I want my business to be carbon neutral. It is important to me.

I don’t care about using it as a marketing tool, I care that my footprint is minimal.

So I signed up to be Carbon Neutral Certified. I was actually excited about finding out our current impact and having all of us agree to reduce it to zero. An office survey had us in agreement that we would indeed be ‘more motivated’ if we were carbon neutral.

But turns out for a small business, the act of getting certified costs $2,000. That is outside of any actual carbon offsetting, which is $25 per tonne + 20% commission to CarbonZero.

If you want to tell the world that you are Carbon Neutral Certified, you also have to pay to use their logo.

So, my theory is that unless you are using your carbon neutrality as a PR stunt, there is no good reason to go down that path. For businesses who genuinely want to be carbon neutral, you are better off to use that $2k to go towards carbon offsetting programs OR learning about ways to reduce our carbon footprint.

So now I am wondering if someone has invented an online calculator that I can plug in our power usage, computer equipment and lifespan, car usage etc and get our carbon footprint. Otherwise, Nik and Oli I will be visiting you this week with a new non-profit but super exciting business idea ;)

I am not a natural negotiator. Like many people I know, when faced with confrontation that can be avoided, I would rather cut my losses and avoid it.

But in business, negotiation is key, and eventually you learn that ‘confrontation’ doesn’t necessarily mean ‘bad’. You also learn that when faced with a good negotiator, you WILL lose out big time unless you have a strategy up your sleeve. I see time and time again, people I know getting ripped off because they simply don’t want to make a fuss. I understand where they are coming from, but HATE to watch people win simply because they have mastered the art of putting people on the back foot. It’s so unfair and such an abuse of a simple skill.

I’m still figuring out the skill, and am by no means an expert on this topic, but like networking and everything else I’m useless at, I have picked up a few pointers that I TRY to use as much as possible.

1. Know what you want and WHY that is reasonable

last week, I have had to negotiate with my landlord about raised rents. Their expectations were for a large jump in payments, ours was for a very minimal jump.

Simply saying I didn’t want to pay more rent was not going to be good enough. So I did a little research and discovered other rental rates in the area, the limiting factors for rental in the house (only one bathroom, price per room relative to a small apartment) and the reasons why it would be beneficial to keep us on (We take very good care of the place).

2. Understand where the other side is coming from and their reasons

Being understanding is key. There are very few people in this world who generally want to rip you off. The rest of the world are concerned that you are one of those people. So show them you’re not. Show them you’re willing to give a little and accept that parts of what they want are reasonable.

My landlords excel at this and emailed to thank me for my letter and explain that they had discussed it and UNDERSTOOD where we were coming from, and that we were right on many points. This puts us both on the same team.

3. Don’t lose your cool

Very few people like a screaming match. Very few people avoid becoming defensive when they feel threatened by you. So stay cool. I just read an interesting article about how to end a relationship (Which is not on my plans FYI), but does cover much the same points. Before beginning any interaction with the other party, sit back and think of their good points so you go in feeling positive towards them. You are not here to benefit yourself, you want EVERYONE to leave happy.

Outside of work, I don’t suppose you so much call it ‘negotiation’ as ‘communication’. On that front, I fail utterly and completely most of the time… But am working on it as I type, so watch this space :)

(For Dave)

In the last month, I think I have spent roughly 50% of my time feeling unmotivated and down. It might not be something I should admit here, but I have a sneaking suspicion that if you live in Wellington, you may have felt roughly the same way – we are severely lacking vitamin D and all the other joys of the sun.

I am not a sad person. I am very good at strategising myself out of sadness. I am not the type to pull the duvet further over my head and claim that it’s not worth getting up. I am good at pushing myself to do the opposite of what I want to do and get my sadness in line. So because it’s relevant to me and Dave kind of asked for it, here are my top 5 tips for beating the winter blues. These steps are also relevant for any other kind of blues that I have experienced.

