Business time august 2015

August 2015 | $4.95 (GST inc.) free

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royalty photographer snaps success among se asia’s elite

big yawn

sleep ... and making your body clock run on time

winning ways the good, the bad and the ugly of customer service

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BUSINESS & NETWORKING: Frankston | Mornington Peninsula | Dandenong

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ISSUE 59 / AUGUST 2015

FRANKSTON / MORNINGTON PENINSULA / DANDENONG

TONY MURRELL KEITH PLATT MARG HARRISON DAVID HILET MELANIE LARKE SIMON BROWN Design MARLON PLATT Finance ANITA HILET

Publisher / Director Editorial Director Sales Director Managing Director Material production / Prepress

features

5 10 18

Columns

more public holidays: Business groups unhappy about extra costs of holidays for Grand Final and Easter.

Social Media: Jessica Humphreys Health: Mike Ellis Markets: Richard Campbell Networking: Ivan Misner Managing: Hamish Petrie

17 18 19 20 22

HOW’S YOUR SLEEPING?:

Tired at work could mean a disruption to your circadian rhythms or maybe an indication of depression.

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& netWork

ing: Frankston

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| Dandeno ng August

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2015 | $4.95

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s on royalt y photog

rApher snAps success Among se AsiA’s elite

big yaw n sleep ... And mAking body your winningclock run on time ways the good, the ugly of

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DISCLAIMER: Information in BusinessTimes contains general advice only. No article or column has been prepared taking into account any individual reader’s financial situation, investment objectives or particular needs. Readers should personally consult professionals for advice on any matter, including investment, health and the law.

While all care is taken, BusinessTimes accepts no responsibility for errors or omissions in the published material. Views expressed are not necessarily those of BusinessTimes Pty Ltd. All content is copyright.

COVER: Michael Warshall took the advice of a customer and sought photography work in South East Asia. It was a good move. P.12 Cover photo: Keith Platt

Check updates online at www.businesstimes.net.au

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James Date and his business partner Francis Hempel say they are proud to have set up their business in Frankston. Having grown up and lived in the area their whole life it was the natural place for Zero 3 Communications to make their home.

Four years later they boast of working with most schools in Frankston and an increasing number of private enterprises.

“We improve the way in which businesses operate through their telephones - increasing productivity, ensuring they don’t miss calls and often reducing their monthly telephone bill,” James Date says.

Although their work is in the technology sector, he attributes their business success to “building a strong rapport and providing a solution which is easy to understand”.

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public holidays

Extra days off ‘unnecessary’ Business leaders believe state government plans for extra two public holidays are unnecessary and will be costly for employers.

The government says it is “delivering on its election commitment to reward hardworking Victorians” by introducing annual public holidays for Easter Sunday and Grand Final Friday.

The government has invited public feedback but its official announcement said that after this had been considered “the new public holidays will be officially introduced via a notice in the Government Gazette”.

Greater Dandenong Chamber of Commerce will make a submission against the proposed public holidays. Chamber president Robert Downing said it was the “unanimous view” of chamber members that two extra public holidays “are not a good idea for businesses in Dandenong”.

Wages would have to be paid without anything being produced or sold. If businesses did decide to open they would have to pay penalty rates.

Mr Downing, of M & K Lawyers, said tourism-related businesses were “the most likely” to benefit if the government went ahead with its plan.

Frankston Business Network president Peter Patterson said there would be minimal impact for the many businesses in service and hospitality industries, which traditionally opened on Easter Sunday.

“Public Holiday pay rates add another cost that these businesses have to bear. Most hospitality businesses are small and going through challenging times already,” Mr Patterson, national business development manager for recycler Replas said.

“The public holiday for the Friday before the Grand Final is not necessary and will impact all businesses.

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“While the Grand Final is a great event, it does not warrant a public holiday. Again, small and medium businesses will bear the heaviest burden and these are the majority of our members.”

Acting Minister for Small Business, Gavin Jennings last month released a Regulatory Impact Statement (RIS) for the public holidays compiled by PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) which “identifies that the two new public holidays will deliver as much as $312 million in benefits to the Victorian economy”.

Mr Jennings said “identified benefits” not factored into the analysis included up to $51m in increased tourism expenditure in regional Victoria; up to $49m in increased expenditure from complementary sporting events and activities; interstate and international tourists; reduced absenteeism; and social and economic benefits associated with enhanced events and leisure time The Opposition said the economic cost of the new public holidays “is up to $898 million each year” plus $286m in wages.

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BUSY BITES

Contract for memorial Frankston’s new war memorial will be designed and built by Convic Pty Ltd for $405,000.

The memorial will be placed in Beauty Park between Baxter and Spring streets. The project has a total budget of about $480,000, funded by council, federal government, Frankston RSL and community donations.

Giving it away While the number of private ancillary funds (PAFs) in Australia has increased by 125 to 1339 in the past financial year, the number of new philanthropic investments is still well below the pre-GFC record of 170 in 2008.

Australian Philanthropic Services (APS) says that after running at between 50 and 100 new PAFs 2009-2013, 153 PAFs were created in 2014.

APS says individuals donate capital into their family controlled PAF (generally a minimum of $500,000) and receive a tax deduction for the donation. The capital is invested, and a minimum of 5% of the value of the PAF assets is distributed as grants to charities each year.

“Philanthropy is becoming mainstream among high net worth individuals in Australia and there is general acceptance that the introduction of PAFs over a decade ago has played a key role in this and has increased the overall pool of giving,” APS technical director David Ward said.

Sydney-based APS establishes and administers private and public ancillary funds and advises on where the money should go.

households keeping to budgets Four out of every 10 Australian households have no debt and more than half are using 10% or less of their income for repayments, according to the latest St.George-Melbourne Institute Household Financial Conditions Report.

The report shows that in the face of low interest rates, Austalians are improving their financial position by directing their savings towards property. which was the only area of savings that saw an increase this quarter, lifting by 1.6%. The report also reveals that credit card debt has fallen below 30% for the third consecutive quarter, with 29.6% of households saying they hold credit card debt for the June quarter. Before December last year, credit card debt had not fallen below 30% of households since September 2008. The proportion of Australian households continuing to boost the piggy-bank and save a lot rose a solid 1.9 percentage points to 8.2% over the quarter – the highest level since December 2013. Conversely, four in every 10 (39%) households said they were able to maintain some form of saving.

St George’s head of retail banking for outer metro and regional NSW, Neelam Tandon said overall Australian’s household conditions rose a strong 2.4% in the June quarter, up 7.3% on a year earlier.

“This is great news for households and shows the effect of mortgage rates declining in the first half of 2015. We’re seeing households not only reduce their credit card debt but mortgage debt has fallen by 3.3% over the same period.

