Every time I forget to check my bank accounts for a while, I find all sorts of nasty surprises. Surprises that are silently eroding away the money in my bank accounts. It may only be a dollar here and a dollar there, but it’s dollars for nothing, and if you are dead set of being rid of those dollars, it is far better to give them to a charity than to a bank.

Key offenders

• Insurance. They bung repayment insurance on credit cards by default and let you pay for it. If, however, you are the kind of person to pay off your credit card/you only have a small limit, it’s simply not worth paying. I recently got life insurance as part of getting a bank loan… Paid off loan and wouldn’t you know it, still have life insurance. I just stopped a $9 monthly charge to my account, that was being taken for nothing (I have no kids, if I die, no one will suffer!)
• Interest. The ‘Goal Saver Account’ is called that for a reason. You have to have some fairly strong goals if you ever want to make any money off it. Today I changed to an online account and instantly raised my interest rate from 5.6% to 8.2%. Crazy.
• Credit cards. If you owe money, get a low interest card. Thank goodness, I don’t but I have one anyway, just incase I ever do. Seriously, why pay 20% when you can pay 12%?

I’m going to go to the bank twice a year now purely to check up on what’s new and get things re-fiddled. Just budget about an hours worth of time and get a good consultant person. It’s worth it!

While Decisive Flow was elbow deep in our business plan on Friday afternoon (and also in chocolate cake and custard), we learned why you write a business plan.

I know, I know, I used to work in a business planning company.

As a result of sitting down and debating who we are, what we’re about and why we exist, we figured out a lot of things about who we are, what we like and why we exist. We probably set aside about 2 hours, and I don’t care how many times people tell you to work on the business as well as working in it, it is only in that 2 hours that you ever remember why it is important.

We are now going to hire a coder guy. This is heavily controversial, as we have run into the problem that ALL coders seem to be male, well, all coders who want to work here seem to be male. And a large part of our identity (as we are starting to realise) is that we are female. However, our coder guy will be welcomed with many girlie hugs, because we also realised we want someone to do that stuff for us so we can focus on the pretty girly things that we like better.

This is going to lead to a little restructuring. Which I am very happy with. The restructuring basically goes that I will be slowly working my way out of my job, so when I go to Vietnam in October, no one will even notice. Actually it is more going that I will have more time to convince you that we are the best people to trust your website with. So that kind of works for everyone.

Anyway, what I’m trying to say, is no matter how small you are, and how straight forward you think your business is, it is soooo good to write it down, and discuss it together. And then take it to an outsider to critique. And then hire a mentor (another outcome of planning) who will keep you honest.

My sister is in Vietnam, but it feels like she is right here:

Watch this:

And then watch this:

And then when you have cleaned up the pants you wet from laughing too much, watch this:

(FYI, this is how we distract ourselves while we are meant to be business planning)

I was wandering the streets at lunch, when I came across a pink petition signing extravaganza.

The petition was to get lighting in official dog walking parks in Wellington (did you know currently NONE of our official dog walking parks has lighting at night or on dark winter days?). I vaguely recognised the brand that covered the stand where we were encouraged to sign the petition as Pet Angels.

Pet Angels is soon to be a major competitor of mine, when Verity and I start a company called WeWillLookAfterYourHandbagDog.com to fulfill our desire to be constantly surrounded by cute puppies without the 17 year commitment. (FYI, our prices will be very competitive, as we are not planning on actually charging at all for our dog sitting services).

However, despite the fact that we now HATE Pet Angels because they will be a competitor, we LOVE the way they Guerrilla market themselves. How clever to cotton onto one issue and make it their own. And be out on the streets as a major dog advocate, getting all these dog lovers onside, then slipping them a brochure.

Pure genius.

I was talking this morning about the joys of becoming ‘the guy’ on a particular issue in terms of marketing. If you find an issue you care passionately about AND that just happens to be relevant to your business, start creating a fuss. The media will soon catch on and you will be the expert in the area. Then you simply squeeze in a word about your company, and voila! everyone knows about it.

I like it how the traditionally boring world of pet services has caught onto this! Good luck an I wish you all the best for when Verity and I launch :)

There seems to be quite a flurry of good business ideas being directed towards me in the past few days. One thing they ALL have in common is exponential growth. This is not exponential growth in customers, but in the size of the idea.

One sentence that I find myself regularly repeating is “There are 6 billion people on this planet. You do not need to appeal to ALL of them”

Yes, if you have a great idea, people WILL get excited about it, they will tell you how it applies in many situations and how much an extra feature would help them.

But while your idea is growing ever bigger, your prospects of success are shrinking just as quickly. Rowan’s diagram explains this phenomenon nicely:

There are MANY downsides to having 6 Billion people on this planet. One of the few upsides is that you can have a super focused, simple and targeted product that 99.9999% of people have absolutely no use for, and your target market will still be multi-thousands or millions of people.

