Mike Hosking was speaking with somebody from Business NZ who apparently had no idea what exporting involves. In short they felt it was a bit much like hard work. And therein lies the problem. What these people fail to understand is it is all a matter of perspective. What the ‘experts’ (who have never run a business, let alone an export one) do, is try to think of creating another Fonterra or two: large corporates who can scattergun their way around the world. If they cannot immediately think of something, they dismiss the idea out of hand.
I’ll explain things based on my own experience. Instead of the scattergun approach, you need to try and visualise how large the world actually is and how small New Zealand’s population is in relation to that. You then do what we did, which was to specialise – really, really specialise.
As a businessman you are seeking to increase your sales and profits, not save the entire country. It is not about creating Fonterra Mark II, but making yourself a fortune. So do what we did in 1998: pick a market in another country of a similar size to New Zealand – but more affluent – and focus only on that. In our case we chose Sydney, due to it having a similar population to New Zealand, being a short(ish) plane ride away and being culturally similar.
Another attraction was, instead of the utterly bewilderingly activity of paying freight costs to send a few boxes of things from Auckland to Timaru, Gisborne or Invercargill, you can send 10 container loads to Sydney and distribute them cheaply within a small geographical area. Blaxland to Bondi is only as a far as the Sky Tower to Huntly power station and Campbelltown to Glenorie a similar distance. Our freight cost suddenly dropped from 12 per cent to about two per cent overnight.
So we’ve just focused on growing sales and profits within Sydney town for those 25 years. Nobody has ever heard of us in Melbourne or Perth. Compiling a list of 50 cities around the world and doing a ‘rinse and repeat’ would be foolish: all we’d end up doing – at best – would be to increase sales, but our profit margins would fall dramatically.
My advice to any businessman is, first of all, to export. New Zealand is small potatoes and, frankly, not worth wasting time doing business in. By exporting you insulate yourself from the local economic shocks that happen from time to time and you will make far more money. Secondly, literally just pick a city – any largeish city: Houston, London, Helsinki, Singapore, Sao Paulo…just pick one and focus on breaking into that market. It will be far easier than you think to do so. It really is that straightforward. The important thing is to start. Pick a city, book a ticket, go there next week and seek advice from local professionals about doing business there. Instead of ‘but, but, but’-ing with a list of excuses, I’ll make it easy: if that city has your product or service then it will be fine. It’ll work. Book your ticket and crack on with it. Imagine 1000 businessmen doing this – all exporting.
Capitalist is a simple country boy from the deep south who seeks nothing less than the destruction of socialism and collectivism in New Zealand. This article was first published HERE
I’ll explain things based on my own experience. Instead of the scattergun approach, you need to try and visualise how large the world actually is and how small New Zealand’s population is in relation to that. You then do what we did, which was to specialise – really, really specialise.
As a businessman you are seeking to increase your sales and profits, not save the entire country. It is not about creating Fonterra Mark II, but making yourself a fortune. So do what we did in 1998: pick a market in another country of a similar size to New Zealand – but more affluent – and focus only on that. In our case we chose Sydney, due to it having a similar population to New Zealand, being a short(ish) plane ride away and being culturally similar.
Another attraction was, instead of the utterly bewilderingly activity of paying freight costs to send a few boxes of things from Auckland to Timaru, Gisborne or Invercargill, you can send 10 container loads to Sydney and distribute them cheaply within a small geographical area. Blaxland to Bondi is only as a far as the Sky Tower to Huntly power station and Campbelltown to Glenorie a similar distance. Our freight cost suddenly dropped from 12 per cent to about two per cent overnight.
So we’ve just focused on growing sales and profits within Sydney town for those 25 years. Nobody has ever heard of us in Melbourne or Perth. Compiling a list of 50 cities around the world and doing a ‘rinse and repeat’ would be foolish: all we’d end up doing – at best – would be to increase sales, but our profit margins would fall dramatically.
My advice to any businessman is, first of all, to export. New Zealand is small potatoes and, frankly, not worth wasting time doing business in. By exporting you insulate yourself from the local economic shocks that happen from time to time and you will make far more money. Secondly, literally just pick a city – any largeish city: Houston, London, Helsinki, Singapore, Sao Paulo…just pick one and focus on breaking into that market. It will be far easier than you think to do so. It really is that straightforward. The important thing is to start. Pick a city, book a ticket, go there next week and seek advice from local professionals about doing business there. Instead of ‘but, but, but’-ing with a list of excuses, I’ll make it easy: if that city has your product or service then it will be fine. It’ll work. Book your ticket and crack on with it. Imagine 1000 businessmen doing this – all exporting.
Capitalist is a simple country boy from the deep south who seeks nothing less than the destruction of socialism and collectivism in New Zealand. This article was first published HERE
2 comments:
Is this the 'aspirational. stuff that Ardern used to go on about? If you don't set targets like this, how do you know if you're getting somewhere? It's a statement of intent and direction for
all Kiwis to get on board with. Great. Kennedy and the moon come to mind.
Good advice Capitalist.
Luxon's goal is great and he said it would to be mostly from the primary sector. That's OK, BUT he has to also forget about all his climate related BS so the farmers and growers can get on doing what they do best, to expand and achieve the export growth he wants. The way it is currently going the never ending increase in regulations is working against the producers.
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