“More and more households appear to have strong debt reduction and savings plans in place.

In previous quarters we’ve seen more Australians draw down on their savings, representing an increased willingness to spend. ”However, we’re now seeing households revert back to a cautious approach, with less

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people drawing on their savings and more people using the low interest rates to pay off their debt quickly,” Tandon said.

So what are Australian’s currently saving for?

St George chief economist Hans Kunnen says the June quarter saw a 2% rise in those whose motivation for saving was to put a deposit on a house.

“While there’s been a rise in the desire to save for a deposit this quarter, this factor as a motivation to save has declined over the past 12 months, indicating potential purchasers may have become discouraged in some markets.”

“The report also shows precaution as a motivator lifted 6.6 percentage points to 57.4%.

Forecasts of a rising unemployment rate may sit behind this increase,” Kunnen said.

Saving for holidays remains the number one motivation for 59.0% of respondents, followed by saving for a rainy day (57.4%), saving for retirement (46.8%), saving to pay debt (43.6%) and saving to renovate (37.1%).

council call to mps over port Frankston City Council has sent letters to every member of the Victorian Legislative Council, asking them to block the State Government’s bill for a long-term lease of the Port of Melbourne.

The letter is described by council as a show of support for the environment and Melbourne’s outer south east.

Mayor Sandra Mayer said council understood the state government wanted to fund rail crossing removal, which was “commendable”, but it should not come at the expense of the south east and in particular Frankston City.

“A long-term lease will effectively kill off the Port of Hastings expansion for the foreseeable future, and that means killing off a major employment boost in our region,” Cr Mayer said.

“In addition, if the Port of Melbourne

problems with super at 65 Industry Super Australia says there are more effective ways to boost the retirement savings of Australians than lifting the preservation age to 65.

“Increasing the age at which Australians can access their super savings should be the last resort,” said David Whiteley, chief executive of Industry Super Australia.

Raising the preservation age is a point for consideration in the Productivity Commission report into retirement incomes policy.

“Quite often people are retiring significantly younger and not by choice,” Whiteley said.

He argues that more effective options include increasing the compulsory super guarantee to 12%, making tax settings fairer and more efficient, and ensuring Australians are in well

performing funds. He says modelling by ISA estimates that for a female retiring in 2055, increasing the super guarantee to 12% and retaining the $500 low income earners’ contribution will increase her super balance by 20%, and for a male by 12%.

“These measures would achieve a greater gain than the estimated boost of 10% that might be achieved by making Australians work longer. ‘’ Meanwhile, the Australian Institute of Superannuation Trustees (AIST) says that raising the age at which people can access their super might see the level of involuntary retirees blow out to more than half the Australian workforce.

AIST CEO Tom Garcia says more work is needed to address involuntary retirement among older, vulnerable Australians before any making any changes to super preservation age levels (currently ranging from 55 to 60 years).

“The Productivity Commission itself acknowledges that changing the preservation age won’t help those who currently retire involuntarily and will lead to only a marginal 2% increase in the overall workforce participation rate,” Garcia says.

“We question the benefit of such a policy change that will only make it harder for a significant number of vulnerable older Australians to access their own super savings.”

Research conducted by the Australian Centre for Financial Studies and AIST in 2014 finds that up to 40% of older Australians currently do not get to choose when they retire due to a range of factors, notably age discrimination, ill health, poor English proficiency and caring demands.

Garcia welcomes the Productivity Commission’s acknowledgment that further research into involuntary retirement should be prioritised.

Garcia also applauds the commission’s call for a holistic approach to retirement incomes policy and the need for clear objectives for superannuation.

Offices demolished Dandenong is about to get a new car park in Stuart St on land previously occupied by the city’s library.

The former Springvale Council offices Springvale Rd are also being demolished and the cleared site seeded with grass.

Greater Dandenong mayor Cr Sean O’Reilly said knocking down the two buildings was “an iconic moment in history, whereby two of our municipal buildings which have served the community well, are changing the landscape of our environment”.

Tourism grants Businesses, investors, local governments and tourism associations can apply for grants under the federal government’s Tourism Demand Driver Infrastructure program.

State Tourism and Major Events Minister John Eren says $3 million has been earmarked for “developing tourism infrastructure to keep Victoria number one”.

Grants ranging from $250,000 to $750,000 are available through Tourism Victoria.

Mr Eren sees tourism as “Victoria’s great strength”. Details: www. tourism.vic.gov.au

Jobs stable The June Australian Bureau of Statistics showed Victoria’s unemployment has been unchanged at 6% since February. Randstad employment market analyst Steve Shepherd says because of its manufacturing base (where most new jobs have been created) the state may “do even better over the coming months”.

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remains our state’s only major port, further destructive dredging will be necessary at the Port Phillip heads to cater for larger container ships, potentially having a serious impact on the Mornington Peninsula tourism industry.

“Given the Mornington Peninsula region was recently voted one of the world’s top 20 destinations by National Geographic, anything that jeopardises our local environment would be grossly irresponsible.”

Cr Mayer said Frankston City Council wanted to see the wheels back in motion for the Port of Hastings expansion.

“We want the studies on Port of Hastings reactivated, and if blocking the legislation in the Upper House is the best way of doing so then council supports this move,” Cr Mayer said.

“Given the potential environmental impacts of dredging at the Port Phillip heads this is a matter of state wide importance, and I ask all members of the Legislative Council to vote in the best interests of Victoria.”

August 2015 | Frankston / Mornington Peninsula / Dandenong | BusinessTimes | 7

NETWORKING gallery

1. Dandenong Chamber of Commerce met on at The Drum Theatre on 9 July. Pictured are Chris Williams, business development manager of Slattery Auctions, with Cheryl Disher, partner of HR Advice Online.

2. Also at The Drum are Glenn Lawrence, managing director of Thrifty Car Rentals, Dandenong, with his sales executive Dean Lynch and accountant Sue Voss, of RV Partners, Mt Eliza.

3. Peninsula Business Network held a breakfast on 14 July.

Pictured are (from left) Kathleen Morrison, of ORS Group employment services, Travis Fewster, associate Maurice Blackburn Lawyers, Sheryal Turner, of ORS Group, and Steven Lamande, partner of nem Australia.

4. Angie Gardiner, of Westernport Chamber of Commerce and Industry, with Sav Neri, of Fifo Capital.

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5. Irene Hoe, of Westernport Marina, Davin Smith, of Woottons Chartered Accountants, and Elizabeth Wells, president of Peninsula Business Networking.

6. Clothes4U opened its new Rosebud boutique on 21 July.

Providing free clothing for disadvantaged women, the store was opened by Austrtalian of the Year Rosie Batty. Pictured are volunteers Jeanette and Susan Petkovic.

