Recent Posts
Recent Posts Tagged With 'business'
What maketh the man?
I was a scrawny, nervous young lad when I got to high school. For those from overseas, high school is around your 8th year of school through to when you leave school at around 17/18 in NZ. Anyway, I had a hard time. The nickname for my school was Pen...
New Zealand – Economic Capital of The World (1/12)
New Zealand’s days as a manufacturer of goods and dairy are well and truly numbered. The high cost and low margins are simply not sustainable. This is a twelve part series exploring what New Zealand might be able to do with strong leadership an...
Employment Fine Print
“Please do not waste both our time threatening me or proffering legal advice. Your threats are risible, and you are patently not qualified to give legal advice.” All I did was ask my ex-client to stop trying to poach my staff. Quite reaso...
Dealing With Mr. Big
Masters. They are everywhere. We work our lives through a series of encounters with them. Regardless of whether you are a person in power, sometimes your life will collide with a master, and how you deal with that encounter determines the rest of you...
Marketing -101 (what not to do)
“Excellent! We are starting to get some nice feedback from our users” This was a nice start on a blog entry over at a security software firm based out of Auckland, New Zealand. Due to external constraints, I can’t really mention th...
Ethics, Professionalism and Business – 5 Rules
Businesses are an interesting beast. When they are new, it is usually their founder that guides them, just like a parent and a child. As they reach a certain point, sometimes the founder/owner hands over the reigns, and the business can grow into som...
RE: Why You Can’t Find Better Employees
The following is from Seth Simonds’ Blog. The article “Why You Can’t Find Better Employees” spoke volumes and demanded a comment. Here is the opening: Here’s a phrase you have probably used before: “It’s impossible to fin...
Tax On Rentals – What You Need To Think About
Owning rental property is an addiction here in New Zealand. Just about everyone I know has a rental property. Some even rent or flat share in more “desirable” locations than they could afford to buy in but have one or two rentals in other...
Kiwis tax debt soars to $4b – may double in five years
Tax. It’s a word that often instills emotion. Particularly if you are speaking to a small business owner. There are two distinct camps here in New Zealand. Well three if you include those that just don’t give a damn about anything. The f...
Statutory Minimum Redundancy Entitlements
Labour’s Darien Fenton wants employers to provide the following in the event of redundancy: four weeks pay for first twelve month’s service two weeks for every additional year up two a maximum of twenty six weeks four weeks notice There...
5 on Monday
Last week was a public holiday, and i completely forgot to post 5 on Monday. This week, I posted it for Tuesday by mistake instead of Monday. My bad. So, what was notable last week: I hate administration chores, absolutely hate them the last episo...
Bootstrapping and Start-Up Culture
I have worked with loads of starts ups over the years, and even had quite a few myself. Something that always astonishes me is the cash burn these companies have. The money sack is literally being shovelled into the proverbial furnace at an amazing...
Unions want 9-day ‘top-up’
Of course they do. Here we stand at the brink of economic crisis, with many businesses teetering, and the unions have their greedy little paws out. How typical of New Zealand unions. So, what is the bottom line that the unionists seem to have complet...
5 on Monday
Welcome to this week’s 5 on Monday. March is here already, where is the year going? So, what was notable last week: busy with work means less time to write having a four year old son is awesome $37 to fill a 9kg gas bottle is a rip off www.powersh...
David and Goliath - I Won.
I fought tooth and nail for tax justice back in 2004 (IRD ; The War Continues, Finally!, IRD - The Saga Continues, The Big Guns) I recently posted Moving To Spain Update I have some great news. I got what was originally agreed to. Right up until 20...
Moving to Spain Update
Having basically set a year for the big move to Spain, it seems to be approaching ever so quickly. At one point, 2011 seemed ages away, but not now. Resolving final issues with IRD, saving sufficient money to ensure Diane and I can be “autonomo...
Professional ICT Contracting
I’m a professional ICT contractor. Agencies are my “marketers”, and their fee is the margin they make on top of my hourly rate, the interest they make on money paid by the client between my pay cycles plus the usually aggressive ...
‘mortgaging our children’
Sir Roger has recently offered a plan to save Government from ‘mortgaging our children’. “New Zealand needs lower spending and lower taxes.” This according to Sir Roger who introduced Rogernomics back in 1984 and continued thr...
Minimum Wage
New Zealand’s government has decided to increase the minimum wage to $12.50 per hour from 1 April 2009. Good on them, that’s 1% higher than inflation. For an annual income of $26,000 for a 40 hour week. Not very much, granted, but it...
IRD ; The War Continues.
I have had a long history with IRD, right back to when they stuffed up settlement of my Student Loan back in the early 90s. (“No one pays their student loan that quickly, our system could not handle it.” “No, we won’t pay th...
I can read it! Can you?
fi yuo cna raed tihs, yuo hvae a sgtrane mnid too. Cna yuo raed tihs? Olny 55 plepoe can. i cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht I was rdanieg. The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid, aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy...
Unions reject pay freeze talk
Of course they do. They have no idea what a business owner goes through during tight economic times. The Engineering, Printing and Manufacturing Union national secretary Andrew Little, who I personally think is a complete fuck wit, said higher wages ...
Self-Employed Vs Employed
I remember reading a piece by Jim Rohn many years ago about money, employment and the likes. Although I can’t find the article, it did have a life-changing affect on me. The bottom line, in Jim Rohn’s opinion is that everyone is self-empl...
Legal Downloads Increase By 25%
EARLIER this month I wrote a piece on the music industry (Is The Music Industry Dead?) Today, I heard a soundbite on the radio that last year, 95% of all music downloaded was done so illegally. This was a scarey number! Then a few more “minor&#...
Australians unimpressed with NZ TV
NEW Zealand is a pretty small country, in fact, Sydney has about the same population as the whole of New Zealand. But we have produced directors the likes of Peter Jackson, Roger Donaldson, Geoff Murphy, Vincent Ward, Bruce Morrison, Jane Campion, Le...
Print Media to Internet - The Challenge!
A couple of years ago I was doing some work for a large media company. They needed to get display adverts from their various newspapers and magazine transferred to an online search engine from their main site. Text adverts were easy for them, but ex...
Is the music industry dead?
I read some article ages ago (still trying to find it again, but that issue is for another time) about the state of the music industry. They were, and are, in deep shit. This is bad for the artists, and largely the executives of the various music...
Procrastination as a [Put profession here]
I have yet to find any profession that is not prone to procrastination. My own personal experience with procrastination is intimate and long term. In fact, since I should be working on something else write now, I guess writing this little bitty is ...
5 Web-based Freelance Writing Jobs to Avoid
You must treat freelance writing as a professional business. Your time can not be replaced, make it worth while. If you take a contract with one of these five, beware, because you could find yourself broke, in trouble with the law or simply passed ov...
Recession? What Recession?
I have been 48 hours from bankruptcy twice in my life, once in 2003 and once in 1993. In 1993, it was a mear $300 cash that saved me. It is interesting that there are ten years between the two incidents. I also find it interesting that my credit ...
