Julie's Blog Posts

Let me tell you a little story. 

It’s the story of a consultant who had a scary idea. She wanted to publish a cookbook. She had no background in writing, publishing, cooking, blogging or anything related to that goal. 

In this tall tale, the consultant left her job to follow her dreams, as the cliché goes. And the next thing you know, the story unfolds just as you would have hoped. The universe conspires — magically! — to give her a helping hand. She finds an agent and snags a contract with a top publisher. She even gets the television personality Anthony Bourdain, a famous chef, to do the blurb on the book cover. 

Cool story, right? But we all know stories like this one don’t really happen. You need a degree from the literary starmakers at the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop, a successful stint on “Iron Chef” or at least 10,000 Instagram followers before you can even dream of doing something like that. 

But wait! This story is actually true. The woman who made it happen is Reem Kassis, and her cookbook is “The Palestinian Table.”  

So why share the story? Not because it is so crazy but because it is so sane. The way Ms. Kassis pursued her scary thing is practical and repeatable. She did things that anyone can do, as long as you have the nerve to try to do something hard and scary in the first place. 

Ms. Kassis grew up in Jerusalem but came to the United States to pursue an undergraduate degree at the University of Pennsylvania. She eventually worked as a consultant for McKinsey & Company before leaving to have her first child. 

It was around then that she decided to give this far-fetched cookbook idea a shot. She was not dabbling in writing at the time. She didn’t have a side hustle making food at a restaurant. She didn’t have a blog or an Instagram account. All she had was a stake in the ground and a direction she wanted to go. 

Oh, and she had those roadblocks. Enough roadblocks that most people would have labeled such an idea unrealistic and given up. 

But one pattern I’ve noticed in people who do scary things is that once they see the roadblocks in their way, they take a specific kind of action to begin to break them down — a micro-action. Having figured out the big goal, they focus on the next, smallest action that will get them a bit closer to it.

Because Ms. Kassis wanted to publish this book in a traditional way, the most obvious roadblock was her lack of a publisher. To get one to take you seriously, you generally need an agent. To get an agent, you need to send what’s known as a query letter. (See how we’re moving from big, insurmountable roadblocks to smaller actions?) 

But first, you need to figure out which agents to approach. So here’s what Ms. Kassis did first: She went to the bookstore, picked up a cookbook and read the acknowledgments section. She noticed that the author thanked an agent in the acknowledgments, and she wrote down the name of the agent. 

There is more to this story, but please note how micro this action was: a trip to the bookstore. Having noted the name of one agent in one cookbook, the next smallest step was to pick up another one. She repeated these steps with every cookbook she could find until she had a list of agents. 

The next smallest step was to go home and research those agents, one at a time. That allowed her to write each of them very targeted emails. Because she was so thorough in her research, she got an almost unheard-of response rate. Eventually, she landed an agent, and now there’s a published cookbook with her name on it. 

Once you’ve identified the scary thing you want to do, don’t obsess over all the reasons you can’t do it. Get quiet and ask yourself one simple question: What is to be done next? Then look for the next smallest action you can take. Do that thing. Ask again. Repeat. 

I can’t guarantee that if you follow the Next Smallest Action Formula that you will succeed. But I can guarantee that if you don’t take any steps at all, nothing much will come of your idea.

This column, titled A Story of a Big Dream and a Single, Small Step, originally appeared in The New York Times on November 21, 2017 - by Carl Richards www.behaviourgap.com

Labor have announced that if they get into Office, they are going to remove the imputation credit system for self funded Retirees.  

So what does this mean?  If you buy Australian shares, most large companies pay the company tax out of the dividend before they distribute to the shareholders.  So by the end of the year most shareholders have the income in their bank acount that was paid by the company AND an 'imputation credit' certificate that shows how much tax was paid, by the company, on their behalf.   At tax time, the shareholder can ask the ATO for the imputation credits back as a refund .... if they don't need them to offset tax they would otherwise have to pay.  This is very attractive for Retirees who either hold shares in superannuation in a tax free pension (so they are guaranteed to get all the tax credits returned to them) OR fall under the tax free threshold outside of super... so also get their imputation credits refunded to them.

The Labor Party intend to stop imputation credits flowing to Retirees - unless they qualify for an Age Pension. 

