Ian My husband and I were born on opposite sides of the world; me in New Zealand and Ian in Wales. We met in New Zealand in 1997, and at the time we were married to other people. After a few years we had developed a strong friendship although we lived in different areas of the country. We would daily spend hours on the phone talking about every subject imaginable and a few years later to cut a long story short, we battled the legal divorce system together, married in 2001, found our first home, bought a commercial building and I became a step mum to then 6yr old Logan who made it quite clear he was moving in with us!
I can only describe the next few years as ‘interesting’. We bought and sold homes, had Ian’s other son, then 12yrs live with us for a while, renovated our beach house and moved the business from home back to offices in the city – it was time to rebuild and make our fortune. We engaged a business mentor and after 3 very short years posted our best ever six figure Net Profit.
Life was good – we had now moved to the Franklin district just south of Auckland city in 2006 with Logan, two cats and a dog. It’s amazing how things turn out – as a result of Ian taking a wrong turn off the motorway one day we came across an area that ignited my fond childhood memories of a rural school, fabulous calf club days and the relaxed nature of it all. So the decision was made we would relocate and enjoy living just 40 minutes from the East and West coasts to continue enjoying fabulous fishing, water sports, and importantly be near both sets of grandparents for Logan, after all it was just going to be a 40 minute commute to our Queen St office if we travelled outside of peak traffic times.
In 2008 our business celebrated its 21st anniversary – a terrific milestone to have achieved for any business owner. We were also recognised entrants in the Deloitte Fast 50 awards and successfully made the finals of the Vero Excellence in Business Support Awards; a benchmark we are very proud to have achieved especially during those economic times.
Over the Christmas break we were exhausted; we had to do something about the lack of personal and family time. We had developed wonderful relationships in the area we resided and continue to be active in the local community. After achieving all our personal and business goals we began to ponder the question …. ‘Where to from here’?
- Do we continue in the same industry knowing ‘adjustments’ to staffing levels would have to be made? (not a previously nice experience)
- Take on less desirable projects and all that entails just to ‘make ends meet’?
- Was it time to look outside our current income vehicle knowledge for alternative? Does it exist?
- We had high equity in both our home and commercial property – do we sell one or both?
- Our cash flow would sustain us for almost 12 months barring any ‘unforeseen circumstances’
- There were so many dreams yet to be fulfilled – are we victims of ‘conditioning’?
- I started investigating alternatives, ‘succession plan’ was not an option with any of our staff, nor had it been for the past 10 years so that avenue was a no go.
Then one morning while reading yet another business update it spurred me on to look into a possible business on-line. Now, that scared me, I had used the internet to gather information only, quite frankly the advertising on search engines wasn’t something I looked at but decided to continue and find out more.
What I did find was an incredible amount of what I can only describe as ‘rubbish’. A random like behaviour with apparent business owners running amuck all over the globe. Where on earth do I start? Who are the people running legitimate businesses and what exactly are their products and services?
After several months of information gathering I could see a pattern, groups of people networking and under the ‘dust cloud’ so to speak was a small group of professionals operating in a professional manner and I felt comfortable with who they were and how they presented themselves. Over the next few months I contacted one of these people and began using courses they were selling and was pleasantly suprised with the add on value available ‘inside’ as they call it. The professionalism this particular individual portraid was exactly what I was looking for and for the last 12 months moved forward with my education, including the odd blood nose I might add!
How could this parallel business world operate all these years without me knowing a thing about it?
Consequently, I have engaged a mentor because I believe anyone looking at a business on or off line should be taught the right way first time. After a few weeks of active participation I started to see the possibilities, I mean real possibilities.
