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!

Yes, our indoor netball peaked at EXACTLY the right point in the tournament. Losing every game apart from the last two, which happened to be the losers semi final and the losers final. Which means we are the best team out of the four losing teams. Quite an honor. We even got matching little photo frames.

Cam from WooWho (who just happens to be a customer) was the winner of the winners final. Yes, that’s what happens to your sporting career when you become a customer of ours - Their site is currently in development, but looking slick!

1. Optional (for those angry people): Open a browser that doesn’t have a massive number of tabs open
2. Browse to 1227.com
3. Try to get rid of the website

Verity and I were the first viewers to make it the entire way and get ourselves out of the website again.

This is important because:

• She is like our Decisive Flow Mascot and currently ‘works’ here (even if she spends most of her time asleep on our couch while we are super busy)
• I used to be jealous of how young she is but now she is old like me (well almost old like me, she is catching up)
• We think she is super!

Happy bday Vestity! Looking forward to a great 22nd (or is it 23rd?!?) year!

I just wonder why parking attendants don’t realise this.

Like the guy last night who was ALREADY writing us a ticket when we arrived back at our car 4 MINUTES too late and who, when we explained we were sorry and on our way, said ’sorry guys, I’ve still gotta do it.’

The ability for humans to think for ourselves and apply our judgement to overarching rules is vital to making us who we are. I can’t understand anyone who actively chooses to give up this fundamental part of themselves.

Organisations who expect employees to follow the rulebook to the word and NOT apply their own thoughts to decision making processes are both fairly corrupt and severely disadvantaging themselves.

The amount of money the parking warden organisation has to spend on ‘educating’ the public about how nice they really are after making us all hate them by doing stupid things like the above, far outweighs the money they would lose for NOT ticketing people who are under ten minutes late.

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!

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: