Tim Calder

The Wellington Small Business Expo was a great place to see all New Zealand’s newly established small businesses. I enjoyed some of the new web businesses that featured at this event like TooMuchPaper, KiwiSelect, and EZYPAY. I was also very surprised how helpful many of the featuring businesses were and how many of them were able to help with developing better systems at EZY STOR Self Storage. EZYPAY was one of those businesses that tapped us on the shoulder and explained how they could improve our cash flow at EZY STOR Self Storage by setting us up with Direct Debit forms as apposed to the Automatic Payment forms that we currently require our customers to setup when a storage agreement is completed. If successful this would mean that we would be able to directly debit our customers bank accounts with our storage fee on the correct day’s that payments are supposed to come out. While in Wellington I took some time out to have a look around this beautiful city, second only to Dunedin

For those of you that are not aware the Internet is moving rapidly towards SaaS whereby Google is leading the way with free applications like Gmail, Google Docs, Picasa, Google Analytics, Google Calendar, Google Reader to name a very few. These online applications are changing the way people use their computers as there is no reliance on working from a particular computer where instead your information is held online and can be accessed from anywhere. I use several Google applications to manage all my online information as moving between different Google applications is very simple and doesn’t require having to log in and out each time. This also includes using Google Doc’s to open and save attachments like Word, Excel and Powerpoint that are received in Gmail. The next move I plan to make on the internet is to adopt new online accounting software Xero as this would allow me to run, process and analysis my join and individually owned companies from anywhere in the world.

Our share investment company Chicken Stock Group Limited has just completed its purchase of Scott Technology shares which is a local public company in based in Dunedin. Earlier this year my Otago MBA syndicate studied Scott’s as part of our Financial Accounting case study report paper. After establishing that although Scott Technology is small compared to it international competition, with its large amount of cash reserves and innovative history this company is well positioned to take on international contracts that the larger firms have pulled back from. Thanks to the support of our broker Peter McIntyre from ABN AMRO Craigs, Chicken Stock Group also has shares in the New Zealand Agricultural sector as well as Australian Health care. I formed Chicken Stock Group Limited two years ago with four other friends that attended St Peter’s School in Cambridge.

Last night was The Dunedin Club’s 150th Jubilee Black Tie Ball held at the Dunedin Town Hall in the Glenroy Banquet Hall. The Dunedin Club has a distinguished history which stretches back to the pioneers of the 1850s. In 1848 the two settler ships John Wickliffe and Philip Laing berthed at Dunedin, bringing Otago’s first European migrants. Ten years later, a group of entrepreneurs founded The Dunedin Club in rented premises in Maclaggan Street. We were also very fortunate to have world famous actor Sam Neill as the key note speaker as weather diverted his flight to Christchurch where he then had to make the long drive to Dunedin. Sam spoke entertainingly about his career, the club and his families four generations of involvement. Credit needs to be paid to Humphrey Catchpole and his team of organisers as this event was very well planed and as a result an extremely enjoyable night.

One of our Otago MBA papers this module is Human Resource Management with PJ Bardsley from Polson Higgs. PJ has valuable business experience in small to medium enterprises with her work with the Employers Association as a Business mentor and her role as a Registrar at the Employment Tribunal. PJ has consulted on issues such as recruitment and retention, policies and practise, performance management, personal grievances and disputes, HR Audits, Systems analysis. Today we were fortunate to have Nick Winder, General Manager of the Dunedin Casino and an Otago MBA graduate, come and speak to our class to give us some insight into how the Casino operates and manages their human resources. Our class is now required to put together a report which identifies possible future problems and ways that they can be prevented or mitigated and procedures improved.

My brother, Ben Calder, has this week made the Mountain Scene Magazine profiling his new Business Big Night Out which takes people on a safe, enjoyable, informative tour of bars in Queenstown. It explains how Ben came up with the idea for the Business and how he has worked hard to form strategic alliances with the bars and attract the right staff. Queenstown is the ideal town for Ben as he enjoys extreme sports and is a regular Skydiver, Rock Climber and Water Skier, all of which activities he promotes on his tours. Both of us have made Otago our home and have formed strong business contacts down here as well as making some great friends. Ben’s ‘Big Night Out‘ image is one to be watched as this is quickly becoming one of Queenstown’s more familiar brands.

Dunedin’s Self Storage industry took a blow this week as a Mosgiel storage company was reported by the Otago Daily Times to have had $30,000 worth of customers goods stolen over the past eight months. This incident highlights the need for industry wide strict security requirements to be met. EZY STOR Self Storage has the latest security system provided by Aotea Security which is the company responsible for the high level security system at Milton prison. All of our units and garages are individually alarmed and monitored by Alert Monitoring which are also responsible for the monitoring of Dunedin City Council and Delta Properties and Buildings. Currently EZY STOR Self Storage have never had an incidence of theft which is a record that we are immensely proud of and aim to keep.

The New Zealand Trade & Enterprise Escalator’s Auckland workshop was a truly brilliant event. All of the speakers were very interesting and provided excellent information for young, fresh, web based entrepreneurs like me. The one speaker that really inspired me was Tim Norton from PlanHQ who spoke very honestly about how he got this business off the ground. Tim has been involved with forming many web based businesses with his most recent being PlanHQ which he has successfully launched and promoted attracting great interest from around the globe. PlanHQ is a unique web service which helps you achieve success with your business plan by working with you to identify tasks/goals and breaking them down to be assigned to your team. Tim is also a member of Siliconwelly which is a community of NZ web businesses with an office in Wellington.

In the presentation before the ORC hearing the CST produced further designs for the new Stadium. In yesterdays ODT article it suggested that these designs better highlight the multi-purpose flexibility of the Stadium. This is vital as the greatest reservation the antis have against the stadium is that it is not multi-purpose. Clearly the pictures in the ODT article and on the CST website show the significant capabilities of this new stadium to be used for a range of sports. Right now there is a lot of opportunity for entrepreneurs to take advantage of the progress of this project and start to think about sporting, musical, and theatrical events that could be organised and promoted at this unique, roofed venue.

The Otago Regional Council has just approved the $37.4M! (with some conditions). This means that both councils have now committed funds to the Stadium totalling $122.4M. I really feel for these supportive councilors who have to make the best decisions they can with hundreds of negative, miss-informed people jeering at them. I don’t think a process like this very fair on our region and city representatives who have a very large, important decision to make. I am very pleased that at the end of the day common sense prevailed.