There are tons of self-help and qualified experts giving advice on how to motivate employees — but is motivating a business the same thing? Not necessarily.

 A business is made up of employees, so the assumption is that if you motivate employees, you will motivate the business. That is not necessarily the case.

 For example, if employees are motivated for the wrong reasons — such as focused only on money to the detriment of the overall health of the company — that can be a problem.

Many surveys have found that employees (once they are given a living wage) are not primarily motivated by more money. Psychology Today noted recently that most raises need to be at least 5 percent to 7 percent to truly motivate employees, and most raises are below that threshold. This is especially true if the employer wants to impact daily behavior.

 But other perks — meaningful work, good colleagues, and prestigious work — in many situations can be primary motivators for employees.

 Employers have several ways in which they can create motivated employees that will improve the bottom line:

 • Trust your employees. You get trust by giving it. Trust your employees with more responsibility and see if it Impacts their performance and attitude. 

• Treat your employees like people, not things. Don’t treat your employees like they are machines. Enhance the social aspects of your workplace so employees feel they are part of a lively, energetic, and positive team. The result will be increased productivity, reduced conflict and better problem-solving.

• Respect your employees. Respect is a two-way street. If you respect employees, they will respect you and your business. How do you show respect? Most importantly, by listening to them. Look them in the eye and don’t be distracted. Your employees are your most important asset, so treat them that way. 

• Be transparent. The more transparency your company has, the easier it will be to get employees to pull together when times are challenging. Plus, they will also feel they are more a part of the victory when accomplishments are achieved. 

• Give employees authority. Employees need to feel like they’re in control of their careers and have a say in what they do. This breeds confidence and encourages professional growth.

 It is not always about the money; sometimes it is about making employees feel their lives will be enriched by the work experience. While these things don’t cost money, they do require the employer to consciously make investments in employees.                 

Dr. Bobby Grossi is a motivational speaker and author of the book “Destiny is Not Hereditary: How Becoming A Better You Impacts Others.” Grossi, DDS, (www.drbobbyjgrossi.com) owns and operates two dental practices and is the co-owner of Great Lakes Dental Design. He founded the Grossi Institute for Dental Assisting in 2016, where he currently teaches. 

Almost everybody bemoans the difficulties in trying to maintain a healthy balance between family and work. But for entrepreneurs, the inability to find that balance is not just unhealthy, it can result in the failure of both the business and the loss of the family.

Most entrepreneurs work at least 50 hours a week, and some people like Elon Musk say that working 100 hours a week is doable and will improve the chances for business success. 

But what about having a life beyond the business?

Entrepreneurs really do have to walk a tightrope between their families and their businesses. Failure in one of those two aspects usually leads to failure in the other.

Making matters worse is that when entrepreneurs first launch the business, many are using their homes as an office. This creates family issues when there are no physical barriers between job and family.

Here are four tips for entrepreneurs who want to have success in both their business and their home lives.

• Set boundaries. Especially if you run the business at home, it is important to set boundaries with your spouse or partner to make sure you are not always talking about business. When you are at work, be at work. And when you are at home, even if your business is in the garage, be at home. Have a separate phone for your business and don’t take business calls when you are on family time unless it is an emergency. 

• Prioritize work tasks. Determine what is the most difficult task and attack it first. That will help you get out of work on time and go home to your family. If you have a family event in the evening, it is much easier to leave a small task to the morning instead of a large, difficult task. 

• Take vacations (even small ones). A vacation doesn’t have to be two weeks. Take a day off and take the family on a picnic. It will not only be good for your relationship with your family, but also be good for your business. You will come back refreshed and better able to tackle the challenges of your business.

• Don’t intrude on your family’s space. If you run your business from your home, have a designated workspace. Don’t use the family dining room table for your paperwork. Find someplace where you can focus on your business without family interruptions. 

Entrepreneurs should not underestimate the importance of finding the right balance between business and family.

If they don’t get it right, they risk losing everything.         

