New Year's offerings

It’s a new year, and we’re buzzing with excitement!

There will be heaps going on at The Business Hive during the first term, so do head on over to our events page for full details.

Like what?

For starters, we will be having a weekly in-person and online ‘Digital Boost’ Collab group - meeting to discuss and apply the course offerings of ‘Digital Boost’, a government funded series of videos to help you get your business online. We know that online digital stuff can be a little daunting, so we thought that together we can take it one step at a time while helping each other where needed.

Then, we have the amazing Amanda Fleming coming back with her first offering of the year: Essentially Speaking. This is a three day experiential presentation skills workshop. Amanda will share with you how you can become a confident and competent public speaker (regardless of your level of experience). Considering the super engaging, sharp and insightful workshops she has offered previously, we believe she is the perfect person for the job.

Furthermore, we are excited to be holding Networking Breakfasts and Evening Networking Socials this term. The Networking Breakfasts will be held every first Thursday of the month, while the Evening Networking Socials will be organised every third Thursday of the month.

Both are offering you an opportunity to catch up with local business talk, whenever suits you best.

We look forward to seeing you at one of our events, and do keep an eye on our Facebook page for event information and updates.

See you soon!

Cara, Alex, Tanya and Robert

Ready for a new year

And we’re back!

Just like that it’s 2021 and we’re back at work.

Blink. Right?!

But we’re excited.

Last year saw our local community rally together in a bunch of new ways and we’re better and stronger for it.

As it happens Xero agrees, stating “being part of a community has a very real commercial benefit that can’t even be broken by a pandemic”.

The local pivots and innovations that 2020 delivered or inspired are worth celebrating.

Things like Pen-y-bryn’s two Jameses’ own-price’ strategy last May. Brilliant and the frontrunner for elevating Oamaru in the minds of Kiwi travellers – thanks guys!

Things like Anvil Engineers’ foot-operated hand sanitising station that made us all that bit safer and made the national news. Go Hayes family!

Things like Jane Thompson and Helen Riley-Duddin’s inspired Meet the Maker fundraiser which showcased incredible local talent (some of whom sold a year’s worth of work in one day), instilled massive local pride and raised a wadge of cash for Fenwick School. Take a bow, guys – you’ve shown us the future!

As 2020 closed, we saw the launch of new local businesses – hospitality retail, manufacturing, trades, importing, health and wellbeing, professional services and more – all businesses being built by people boldly investing in their futures and our collective economy.

Congratulations and thank you, every one!

We also saw profound bravery in those who closed their businesses. You worked every bit as hard as the rest of us. Thank you for your service and your effort.

You got beaten in the ring that was 2020 but you’re not out for the count. Stand tall. There will be new bouts and you will win again.

Looking forward, Xero tells us that small business trends for 2021 include: more remote working, more online sales, more workplace flexibility, more pivots and more small business tech. These are things The Business Hive can help support and we’ll keep working hard to help keep local businesses thriving.

Expect some new offerings. Stay in touch and watch this space.

On a personal note, I was humbled by being named a Waitakian of the Year for 2020.

I have a lot of support that enables me to get involved in things that matter to me and am grateful beyond words especially for the guy who makes it possible – Alex Regtien.

Welcome to 2021! Let’s get cracking.

• Cara Tipping Smith is a director of The Business Hive, a co-working space in Oamaru’s Ribble St.

Source: http://www.oamarumail.co.nz/opinion/ready-for-a-new-year/

Collective for local businesses

Back in the day, when people asked me what I was studying and I said, “psychology”, their response was usually to fold their arms, take a step backwards and say something like “are you analysing me?”.

Let’s just say psychology didn’t make me the most popular girl in the pub.

That all changed when I decided to lie and tell people I was studying palmistry. Cue a line-up of people with their hands out, palm up, asking me what I “could see”.

I learned that the way information is presented makes a difference.

Psychology is a science and like all sciences, it depends on numbers.

I quite like numbers. They either add up or they don’t.

So, a couple of weeks ago, when the Otago Chamber of Commerce put out some numbers about how it had distributed central government money to help support businesses in our region, I was interested.

Scrolling down the list of districts I read: Dunedin City, Clutha, Central Otago, Queenstown, Waitaki and then, last on the list, Wanaka. Wanaka’s not a district. Wanaka and Queenstown are part of the Queenstown-Lakes district.

