I just feel like I have to say that to avoid being accused of underhanded self-promotion.

I LOVE the idea of getting bargains through amassing crowds, and I love the bargains they are giving out. I just referred all my friends and we are going bowling en masse.

I know it’s not unique in the world, but most times you hear about sites like this and are super excited, but NZ is ignored, so you have to sit there and wish you lived in America.

I hope they do well and despite the fact that I will be missing my $10 referral fee for everyone who signs up through this blog post, I hope everyone signs up and we get lots of cool stuff dirt cheap.

Another disclaimer: The only addiction I have discovered that I have is for cheap internet shopping sites… so there is a mild chance I get overly excited when I find them.

I went to a cycle event on Saturday morning at 8am, organised by my friend Claire, who is a doer. Claire is sick and tired of how we as a country are dead set on ignoring climate change, she is annoyed that the council claims to want to make Wellington carbon neutral yet seems to do nothing about it but come up with grand schemes for sometime in the future. Our council, on this issue at least, are talkers.

So Claire organised this bike event. She invited the local Mayors and councilors and a bunch of cyclists and people like me who are normally too terrified to brave our streets on a bike and we were meant to catch the train from Wellington to Petone, then bike back. Basically Claire wanted to show our council and our Mayor what it is actually like for cyclists in Wellington (paying a full adult fare for carrying a bike on a train so that your daily train fare for one person is more than the cost of driving and parking, having to bike along one of our TWO roads out of the city on the half meter of road allocated to bikes while trucks and buses whistle by at 100kms an hour, having cars honk at you because the lights for cyclists last literally 10 seconds and you end up right in their path… You get the point)

So our Mayor came along before going to pull a publicity stunt at the major bike the bays event on later in the day. She was asked to give a speech about biking in Wellington and despite being part of our land transport committee or whatever it is, and despite campaigning successfully on the back of a Carbon Neutral platform for two terms running, the best she could come up with when asked why the council was allowing our bike paths to remain so substandard they pose real risk to bikers was ‘well we talk about it at every meeting. I can assure you, it is brought up at EVERY meeting.’

I can tell you that one of the proudest moments I have had recently was looking at all these people who talk the big talk and spend their lives convincing people of how much they are going to do some day, and comparing them to MY friend, who simply got her act together and did it.

Sometimes I feel thick because I have to ask a potential customer so many questions, part of me just wants to nod along and pretend I know what they’re up to so they’ll feel comfortable spending money with me. But another part of me figures that if a business is making me feel dumb and intimidated because I don’t get what they do, surely they aren’t marketing themselves very well.

Publish a five word summary puts in very concise words one of the biggest things I think we offer our customers and WHY we think it’s so important.

I realised this very early on after starting a blog – the 5 word summary of what the blog was about appeared in every review and directory listing people gave us. They just copied and pasted it. We made it so easy for them to spread the word about us, they just did it (I just realised that we’ve somehow deleted that summary, I’ll put it back up tomorrow)

I also notice it when talking to people about what we do. If I give the 5-15 minute explanation, people often get a polite but entirely bored look on their face. Most people just don’t care about the inner workings, they just want the 5 word summary. If they get your business in 5 words – especially if they know nothing about the industry – they feel smart. They like you AND they can tell their friends about you.

So, what’s your five word summary?

One question we were asked is ‘how much money do you want to get out of your business?’

It’s funny, I’ve never thought of a dollar figure before, it was always ‘whatever it can give me’. Now that seems like a terribly stupid answer… Because once you’ve established a dollar amount, you can work back through your expenses to come up with a figure you have to charge for your product or service to GET that dollar figure.

You will find out if you’re bonkers and there is no way that will happen with your business, you will discover that you may need to increase your prices or cut costs.

So simple. I love it.

Refining your Pitch
I’m over here in the US right now taking PlanHQ around the market and in the last few weeks aside from pitching to around 10-25 people a day, have done 5 video interviews including:

• interview on lunchmeet
• another at techcrunch, then finally last week
• presented our 6 minute pitch with a live product Demo on stage in front of 700+ people including press and investors.
• By this point we were in pretty good form, so straight after that a TV show from Canada came and did an interview (doesn’t air until October 15), people like good clear stories if you tell yours well, more people will want to pass it on.

