Industry News

Did you survive the soap opera style cliff hanger we left you with last month? Build you up to a level of pure excitement and hope, sitting there thinking the answers to all your problems are on the next line and no, just a full stop.   Perhaps that’s a little melodramatic, I live with two drama queens please excuse me. However we experience cliff hangers in our businesses as well on a regular basis. Things like deadlines not being met, materials not turning up, staff being late and...

So 25% of the year gone already, there was one of the big chains advertising a winter sale on the box last week and the misses complaining we have not been to the beach much this summer (and we live at the beach). “Time just flies these days” how many times have you heard someone say that?   The fact is of course time doesn’t fly, a minute still take 60 seconds to complete and a day isn’t any less than 24 hours, apart from those mornings when the hang over is so ba...

I write this in hope that you have all enjoyed a great and well deserved holiday season. Guys, you should have brought “her in doors” a gift to be proud of and one she deserved. Ladies did you treat him like the king he thinks he is? If so Christmas should have been a doozy. But it all seems so last year now as you have been back to work for weeks. Is life any different? Has anything changed at all? Does it need to change?   For many busy business owners sitting down for any &...

Oh the joys of the end of year. The time we are “supposed” to be looking forward to and of course we do, but it can also and does bring with it so much pressure. Ah Humbug!   What pressure and why do we let it build up? We have all the home stuff, prezzies, holidays, kid’s off school, got to get the tent fixed, the boat serviced and its mother in law time again. Why does buying ‘her in doors’ a present create so much tension? Because she says “ don&rsqu...

We have just gone through the 2014 Northland Business Excellence awards, an institution that our sister company Business Coaching New Zealand has been a part of for the past 8 years as a category sponsor. We sponsor the Emerging Business section and have to say love every minute of it. For us Northlanders it’s about the only opportunity to get all tarted up, new cloths, fancy hair and enjoy a night out with 400 other likeminded business owners and that’s just from the boy’s per...

Patterns. Many people comment on the fact that you cannot predict business any more. In the past or the good old days as some still call them there were patterns to business. Things like slower in the winter busier in summer, quiet Mondays, manic days leading up to Christmas and lots of other similar quotes. Is it still the same? For some maybe but for the majority no the predictable patterns have gone or most certainly have changed.   Why when you take two builders, same size, same reput...

This month is story time, not a once upon a time type story but a “for real” type story and one many of you will recognise parts of.    It all happens in a land far, far, far away….well, they wished it did but alas no, it happens all over New Zealand. Two blokes meet, maybe at school, maybe in the pub, maybe during their apprenticeship… wherever it is, they become best buddies. They think the boss is a…well…a little substandard so they decide t...

We spoke about retirement a few months ago and I have sent out quite a few spread sheets for people to answer the dreaded question will I have enough to survive those wondrous years of retired bliss. I have checked the NZ Statistics web site and there has not been a marked increase of trade suicides over  the past 8 weeks so I am comfortable in the belief that I have not added to the national mortality rate.   That being said it brings us back to the question of how do we earn an inc...

I said I would write about ways to generate funds during your retirement but with your assumed permission I am going to leave that until next month. Don’t panic if you are planning to retire in May or early June, a couple of weeks are not going to make that much difference to your next 25 odd years of retirement bliss and if panic is setting in just give me a call and we can chat about it.   What I want to talk about is the saying “If you always do what you always have you wil...

Last month I mentioned I would fill you in on some scary, maybe unwelcome or possibly head in the sand don’t want to think about that sort of stuff tit bits.   So the subject today is retirement or more recently known as succession planning. Which is accountant speak for retirement. You hear the words “you must be looking forward to your retirement, all that time to yourself no pressure from work, you lucky …………” Now for some those words are a...