1. Identify the problem

Write a list. I don’t care if it’s mental or physical, but it has to be done. List all the good things in your life (friends, upcoming activities, cool work project etc) against the bad things.

Normally you’ll have a lot on the good side, and one BIG, all consuming bad item on the bad side. But it’s still just one thing (This could range from it being dark and gloomy weather through to some actual real problem).

This puts life a little bit back in perspective.

2. Achieve something. Quick.

In my experience, when life feels like it is spiraling out of control or you just feel down, the best thing you can do is seize control of something you CAN do, and do it.

It doesn’t matter if it’s cooking dinner, cleaning the house, paining a picture or ticking 5 thing off your boring to-do list. You will feel an immediate sense of satisfaction. You will also feel like you have gained back some control of your life.

3. Laugh

It may feel stupid, and frivolous and totally inappropriate given how down you feel, but at the end of the day, despite everything you may think… We are a bunch of chemical connections and sometimes the best way to force the good connections is to just start making them.

So rent a comedy, or get your most happy, enjoyable and funny friends together and shoot the breeze. The simple act of laughing changes your entire emotional state. The more you do it, the more you want to do it and the less important the problem seems.

4. Sternly talk to yourself

These days, in this country, we simply do not come across real problems all that much. I think a lot of times it is this lack of problems that causes us to work our heads into a messed up state. Some psychology guy talked about the hierarchy of needs. We are born so high up the hierarchy that I think our brains misfire from the ease of it all.

I have found that post list writing, achieving and laughing, you are generally in a mindset where you can look as objectively at the problem as you will probably ever be able to manage. At this stage ask yourself:

• Can I imagine life without this problem in the future? (I normally set a timeframe based on the size of the problem)
• How am I going to stop this problem from being there in the future? Depending, once again on the size of the problem, it could be anything from taking a day off work and frolicking in the country side, the quitting your job, your relationship or your life and starting again.
• Whats the worst that could happen? This is generally for larger problems, but in saying that, in winter, you generally feel too stressed to contemplate the lack of problems taking a day off will entail. Once you realise that actually taking a risk on this solution wnt actually lead to much falling apart, you then become more inspired to do it.

5. Recognise the good and bad people around you.

People put people in baskets. If you are a happy person, in general, some people think that is reason enough to rely on you as their source of happiness, as they are the ‘sad’ person. The problem with this situation is that you are just a person and in your sad times, these people offer you nothing but half an ear while you try to prop yourself up. You should probably avoid them while trying to get out of your slump.

Other people will drop everything for you when you need them. They will go over your lists, they wont just support you, they will demand you give them logical and reasoned answers as to why life is so hard and why your solutions are impossible. These people are gold and you should spend good time with them.

I have found time and time again in my life, when struggling with things, this simple 5-step process really works for me. However, I am good at forgetting it too (as Jim Donovan reminded me recently when he had to force me out of the office for coffee) :)

I heard about the One Laptop Per Child project years ago, and I always thought ‘I would love to help that project out’ in the vague way people who like to feel good about themselves do.

Today, I have been immersing myself in the TED talks and as a result of listening to the founder, went and bought one. It’s probably one of the best uses of $200 I’ve seen and when you put it on the credit card, you don’t really even notice the reduction in cash in your wallet.

Now that I have made the donation, I feel entitled to bombard you with the lessons I learned.

1. If you make more money than you spend, give some away to people who need it

I’m a firm believer in the ability of organisations like One Laptop and Kiva to sustainably and effectively increase the wealth of people who weren’t lucky enough to be born in a rich country. This benefits all of us and to be honest, we should probably all spend a bit more time actually doing something about it.

But I know that for the foreseeable future, I will not bring myself to spend any decent time helping out. However, other people have devoted their lives and sacrificed their incomes because they cannot sit back and enjoy the world they were born to unless everyone can share the same. Those people are heroes and it is the least we can do to help out financially. And I don’t mean $10 here and there. The more I think about it, the more I think a business should plan to invest at least 5-10% of it’s profits in charity. We shouldn’t think of it as an ego trip but a necessary part of creating a sustainable world that we can continue to run businesses in.