Peter J. Strauss (www.peterjstrauss.com) is an attorney, entrepreneur, and author of several books, including the soon-to-be-released “The Accidental Life.” He is the founder and managing member of The Strauss Law Firm, LLC, on Hilton Head Island, S.C, and also the founder and CEO of Hamilton Captive Management, LLC. 

As a business advisor for the Onondaga Small Business Development Center (SBDC), I frequently encounter entrepreneurs with great ideas for new businesses. Most often, they are convinced that they have a business model that will be successful in the marketplace. Whether it is high-tech or low, product, service, or a combination of both, they are convinced that it is a winner.

I frequently pose various questions to these startup leaders, including: What value are you providing? How do you know it will be successful? Have you identified any customers? Is anyone else providing this service or selling this product? Surprisingly, very often the entrepreneurs respond with a blank stare. The reason for “the stare” is that they have not created a value proposition or done any customer discovery.

Steven G. Blank originally described customer discovery as part of the Customer Development Model (CDM) in his book, “The Four Steps to the Epiphany: Successful Strategies for Products that Win.” Blank is a lecturer in entrepreneurship at the University of California at Berkeley and Stanford University. He based the book on his observations while working for a number of startups in the Silicon Valley area. However, many of the principals and hypotheses apply equally well to non-high-tech firms as well as the high fliers in Silicon Valley.

Blank defines the CDM as a “set of objectives and milestones that are meaningful for a startup”. He describes the first step in that process as “customer discovery.” It is designed to identify a startup’s first customers. In this step, the main objective is to test your hypothesis about who you think your customers are, what is the problem that they have, and the solution you are offering to that challenge. Then testing that hypothesis is the next step. This testing is accomplished the hard way, at least in many entrepreneurs’ view — mainly through interviews with potential customers, analysts, and the media.

This is obviously an oversimplification of Blank’s process and an abbreviated description of his overview of the CDM, but what I hope to highlight is this often-overlooked step in creating a new business. Too often, an entrepreneur comes to us for assistance with a concept that “is certain to sell” because it is such a great idea. Generally, that description is coming from the mouth of the creator of the idea. In reality there is no way to know if something will sell if one has not described the value proposition to a potential customer and asked if he/she will buy it.

So, what then is the “value proposition?” Simply stated it is a description of the obviously apparent benefits from a product or service that deliver value to a customer. By testing this value proposition with potential customers, a startup is able to refine this statement to become a core part of the developing business model. The company will most effectively be profitable if it delivers substantial value to its customers. This is where the previously discussed “customer discovery” comes in. Testing this proposition with your target customers accomplishes two things — one, you will know if the identified target customer is in fact your target audience for the product or service, and two: if that target audience is sufficiently motivated by the value proposition to avail themselves of the offering. Then you will know if you have to re-evaluate your target audience or your value proposition. That, of course, may in fact necessitate another round of customer discovery to test the revised market segment and value proposition of your offering.

Therefore, it is important to consider this: If you are convinced that you have a unique product or service offering and are ready to charge off to create a company and start selling it, you have missed an important step (well, probably many). Until you have decided what it is that is valuable to your potential customers and tested your concept for market acceptance, you will not know with any certainty if you have the potential for a successful venture.        

Paul Brooks is a certified business advisor with the Onondaga SBDC. Contact him at p.c.brooks@sunyocc.edu

The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 added many new acronyms to tax advisers’ vocabularies. A few of the new acronyms in the international arena are GILTI, FDII, BEAT, DEI, and QBAI. Some of these acronyms have positive connotations; others, not so much. 

Foreign derived intangible income (FDII) is one acronym with a positive connotation and one that should be on the radar of CFOs and tax advisers of C corporations, as calculating FDII can result in a smaller federal-tax liability for a corporation. But before we get into FDII and its related acronyms, we first should mention BEAT and GILTI.

