A story in the Canning Examiner Community newspaper this week caught my eye. The headlines screamed “Food slashed for rent”. The article tells the story of a pensioner that has been forced to stop eating meat and cut back on cigarettes after high private rent prices and her inability to get on the list for government housing leave her with little money to spend on groceries. Now get this … The landlord is HER SON who told her that she had to accept the increase in rent or she would be out (on the street)!

Not knowing the full story, it does beg one to ask a couple of questions:

- How can her son do this to his own mother?
- Why are cigarettes taking a priority over food?

Now read the following story that’s doing the email rounds.  It is a powerful message in our modern society. We seemed to have lost our bearings & our sense of direction. Is it not time for all of us to take back that which was (is being) lost?

Forward this story to as many as possible … Who knows, this may change somebody’s fate …

One, young, academically excellent person went to apply for a managerial position in a big company. He passed the first interview. The director who did the last interview, made the last decision.

The director discovered from the CV that the youth’s academic achievements were excellent all the way, from the secondary school until the postgraduate research. He never had a year when he did not score. The director asked, “Did you obtain any scholarships in school?” The youth answered “none”. The director asked, ” Was it your father who paid for your school fees?” The youth answered, “My father passed away when I was one year old. It was my mother who paid for my school fees.” The director asked, ” Where did your mother work?” The youth answered, “My mother worked as a clothes cleaner”.

The director requested the youth to show his hands. The youth showed a pair of hands that were smooth and perfect. The director asked, ” Have you ever helped your mother wash the clothes before?” The youth answered, “Never, my mother always wanted me to study and read more books. Furthermore, my mother can wash clothes faster than me.” The director said, “I have a request. When you go back today, go and clean your mother’s hands and then see me tomorrow morning.”

The youth felt that his chance of landing the job was high. When he went back, he happily requested his mother to let him clean her hands. His mother felt strange,  but with mixed feelings, she showed her hands to her son. The youth cleaned his mother’s hands slowly. His tears fell as he did that. It was the first time he noticed that his mother’s hands were so wrinkled and that there were so many bruises in her hands. Some bruises were so painful that his mother shivered when they were cleaned with water.

This was the first time the youth realized that it was this pair of hands that washed the clothes every day to enable him to pay the school fee. The bruises in the mother’s hands were the price that the mother had to pay for his graduation, academic excellence and his future. After finishing the cleaning of his mother hands, the youth quietly washed all the remaining clothes for his mother.

That night, mother and son talked for a very long time.

Next morning, the youth went to the director’s office. The Director noticed the tears in the youth’s eyes and asked, ” Can you tell me what  you did and learned yesterday in your house?” The youth answered, ” I cleaned my mother’s hands, and also finished cleaning all the remaining clothes.’

The Director asked, ” Please tell me your feelings.”

The youth said …
- Number 1, I know now the meaning of appreciation. Without my mother, there would not be the successful me today.
- Number 2, by working together and helping my mother, only now I realize how difficult and tough it is to get something done.
- Number 3, I have come to appreciate the importance and value of family relationship.

The director said, ” This is what I am looking for in my new  manager. I want to recruit a person who can appreciate the help of others, a person who knows the sufferings of others to get things done, and a person who would not put money as his only goal in life. Son,you are hired.”

Later on, this young person worked very hard, and received the respect of his subordinates. Every employee worked diligently and as a team. The company’s performance improved tremendously.

A child, who has been over protected and habitually given whatever he or she  wanted, would develop the entitlement mentality and would always put himself first. He would be ignorant of his parent’s efforts. When he starts work, he assumes that every person must listen to him, and when he becomes a manager, he would never know the sufferings of his employees and would always blame others. This kind of person, may be good academically and may be successful for a while, but eventually would not feel a sense of achievement. He will grumble and be full of hatred and fight for more. If we are this kind of protective parents, are we really showing love or are we destroying the kid instead?

