Two women, 4 ingredients and a best-seller

What started with a simple idea and a conversation over red wine has led to over half a million sales of a cookbook. The authors of 4 Ingredients have found the recipe for small business success.
The story began when entrepreneur and motivational speaker, Rachael Bermingham gave her first book Read My Lips, about marketing and motivation for women, to her friend Kim McCosker.
"Kim was raving about it," says Bermingham. "I said, everybody's got a goodbook in them, and after a few red wines that same day she said, I've got a good idea for a book. She told me that it was a recipe book with [each recipe using] only four ingredients. I said, that's brilliant I would buy that, and my friend next to me said, I would buy that too."
Bermingham, a motivational speaker, kept asking McCosker, a financial planner, about the book's progress until she finally decided to give it a go, on the agreement that Bermingham would co-author it.
"Her idea and my motivation kicked us both into gear. We said we'll give ourselves 12 months. We had the book on her door step at 10 months. We wrote it during our children's sleep times," Bermingham says.
"None of the publishers wanted to know us. `Are you famous, are you a chef?'. `No'. They wouldn't even talk to us, we couldn't get past the secretary in most cases."
So the Sunshine Coast pair decided to appoint their own editor and printer and self-publish, with $20,000 seed funding from McCosker.
4 Ingredients was published in March last year and has since sold 575,000 copies in Australia and New Zealand, with agreements underway from other international distributors. After considering a variety of television proposals, they recently signed a deal with the Lifestyle Channel to present their own cooking show, which will air from September.
Bermingham says there were four key ingredients to the book's success that can be applied to any business: "Idea. Plan. Action. Marketing".
"I've marketed many other companies before and it's still those same four ingredients. You do it a little bit differently to suit the company you are marketing, but it's just the language that changes, not the process," she says.

"There are a lot of people out there with fantastic ideas but they just don't do anything. You need to first of all do something with it, take some action, then marketing is definitely the oxygen.
"I wrote up a press release and sent it out to all the media and press and print entities in Australia. Kim and I both followed up with phone calls and we got on the phones to the book stores too. We keep doing it, we still do it every single week. Just this week alone Lifestyle was filming in my house and I called my local paper to let them know."
Bermingham has no formal training but decades of experience in marketing. She has run many small business, including a travel agency, a speakers' booking agency and a consultancy practice called "Marketing to Success" where she provided advice to women over the phone on how to market their business with a zero budget.
"Whether you are the director of a child care centre or an insurance broker, every single person needs to market their business in some way. I always say if you market properly you don't ever need to sell, your marketing should do that for you."
A positive approach to marketing is important, Bermingham says.
"I think everybody has a problem with selling because they are fearful of rejection, that is a normal human quality. Whatever I'm doing, I come at it from, `How am I benefiting other people'."
Bermingham says excellent customer service and a clearly defined target market are also important for success.
"A lot of people in business don't know who their market is. You need to know what language to use. If my market is women, I'm not going to speak in a male language, because they'll miss the point."
The original target market for 4 Ingredients was busy mothers between the ages of 25 and 55.
"But our market has grown now and we have changed our marketing to capture more of the market because our biggest online buyers now are actually men," says Bermingham.
"Single men may be wanting to wow their partners, and there are a lot of widowed men out there too. You can evolve [your target market] but you need to start somewhere."
Bermingham and McCosker are in the final stage of production of their second cookbook.
They will be self-publishing their second book, despite offers from publishers around the country.

Brumby's baby boom budget

NEARLY $1.5 billion of tax cuts for home owners and businesses, and a "bush bonus" of $3000 to encourage young families to move from Melbourne's bulging outer suburbs to regional Victoria are the key features of yesterday's state budget.
Dubbing it a "baby boom budget", Treasurer John Lenders also announced $180 million of extra spending on maternity and child health services to cope with Victoria's highest birth rate since the early 1970s.
Mr Lenders gave business a welcome surprise: cuts to land tax aimed at helping the struggling manufacturing sector, a reduction in payroll tax to encourage employment and, for the fifth year in a row, a cut in WorkCover insurance premiums.
Victoria's stamp duty rates on home purchases — among the highest in the country — will be cut, with all thresholds lifted by 10%.
This follows a staggering one-year jump in stamp duty tax revenue of $913 million, or more than 30%, as a result of the boom in the property market. The cuts will reduce the stamp duty take by only $138 million next financial year.
The stamp duty relief is aimed at first home buyers. Mr Lenders said the saving for a family buying a median-priced first home for $317,000 would be nearly $2500.
The Opposition dismissed the tax cuts as illusory, saying the Government had "gouged" five times more in additional revenue from taxpayers since last year's budget than it was giving back in tax relief. Other features include:
■A $1 billion social justice package to help families with disabled children and "at-risk" communities such as Aborigines and new migrants from the Horn of Africa.
■Almost $800 million to increase capacity on the public transport network, including extra tracks at the Laverton, Westall and Craigieburn railway stations, and upgrades of Prahran and Windsor stations.
■Nearly $600 million to rebuild, renovate or extend 128 government schools, including new schools in Craigieburn, Caroline Springs and Wyndham.
■More than $350 million extra for capital works on hospitals, including Sunshine, Box Hill, Dandenong, Bendigo and Warrnambool.
Mr Lenders said the budget was aimed at helping the state cope with a population boom — Melbourne is growing by about 1200 people a week — and ensuring adequate provision of transport, education, water and health care.
"A growing population brings new joys — but it also brings new challenges," he said. "It places our infrastructure and services under much greater pressure. It makes it harder to maintain our liveability. And it puts a bigger strain on our natural resources."