7. Teena Pawsey, Maxine Short and Veronica Whittaker, president of Clothes4U. 8. Volunteers at the opening of Clothes4U, Rosebud.

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Limited Edition

9. Spectre Residential Apartments ,Dandenong, hosted an investor night at the apartments in Thomas Street.

From left are Vince Golf, of ReMax Property, Martyn Barnes, managing director of Barnes Capital, and Clinton Richards, director of sales and marketing, Barnes Capital.

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10. Damian Mc Cormack, of Guard Finance, Lindita Rusi, of ReMax Property, and Andrew Fleischer, of Envisage Capital.

11. Jack Miltos, director of ReMax Dandenong, Joel Taylor, of Macro Plan Dimasi.

12. Georgina Brosnan Hosking and Paul Turner, of Barnes Capital.

13. Frankston Business Network had its July get together at Sandhurst Club on 22 July.

Pictured are Eddie Wifling, of Excelbiz, and Emma Robinson, of Settlers Run, Cranbourne.

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14. Michelle Gradwell, of BCV Financial Solutions, with Michael Drew, of Le Mans GoKarts, and Carolyn Harli, of Quest Frankston.

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15. Mary Rahilly, of GYPCO, with Frankston Business Network committee member and former mayor Christine Richards.

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16. Caitlin Swanton, of Promotional Products Advertising, with Kellie Balisson, of Silly Seahorse Indoor Play Centre, and Vanessa Savin, of Flinders Partners, Frankston.

email marg@businesstimes.net.au if you have something to share.

Networking Galleries

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www.businesstimes.net.au

Listen online - rppfm.com.au, via the app or 98.7fm

Taking Care of BUSINESS Friday 11am to 12 noon 98.7 fm with Jacki Mitchell Ideas

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Success

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As seen on Sky Business News

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Tips

August 2015 | Frankston / Mornington Peninsula / Dandenong BusinessTimes | 9

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measured the resilience of 16,000 people across 250 organisations and found 43.3% of respondents ranked highly on questions relating to tiredness and fatigue.

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Tired of work or just tired at work? The effects of tiredness on output can be dangerous and costly.

Having someone fall asleep on the job leads to mistakes and affects every other employee.

Research by the Resilience Institute of Australia shows disruptions to our circadian rhythms means we are getting one of two hours less sleep a night than 100 years ago.

“We are perpetually desynchronised by artificial light, heating, electronics and sleep debt,” the institute’s founder Stuart Taylor says.

“Good decisions, productivity and teamwork are all hindered by exhaustion.

The cost to our development, lives, health and productivity, is enormous.”

Taylor says coordination, attention, decision making and impulse control all suffer, while cardiovascular risk, blood

Here’s Taylor’s explanation to help us understand “the science behind” our need for a good night’s sleep: Sleep is subject to biological clocks; our circadian rhythm is a 24.5 hour cycle built into the suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN).

Sitting just behind the eyes, this clock is paced and regulated by light, in particular, requiring blue light in the early hours of the day to effectively re-set. Upon waking, our body temperature rises, cortisol is released, blood pressure rises, testosterone peaks and we are alert, co ordinated and effective.

During the day, we build up adenosine which in high levels increases our propensity for sleep. The longer we are alert, the deeper our delta-wave sleep. After 7pm our body temperature drops, at 9pm melatonin secretion begins and we drop into a deep sleep somewhere between 10pm and 2am. Growth hormone is active during this stage, facilitating repair, growth and immunity. Taylor says a good night’s sleep rejuvenates cells, builds muscle and repairs the brain; REM sleep (dreaming) is essential

to memory and emotional intelligence.

Tips to making sure our body clocks run on time: 1. Commit to a regular wake up time – preferably around dawn.

2. Get vigorous exercise early in the day.

3. Take powernaps – 15 minutes after lunch.

4. Avoid caffeine after 2pm.

5. Have an early and light evening meal.

6. Limit alcohol and protein intake.

7. Ditch TV, laptops and gadgets after 7pm (or at least two hours before bed).

8. Cool, darken and quieten your bedroom.

9. Remove TV, phones and laptops from bedroom.

10. Develop a relaxation routine before sleep.

11. Discharge sleep debt by going to bed early (rather than sleeping in).

12. Aim for seven to eight hours sleep a night.

Details: www.resiliencei.com • See Health writer Michael Ellis’s article on sleep this issue, Page 18.

BUSINESS IT CONFERENCE The latest business technology opportunities and challenges, including cybersecurity, will be addressed at ISACA’s Oceania Computer, Audit, Control and Security (CACS ) Conference, in Sydney, next month. The conference will bring together industry experts from Australia, the US and Asia who will present their latest thinking, research and practical experience, along with tips and tools to help IT professionals add value to their enterprises. Hosted

by ISACA, a global association serving 140,000 information systems professionals in 180 countries, Oceania CACS2015 is billed as the region’s leading annual conference. This year the conference is being hosted by the ISACA Sydney Chapter at Sheraton on the Park, Sydney from 9 to 11 August. This year the conference will focus on ‘The Creation of Value, The Science of Trust’. For details on the conference, including registration, visit: http://www.oceaniacacs2015.org/ .

A discount on electricity may cost you more, says ERM Businesses are being urged to take a closer look at “discounted” electricity offers before signing up because some offers may not always represent the best value for money. according to ERM Business Energy, Australia’s fourth largest electricity retailer1.

“For example, a 25% discount from one retailer may represent a better saving than a 30% from another retailer,” ERM sales manager Peter Bennett said.

ERM says this is because the electricity prices being discounted are not the same.

“A retailer offering a higher discount may have a higher starting price than a retailer offering a lower discount, or even no discount at all.”

Bennett said he believed confusion stems from a common misconception that electricity prices are set by government, but this hasn’t been the case since deregulation.

“Electricity prices are set by energy retailers and rates can vary considerably between retailers, so it pays to do some research,” he said.

“Don’t be fooled by the size of discounts. To make an accurate comparison for your business, focus on

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the price per kilowatt-hour shown in cents, as this is the best way to measure the real cost of your electricity.”* “ERM Business Energy has pricing that is straightforward and competitive. There are no gimmicks or discounts on inflated base prices, just our best price and, unlike some of our competitors,” Benett said.

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August 2015 | Frankston / Mornington Peninsula / Dandenong BusinessTimes | 11

cover story: michael warshall

A FOCUS ON

ROYALTY and other subjects

The contrast between Michael Warshall’s office and his adjoining Nulab Professional Imaging factory at Braeside could not be greater. Going through the door to where the photo processing takes place is like going from one world to another.

The office provides clues to Warshall’s professional life as a photographer. There’s the attention to lighting and more than a hint of Asia in the furnishings. Warshall made his name as portrait photographer in Indonesia, working for well-heeled families, including royalty and the Suhartos.