I think the whole team thinks we’ve done pretty well, the secret is to keep doing it, as often as possible, tweaking it, watching peoples re-actions, simplifying what you do, say and show, until people love it. See what you think of some of the videos above and how we progressed, and get working on your pitch.

The new site looks nice, but I feel like the point of the redesign was missed a little. It’s not actually much easier to find stuff. I realised quickly that I had ‘learned’ the old site – I knew where that random link to the graduation information was off by heart so had taught myself how to get to it. The new site, I had no idea.

Looking quickly through the site to try to understand who and what they were catering for, I started jotting a quick list of what I think are the building blocks of a successful website. It is by no means complete, but based on the things I think the new VUW site does well and not so well.

• Use menus to break the areas of your website up into large chunks. People use navigation only when necessary so keep your main menu small (only a few links) and prominent. I can then quickly get to the broad area I need to.
• If you have a big site (with more than 2-3 layers of content), have a search box. I can avoid a long path to my goal page, if I can quickly search for it.
• Too much small text in small chunks is confusing, especially when it looks the same – I ignore it. Maybe I assume they are ads? Clearly separate different content and give it some space and size!
• I think 4 columns may be a bit much. It’s too busy and hard to separate the content out, so makes me head back to the menus. Keep it simple, 2-3 columns maximum and keep the main content area a lot larger than the ‘module’ bars so I know where I’m meant to be getting my information from.
• Completely understand the REASON why someone is there. What are the things most people are trying to get to? Make sure it is as easy as possible to people to achieve their most common tasks. All information was not created equal. Do visitor requirements change over time? (i.e with a graduation ceremony coming up, make graduation prominent, at other times, leave it more ‘hidden’

Luckily it was a whole slug. In fact it was a happy slug. Quite cute too, had it not been in my dinner.

I got that weird, squirmy feeling about what exactly I had just eaten. Then the waiter came past and was shown the slug. He said ‘oh dear… Umm, would you like me to take it away?’ and kind of wiped it off my plate with a towel.

I think we looked a little shocked because he then offered a free dessert. Funnily enough, I wasn’t too interested, so got my dinner for free.

I’d give him about a B- for his dealings with me.

When we went to pay, the owner/manager happened to be standing there. He wondered why we were getting a free meal. When he was told, his face went a little pale and he ordered everyone into the kitchen to look at the salad. He wasn’t thinking ‘oh dear a slug’ he was thinking ‘potentially these people could do significant damage to my restaurant’. I mean, imagine if I’d been a restaurant reviewer?

It made me think… Shouldn’t every one working in a restaurant be equally concerned about slugs?

Small business should be the home of sustainability. We know how to live off a shoestring, to use our resources until they are well and truly done for. We like to save money, we like to achieve things, our livelihood depends on us standing out.

Simple measures we can take

I’ve been thinking about it a bit recently and talking to others about potential small solutions that make a big difference. We aren’t necessarily doing all these things, but I think we should make it our 6 month aim to be. I’m also very interested in hearing what other small businesses are doing and how they can save money doing it.

Live close to work

If you have less than 10 people, you should all try to live within walking or biking distance, or at the very least, use public transport. Why hire people who live far away? Build your daily exercise into getting to work – My sister often walks an hour to get home to the suburbs and arrives refreshed and relaxed.

Try to cut paper waste

We send out our invoices via email. We’ve had one or two customers complain and politely tell them that they can print them at their end if needed, we can’t justify the waste… And it saves us tonnes of money!

We also ask customers to set up direct bank transfers instead of sending cheques. We don’t have a 100% hit rate, but the time and hassle it saves when cheques aren’t sent is enormous! I use the envelopes we get as srap paper for all the notes we jot down throughout the day.

We store copies of all our valuable information online instead of in printed version. If you do print stuff, print on both sides!

Recycle

It is a shame that for some reason in the last two offices we’ve had, there has been no recycling. We do put recyclables aside and Tim sometimes takes them home, but if the cleaners get in first, I suspect it all goes in the bin. One aim for the next 6 months is to sort the recycling situation in our office.

Every time you get rid of a computer or a cellphone or any electrical junk, THINK before you bin it. There are recycle stations, companies like Vodafone do have drop off days. if it’s not broken, someone else might want it… Take it to the Salvation Army or charity store.