At least they are in every single other government or regional authority report I could find.

Interest piqued, I went down the rabbit hole. Turns out, it was one of those dusty, shallow, lazy sort of rabbit holes that don’t run very deep.

With some quick maths, I recognised that, of all the funding distributed, Queenstown-Lakes received on average, about 61%.

Within that, it received 78% of the tourism transition and 58% of the Covid-19 advisory support money allocated to the Otago region.

By contrast, Waitaki received an average of 2% to 3%.

Personally, I can’t begrudge the support delivered to Queenstown-Lakes. It has by far been hardest hit.

Why create a separate Wanaka district? You can make up your own mind about that.

For us, the focus is local.

That’s why we’ve signed up to the newly incorporated Oamaru Business Collective.

We think it’s important for local businesses to have local representation that doesn’t have to juggle the interests of any other district.

The Oamaru Business Collective is more than a retailers’ group. It offers collective support for all local businesses; professional services, trades, manufacturers, hospitality and more.

Membership starts from $10 per month and the first event – a social media workshop – is free for those signed up.

Join the Facebook group for details.

• Cara Tipping Smith is a director of The Business Hive, and an Oamaru Business Collective committee member.

Source: https://www.oamarumail.co.nz/opinion/collective-for-local-businesses/

Welcome to the team Tanya!

When we put out an ad for an admin wizard (wizardress) we got a huge range of responses, including from Tanya Ribbens – now our newest member of The Business Hive crew.

Tanya is our kind of people; a get-on-with-it doer who is smart and resourceful.  She has a Bachelor of Communication Science and a Master of Science in Strategic Communication (wow) but for us, it’s her capability and attitude that count.

Like most small businesses, we all do all the tasks around here. Tanya’s built the same way. She has experience across a whole range of roles, from export documentation assistant to managing children’s school holiday programmes, from team leader roles to festival logistics.

Along the way she has designed systems and processes, developed a management manual, prepared a public tender, written press releases as well as done more traditional admin such as data entry, diary and event management, document preparation and spreadsheeting.

It’s not every day you meet someone who is at home with the (somewhat mystical) art of communication as they are with structured data entry but here she is. We’re calling her a business support specialist because whatever support a business needs – she’s got the savvy (and the will) to deliver it.

Need a Tanya in your business? Contact her at tanya@thebusinesshive.co.nz.

We need your help... to find a new member of our team!

Bristol

Chief distraction officer & cuddle machine

Yep, we’re growing and we’re looking for an admin star who loves getting stuff done. It’s a contract role and we reckon the right person will have all the work they can handle between what we need and what out clients need as well.

The person we’re after will want to be working on a bunch of different projects - some commercial and some community focused. There’ll be a range of different tasks too - from designing images (with Canva or similar) to preparing documents, planning basic budgets, helping manage events and liaising with all sorts of different people.

We reckon we offer a pretty cool environment to work from - we love a laugh, we have an awesome bunch of members and let’s not forget, one hell of a cute puppy!

See the job description below and please spread the word. You may know the person who knows the person we really need.

Job Description

We are looking for someone who loves admin and is confident using a variety of software systems.

This is a contract role so we will ask you to demonstrate your capability for;

• self-management

• initiative

• discretion

We offer competitive remuneration, flexibility and opportunities to take on further work with other clients to support you in growing your business.

Please send your CV and covering letter to hello@thebusinesshive.co.nz including

• your preferred time to work

• the number of hours you wish to work

• preferred hourly rate

Naturally, all applications will be treated with complete confidentiality.

Requirements

You will be able to;

• prepare and format documents and presentations

• post content on a variety of social media platforms

• update websites on a variety of platforms

• use Canva or similar to create images

• use Excel or similar to prepare budgets / spreadsheet information

• manage files within Google Drive or similar

• support event management & workshops

• liaise with our clients and other business

Time to unite behind a shared purpose

As I write this, the news is breaking . . . Todd Muller, leader of the National Party, has resigned.

I love politics.

I like to get deep into policy detail. Not so much the scandals.

Petty politicking doesn’t do anything for me, not in government and not in life.

In two months, we’ll be at the polls.

