesses succeed.
Small businesses, after all, are the lifeblood of the economy. There were 280,000 new businesses created last year. Most of them founded by women, Bruce said. And they contribute 42 percent to Australia’s gross domestic production, some $610 billion. Small businesses hit by regulations But they often face disadvantages when it comes to regulations. He discussed the problems small businesses face due to compliance requirements and regulatory settings at different levels of government. “We know the tax system. Even though it’s largely the same for larger and smaller enterprises. It lands disproportionately heavily on small business,” he said. “If your turnover is under about $1.5 million you’re hit harder. Your cost per $1,000 of revenue is six times higher to comply with the same law compared to a business turning over $5 to 10 million. The same rules are landing quite differently and heavily on the smallest businesses least able to cope with that cost.” Personal experience Bruce has owned his own small business with his wife. So he knows what it means to launch and run your own business. “We’d work hard and think it’s time to rest, and then the pillow talk would be of cashflow,” he recalled. “We’d be thinking about when the BAS Is due. We had that constant reminder where every waking moment is wondering what else you can do to ensure success.” But he said that technology like Xero was ensuring that small businesses can comply with the regulations they need to. Without the high cost or administrative burden that has traditionally followed it. And that technology is inspiring the government to improve its own processes to ensure that small businesses can interact with it easily. Bruce said he wanted to “energise enterprise”. When is the government going to help I asked Bruce why has it taken so long for small businesses to get recognised by government as a sector that needs (and deserves) some help? Bruce said small businesses are a diverse group that don’t have a consolidated group to lobby government on their behalf. This means it can be difficult for their voices to be heard. But politicians are beginning to really look at how to reduce unnecessary regulations for business. And technology helps to automate and simplify many compliance processes. Small businesses have a bright future ahead of them. Today’s guest author is small business and finance expert, and co-host of Sunrise, David Koch.
I often get asked how small businesses should approach technology. My advice is always the same. To safeguard your business and improve operating efficiency, stay up to date. Small businesses have always been nimble – it’s our greatest strength. Constantly evolving tech is letting us to be more nimble and competitive than ever. How we know business is changing Nowhere is that more evident than in our mobility. It’s so easy for small business owners to work on the go, and still get things done quickly and efficiently. You could probably run a lot of businesses from your phone alone. The need for a regular office is diminishing and the mobile workforce is on the rise. For the record, my family business uses a combination of desktops, laptops, tablets and mobiles. It allow us to collaborate across different rooms, states and countries. So it might not be time to throw out the desktops and laptops from my business just yet. But some businesses can operate without a lot of the traditional hardware we’re used to. It just depends on the type of operation you run and how your business functions on the tech front. Hanging up the fixed-line for good All you need to start or run a business these days is a phone, email and internet connection. That can all be done from the one device – a smartphone. According to the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA), there’s a group of Australians (12 percent and growing) who are exclusively mobile. That is, they don’t have a fixed-line telephone or fixed internet in their homes. It’s these consumers who expect mobile conveniences. They want mobile-friendly websites, mobile payments and the ability to resolve issues over email or social media. For a business to communicate on these customers’ terms, all they need is a mobile connection. This is particularly true if your business is predominantly on the go. Like if you’re always out seeing clients, travelling or doing deliveries. Especially if you don’t need advanced tools like design software or stock management systems. mobile-business-xero-david-koch Working on the go from your mobile Times have changed. Basic tasks like phone calls, emails and invoicing can all be done from a smartphone. Accounts can be kept in the cloud so bookkeepers can work remotely. Huge point of sale terminals have been replaced with mobile payment systems. A great tablet can do just as much as a laptop these days. It’s probably within reach for a lot of small businesses to do away with clunky desktops for good. No matter what technology you use, it might pay to review the essential software and functionality you need. You may find that everything you need is already on your mobile device. Embracing the right mobile technology could just lift some of the burden, save a bit of money, and make your small business that touch more efficient. We’re halfway through the year and we’ve been busy delivering product. We added key features to Xero such as Quotes and Inventory. We also delivered innovations such as the Business Performance Dashboard and Find & Recode.
But we’re just as focused on making existing Xero features better. Our online Community is one of the many ways we listen to our customers. You can use it to provide feedback on our products, request new features, and make suggestions for how existing features can be improved. In fact, since we last updated you in November, we’ve completed an additional 89 user requested features to Xero and have given back 2,893 votes! Looking at today’s release, there are a few features that have come about from Community feedback. Let’s take a look. Default tax settings for Quotes and Purchase Orders Ever sent a quote only to find that you’re over-quoting your customer because you’ve used the wrong tax rate? You wanted your quote to be tax exclusive, but it was sent with tax included? It’s an easy thing to do, but means it’s just one more thing for to follow up on. Now your default tax settings (whether you’re inclusive or exclusive of tax, or apply no tax) for Sales and Purchases now apply to Quotes and Purchase Orders, respectively, just as they apply to other types of transactions. This setting applies both at an organization level as well as any defaults you want for your customer or suppliers. community-release-feature Currency placeholders on email templates We want to help you look good to your clients, and this will be a focus for us in the year to come. We’ve improved our email templates. You can add placeholders for every currency symbol (e.g. “$”) while choosing whether to include or exclude currency code (e.g “AUD”). Now your email templates can be set up to read: “$234.00” (rather than the current 234.00 AUD) – much easier for your customers to read. Import multiple manual journals in one file For Advisors in Xero we’ve made a change to journals. If you’ve ever imported a manual journal with several dates, you know you have to create separate files for each date. Not anymore. From today’s release, you can now import manual journals for multiple dates, using a single file. This makes it less cumbersome to update your manual journals. To accommodate this, we’ve had to make some changes to the journal import process. Please refer to our online help for the details. Use Community to keep the feedback coming If there’s something you’d like to see in Xero, then please visit Community and let us know (be sure to vote!). While Community votes help us prioritize, all ideas count. If there’s something that can be improved quickly, or be included in a bigger piece of work, we might do this too – even if it doesn’t have as many votes. And don’t forget we’re listening elsewhere too. Online and on Twitter, when you contact our support teams, as well as the many other occasions we come into contact with our customers and partners. In the meantime, if you want to find out more about today’s release, please refer to our Release Notes. |
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