To help fund future investment, the Government will increase the state's debt more than four-fold to almost $10 billion over the next four years.
While business applauded the budget, the Australian Medical Association said it did not do nearly enough to meet growing demand for public hospitals. Public transport and environment lobbies said it failed to tackle congestion and climate change.
Opposition Leader Ted Baillieu dismissed it as visionless, and ridiculed claims that it would enable Victoria to cope with the baby boom.
"Our babies will be paying the bills for the mismanagement of this Government," Mr Baillieu said. "There is a substantial increase in taxation in this state, and our babies will be paying the bills long into the future.
"When the people of Victoria wake up tomorrow, they will still struggle to get on a train or a tram, they will still struggle to get into a hospital bed, they will still struggle to get the fundamental services they deserve.
"This is maximum taxation, minimum delivery of services and no substantial infrastructure projects despite a bigger revenue take."
Mr Lenders conceded that economic growth was slowing, down from 3.25% this financial year to a forecast 3% for each of the next four years.
He said the budget surplus was expected to be $828 million next financial year and average $907 million over the subsequent three years.
This would give Victoria a buffer against "harder global times" caused by rising interest rates and inflation in Australia, an economic downturn in the United States and turmoil on the world's sharemarkets.
"It's clear that this budget comes at a challenging time: for Victoria, Australia and the world," Mr Lenders said.
"But it's equally clear that the Victorian economy has the resilience and diversity to meet these challenges and weather the risks ahead."
The Opposition attacked the Government's plan to fund future infrastructure projects in part by pushing the state further into debt.
Opposition treasury spokesman Kim Wells said Victoria was "on the path back to the bad old days of the Cain-Kirner Labor government's debt spiral".
"This will become a frightening legacy for the next generation," he said.
But Mr Lenders said net debt would stand at 2.9% of gross state product by 2012 — lower than the level Labor inherited from the former Kennett government in 1999.
"Worldwide, many governments carry a level of debt to drive their economies and invest for the future," he said. "They would be negligent if they did not."
International credit rating agency Standard & Poor's said last night that Victoria could easily afford the projected increases in net debt while retaining the state's triple-A rating.

Family struggles to help child recover

By: Jennifer Moxley

CHARLOTTE -- Cabarrus County parents are turning to an alternative therapy, hoping it brings back the little boy they nearly lost to an accidental drowning. He now has severe brain injuries after being found face-down in a pond, having been without oxygen for at least 45 minutes.
Aidan Wright’s parents want to continue the 2-year-old’s therapy at home, but they are struggling to pay for it. Part of the therapy is putting Aidan in a hyperbaric chamber. “What we’re doing is we’re taking oxygen -- concentrated, compressed, under pressure -- and we’re giving it to his brain,” said Rebecca McCall with Alternative Health Solutions.
The hope is that by giving him oxygen in the chamber, parts of Aidan’s brain will come back.
“He's fighting, he's still in there and we hope and pray that we can get him out of there,” said Russell Wright. He lost his job five days before the accident, so the family is on Medicaid. As the oxygen treatment is considered an alternative therapy, insurance doesn’t cover it.

The Wrights say the treatment is needed regardless.
“Lack of oxygen to your brain, treat it with oxygen instead of pumping more medical chemicals into your body,” stated mother Erin. McCall is donating her time and services, but the Wrights want to buy a chamber of their own so their son can get more treatment. No matter the stress or financial burden, they say they won’t give up.
“If you had something like this happen to [a loved one], wouldn't you do the same thing,” asked Russell. “I mean wouldn't you go to the ends of the Earth to make sure he was alright?”The hyperbaric chamber costs about $25,000 and so far the family estimates they’ve raised $9,000. A golf tournament to raise money is scheduled for June 14 at Rocky River Golf Club.