What should we as a nation allow and disallow?

Who should be looked after? Who needs to pull more of their weight?

Decades ago, I studied political theory.

I had a brilliant lecturer and I’d sit in awe as he crafted deeply theoretical constructs on such lofty notions as human rights or freedom.

I worshipped his ability to wend words through the vapours of a stale auditorium revealing glistening utopias and their shadowy counterparts week after week.

He argued everything both ways and sideways.

It was grounded for me with one simple theoretical dichotomy: “freedom to do what you want” versus “freedom from interference”.

Two things you almost never have in the same moment in time.

Follow me here . . .

If you have “freedom to do what you want” then I am not “free from interference” (yours) and vice versa.

The only way we both get “freedom to do what we want” and “freedom from interference” is if we want the same thing.

So, if you want me to do something (or not do something) and I don’t agree, then you have to convince me or coerce me, right?

That’s exactly where we are today as I write.

Not just in the conversations the National Party will have had on Tuesday morning, but in every part of our lives and economy.

It’s there in our Covid response. It’s there in our recovery.

From the corridors of power to the dirty alleyways of Facebook these are our options -convince or coerce.

In our local business community I see so many examples of the former: businesses aligning to support collaborations, celebrating success and sharing ideas to help take our town forward.

In our wider community I see examples of the later: threats to name and shame shopkeepers, personal attacks and outright slander.

We don’t choose our freedoms just once every three years.

We cast them in every action and reaction.

We can get behind the things we want in common or let petty politicking bullies tear every idea apart.

I’m voting for the former.

Feel free to join the movement.

• Cara Tipping Smith is a director of The Business Hive in Oamaru.

Source: https://www.oamarumail.co.nz/opinion/time-to-unite-behind-a-shared-purpose/

What now for local businesses? Savvy marketing is key.

Lockdown hurt. It hurt our pocket and I’m pretty sure it hurt yours too.

Pre-lockdown, it looked like we’d be able to trade online if not in store so some retail and manufacturing businesses were forced into investing into an online solution super-fast. Others who were already online managed to sell goods to be delivered after lockdown but for many non-essential products and services - the sales just stopped.

Now we’re out, we’re all aware that businesses are struggling near to home (Queenstown and Central Lakes, Invercargill and Southland are the obvious ones). We’re pretty well insulated here in the Waitaki - last week’s Oamaru Mail showed us that there are plenty of jobs around.

Still, the wage subsidy runs out in September and our whole country might be looking very different around then. So what now for local businesses? Especially our small ones? Well, now’s the time to pull together and get our marketing savvy on.

Before I moved to Oamaru, a partner and I started a business to teach business owners the marketing essentials they really need to know. Her health and my move meant we gave it up for a time. Right now though, I’m going to dust it off and deliver it locally and here’s why.

1. Nobody ever makes a second best decision

   A wise man once told me that you never make a second best decision. He said, “unless you’re clinically insane, you will never think to yourself, there’s my best decision so I think I’ll do something else. Every decision you have ever made was the best available option for you, as far as you knew, at the time”.

   The basic message is that if we want to make ‘best’ decisions, the one thing we can do is work harder to understand all our available options.

   Nobody knows it all but when you don’t know what you don’t know - you can’t be confident that your choice is the best one for you. Fact. That means it’s worth your time to get your head around modern marketing so you have the information you need to be confident that any marketing investment you make is actually, your best decision.
   

2. Small business here is not small business everywhere

   I’ve worked in Auckland, Wellington & Oamaru, London, Cardiff and Bristol, even Buenos Aires and no two places operate the same way. My clients in 25+ years of copywriting have had markets all over the world - they all operate differently when it comes to marketing and selling the ‘goods’.

   Marketing companies come to New Zealand from the US or the UK tell our business owners that they have a marketing solution for them. But small business in the US means fewer than 500 employees. In the UK, it means fewer than 50 employees. In New Zealand it means fewer than 20 employees and for most small businesses (90%) that really means one to five people in their whole team.

   What works in one place doesn’t necessarily work in another. There are some absolute truths when it comes to marketing but you won’t find them with the latest pushy upsell.

3. The whole world and every economy has changed

   Have you ever marketed your business in a global pandemic before? Do people want the same things? Do they want things for the same reasons?

