Her Magazine is New Zealand’s only women’s business lifestyle magazine! Her Magazine highlights the achievements of successful and rising New Zealand businesswomen. Her Magazine encourages a healthy work/life balance.
Issue link: https://viewer.e-digitaleditions.com/i/134780
Lisarna Wynyard Mini Manager and Micro Manager T ime. Every small and medium business owner wishes they had more of it; more time to work on improving the business, more time to generate new business and, ultimately, more time to spend enjoying life away from the business. Lisarna Wynyard, founder of Mini Manager and Micro Manager, understands just how much Kiwi entrepreneurs struggle with balancing work, business development and lifestyle. "I first started Mini Manager because I'd run my own businesses and knew how hard it was to strike the right balance between working in them and growing them, while also making time for my family," says Lisarna. "Mini Manager draws on my 18 years experience in business management. We provide expert advice about how to move your business forward, but we also go a step further by providing business owners with practical assistance in achieving their goals. Where a traditional business coach will offer advice and then leave you to get on with it, Mini Manager takes a hands-on approach to getting things done. At the end of the day, the objective is to get business owners spending more time on the things they love," she says. Lisarna also understands better than most the importance of spending time with those you love, after losing her 20-year-old son, Kyle, in a car accident four years ago. "Losing Kyle was life-changing. Going through that hell really puts things into perspective – life is for living and enjoying, not being a slave to work," says Lisarna. Three years after starting the business, Lisarna has helped clients in a range of small and medium-sized businesses. "One of the key areas that I'm finding people need help with is putting the right systems into place to enable them to work more efficiently and scale up more easily. There are a heap of cloud-based solutions, like Workflow Max and Xero, that can help businesses in this area – but business owners need support and help to identify and implement the right systems, and that's where I step in," she says. Lisarna's quest to help businesses work more efficiently and increase their earning potential has also inspired another venture – Micro Manager, a web-based app that helps businesses with mobile employees capture time and cost more accurately. "There are a heap of productivity apps and programmes out there, but nothing that does a great job of measuring the time that mobile contractors spend travelling, talking on the phone and working at client sites. I initially searched for something that could do that for me and could find nothing, so I decided to develop the app myself," says Lisarna. Her son, Kyle's 'take life by the horns' approach to life was a huge influencing factor in the decision to develop the app herself. "Where, in the past, I might have thought 'I wish someone would develop that', the massive shift I've gone through in terms of life perspective made me think 'there's a need in the market for this, I'm going to meet it!'", she says. The Micro Manager app is currently in development and Lisarna has already had international interest in the product, and has the backing of The Icehouse. "If you'd asked me five years ago where my life would be today, there's no way I could have anticipated what I've been through and the direction I'm headed in. Today though, I'm really excited about the direction that Mini Manager and Micro Manager are heading in – both businesses are moving ahead in leaps and bounds, and it's so exciting seeing the difference they're making to my clients' businesses," she says. WHO'S WHO 2013 41