The decor, furniture and lighting of the large office is more like a sitting room than a workplace. A very ornate sitting room.

The factory is concrete, brick and partitions.

Thought has gone into lighting the office.

There’s ample to illuminate his large desk with more subdued, directed beams on walls and other furniture. Paintings (two large colourful near-nudes), family portraits and awards line the walls.

A glass cabinet houses model cars (he explains that expensive vehicles are one of his indulgencies and there’s a Lamborghini in the car park); porcelain figures, vases and sculptures cover the tops of chests of draws; and there are rugs on the floor of highly polished tiles.

The furniture mainly has an Asian feel although the glass topped table and chairs have a French flavour. The chaise lounge

WORDS AND PICTURES: KEITH PLATT

(and also one in the foyer) and couch and coffee table add to the feel of the office being a sitting room.

Warshall’s nine dogs are also there. The cardboard cut-outs of sitting, standing and running dogs are more reminders of home.

“My wife told me that I spend so much time at work I may as well be surrounded by the things I like,” Warshall says, explaining the eclectic mix of furnishings and ornaments.

Another explanation comes when he outlines his 42 years in photography, a career that really started as soon as he left high school.

His parents “freaked out” when decided against following his chemistry studies in favour of photography at RMIT (Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology). “But it’s been good to me, I’ve never looked back.”

His taste in furniture harks back to eight years of monthly commuting between Australia and Asia photographing high profile members of various royal families and business leaders.

12 | BusinessTimes| Frankston / Mornington Peninsula / Dandenong | August 2015

Photographer Michael Warshall’s office reflect While running his photo studio at Doncaster Shoppingtown a customer suggested Warshall look to Asia for business. He didn’t act on the advice until he met the same person again while shooting a local wedding: “Business was starting to shrink and so I flipped a coin, Hong Kong or Jakarta, and Jakarta won. I went for six days with a camera, lights and samples of my work.

“I photographed one guy’s family which led to another job, which was the president of the bank of Indonesia and then the Sultan of Jogjakarta. I came back with a lot of money, 20 times the cost of my trip.”

That was the start of what at the time seemed a whirlwind: “I came back to do a Greek wedding on Boxing Day and then flew back to Jakarta doing shots for 20

ts the influence of Asia on his life, his eclectic tastes ... and the love he has for his dogs. pings of his office, Warshall comes across as a very focussed businessman.

He’s a strategist who composes his business with the same attention to minute details that he gives to his photographs.

He says businesses are being hampered by the slow internet speeds available to Braeside’s light industrial area – where Nulab is headquartered – and is critical that the national broadband network (NBN) is going first to residential rather than commercial properties. He is not alone with his concerns, which have been backed up by the results of a survey by Geografia, which showed “there are companies in SE Melbourne who are at the forefront of innovation in their respective industries.

However, they are currently constrained by the speed and capacity of the telecom-

munications infrastructure and the outdated exchanges”.

The research was commissioned by Kingston, Frankston and Greater Dandenong councils which are now lobbying politicians to have the NBN rollout speeded up.

However, from a politician’s point of view, taking the NBN straight to the home makes electoral sense. They know which electorate those living in a particular area belong to, whereas factory workers could come from anywhere.

Warshall runs a top end photographic laboratory, which needs to be able to provide a fast turnaround for its printed products. Nulab has corporate clients in Australia and New Zealand with 99% of work arriving electronically.

Since Warshall moved Nulab into a 14

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families, including that of President Suharto (who ruled Indonesia for 31 years).”

The connections between royalty and business in Asia saw demand for his services grow to such an extent that successive trips would see him fly from Australia to Jakarta, then Hong Kong and then Brunei. The work was mainly private commissions by people who “are very proud, want big shots and want everything documented”.

Always on the lookout for a marketing opportunity, Warshall would make brochures featuring magazine articles written about him and his Asian assignments.

“That went from 1989 until 1997. It was hard work until it became too [politically] unstable, so we left.”

Despite the elaborate and whimsical trap-

August 2015 | Frankston / Mornington Peninsula / Dandenong BusinessTimes | 13

13

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cover story: michael warshall

50,000 square foot Braeside factory 14 years ago because of its convenience for his 30 staff, these electronic files have increased in size. Sometimes they can take hours to download with clients expecting a next-day turnaround.

“We’re just five kilometres from the Mordialloc exchange, we’re running 10 ADSL2 lines but it’s as slow as a snail so we’re becoming non-competitive,” Warshall said in a recent interview with his local community newspaper the Chelsea Mordialloc Mentone News. “[The NBN] would make us more competitive.

Some customers think orders takes too long … so we lose orders.”

On the day he’s visited by BusinessTimes Warshall’s views on the need for a fast internet are reinforced with his reading of A Smart Move, a PwC report on “future-proofing Australia’s workforce by growing skills in science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM)”. STEM will become an acronym increasingly used by politicians.

“There are many jobs at risk,” Warshall says. “It’s seriously scary stuff.”

The PwC report says businesses have to “come to terms with the monumental impact that digitisation and technology is having on business models, supply chains and customer behaviour”.

The report says 44% or 5.1 million Australian jobs are at risk from digital disruption (computerisation and technology). Heading the list of jobs most likely to be affected are accounting (97.5% chance), checkout operators (96.9%) and personal assistants/ secretaries (96.1%). Jobs least likely to be affected (less than 1% chance) are doctors, nurses and teachers.

However, PwC says the country’s GDP can increase by $57.4 billion if just 1% of the workforce is moved into STEM roles.

As a photographer Warshall has already seen his business world turned inside out by the advent of digital picture taking and the (almost) disappearance of film.

“The photographic industry has been shrinking for more than five years – everybody thinks they can take a good photo with their phone,” Warshall says.

“This is the most widely photographed generation but, unless photos are printed, they will have nothing to show in 20 years. Video has shrunk, there’s nowhere to play it, it’s gone.

Michael Warshall and his Lamborghini outside Nulab in Braeside.

“If pictures are not protected we have a problem.”

Warshall’s answer is to invest in new equipment for “high end” printing of photographs.

“We’ve moved from printing on silver halide paper to printing high quality digital which no one else has achieved.

We’re printing with ink, not light sensitive paper.

“There are no chemicals sent into drains, the process is biodegradable and we’re the first in Australia.”

Warshall has spent $150,000 and been on the road with his National Innovation Tour promoting the efficiencies and benefits of prints from the six-colour Indigo 7600 press “because a lot of photographers don’t want to change, although the new generation do”.

“Most digital printers use powder, but the Indigo process is a suspended ink in oil.”

Warshall documents his own life with photographs: family, holidays, pets and possessions (“I document everything”).