   We are all in brand new, uncharted territory. Uncharted territory is an exciting place to be if you’re part of a trusted group. It’s a pretty shitty place to be on your own though.

   In 25+ years, I’ve learned a lot about marketing in all sorts of places with all kinds of products and services and I’ve taught a lot, from individual tutoring to lecturing at Polytech. I could tell you the absolute truths I mentioned above but I think our time will be better spent applying them to your real business in our real new world.

Last year, Forbes* produced an article stating that “there have been a number of studies going back nearly one century that point out the advantages of maintaining or even increasing ad budgets during a weaker economy. Those advertisers that maintained or grew their ad spending increased sales and market share during the recession and afterwards.”

So now really is the most important time to get your head around modern marketing - what will and won’t work for your business in today’s business climate.

To that end, The Business Hive is launching a Marketing Bootcamp starting Monday, 20th July. It’s a 10-week programme of doing. That means bite-sized but essential cornerstones of modern marketing and an opportunity to implement them in your business during the following week.

Together, we’re going to build a business community that has confidence around marketing and can tell great marketing opportunities from the latest snake oil while getting the results we want and need.

Important Information

• The programme costs $450 plus GST for the whole 10 weeks.

• Late starters will only be accepted with the agreement of the whole group.

• The maximum capacity is 12 because every participant is welcome to bring one teenager for FREE. It doesn't have to be your own teenager, any teenager you think could benefit from this learning experience can buddy up with you at no extra cost! 

To register and pay online click here. If you would like to register and pay by invoice please email us.

*Forbes convenes and curates the most influential leaders and entrepreneurs who are driving change, transforming business and making a significant impact on the world.

Social media full of crazy but plausible lies

Seventy years ago (give or take), my mum and her sister walked into the kitchen for breakfast to find the radio blasting and their dad sitting on the floor with a paper bag over his head.

Turned out, he was listening to the radio about how to save yourself from nuclear fallout.

Granddad had been carefully following the instructions as the radio announcer delivered them, diligently practising what he needed to know to keep his family safe.

At this point in the story, Mum and my auntie would double over laughing, hugging their sides and cry-gasping through their giggles.

That day was was April 1. Granddad (like hundreds of others) had fallen for the “fool”.

Granddad wasn’t happy.

No real harm had been done.

Fast-forward to 2020 and our Covid-19 crisis – human nature hasn’t changed.

True, we want to keep ourselves and our families safe.

Also true, misinformation can make a fool of any one of us.

Nowadays we know you can’t protect yourself from nuclear fallout by putting a paper bag over your head. In the early 1950s, it wasn’t so clear.

Of-the-era advice included shutting windows, crawling under tables and – wait for it – hiding behind hay bales for protection.

Whatever made people feel better in the face of certain death, right?

This time it’s different.

We’ve got meaningful and useful Covid-19 advice.

We’ve got some control over the spread of the virus.

In fact, for most of us, the virus doesn’t even threaten certain death.

Yet, ’50s-era-style un-science and mind-curdling but believable lies are dripping from social media like nuclear fallout itself.

When my grandfather fell for bunkum, he only risked egg on his face (well, that and the paper bag, of course).

Today, the spread of lies can cause death and it comes in two distinct forms.

The first kind includes quack cures and medicinal lies – the things that harm people directly or indirectly but are wrapped up like a real cure.

Stuff like, “breathe in the air from a hairdryer because heat kills the virus”.

Great. Let’s have kids with mouth burns, adults with itchy seared nasal passages and then expect them to keep their hands away from their face!

Stuff like, “drink hydrogen peroxide”, “methanol” or some other poison to kill the virus.

Awesome. Hospitals, overrun by Covid-19 patients, became inundated with poison cases in Iran, thanks to fake methanol cures being shared on social media (including blinded for life) and up to 300 dead.

Sharing medicinal lies causes real harm. That’s obvious, right?

Even when President Trump says it?

How about this .. Trump said hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine (antimalarial treatments) cure Covid-19. The US Food and Drug Administration said they didn’t. Meantime supplies evaporated for (among others) Lupus patients who need those drugs to help prevent organ damage.

Don’t get me started on injecting disinfectant. I have no words.