I know it’s scary and adding new target audiences feels intuitively like a safe way to play it, but the reality of the situation is that the more you DILUTE your idea and spread the appeal, the less that your main and most profitable market will like it.

When you have that target market eating out of the palm of your hand, that is the time to start looking at how to attract a different group of people. If you are unsure of whether your idea is enough to get your initial group knocking down your door, then maybe it is the idea and not the size of the market that needs analysis…?

Turns out we are a very talented bunch here at Decisive Flow. Emma and I just spent the morning watching Alex present her concept of what the world will look like in 80 years, as part of a collaborative project between Vodafone and Victoria University.

I was still a little off color after attending one of my oldest friend’s engagement party last night, and being hurled into a world of what may be, was quite literally mind blowing.

Turns out in 80 years we will be:

1. Nude. Emma and I are not entirely comfortable with this concept.
2. Nature lovers
3. Virtual world inhabitants. The only controversy seems to be over whether there will indeed be a difference between the real world and the virtual world of if they will become one.
4. Lonely. All presentations seemed to involve only one person who was geographically isolated.
5. Non consumers. Stuff is like sooo 80 years ago.

Congrats Alex. I always knew you were a super star, I just didn’t realise quite how varied and fantastic your talents are!

I just got invited to High Tea at Kirkcaldie and Stains! Turns out this is the latest craze to (re) sweep the world.

From some article in the Dom Post:

“WHILE you are thumping your keyboard and shovelling junk food from the office vending machine into your gob, in downtown Wellington people are nibbling cheesecake, discussing genteel topics such as the scent of fresh roses and taking tea.
It’s high tea, Wellington-style, with wee mince pies and fat-lipped china.
Catching up over coffee is all well and good, and a tradition which surges through the caffeinated veins of this city, but there’s a growing market for the global resurgence in high tea.”

High Tea is expensive ($20) if you think of it in terms of tea and scones (like Emma does), but as the marketing guy in charge of the high tea ‘experience says’: “It’s not just the tea or the sandwiches or the scones. It’s the whole experience.”

I trust him, he is in marketing.

And also, it reeks of classiness, or being a delicate lady who would never flick spaghetti all over her face by accident, or knock over a tea cup or feel awkward whenever she is around breakable things. Of being a socialite in the 1800’s in our mother country.

But no sticky outy pinkies when sipping the tea. Turns out that is like sooo not cool at modern day High Tea.

UPDATE: This is sophisticated us

This weekend, we ventured back to Waikanie to check out the results of last year’s tree planting expedition, and get in round two. For anyone who has never planted a seedling, (which may sound dumb, but lets be honest, how many chances do you get in modern life?) it is one of the most awe inspiring activities you can perform, short of giving birth (I imagine). There is something so cool about digging a hole, pouring in water, mushing it all up and then gently placing in the little baby plant and tucking the soil back around it.

They remind you of just how fragile life is, and when you are helping rebuild a wetland, and literally watch it prosper from year to year, the miracle of our environment is really rammed home. This year, they have just started to hear the birdsong of a particular native bird that hasn’t been in the area for years. In a world that is forever telling us to stop the negative impacts on our world, it is such a brilliant change to be actively aiding in it’s recovery.

In a society where (and I’m a prime perpetrator) people spend huge amounts of time indoors, the simple act of hanging out for an entire day without iPods, computers, alcohol or anything apart from a spade and the chatter of a 2 and a half year old is super refreshing and calming.

I LOVE modern society, but it did, once again make me pause to think how much extra the tvs, concrete and bars really offer, and if we actually were genuinely happier before we went ahead and invented it all.

There have always been competitions over the best 404/500 pages (the pages you arrive at when the website breaks or you hit a link that doesn’t exist). This is because people arriving on these pages are generally not going to be happy chappies, because they expected to go somewhere and instead landed nowhere.

So people got all creative and made cute, funky and downright funny pages that get their now happy visitors back on track.

But I’ve been thinking more about website personality. I LOVE it how Google changes their logo for different events. How cool is it when the normal Google page gives you a little surprise? It makes the average internet geek’s day.

I also saw a site recently that is dedicated to ‘beer o’clock’ and was thinking it would be kind of funny if on fridays everyone replaced their website with that uber disgraceful animated gif, scrolling fluro text filled page as they knocked off for beer… Even if it was just for an hour.

It would make me laugh, and probably lead to the entire Decisive Flow office winding up on your doorstep.

I like all the websites that put up fake sites on April Fools day. Not only are they a crackup, they go viral like nothing else (don’t you love it how I’m giving all these examples but not bothering to search for links to them?)… And viral marketing is a gazillion times better than anything else. ever.

It just struck me when Technorati threw me a cute error page about 2 minutes ago, that these website ‘quirks’ are just so cool. We should take more advantage of the fact the web is a bug ridden place and allows for people to end up virtually anywhere - and give them something cool to look at when they do.

Ok back to ‘real work’ now.