But he makes sure all these images are

14 | BusinessTimes Frankston / Mornington Peninsula / Dandenong | August 2015

all printed, “because there’s no substitute for good, physical printing”.

“You can open a book in 100 years’ time but [digital] files will not be able to be opened,” Warshall says.

“I document peoples’ existence in life at a particular time. I get our family’s portrait taken every five years because you can’t go back in time, no matter how much money you have.

“I documented the Warshall history, a family tree in pictures, for the kids [a son and a daughter] at 21 – but they weren’t too impressed because I started with their birth.”

As part of his own history, Russianborn Warshall still has many of his old cameras, from large format film to early digitals.

He runs a portrait studio in Elwood and is constant in his conviction “about the need to educate people about the need for portraits – they can be viewed anytime, you don’t need power or a battery”.

A quality image is everything for Michael Warshall. It’s a necessity for him, and his clients.

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contributions

starting a new employee *BY RHIANNON PILTON Many owners and managers need some help peeling back the layers of HR and building confidence in everyday interactions with their team.

Obviously, the link between business success and the human factor is critical. Consider the various roles within the business and how they all link and must work together in alignment with the business plan. Running a business and managing people is never easy. To make matters more complicated, Australian employment law never fails to deliver on the complexities and challenges of hiring, managing and dismissal processes.

Firstly we will look at starting a new employee, commonly termed “onboarding”. It’s no secret that the high cost of recruiting someone is wasted if you do not onboard correctly.

Why does onboarding matter? Well, 25% of the entire working population undergoes career transitions each year – in some industries staff turnover rates can be 50% within first 120 days of employment. So, first impressions are critical.

One of the most effective ways for employers to impress new employees is by providing a great onboarding experience.

The purpose of any onboarding program is to welcome new employees to your organisation and help them become high performing in their new roles as quickly as possible.

Research has found that if you extend onboarding activities from six months to a year, your process can be far more effective in familiarising new employees with your culture and supporting their high performance. This will require some planning and checklists are a key to a successful outcome. Remember, you’re not just welcoming new employees, you’re laying the foundation for a great working relationship that will last.

Good habits start early. Start an ongoing, two-way dialogue about expectations, performance and development by conducting performance reviews 30, 60 and 90 days after the new employee’s start arrival. This will ensure the employee gets the early direction, feedback, coaching and development they need to work effectively. Invite the employee to communicate his or her value and to contribute early on. When organisations give new employees opportunities to showcase their skills as part of their onboarding process, they see better job attitude, performance and retention. Think about it: you hired the new employee for a specific reason. You saw something in them in the interview process that made them stand out from the rest. Why not make the most of this?

Finally, after a successful “onboarding” process, tenure becomes important to avoid unnecessary exits. The key message here is that unless you lead your team to deliver the best outcomes for your business or organisation, you can be reasonably sure that employees will default to below average

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performances and may even become a disruptive or even a catastrophic influence on your success.

Next time I will discuss how to manage this part of the employment process. It’s about having the best people in functional roles, performing above expectation and aligned to your company vision, mission and values.

Rhiannon Pilton is Director of PWR Consulting Group, advising on recruitment, business solutions and human resources, 0402 807 144, www.pwrconsultinggroup.com.au

As a social media consultant I am often Jessica Humphreys* asked, “how do I get more likes?”.

Social media consultant While we all want to grow our social media presence, this shouldn’t be our core focus. Instead, we should be attempting to build a loyal and engaged following. The number of likes, followers or connections you have can be rather difficult to manage, particularly when you are just starting in the social sphere. People associate a solid following with the business or individual’s credibility, but this shouldn’t always be the case. The obsession with getting more likes can lead businesses down the path of buying likes. This is completely against social media best practice and while it may garner you an immediate growth in followers, the chances of these followers or likes ever engaging with your content is slim. It looks worse if you have a considerable amount of followers, but very little activity on your social media platforms. So the question we are left with is how can we organically grow our social media presence?

There are a number of different tactics you can utilise to grow your social media presence, both on and offline.

• Create awareness: People can’t follow you unless they know you are within a space. Include your social media URLs everywhere. On your email signature, receipts, business cards, show windows, word of mouth, newsletters and flyers.

• Engage in social media advertising: This is different to buying likes. Let’s take Facebook ads for example. These can be highly targeted in a number of different ways to the people you are trying to reach. Facebook has a number of different objectives you can set for ad campaigns. My suggestion is to try to use these ads to grow your email database. You don’t own your social media platforms and they can change in the blink of an eye. However, you do own your email list. If you produce quality content within your regular emails you will inadvertently grow your social media following anyway • Show a little personality: What separates you from your competitors? What makes you unique? Use social media to have a little fun and make your audience feel as if they are a part of something by sharing engaging content that provides education, value, offers and sometimes a few laughs.

• Demonstrate yourself as an expert: If you are providing your followers with regular quality information you will be positioned as an expert and people will be more likely to direct their friends and colleagues to your profiles. *Jessica Humphreys operates Social Concepts, a social media consulting business. Send questions to Jessica@socialconceptsconsulting.com

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health

To sleep, perchance to dream Towards the end of a visit to my GP not long ago, he asked me in that casual, sounds-like-an-afterthought-but-actually-checking-on-apossibility kind of a way: “How are you sleeping?”

Now I’m not qualified to speak for Western medicine, but in Chinese medical consultations that question is also high on the agenda, and it’s not a conversational filler there either. I expect it’s asked for the very same reason.

Restless or easily disturbed sleep is a key indication for depression, because it reveals an unsettled mind. Depression is not the only cause of disrupted sleep – anything that generates heat in the body, from fighting an infection (as I was) to drinking red wine – can make for restless nights, and of course the doctor would need to see other symptoms and signs, but essentially it’s the No.1 indicator of a mental disorder.

As a kid I used to wonder why we even need to sleep. I mean, it just seemed such a waste of valuable time. Surely by now evolution could have worked out a way to achieve whatever it is that needs to happen during those hours of unconsciousness while we’re still going about our daily affairs — surfing, drinking coffee, sitting on the couch watching the football, writing articles — all those things that everybody does endlessly.

But no. Evolution hasn’t got there yet.

It’s still requiring us to spend a third of our time buried in doonas, muscles immobilised, oblivious to the outside world and snoring away the hours of darkness.

Why would that be?

The answer that the philosophers of ancient China arrived at is that the cycle of activity and sleep reflects the nature of the universe. They thought it was all about yin and yang, and explained it like this: without one, the other makes no sense.

The universe is composed of waves of energy, many of which stimulate our nervous systems so we can sense them (light and sound particularly) but the way this works is that our senses are attuned to the stimulant. The nerves of our eyes are switched on by light (not dark); our ears hear the noise (not the silence), our skin feels the touch (not its absence). When that big wave looms behind the sandbank, we see the peak, not the trough.