Yet, there’s worse.

Worse is when people think they’re virus-free or virus-safe when they are not.

This is the really dangerous stuff. In the movies, this is the contagion of the unsuspecting and the unforgiven. This is the annihilation of the good by the well-intentioned. This kind of misinformation is what haunts the annals of the walking dead.

Walking-dead advice puts people on to the streets, thinking “I’m OK, mate” while they silently spread the disease.

Walking-dead advice is stuff like you can make hand sanitiser from vodka.

Come on! Common sense says if you can drink it, it’s not likely to kill a virus. But in times of desperation, we like a bit of magical thinking (like putting a paper bag on our head), especially if it’s delivered by a trusted radio announcer (friend’s social media recipe).

Look, if it did work, I’m pretty sure the hospitals and the government would have commandeered supplies and put Joe’s “aloe vera vodka sanitiser” to work – with or without essential oils.

Walking-dead advice is stuff like taking 10 deep breaths in the morning will tell you if you have it.

Stop the bus. Who needs actual tests? Why bother actually testing?

We can just breath-test ourselves in the morning with some Les Mills calisthenics and go about our daily business as usual right?

Right.

Up until we can’t breathe.

Or Granddad can’t breathe.

Or that nice lady who played bridge with Granddad in the rest-home can’t breathe.

There’s no question that at times like this we’ll grasp at any straw of hope in the darkness.

My grandad, sitting on that floor with a paper bag on his head was duped by a trusted radio announcer on an April Fools’ Day morning.

He was a smart man, an engineer and a guy who would have done anything to protect his family.

We can all be taken in.

We know that staying at home saves lives. We know that washing our hands eliminates the chance of accidental contamination.

The internet equivalent of staying home is not sharing.

The internet equivalent of washing our hands is fact-checking. Twenty seconds and the contamination’s gone.

Now’s the time to take the paper bags off our heads and start facing up to responsible internetting.

Cute kitten videos notwithstanding.

• Cara Tipping Smith is the director of The Business Hive

Source: https://www.oamarumail.co.nz/opinion/social-media-full-of-crazy-but-plausible-lies/

$35,000 from Lotteries big boost for WaiYou!

I’m truly excited to share the awesome news we have just landed $35,000 from the National Lottery Community Fund for our businesses and young people.

By we, I mean everyone in the Waitaki and Waimate regions. Yep, everyone. Mums and dads. Young people. Old people. Businesspeople, big and small. Doers and dreamers alike.

You may have forgotten about that WaiYou! project I banged on about a few columns ago. Let me remind you. WaiYou! is a local initiative (Waitaki and Waimate) about making it easy for young people and businesspeople to connect for work-related opportunities including by using a world-class tool (developed in Dunedin) called Youth Employment Success (Y.E.S.).

Why? Because businesspeople want good workers, suppliers and customers.

Young people want real prospects – jobs and careers that aren’t just on a race to the bottom in terms of wages (or satisfaction).

The work world is fast-changing, as is the world of education – vocational and academic.

Economic uncertainty says a heap of educational debt may only serve to send our young people (and our dollars to support them) to bigger towns and bigger economies – leaving our mums and dads struggling in the dust.

We have an ageing population and quite frankly, someone’s got to pay the rates. That means we need working-aged people earning enough to live here.

Different generations have different styles and expectations.

But getting together, learning each other’s priorities and finding that common ground is what gets the business done.

Business owners know that. For us, it’s everyday life.

Over the next months, businesses will have unprecedented opportunity to engage with young people. (Not only with WaiYou! but also the school’s career expo in May).

For businesses, it’s in our interest to check them out and actively look for the mutual benefits they can bring.

We haven’t finished fundraising but, thanks to the Rotary Club of Oamaru and Lotteries, we’re off to a flying start. Let’s make the most of it. We’re all in it together.

WaiYou! is a Rotary Club of Oamaru project. The steering group includes business, school, ot-for-profit and local government representatives from Waitaki, Waimate and Dunedin. Find out more at facebook.com/YESWaiYou.

• Cara Tipping Smith is a director of The Business Hive.

Source: https://www.oamarumail.co.nz/opinion/35000-from-lotteries-big-boost-for-waiyou/

Productivity gains made easy

Productivity.