Turn off your computers and lights at night

Once again, we’re guilty… some stay on, for no reason at all. We live in a world so full of waste that we forget it’s actually no burden to flick the switch when you leave the office.

Avoid Taxis

If you work in a city like Wellington, there is virtually no need for taxis. Bus lanes enable busses to get there just as fast or faster, and walking in the middle of the day gives you the chance to get some fresh air. There is no reason why you can’t plan to finish meetings and events with 15 minutes to spare before the next one.

Or why not get a company bike? Slap on your logo and make it the first point of call for transport. I’ve heard of a company that did this recently and replaced an entire company car with a bike. Needless to say, they are gleeful about the extra money in their pocket.

Support a charity

While organisations like Greenpeace wont accept corporate sponsorship, you can do it individually. Surrounding yourself with information about what people ARE DOING, keeps you inspired to do something yourself.

It may not be world changing… But it’s a start

I know these sound small. It’s the same argument with plastic bags – why bother cutting yours if the rest of the world don’t? Because your usage however insignificant compared to the billion other people on the plant, IS SIGNIFICANT compared to what it could be.

It’s not going to be long before we actually have no choice in the matter, so why not get prepared now? It’s always better to be a leader, not a follower.

Today’s lecture is now complete. :)

The Problem PlanHQ is solving

Business Plans have become known as static wordy documents that get out of date quickly and don’t get achieved. 

Bring Your Plans to Life 

PlanHQ is all about bringing your business plan to life. We make planning a collaborative ongoing process, something that you keep tweaking, updating and logging your actual performance against as the journey of your business growth evolves.

Grow your business 

If you’re serious about growing your business, then PlanHQ will become a must have. PlanHQ helps you set your direction and move towards making it happen, one day at a time.

What do you think?

Geting a lot of feedback and thoughts from people on PlanHQ right now and turning this straight back into the product, very interested in hearing any thoughts, if you’ve got anything to say about it, hit me up @ tim at planhq.com

A $700 million company in 7 years

After reading a blog post by friend Rowan Simpson (Development Manager and ex-shareholder of New Zealand’s auction / marketplace site Trademe) who was looking back upon a time when he was out round the country pushing his business flathunt.co.nz, he reminded me that it was 1 year ago today that Trademe was sold to fairfax for $NZ700 million. (Valued at just 15 times earnings for a business now firmly planted at the centre of New Zealands domestic trading, it’s quite the deal for Fairfax). Rowan said it has been a week of reminiscing, must be some cool times to look back on, good on you guys!

An overnight success? – Well 7 years is one very long night 

It blew most people away in New Zealand, which is understandable, we don’t see many businesses and deals of this size, let alone those born from small groups of individuals (where the real action happens), but on the other hand, what it showed is that most people just don’t get whats happening here, with the individuals who really have remarkable vision and action at play here. The fact is some people are working away all the time, everyday, making things happen. They follow their ideas, think about and build valuable businesses and eventually, with enough persistence, the right direction, focus, and good people, naturally, not at all surprisingly, these people pull off extraordinary and big things. Businesses like Trademe don’t just happen, people make them happen, and it took them… well as long as it took!

Do Before you think

I remember reading from a distance the articles when the sale went through hoping to catch a glimpse of the words from the horses mouth. As a doer, a creator, a risk taker who’s continued to put every $ and hour on the line to make something happen ages, I wanted to hear a few sneaky words from the horses mouth. Here’s a few words I remember coming through the paper from Sam Morgan, Founder and Major shareholder of Trademe:

Sam Morgan on Making Decisions and Doing

"Some people are better decision-makers than others,"

"Some people spend a lot of time sitting around talking about things they’re going to do and others get out and do them. I think there are plenty of people like that."

"Some people spend a lot of time sitting around talking about things they’re going to do and others get out and do them. I think there are plenty of people like that."

When Asked: "So that’s the trick? To do rather than think?

"Yeah, I think so. Everyone says a lot of people will no doubt think, ‘oh, I wish I had that idea’ but what they should think about is ‘what ideas do I have?’ And get off your bum and go and do it."
source: NZ Herald

Doing is the best part of Thinking 

That’s not saying there wasn’t plenty of very insightful thinking behind the move to make Trademe, but I guess the message I got from this, and something I really believe in is;

Your best thinking is embedded in your next actions, so you may as well just do, and face whatever consequences meet you on the other side.