One of the unintended consequences of Labor doing this, is that it will prompt some self funded Retirees to spend their funds to get back onto the age pension.   Self-funded retirees are already up in arms about Turnbull's attack on superannuation, and the unfairness of an age pension system which punishes thrift and rewards those who have saved nothing towards their retirement. The general feeling among self-funded retirees now is "what's the point?". 

The cost of welfare in this county is growing at 8% per a year.  All parties should be focused on encouraging retirees to become self sufficient and get off welfare.  In my opinion, Labor's policies would do the opposite. 

I have attached an article that oulines some of this impact from the Australian Financial Review.   If you want to talk further about this matter, please don't hesitate to pick up the phone or send me an email.  Remember, it is not in force yet, there is no election being called just yet - but I think its important we all start bringing awareness of this issue out into the open now, so ALL Politicians learn the full impact of their decisions. All for now, Julie 

The Dow Jones dropped 3% on Thursday on news of President Trump’s trade sanctions against China, which might seem understandable, except that there aren’t any sanctions yet and the whole thing was well-flagged anyway. The headline in the Financial Times, and just about every other news outlet said: “Trump to impose 25% tariffs on $60bn of Chinese imports”, which is obviously pretty alarming. A trade war between America and China would seem inevitable, as well as very bad indeed.  The venerable Economist even reported: “President Trump announces tariffs on Chinese goods”. Well, that’s not quite true. I’ve read all the actual material coming out of the White House and tariffs have not been announced, and there’s no mention of $60 billion. There’s no announcement of tariffs of 25% in the memorandum that trump signed either – that figure is contained in a “Fact Sheet” published later, which says: “President Trump’s Administration will propose for public comment adding 25% additional tariffs on certain products that are supported by China’s unfair industrial policy”. “Will propose for public comment” is not exactly an announcement. I presume the $60 billion number comes from the next paragraph of the Fact Sheet: “Sectors subject to the proposed tariffs will include aerospace, information communication technology, and machinery”. I suppose journalists have added up all the Chinese imports in those sectors and come up with $60 billion, but that’s not clear in any of the articles I have read on the subject. That is, all the articles quote tariffs on $50 billion or $60 billion worth of imports without saying where that number comes from. You might think I’m nitpicking and that both the reporting and the market reaction are fair enough given the gravity of what’s happening. But I reckon investment decisions need to be made on facts rather than headlines that are, after all, designed to sell newspapers and generate ratings and clicks rather than to inform. Will there be a trade war? Maybe, but we’re a long way from the US actually taking action and even further from some kind of retaliation by China. It’s worth listing what the Section 301 investigation of China (unfair trade practices) that Trump commissioned last August has actually found, since this what this week’s announcements were based on and also because it also applies to Australia. This is an edited extract from the memo that Trump signed on Thursday:

• “First, China uses foreign ownership restrictions, including joint venture requirements, equity limitations, and other investment restrictions, to require or pressure technology transfer from U.S. companies to Chinese entities. China also uses administrative review and licensing procedures to require or pressure technology transfer…

• “Second, China imposes substantial restrictions on, and intervenes in, U.S. firms’ investments and activities, including through restrictions on technology licensing terms…

• “Third, China directs and facilitates the systematic investment in, and acquisition of, U.S. companies and assets by Chinese companies to obtain cutting-edge technologies and intellectual property and to generate large-scale technology transfer in industries deemed important by Chinese government industrial plans.

• “Fourth, China conducts and supports unauthorized intrusions into, and theft from, the computer networks of U.S. companies. These actions provide the Chinese government with unauthorized access to intellectual property, trade secrets, or confidential business information, including technical data, negotiating positions, and sensitive and proprietary internal business communications, and they also support China’s strategic development goals, including its science and technology advancement, military modernization, and economic development.”

 My view: numbers 1 and 2 are pretty obvious and unarguable. I’m not sure there’s anything wrong with number 3 – isn’t that what everyone does? Beijing will protest most about number 4 – they have to really. IP theft is a serious charge. We all know it’s going on and it’s well organised, but this is going to be the flashpoint for the trade war. If Beijing gets outraged about being accused of IP theft but then quietly stops doing it, even for a while, then no trade war. If they get outraged and keep doing it, and the Trump Administration moves from proposing tariffs for public comment to actually imposing them … well, then all bets may be off.   The most important thing for investors in the meantime is to not mistake headlines for truth. *This blog is from Alan Kohler's 'The Constant Investor' weekly overview.  A website I'd encourage everyone to subscribe too for a good, well balanced read on all things financial.