It’s on every small business owner’s mind this time of year.

If we’re not ruminating on how our business could be more productive, we’re asking “how could I be more productive or get better life balance, work smarter not harder”, yadda yadda yadda.

Right now, productivity is all over the news.

Sanna Marin, Finland’s new (and young) prime minister, once suggested working six-hour days or four-day weeks. Admittedly that was some time ago when she was transport minister but hey, it’s making headlines again now.

Perpetual Guardian’s Andrew Barnes and Charlotte Lockhart are on a tour of the United States talking about their successful implementation of a four-day working week (whoop, another Kiwi company punches above its weight – love it!).

Of course, Barnes has a book coming and, in the interim, an interesting read in a free white paper download at 4dayweek.com.

Perpetual Guardian excepted, we’re not very productive in New Zealand.

We know this because our Productivity Commission says so. Yep, they are a real entity with a very informative (although ironically slow loading) website.

They reckon New Zealand’s firms are on average about 30% to 40% less productive than our international counterparts (2016-17 figures).

This week, our Government commissioned them to come up with policies to improve our collective business performance by analysing and extrapolating what works from our most effective firms

These defined, but I’m hoping there’ll be some from the 97% of all Kiwi businesses which employ fewer than 20 employees, including from the 360,000 business owners who work alone.

Perpetual Guardian has 240 employees.

Notwithstanding the difference in scale, some of their white paper suggestions can be easily applied for a small business owner.

Things like focusing on outcomes instead of time spent. Things like being clear about our goals and the payoff of doing things differently. Things like figuring out what we could do with that extra time and making that our reward.

Alex and I are going to test a few theories over the next little while. I think I’ll start with shorter meetings.

I figure if I have 10 meetings a week and they’re 45 minutes instead of an hour, I’ll get two and a-half hours back.

That gets me round a nine-hole course. Or could, if I did it more. Every week.

Food for thought.

Hope you’re having a happy and productive New Year.

☆ Cara Tipping Smith is the director of The Business Hive.

Source: https://www.oamarumail.co.nz/opinion/productivity-gains-made-easy/

New initiative aimed at youth employment

The revolution is coming.

The kids are taking over the world and so are the machines.

The sky is falling and the baby boomers have sucked the life out of everyone’s future.

Or to quote a boomer mate of mine: “calm the farm”.

Young people revolt (sometimes in both senses of the word). True.

Increased automation is happening. Fact.

Conversely, baby boomers (and gen Xers) are deeply invested in their children’s and grandchildren’s futures.

You only have to ask one.

And that’s the key.

One on one, we all get along. It’s that “them” and “us” type thinking that chucks a spanner in the works.

So, let’s not do that. Let’s stop the intergenerational catastrophising and write a new story.

Introducing (drum roll please) a new local initiative; WaiYou!

WaiYou! has come out of the Work Ready Passport initiative with representatives from both Waitaki and Waimate District Councils, schools, businesses, business groups and community on both sides of the river.

As a group, we are operating under the Rotary Club of Oamaru’s charitable trust.

Our purpose is to write a better story about our youth and work.

Specifically, we want to change that old-people dialogue that says, “kids aren’t work ready”, because we can help them be ready (and if we’re honest, we were pretty useless at the beginning too).

Specifically, we want to change out the young-people dialogue that says “no-one will give me a chance” – because we can give them a chance (and we’ve been there – we could have wallpapered our bedrooms with rejection letters, back in the day).

WaiYou! is going to sponsor a local version of a programme called Youth Employment Success (YES).

YES is a gold-standard, multi award-winning programme that creates one-on-one youth-employer connections that changes lives.

We’re determined to bring it here – as fast as we can.

We’ll be fundraising.

We’ll need employers willing to mentor youth on board.

We’ll need parents and grandparents to show support.

Most of all, we’ll be showing youth we have some cool tools to help them, and they have greater options than they ever had before.

Commenting on the differences between baby boomers and younger generations this week, economist Brad Olsen said: “We need to rapidly shift our energy from blame to action”.

We welcome your interest. Now’s a great time to get in touch.

★ Cara Tipping Smith is the director of The Business Hive.

Source: https://www.oamarumail.co.nz/opinion/new-initiative-aimed-at-youth-employment/

Busy? Take a minute to think

June has rocked around as it always does and “busy” is the new “weather” of chats.