2. Don’t get caught up in the feeling that everyone demands your money

Come up with a strategy to deal with it. We’re all smart people, we can logically think through the effects of donations of money, versus donations of tools and resources that help people help themselves. Even if all charities are fundamentally aiming to do good, you have got to expect that most of them don’t have the answer and giving them money is not adding hugely to the solution. Not giving to them doesn’t make you a bad person, but it doesn’t mean you should just not give at all.

So, if you have a spare $200 that you know will otherwise go on partying or a new television or whatever it is that you don’t really need, Let Nicholas explain why giving it to him will be a much better option.

Yup, it’s a pain in small business when you’re overloaded and everyone gets sick. The business grinds to a halt and you all get behind. Rod Drury’s fairly ‘unique’ solution has a lot of plusses and can be adapted to virtually any small business:

To: All Xero Staff (and Shareholders)

From: Rod

Re: What do do when you’re sick

If you feel like you need to be off work you will require a medical certificate. This will mean a trip to your doctor.

In New Zealand a doctors consultation for 15 minutes will cost you around $49. The same as a whole month of Xero.

As the doctor is completing your prescription, this is a good time to enquire about what accounting system they use. Advanced Xero’s will actually be able to do a live demo right there on the doctors computer.

Medical centres are mainly cash based with most receipts coming through the bank account each day and processing of supplier invoices. Use this information to show you understand their business.

As you’ve paid for the consultation, don’t feel bad about using a few minutes to show the benefits of Xero. It will make you feel a lot better if you can get them to sign up for a free demo.

Accordingly medical certificates will now only be accepted with a matching demo sign up.

Be well.

Rod

I admit it, horoscopes rule my life. I am one of those superstitious idiots who ill read a bad horoscope and then dwell on it for a week. This week, my horoscope was quite wonderful, but mentioned that I would have to make an ethical choice in business, and decide to who and how I would be willing to sell out (This wasn’t even a business horoscope!?!)

It got me thinking about ethics in business, an issue that I have come across time and time again through people who think that the way you run your business has a different set of ethical rules from the way you run your life (and some who run both extremely unethically). A couple of rules I think a lot of people need to learn (especially in small business) are:

Pay people on time

This includes employees, yourself and your suppliers. Most people accept flexibility and I’m happy to work with people who genuinely don’t have the cash and sort out an arrangement, but to try to sneak out without paying is just rude. And it starts a cycle. If you don’t get paid by your customers, then you can’t pay your suppliers and we all lose.

Your employees are hanging out for the day your business is worth a fortune, they are only there for the pay they receive weekly. Give it to them. I am shocked at how many people are nice enough to allow people not to pay them until they can’t pay their rent, this niceness shouldn’t be abused, it should be rewarded.

But it’s not all about money

I hate people who say ‘it’s just the way business works’ and who look down on you for not being a cut throat, money and power hungry machine. I find the kind of personality that thrives off underhanded competition just plain weird. That’s not business, that’s a psychological disorder! Play by generally accepted social rules, do business as if you are doing it with friends, not enemies.

Work with people you believe in

A benefit of owning your own company is that you have the choice to work with who you want, when you want to. Don’t forgo that choice in order to make profits, because you will lose int he long run. You don’t have to ‘sell out’ to anyone, you do have to wake up tomorrow and look at yourself in the mirror and be happy with what you see.

I am one of those people who happened to meet some of the best people I will ever know at school. We have grown up together and despite the range of things we do (from web geek to environmental geek to Psychology geek, to hydrology geek and legal geek… You get the idea), we have all reached this age with a couple of things in common. We are uber driven and we have spent the last few years working ourselves to the bone: completing degrees while working full time, starting businesses etc etc.

And now we all find ourselves 24-25 and pretty successful.

