Stefan Olsen

Without wanting to have a political spin in this email newsletter, it is great to see those businesses north of the Auckland border getting ready to open up with DHB vaccination rates moving past the 90% threshold.

Over the years there have been many stories about how the 2003 British cycling team went from mediocre to world beating. How did they do it?

Ditch the Strategic Plan & Watch Sales go from $850k to $5.5m! In this video I'm going to tell you about some folks who've thrown that strategic plan out the window and their business has gone from 850k to just over $5.5m in that period of time. Let me tell you what they've done ...

In my April 2021 Autumn Update I outlined how I saw the Hawke's Bay business climate as we headed towards Winter – READ IT HERE.And without wanting to sound like a clairvoyant, things have pretty much turned out as I predicted.

I thought I would tell you the story of two businesses, Business A and Business B. They're both pretty similar, turnover around that five million dollar mark, shareholders and directors working in the business, both of them have around 15 or 20 staff and although they're in different industries they have to do similar things well for their customers.

In my April 2021 Autumn Update I outlined how I saw the Hawke's Bay business climate as we headed towards Winter – READ IT HERE. And without wanting to sound like a clairvoyant, things have pretty much turned out as I predicted.

If there's one thing I really enjoy it's just sitting and watching the ocean and it's always changing, different things to look at I was chatting to some folks the other day and it made me realize that actually being in business sometimes is like being in the middle of the ocean let me explain how.

I thought I'd tell you about a book I just finished recently which is by Greg Crabtree and it's called Simple Numbers Big Profits. I first came across Crabtree when I was reading Vern Harnish’ s book Scaling Up and he provided some of the financial commentary. The comment on the back of the book says ‘there's gold in your simple numbers if you use them to make the right day-to-day decisions’.

In a couple of earlier vlogs I was talking around shareholders agreements and family charters, and I mentioned a board charter. I've had a couple of people come back to me and say what is a board charter, what does it do, and why would we have one? So I just want to give you a bit of a rundown as to what a board charter does and where it may be appropriate for your business.

In the previous three instalments about Strategic Reviews, Annual Business Plans & Execution we looked at the importance of strategic reviews, insights gained from staff workshops, and how to find your competitive advantage. In this fourth and final update we look at the all-important business plan.