You can let your kid live in a big house, eat  good meals, learn piano, watch a big screen TV. But when you are cutting grass, please let him experience it. After a meal, let him wash his plates and bowls together with his brothers and sisters. It is not because you do not have money to hire a maid, but it is because you want to love him in the right way. You want him to understand, no matter how rich his parents are, one day their hair will grow gray, same as the mother of that young man . The most important thing is your kid learns how to appreciate the effort and experience the difficulty and learns the ability to work with others to get things done.

 

It’s easy when you know how.  The same principles apply here as anywhere else – know the rules and work with it.

In a nutshell, 99.9% of accountants (and solicitors) charge on a time basis. Their working day is broken down into 6 minute intervals (Yes … you got that right … 6 minutes!) and time is allocated to clients whenever any work is done. So when you call your accountant, they “clock” you in and when they finish talking to you, you get “clocked out”. Then at the end of the week, a practice manager or partner will review that to check that the staff member has somehow miraculously managed to charge out the predetermined required number of hours to chargeable work ie to you, the client. The whip comes out at this point if the staff member has not managed to meet their required productivity.

Needless to say, this method of charging clients for work done can be abused (as with any other system) and can lead to you, the client, being charged for inefficiencies by the relevant staff member – which may or may not sometimes include the partner too!

This eBook Your Accountants Secrets Revealed will tell you how you can keep your accounting fees down and also give you suggestions as to what you should be looking for when you get your bill. To download your copy of the free eBook, just follow the link to TheCharteredAccountants.com

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed people can change the world. Indeed it’s the only thing that ever has.

Margaret Mead

It only takes a few caring people to change the world. At the top of this year’s most trusted list are people who strive to achieve just that. The 2010 Reader’s Digest Most Trusted People poll was published in its July 2010 edition. So, who made it into the list?

Not surprisingly – Dr Fiona Wood took out the No 1 spot again for the 6th year running. Jessica Watts, the young adventurer captured our imagination and catapulted into No 48 … ahead of ex Prime Minister Kevin Rudd who only managed No 81.

What about the professions? Ambulance officers, firefighters, nurses, pilots and doctors took out pride of place ahead of teachers and and childcare providers. Surprised to hear that plumbers rank ahead of accountants and religious leaders? And last but not least, will you be surprised that sex workers rank ahead of politicians for being trustworthy!!

I work all night, I work all day, to pay the bills
I have to pay
Ain’t it sad
And still there never seems to be a single penny left for me
That’s too bad
In my dreams I have a plan …

But how many of us really do have a plan?  Apart from the fortunate few, most people do end up working all day to make enough to pay the bills and for some, they even earn enough to buy some luxuries in life. We drag ourselves from one day to the next. We dream, but we do nothing about making sure that dream comes to fruition. There’s an old saying: “Most people aim at nothing in life . . . and hit it with amazing accuracy.” It’s a sad commentary about people, but it’s true.

Plans are not just for businesses. All of us should have personal goals and plans (although the thought of just watching life go by sitting on the beach on some remote island does have its attractions … at least until I want that ice cream or chocolate – I don’t think they have those on desert islands).

I love this analogy that I heard a while ago from a pastor at a church “If you want a job, you must first apply for the job. If all you do is suntan yourself at the beach, then God will bless your suntan” or the blonde who kept praying to God to let her win the lottery, and finally God replied “Work with me … You have to buy a lottery ticket!”.

We are looking forward to this new phase in our business as we launch our Blog.  This means you now get to enjoy, once again, our much loved newsletter style with really good and useful content – all coming to you in an entertaining and fun way.  Many of our Gardner Pope Success newsletter articles have been saved from obscurity and will, over time, be posted on this website … all appropriately categorized to make it easy to find.

The only difference will be that you now get to receive our newsletter via RSS feeds!

Before you ask … There will be NO tax articles – we didn’t spend the last 7 years running away from tax to get back into it.  But there will be plenty of our light hearted views on life and anything else you care to think of.  Blogs provide so much more freedom of expression!!

So bookmark this site … Keep an eye on the Blog. From here, you will hear about fun stuff, interesting stuff and heaven forbid, even useful stuff!