Claire and I were laughing the other day at how many people meet us now and think we are watched over by some wonderful guardian angel who has blessed us since birth with presents delivered to our laps. Because, while we have been through the tough times together, people we’ve just met have only seen us getting scholarships, government funding, recognition and to the point we don’t have to work 24 hours a day.

Some times people say ‘Man you are so lucky to be able to take all these trips away’ or ‘wow you’re so lucky to get that funding’

And I find it a little offensive. I WISH it were luck, but unfortunately its purely long hours, a lot of stress, an ocean of tears and finally, after a good few years, some significant breaks. The upside being that all those people who despair at their bad luck can simply get off their butts, take the knocks and find themselves in the same situation we are.

This was the best part of the Small Business Expo this year (in fact the ONLY memorable part). KiwiSelect helps you get off the default KiwiSaver plan that you got stuck on because you didn’t have time to figure out all the options… And onto the best plan for you.

It also helps you manage your KiwiSaver options as the years roll by so you can always ensure you are with the right plan.

Its a super slick website with a swish calculator right on the front page that shows you just how much money you expect to have by retirement if you keep saving. (You will be pleasantly surprised!)

It’s FREE to use, and nice to look at… Brilliant!

As I was blown to work today by the icy cold Wellington winds, it hit me that life is just so cool.

Every now and then I get struck with a fear that it simply can’t BE this good! Working on awesome projects all week, then running off to ski fields/Nelson/Mt Manganui/Hawkes Bay all weekend.

Then Lance Wiggs sent me an email about a new project we are working on, with the following timeline:

“We are aiming to settle this within the next 2 weeks so that I can go motorcycling”

Love it!

We had our netball semi final on Tuesday, and I take back everything I said about us being losers. We played like a well-oiled machine. If the Silver Fern coaches were there, they would have snapped us up.

After the game and after I stopped jumping up and down long enough to ponder what went right, I realised there are some fairly cool keys to success that are pretty simple to replicate and apply across anything in life.

1. Overcome the odds

If life is too easy, you can’t be successful. In this case, we had ongoing psychological torment from the opposition who loudly and regularly commented on how ‘guys, we can’t like, win! We’re not going to be here for the final! Guys, why are we winning? We’re not MEANT to be winning’… All, which, if this was not social netball, you would have assumed was a plot to destroy our team’s confidence and leave us in tatters and without any faith in ourselves.

Instead it made us angry. And when we got angry, we started playing extremely well. We suddenly cared. Well I did anyway. It was my one and only aim in life at that particular stage in life to beat these guys. Yes we got competitive. You see the same thing with Startups and small businesses up against huge competitors. They get angry and then they get clever, and then they win.

2. Play as a team

Nik and I have worked together in the past. And despite that going largely well, I don’t think we have EVER worked together as well as we did in that netball game. The whole team was in the same boat. We knew our roles, and we fit together and relied on each other to exel and be where we were meant to be. There was no room for superstars in our team.

Yep. How many businesses have a prima donna/superstar who cannot work in a team? When people apply for jobs and say ‘I’m a good team player’ I find they are invariably lying. Few people really know how to let go of individual them and become part of a team. But it’s amazing the difference working as a team makes.

3. Play Mouse and Elephant

Yes, while you hate your competitors psychological games and they are awful and mean spirited, that is no reason not to use their tactics.

The best point in our game was when their 2-point shooter who had about a 100% hit rate previously, suddenly let Nik put him off. In the space of one of Niks spider jump defense moves, this guy went from mr Untouchable Elephant to mr Totally Freaked Out For No Reason. (the analogy, of course, refers to how Elephants are scared of mice for no reason – I’m not sure if this is a myth or not)

We totally psyched them out and the more we psyched them, the better we got. I’m sure it’s a really cool physics law, but I have never experienced it quite this well before. And I’m assuming it works in business as well. When your competitors start to see you doing very well, it freaks them out and they start stumbling.

Anyway, bring on the finals!