Michael Ellis*

Chinese Herbalist

The answer that the philosophers of ancient China arrived at is that the cycle of activity and sleep reflects the nature of the universe.

They thought it was all about yin and yang, and explained it like this: without one, the other makes no sense.

As a result, we can get the impression that these things are opposites, that you’ve got one or the other – light-dark, soundsilence, peak-tough – and that they can’t exist simultaneously.

But they do. Nothing in existence makes sense without its flipside. A wave has a peak and a trough; without both it cannot be a wave. Without silences, there can be no noise to hear. Without space there are no objects (and no shapes). Without night, there is no day, and without stillness there could not be activity.

Nothing makes sense without its opposite. But our senses deceive us even on this. In reality these apparent opposites are just the front and back of the one thing.

Every phenomenon has a wave and a trough. Daytime and nighttime are the day’s twin faces, its yin and yang.

The end point of this philosophy is recognition of the illusion that we and the world are separate; that we exist as objective beings who come into this realm and gradually tune our senses to a shared reality, before living our allotted years and exiting again.

Just as I would make no sense without the world I exist in, neither would the world make sense without me to experience it.

“You are the world,” the Daoists said.

Or as the British philosopher Alan Watts put it: “We do not ‘come into’ this world;

18 | BusinessTimes Frankston / Mornington Peninsula / Dandenong | August 2015

we come out of it, as leaves from a tree. As the ocean ‘waves’, the universe ‘peoples’.”

(I bet you didn’t think I could get from a GP’s office to the meaning of life in eight paragraphs.)

Anyhow, you get the point. Without sleep, wakefulness would make no sense, and that’s just the nature of the Dao (a shorthand term for life, the universe and everything).

On a less philosophical level, sleep seems to have two distinct evolutionary purposes, encapsulated in its two modes – REM (rapid eye movement), and, rather unoriginally, NREM, non-rapid eye movement (note how we’ve again got two “opposite” phenomena).

NREM is when internal activity quiets right down and our internal maintenance system kicks in, allowing us to repair cells, restock glands and run the robo vacuum cleaner.

The more exciting part of the sleep cycle is REM, which of course is when we dream.

I’ve written about the curious phenomenon of dreaming in a previous column (“Dream weavers unravelled”, December 2012) and, in particular, its crucial role in protecting our mental health.

As I explained then, in Chinese medicine, being aware of your dreams is pathological – a sign that they are either too vivid or run for too long (ie. you spend too much time in REM and not enough in NREM).

We often awake with our conscious minds able to capture snatches of the bizarre images generated by our subconscious (there’s that two-sided thing again) but rarely do they make sense to us, no matter how rationally we try to reconstruct them.

Dreams obey none of the rules of physics for very good reason. Their job is to take the unresolved feelings and emotions generated by the traumas and unmet desires of daily life and to discharge them, thereby setting our conscious minds free of the past and able to move on afresh with every new day.

That’s why the GP asked about my sleep.

I said it was fine.

• See previous column on sleep titled Dream Weavers unravelled: http://businesstimes.net.au/articles/dream-weavers-unravelled/#.VbWKGyjR38s *Michael Ellis is a registered Chinese herbalist in Mt Eliza. Visit www.mtelizaherbal.com

MARKETS

Selling China what it needs Now that China’s steel is “cheaper than cabbage” and getting cheaper, we need some national deep thinking.

Richard Campbell* Stock Analyst

Cochlear remains very cautious about China and has said as discreetly as it can that it is mindful of Chinese competitors copying its technology and competing in government tenders with a lower priced option.

shown how. Its sales of plasma to China have been growing at over 20% a year for almost a decade which explains how it has a 25% market share of the $2.4 billion market, but the point to note was that this was against objections by Chinese companies who tried to argue that the Australian product was inferior to their own.

Cochlear remains very cautious about China and has said as discreetly as it can that it is mindful of Chinese competitors copying its technology and competing in government tenders with a lower priced option.

At the micro end of the market there are few –admittedly very few – other examples.

One is the success of Compumedics in selling blood flow monitoring systems to China. As with CSL it has been no overnight success. It has been selling into

* Richard Campbell is Executive Director of Peninsula Capital Management, Tel. 0415687431. rcampbell@peninsulacapital.com.au

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Iron ore is by far our single largest export item and a major contributor to federal and state revenues so the impact on the wider economy is large and will grow worse as Rio and its big competitor add another 160m tons to the market next year. The Pilbara exporters may really believe it’s smart to drive the iron ore price down even further as they claim, but they now have very little choice. BHP is taking write offs on its oil shale business as OPEC does to the oil market what Rio, BHP and Vale are dong to the iron ore market. The Saudi government is now resorting to borrowing funds while it waits for US shale oil production to collapse.

The flip side of this demolition of iron ore export revenues has the silver lining that the $A should keep falling providing incentive for other exporters: UBS says it will hit 70c by the end of the year and others say more. The catch is that others are also trying to keep their currencies low to protect their industries from imports so a weak currency is not sufficient in itself.

The products must be targeted to specific needs. China, for example has questioned the ash content of Australia coal shipments sending a shudder across coal markets.

Coal shipments have fallen 35% in the last six months.

The task then is to find replacement exports that others definitely need. In the case of China where reliable water, health standards and biological products are not a given there are opportunities. CSL has

China for over a decade, but recently placed 70 of its brain scanning units into a Chinese military hospital against competition from Chinese companies.

Another entering the China market is Resmed which has been an outstanding story for over a decade as its sleep apnoea products gained wide acceptance. Sales into China are less than 10% but should expand as middle class incomes support rising health and comfort expectations.

Resmed’s difficulty is that despite all the funds it has put into its pressurised air masks, the end result is not difficult to copy.

In water Melbourne’s CleanTeq has taken a strategically different route by engaging with a Chinese water technology institute part owned by the giant Three Gorges Dam Corporation, the largest hydro company in the world. The joint venture will share CleanTeq’s sophisticated ion exchange solution which enables it to tackle a range of “dirty water” contaminated with metals, petro chemical residues and other nasties, not the least being animal and human waste.

Whether this model succeeds is yet to be seen, but as an alternative it looks interesting as by giving away 55% of potential income in China it will have access to a far larger market than it might have achieved as a micro company attempting to enter the vast, highly competitive and fairly bruising China market on its own. The lesson seems to be to sell what the customer wants; not what you want to sell.

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networking

Seven secrets to balance As an entrepreneur, finding time for your family, your business, and your leisure time can be challenging. It’s difficult to do it all. So, I thought you might like the secret to balance? Are you ready? Here it is…

Forget about balance, it’s about creating harmony. This is more than semantics – it is a different way of looking at life. While life can’t be fully in balance, it is possible to create a life that is in harmony with your vision of who you are and what you want to do.