How are you? So busy. Can’t believe it’s June already .

In the crush of the busy-blues myself, I went procrastination Googling to see if business owners are busier than anyone else.

Turns out we’re not. But I did find a thing called entrepreneur insomnia.

It’s exactly like insomnia, but made special by putting the word “entrepreneur” in front.

I did find some smug little sayings, “busy is as busy does”, “if you want something done – give it to a busy person”.

“Busy is as busy does”. Thanks, Google, we know we make our own busy.

But whether everyone’s busy is equal or some people’s busy is more equal than others has to be a matter of perspective (obviously not your own though – just ask any project or volunteer co-ordinator).

I’m convinced the “give it to a busy person” saying is only said by reprobates or masochists. Real busy people forget stuff and sometimes forget what they were supposed to do.

Super-efficient, busier-than-other-busy-people – maybe you’re the exceptions.

For the rest of us, the fear of forgetting is real and, come to think of it, most likely responsible for that “entrepreneurial” (or any other kind of) insomnia.

I did find time management advice including strangely animal-focused gems such as “beware the elephants on the horizon” and “how to eat two frogs”.

Those elephants? Apparently, they sneak up on you, like your mother’s 80th birthday that you had all year to organise .. a year ago.

The frogs? Eat the biggest, ugliest first. That way the second will be less awful.

Yes. That’s real advice.

While procrastination Googling might be fun (be honest busy people, you do it, too), I was looking for something simpler and more concrete.

The dictionary says “busy” means one of two things: having a great deal to do, or excessively detailed or decorated.

Hmmm, that sounds a lot like my kind of busy.

So, the wisdom I’m taking is this. “Do less, do less fussing”.

As business owners we’re in charge. Things will crop up, surprises will happen but we choose what we add to our plates (frogs and elephants included).

I wouldn’t give up my day job for a second.

That doesn’t mean I can’t tweak it. Likely so can you.

Why not do that?

Enjoy June.

★ Cara Tipping Smith is the director of The Business Hive.

Source: https://www.oamarumail.co.nz/opinion/busy-take-a-minute-to-think/

The benefits of collaborating

Business is supposed to be competitive, right? You must be better than the competition and win the most sales.

Back when I worked in recruitment, we had sales days that were like sugar-hyped children’s parties.

Imagine, the whole team competitive cold calling; make a cold call (yeah), book an appointment (whoop), pop a balloon (yeeha), win a prize (voucher for Asti Spumante – score) and repeat.

It was chaotic hell and I hated it.

Nothing says “I’m a professional” during a cold call like some woman screaming in the background. Not.

But that was how the business was done.

Doesn’t make it right.

A few decades on, I’ve learned a lot. Like the benefits of collaboration and trusted competitors.

Funnily enough, the seed was planted in those recruiting days when the company I worked for and a major competitor merged.

Management was worried about the two top billers – strong minded, capable women who’d been direct competitors with overlapping client portfolios which were now to be divvied up between them.

Meetings were held.

Concerns were discussed.

Ah, I can still remember their pinched faces.

She and I went for a drink. We shared insights about our (formerly) shared clients. We laughed our heads off about the drama everyone was expecting.

In short, we naturally fell into line with each other because we had something our bosses hadn’t factored in – mutual respect.

Our collaboration made us both better off (and our bosses happy).

It was a lesson for life.

Since then, in every role, collaboration has produced far better results than I could on my own.

Equally, I came to rely on trusted competitors. These were the people I could direct clients to whenever I didn’t have capacity, the right solution or simply didn’t want to take on that job.

They allowed me to work in my sweet spot, develop my niche and build far more profitable and loyal client bases.

That’s why when there was a call for Oamaru retailers to work together, we offered to host a meeting at The Business Hive.

Back in recruiting days, it took just a little initiative and a very short time for my colleague and I to figure things out.

If we’d waited for someone else to take the lead, we might have had a different outcome.

So, when it comes to competition or collaboration, I say both. And retailers, whatever it takes – we’ll support you.

★ Cara Tipping Smith is the director of The Business Hive.

Source: https://www.oamarumail.co.nz/community/the-benefits-of-collaborating/