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/54854
How do we make their life easier? It's a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy – we tend to create large expectations that the clients can rely on us to meet. Q: What do you perceive as your marketplace: local, national or global? For the nzgirl business the market is national – but interestingly enough it feeds my other businesses, which are globally focused. Flossie.com is Asia-bound in late 2012. Q: Do you use Social Media? All day, every day. Even as I type this! I multi-task well, which makes social media much easier to manage and comprehend. Q: How important is it as a tool for your business? Extremely. Think of it this way. The average New Zealander has 130 Facebook friends (and within my audience of 25-35-year-old women the representation on Facebook is over 90%). every time they talk about you it's to the 'power of 130'. Within my nzgirl customer base the average number of Facebook friends is 300. Q: What are its weaknesses? It's constant, not just a switch on/off when it suits you. It's a constant conversation that requires you to be interested in what you're saying and what is being said. Q: How prepared do you think New Zealand businesses are to take their place on a global stage? I think most want to but don't know how to. We certainly are scared of what the 'global stage' means – the comfort of home can be appealing. Preparedness is the answer though – the more market research you can do the less scary it will be. New Zealand is amazingly advanced and it's not until you step offshore that you realise we do have what it takes (and then some) to make it work. Q: How well equipped are New Zealand businesses to integrate an increasingly multi-cultural and aging workforce? Most business owners I know don't discriminate on gender, race or age. We're all looking for the same thing – hard working people willing to go the extra mile. Unfortunately super-stars are a little thin on the ground – we do have a tendency in this country to have people with hands out looking for the easy options. I've been very fortunate and met some incredibly hard working people who recognise and realise that life is a simple mathematical equation. What you put in, you get out. Q: What examples of business innovation in New Zealand have inspired you? Anyone who has been gutsy to just say 'Hey, I get it's going to be hard, but I know this is going to work because ...'. rod Drury from Xero is a great example of this. Stuff the notion of a market being led and saturated by one stalwart who hasn't innovated but nonetheless dominated for donkeys years – he saw that innovation could transform an entire industry and became relentless in his pursuit to achieve a total market disruption. Inspiring stuff. Q: Which women business owners or managers have you watched with interest? I'm fortunate enough to meet many business women daily who I admire both here and overseas. Katie May from Kidspot has to be one of the hardest working, switched on people I've ever met and her recent company sale (netting around $30m) was just for the commitment to strategy she instilled from day dot. Q: What qualifications do you hold? Not a heck of a lot. Pitmans Typing Examination 1993? Q: What is the most valuable training you have had in your career? My training has been very hands-on. Through my investors (Movac, Lloyd Morrison) I have been taught valuable life and business lessons. I now have a personal panel that I refer to for guidance. The people in my life have been my trainers – from family to friends to colleagues. The domestic market can be lucrative, and exploiting it to its full capacity is smart. It's a fairly forgiving market, the cost of doing business is less than in exporting, and trumping the domestic market, or not, can teach you a host of valuable lessons to take into exporting. Q: How well equipped are New Zealand businesses to integrate an increasingly multi-cultural and aging workforce? Some are more than ready and are doing so as we speak. But it's a matter of our needing growth and development across the board. We have an enormous base of SMEs in New Zealand and it's hard for those companies to manage these kinds of challenges. But they do, and often times it makes for a much better workforce and more robust business. Q: What examples of business innovation in New Zealand have inspired you? I'm inspired by creativity and smart marketing. Various campaigns and products have inspired me, as have specific people. Among others Assignment, AirNZ, Pack Investment Group, Positively Wellington Tourism, Chefs Sean Marshall and Martin Bosley, Nigel Greening, Sarah Robb O'Hagan, and the Family of Twelve. I really enjoy being around people with great acumen, who aspire to fly higher and faster, and who don't need validation by others to know they're good at what they do. I'm also inspired by intergenerational Maori business – it's the ultimate in future investment. Q: Which women business owners or managers have you watched with interest? Jenny Shipley, Fran Wilde, Sarah Robb O'Hagan (Gatorade North America), Sarah Reo (Cultureflow), Cath Cordwell (Zest Food Tours), Judith Tabron (Soul Bar & Bistro), Annabel Langbein (Chef, Author, Television Presenter). Q: What qualifications do you hold? LLB, Motherhood. Q: What is the most HER MAGAZINE | February/March 2012 | 41 valuable training you have had in your career? Eight years as Trade Commissioner in the United States for New Zealand Trade and Enterprise.