If that resonates, try these simple techniques: Wherever you are - be there. Here are three simple words that can begin to make a huge difference in creating harmony in your life: “be here now”. Wherever you are – be there. If you are at work, don’t be thinking about the time you didn’t spend with the family the night before, or what you should be doing with your “significant other” right now. When you are at home, don’t be thinking about the work you have to do at the office. Wherever you are – be there, fully and completely.

Be creative (about how you manage your time). If you have a big project at

Dr lvan Misner*

Networking specialist

work that has to be done and you want to spend time with the family one evening – get creative. I used to spend the evening with the family and when everyone went to bed, I sat down to write my first book.

Be creative and inventive in finding ways that you can accomplish what you need to do yet still allow you to spend time doing the other things in your life that bring you harmony.

Integrate various elements of your life. For many years, I spent a couple weeks or more working remotely from a small lake house. Now that I have more room, I bring up my staff and management team for short retreat/work days. It is a great way to combine my work life into a leisure environment. Then, the last week or so, I take off completely and spend the time

20 | BusinessTimes Frankston / Mornington Peninsula / Dandenong |August 2015

with the family. By integrating my two worlds – I create a sense of harmony. Look for ways to integrate elements of your life whenever possible.

Practice “letting go” and “holding on.”

Contrary to popular belief, I do not think it is possible to “have it all”. Unfortunately, life involves making choices. Practice understanding what things to say “no” to and then letting go of them. At the same time think about the things that are truly important in your life and hold on to them with all your might.

Be intentional (about who you “let in your room.”) Imagine that you live your entire life in one room and that room had only one door and that door was an Enter Only door. Anyone who gets in is in for life. If that were true, would you be more selective about whom you let into your room? Everyone I ask that to, says a resounding “Yes”. Well, luckily this is only a metaphor. However, when we do let people into our lives that are caustic or difficult – it is very difficult to get them out.

If you want harmony in your life, be more selective about who you let in your room.

Create margins. Life for an entrepreneur is crazy-busy. Create a life that has “margins”. Build in free time, family time, personal time into the margins of your day-to-day existence. You’ll be happier for it – I promise.

Work in your flame not your wax.

When an entrepreneur is doing things they hate to do they are in their wax – meaning they are doing things that are sapping their energy. When an entrepreneur is doing things that they love to do – they are in their flame. They are energised and excited.

If you want harmony – strive to do things that are in your flame and not in your wax.

The truth is that when you are 70 years old, you are not going to wish you spent more time at the office. You don’t need to be a workaholic to be successful. Focus on creating harmony in your life. Be creative.

Find ideas that work for you and the life you live. Make the time and be innovative.

Harmony is created where harmony is sought. *Dr Ivan Misner is a New York Times bestselling author. He is founder and chairman of Business Networking International (BNI), the world’s largest networking organisation. Dr Misner is also senior partner for the Referral Institute, an international referral training company. Email: misner@BNI.com

CONTRIBUTIONS

Making podcasting pay

BY BEAU RIXON* Every podcaster at some point faces the question of how to make money from podcasting. The question most often arises when facing challenges about the motivation to keep going.

In the world of video content like, say, YouTube, you have a default option where you upload your content and can accept ads while YouTube takes care of everything and pays us a percentage.

Podcasting is different and requires a little more effort, but over time the rewards are there and definitely worth it.

So, for those already podcasting – or thinking of starting – here are some strategies to help monetise your efforts.

Implementing just one of the strategies could help you to start generating income straight away.

1. In-show ads or sponsorship Ads or sponsorship are a popular strategy for many podcasters and an obvious one to get started. Placing an advert or sponsorship message amid content has been around for decades and is easy for people to understand. You create the content (podcast), then find a brand or business that resonates with your community. The brand pays you to promote to your community through a pre-recorded advert or a spoken message from the host. With this method all it could take is a few emails and phone calls to start generating income.

Think about ads and sponsorship when you’re podcasts are getting around the 5000 downloads an episode. At those figures, the cost can vary between $20 to $50 cost per thousand (CPM) depending on how narrow niche and what type of advert.

To calculate this, you divide the number of downloads by 1000, then times the rate.

For example: 5000 downloads /1000 (cost per thousand) = 3 CPM; 5 x $20 CPM = $100 for a 15 to 30 second ad spot in your podcast; 5 x $50 CPM = $250 for a 15 to 30 second ad spot or spoken sponsorship message in your podcast A spoken sponsorship message can be more expensive than a pre-recorded advert because it carries the authority and trust the host has developed within the community of followers. Although turnover might seem

small at 5000 downloads, don’t underestimate the importance an advert can have to your podcast appearing larger than it might actually be. It’s important to never take money for the sake of it. You want to protect the aesthetics of your show and an advert or sponsorship needs to be treated as a segment just like everything else. It needs to provide value and be aligned to the flavour, topics and needs of your community. If you are in doubt about this strategy, continue building your community and wait for the magic number. About 20,000 downloads an episode or 50,000 a month is a great milestone. From this point

It’s important to never take money for the sake of it. You want to protect the aesthetics of your show and an advert or sponsorship needs to be treated as a segment just like everything else. It needs to provide value and be aligned to the flavour, topics and needs of your community. you can really ramp up advertising because you are more cemented in the niche or industry.

2. Membership of a forum or club Often overlooked by podcasters, a podcast can provide opportunities around paid memberships, forums or clubs. A podcast can be used to drive traffic and sales of new memberships or be the product received because of membership.

For example, accounting firm Acme Partners might want to create a VIP Client Membership Service. This would be a monthly service where members receive information, tips, access to a discussion forum and special offers.

Acme Partners could use podcasts in two ways – both if they want to.

Firstly, a podcast could be created where Acme Partners interviews existing VIP members or clients about their business and how Acme has helped them. At the end or during each episode the host would promote the VIP Client Membership Service, encouraging listeners to join.

Secondly, a VIP podcast may only be

accessible when you are a member. The Acme Partners VIP podcast could present information about business development, marketing, sales, finance, and even be used as a platform to invite other professionals to share useful information that can benefit the members.

Depending on the value, your clients and the market membership fees could range from $200 a month to $200 a year.

3. Sell products or services Similar to the membership site strategy, direct selling products through podcasts allows for deeper engagement with your brand. No matter if your business is using podcasting as a tool to generate new customers or a hobbyist podcasting because of the love for a topic, there are a mountain of opportunities to offer products or services to listeners. Products or services commonly promoted and sold through a podcast include physical and digital books, services or special offers, training courses, webinars and seminars.

4. Affiliate sales or links Affiliate links are simply someone else’s product or service that you recommend. If a purchase is made and the new customer is from your promotion activity, you collect a fee or commission.

