In November 2012 we launched NZ Entrepreneur to help inspire, educate and celebrate entrepreneurship in New Zealand.
Since then, as part of our mission to show we all have the potential to be entrepreneurs, we’ve showcased 100+ #nzentrepreneurs from all sorts of backgrounds, industries and parts of the country.
There is no doubt that us New Zealanders are amongst the most entrepreneurial people in the world. We are consistently rated the “easiest country to start a business” and our understated “give it a crack” mentality and DIY ethic ensure we have a very high quota of startups, small businesses and self-employed business people for our population. The trouble is, as media commentators and the investment community point out, we don’t have enough of them kicking on to become large, truly global businesses.
Why is this important? Well, just like households need more external income coming in to grow their wealth, countries too need more income coming in, than is going out. We can’t grow the real wealth of our nation just by selling stuff to each other (least of all by just swapping houses!)
So while we’re fairly good at innovating and mobilising products, services and business ideas, it’s our ability and desire to grow our businesses that we need to work on.
And while we absolutely need more entrepreneurs thinking “Global from day one”, the reality for most #nzentrepreneurs is that they need help right now just growing their businesses to a level of revenue which provides them with breathing space and a stable base from which they can then start to lay more grandiose plans. It’s pretty hard to think about what kind of sand sculptures you’re going to build on the beach, when you’re just trying to keep your head above water!
As they say, you can have the best product in the world but if you don’t know how to sell it, it’s worthless. For this reason, from this issue on, we have made the decision to publish our business growth sister titles NZ Sales Manager and Marketing Online as part of NZ Entrepreneur. We hope that readers of NZ Sales Manager and Marketing Online will continue to enjoy our sales and marketing content in it’s new home within NZ Entrepreneur.
Enjoy!
Richard Liew is the founder and Editor of NZ Entrepreneur