BEAT stands for base erosion anti-abuse tax. The BEAT provisions in the new tax law impose a minimum tax on a corporation’s taxable income as modified to eliminate deductions for certain cross-border payments to related parties. The rules are complex and apply only to companies with at least $500 million of gross receipts. The gross receipts of certain related parties are included when determining whether the threshold is met. Nevertheless, BEAT applies mainly to large multinational corporations.

GILTI means global intangible low-taxed income. This is income (with certain exceptions) of a controlled foreign corporation (CFC) in excess of a standard rate of return on the tangible assets of the CFC. The GILTI rules require a U.S. person (individual, domestic corporation, partnership, trust, or estate) owning at least 10 percent of the value or voting rights of the CFC to include the global intangible low-taxed income of the CFC in its taxable income, regardless of whether any amount was received from the CFC.

In the carrot-and-stick analogy, FDII is the carrot and GILTI is the stick. GILTI aims to discourage shifting profits to overseas subsidiaries, whereas FDII seeks to encourage U.S. corporations to generate profits from overseas customers. The FDII rules allow a deduction against taxable income equal to 37.5 percent of the corporation’s foreign derived intangible income, effectively reducing the federal corporate tax rate on that income from 21 percent to 13.125 percent. So how is a corporation’s FDII calculated?

The corporation must first determine its deduction eligible income (DEI). This is the excess (if any) of gross income over deductions allocable to such gross income, but it does not include income from foreign branches, GILTI, subpart F income, and certain other specific types of income. The next step is the determination of qualified business asset investment (QBAI), which is the average of the corporation’s aggregate adjusted bases of its tangible assets used in the production of the DEI.

Now come even more acronyms: the corporation’s deemed tangible income return (DTIR) is 10 percent of the corporation’s QBAI. The deemed intangible income (DII), is the excess of the deduction eligible income (DEI) over the DTIR. Note that the DII calculation attempts to quantify the income being generated from the company’s intangibles. FDII is the portion of the DII that is allocable to foreign revenues. 

Here is a hypothetical example to demonstrate how this works.

High Performance Inc. has $4 million of revenues from the sale of running shoes, of which $1.5 million of sales are to foreign customers. The corporation incurs expenses of $2.75 million, all of which are deductible for determining the corporation’s deduction eligible income. Of the $2.75 million of expenses, $1.125 million are related to foreign sales. The average aggregate bases of the machinery and equipment used in the production of the running shoes (QBAI) is $2.1 million. Its FDII can be calculated as follows:

• DEI = $4,000,000 – $2,750,000 = $1,250,000

• Foreign-derived DEI = $1,500,000 – $1,125,000 = $375,000

• DTIR = 10 percent * QBAI = 10 percent * $2,100,000 = $210,000

• DII = DEI – DTIR = $1,250,000 – $210,000 = $1,040,000

• FDII = DII * (Foreign-derived DEI/DEI) = $1,040,000 * ($375,000/$1,250,000) = $312,000

Conclusion: High Performance Inc. would get a tax deduction against its taxable income of $117,000 (37.5 percent * $312,000). Since the federal corporate tax rate is now 21 percent, the federal tax savings for the corporation would be $24,570.

This is a general overview of the FDII calculation. All along the way, there are more specific definitions and computational rules. Note that the same code section (IRC §250) that allows the deduction for FDII also provides a deduction of 50 percent of the domestic C corporation’s GILTI income that was required to be included in current income, but the combined deductions for FDII and GILTI cannot exceed the corporation’s current taxable income. For taxable years beginning after Dec. 31, 2025, the deductions for FDII and GILTI are reduced to 21.875 percent (from 37.5 percent) and 37.5 percent (from 50 percent), respectively.

It’s important to emphasize that the FDII and GILTI deductions under code section 250 apply only to domestic C corporations. However, for those C corporations with taxable income, despite the complexity of the calculations needed to determine the company’s FDII, the calculations are likely worth the effort.           

Linda Bruckner is a partner at Sciarabba Walker & Co., LLP and a member of the firm’s International Tax Group. Contact her at: lbruckner@swcllp.com