Using your platform to create relationships with businesses and people who sell products your community would enjoy is another way to generate income. Done right, this process creates a win, win, win – the business wins by making a sale and acquiring a new customer, you win by generating income without creating or delivering the product, and the listener wins by being exposed to a product or service they need. The usual method by which this process is done is by promoting a unique sign-up link. This unique link has a tracking code that connects the visiting potential customer to your account so that any sales commissions can be assigned.

The challenge here is that affiliate links often look complicated and not great for reading out during a podcast episode. So to make it easy to remember and type, you promote a link on your site that automatically redirects to the affiliate page. * Beau Rixon is a partner in Podmania, specialising in advising businesses about using podcasts for branding and sales.

Visit http://podmania.com.au

August 2015 | Frankston / Mornington Peninsula / Dandenong BusinessTimes | 21

MANAGEMENT

The good, the bad and the ugly of customer service In a discussion with one of my customers, she asked for more examples of leadership issues particularly in relationship to handling customers.

We recently had some very clear examples that spanned the full spectrum of handling customers so let’s examine them in more detail.

It is always best start with the positive: the good. On a drive to Sydney – a trip we often do – we decided to stopover in Gundagai. Our host recommended the family hotel over the road so we ventured into their dining room. It was packed on the cold winter’s night maybe because of the roaring log fire, so we took our place in the bar and waited for a table. The publican, Peter, came and found us when our table was ready and briefed us on the menu. About 15 minutes after ordering, he came and apologised for the long wait and topped up our individual glasses of wine, on the house. Our meals were great and we told him so when he checked with us a few minutes after starting our meals.

After our meal, Peter took the time to inquire about our travels and background and seemed genuinely interested in us.

While the facilities were typical for an old country pub, Peter and his staff provided exceptional warm service that ensured that we will come back whenever we can arrange our travels for a stopover in Gundagai. The lesson here is that they were sensitive to the customer feelings, anticipated a problem and took positive actions to overcome it. The small cost of topping up our wine glasses was minimal in regard to our overall spend that night and potentially future nights. These are all important aspects of creating customer delight.

When we got to Sydney, my wife and I decided to try some local golf courses to determine which one we would join. It was our third course, our local municipal one, which provided our bad and ugly examples.

We are hack golfers prepared to put up with the frustrations of inconsistency because of the overall pleasure of a walk in nice surroundings and an occasional good golf shot. We recognised that we were

Hamish Petrie*

Business consultant

Remember the three steps towards customer delight: removing customer dissatisfaction, meeting expectations and then doing something unexpected to create delight. Following these steps will help ensure that your customers experience a lot more of the good and much less of the bad and ugly. testing these courses in mid winter and so we were prepared to make allowances for this. Unfortunately, this local course was very muddy, poorly tended brown greens, no ball washers, no distance markers and overall, it was badly maintained. We are accustomed to losing golf balls in the rough, but here we lost balls in the middle of the fairways when they disappeared into the mud. Obviously, we were disappointed and finished after nine holes with everything covered in mud, only to find that they had no facilities to clean our clubs, shoes or ourselves. Obviously, the managers of the course had not thought through the actual experience that their customers would have at this time of the year, and then failed to make some actions to offset the negatives that were very predictable.

For little effort, they could have marked out the worst areas of mud so that you could avoid them safely. For a relatively small capital expenditure, they could have installed ball washers on every hole, and added facilities to clean equipment after a game to help make the experience tolerable.

Overall, lack of management forethought left us, and other customers, with a bad experience.

Now for the ugly. We approached the club professional after the game intending to make some suggestions, as above. As soon as we commented on the condition of

22 | BusinessTimes Frankston / Mornington Peninsula / Dandenong | August 2015

the course, he was on the defensive. After a few moments discussion, he started to become emotional. He failed to recognise that our feedback and suggestions were meant to be constructive. He did not hear our ideas, because he was too busy talking over the top of us. He forgot that he was given two ears and one mouth for good reason. We persevered a little, but then decided that we were wasting our time and left, mud and all, vowing never to return.

There could have been a very different outcome if he had handled the situation of customer feedback positively. For example, if he had listened to our suggestions, empathised with us about the current problems, offered to replace a couple of lost balls, and undertaken to represent our feedback with his management, we could have gone away feeling positive about our experience.

Every businessperson understands that customers are critical TO their business but, unfortunately, too few set high standards for the handling of customers when they become critical OF their business. Remember the three steps towards customer delight: removing customer dissatisfaction, meeting expectations and then doing something unexpected to create delight. Following these steps will help ensure that your customers experience a lot more of the good and much less of the bad and ugly.

Action Planning Questions: • Have you empowered your staff to provide small free items to customers when they recognise actual or potential problems?

• Do you expect that your staff will converse with customers to build relationships based on understanding customer backgrounds?

• Have you analysed the negatives that may be encountered by your customers and taken action to offset these with minor capital expenditures?

• Have you set the standard for your people to handle customer feedback calmly and with positive empathy, rather than adversarial emotion? *Hamish Petrie had a 37-year corporate career including 25 with Alcoa Inc. His latest position was VP People and Communications for the Global Alcoa Corporation based in New York.

He can be contacted at hamish@nitroworld.net or on 0404345103. © Hamish Petrie 2015

GIVING IT AWAY While the number of private ancillary funds (PAFs) in Australia has increased by 125 to 1339 in the past financial year, the number of new philanthropic investments is still well below the pre-GFC record 170 in 2008. Australian Philanthropic Services (APS) says that after running at between 50 and 100 new PAFs 2009-2013, 153 PAFs were created in 2014. APS says individuals donate capital into their family controlled PAF (generally a minimum of $500,000) and receives a tax deduction for the donation. The capital is invested, and a minimum of 5% of the value of the PAF assets is distributed as grants

to charities each year. “Philanthropy is becoming mainstream among high net worth individuals in Australia and there is general acceptance that the introduction of PAFs over a decade ago has played a key role in this and has increased the overall pool of giving,” APS technical director David Ward said.

OFFICES DEMOLISHED Dandenong is about to get a new car park in Stuart St on land previously occupied by the city’s library.

The former Springvale Council offices Springvale Rd are also being demolished and the cleared site seeded with grass.

Greater Dandenong mayor Cr Sean

O’Reilly said knocking down the two buildings was “an iconic moment in history, whereby two of our municipal buildings which have served the community well, are changing the landscape of our environment”.

HELPING WITH MONEY WOES Offering a helping hand is a new website and mobile app providing easy access to wise counsel that can help people back on to the path of stable financial control, small business minister Bruce Billson told the launch of Financialfirstaid.org.au.

The new website doesn’t require a business background, is easy to navigate and offers immediate support to users.

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