The business intellect of kiwis

[nodrog:Me]

That's 20yrs of chasing kiddies around with candy treats and trying to extort money form them.

oh so its a 'hello Kiddie' tee shirt hes wearing?

Don't knock Mr Whippy! Hell - you'd have to make sure there was diesel in the van, and enough mix in the machine... and some sprinkles too. It takes some planning!

not to mention doing stock take on all those hundreds and thousands.

[vifferman]

His answer confirmed it for me. He was too good for that... he wanted the money, not the work.

I suspect there's a lot of that - people not wanting to answer to anyone else, not wanting to do the 'shit' work, and wanting to make the big bucks. What percentage of businesses go bust in the first year? I can't recall, but it's VERY high (90%?). I bet a lot of that is to do with sucking too much money out, poor cash flow, etc. But I'd imagine a lot is also people who go into business for themselves just so no-one can tell them what to do, then piss off their customers because they don't like 'kowtowing' to them.

What's gonna happen when the current generation of teens become the workforce? They expect SO much for so little. Customer service will be fucked.

[buellbabe]

WOW! Finn, every post you have made I wanna give you green bling for. Totally agree with you. It AIN'T rocket science. Provide top notch service (to the best of your ability) and customers will keep coming back to your business and recommend it to other people.

And BTW I hope you rode up to that useless dealer on your new bike and rubbed it in their faces!

[merv]

Great thread Finn. I've been away for the last two weeks spending the second week staying at my Bro' in law's while I helped my daughter pack up her flat and move to Zurich. This story has nothing to do with my daughter.

What a week I observed. The Bro' in law has had a nice new house built. He arranged for a contractor to cut down some trees, guy arrives cuts half of one down leaving a complete mess on the ground, then fell off his ladder and broke his wrist and was not seen for the rest of the week. Other guys were coming to asphalt seal the driveway Tuesday, ah Wednesday - all week went by it never happened and weather was generally perfect for it. Thursday Bro' in law says can you be at the house to let the guy in to fit the fancy electric blind on the high hall window. I get a text from him later, ah don't worry they can't come now. So f... all happened all week and boy is he frustrated with NZ tradesman service.

I spent a lot of time in USA in the 80's and 90's and sure I loved that "certainly Sir, whatever I can do Sir" attitude. Even the way your breakfast was delivered and set out for you by room service at hotels was fanatastic to observe.

[Maha]

(ie somebody actually being able to fucken tell him when his shit will arrive)

Translation!.....The Business intellect of Kiwis is somewhat constipated at the moment?

In saying that...on the subject of Flooring/Carpet...
Their are other Manufactures that produce an equivalent product to thier competitors IE: if you are wanting a particluar carpet form say Cav/Brem and they cant produce it for whatever reason, then someone like Godfrey Hurst may be able to fill your needs, or any other Manufacturer for that matter.
I once had a customer that wanted a particular carpet, cos it siuted her dog!!
Now that took some handling.

[ManDownUnder]

I once had a customer that wanted a particular carpet, cos it siuted her dog!!

Shag-my-leg pile?

[The Stranger:Me]

I once had a customer that wanted a particular carpet, cos it siuted her dog!!
Now that took some handling.

Easy.
Kill the mutt.

[Maha]

Shag-my-leg pile?

The real bastard is that, she chose off a shop sample, it had been in the for about 10 months, the dye batch had change in that time but the samples were not up to date, so the right Carpet was ordered but the all imortant colour was different. It took my experiance as an installer for over 25 years to calm her and get her the right Carpet...for her and her Dog.

All good things come to those who wait.

Easy.
Kill the mutt.

The irony is.....the dog died about 6 months after... opps I mean

[vifferman]

The irony is.....the dog died about 6 months after... opps I mean

Your carpet killed it, dinnit?

[Swoop]

I left school (if you could call it that - I thought it was a place to make friends and eat lunch) at 15.

Reading about a "resonably successful" businessman who declares he "voluntarily dis-enrolled in the education system" to make his money...

[Finn]

In saying that...on the subject of Flooring/Carpet...
Their are other Manufactures that produce an equivalent product to thier competitors IE: if you are wanting a particluar carpet form say Cav/Brem and they cant produce it for whatever reason, then someone like Godfrey Hurst may be able to fill your needs, or any other Manufacturer for that matter.
I once had a customer that wanted a particular carpet, cos it siuted her dog!!
Now that took some handling.

This is a custom coloured carpet that I paid a deposit on.

[RantyDave]

So if a dumb arse like me can get the formula right, why can't other people do the same with the benefit of all those letters after their names?

You really want to know? It's to do with opportunity cost.

As a school leaver at 15 you have nothing to lose. It's "make my own company and maybe become unspeakably rich" vs "become DangerousBastard" so you might as well give it a crack. Had you gone off to university then it the consideration would have been "make my own company and maybe become unspeakably rich" vs "get a respectable job with a nice clear career path in whatever field it was I studied" so you'd be less inclined to take the risky route.

Of course, as time gets on the proposal gets worse until you eventually get to the position that potential founders of tech companies in Wellington get i.e. "make my own company and maybe become unspeakably rich" vs "contract out to the government doing some awful .net shit and make $100/hr for no risk whatsoever" in which case you'd need to be either (over) confident of success or completely barking mad to start a new company.

BTW, what happens in practice is that the $100/hr bunnies become certain they are the shit, head off to form companies being vastly over confident, lose momentum (and about a hundred grand) before the company gains any traction at all and limp back to .net contracting once they're over their Ruby on Rails infatuation. The interesting conclusion of this is that the best thing we can do for Wellington's tech community would be to teach the government to stop spending vast quantities of money on badly run technology projects, but I digress.

Dave

[Mom]

This is a custom coloured carpet that I paid a deposit on.

There really is no excuse for them running out of yarn. They would have known how much they needed to make your specific job, they should have checked and ammended their eta to reflect the fact they needed to get more in before you paid the deposit.

The instance Maha talks about was very embarrasing for us. The rep made monthly visits to the showroom to update samples, so our samples should have been right. We sold the colour in good faith off the sample, then received a totally different colour. The sample numbers were the same, the carpet was pink not brown. This company tried to wriggle out of replacement, so not only did we have the dog to rematch another colour to we had to get them to come to the party as well.

Maha sorted the nut bar client, I got the supplier to credit the wrong colour carpet, and replace it including the time that I had paid my staff to start the job with the incorrect carpet. All this because a rep did not do his job properly.

[Finn]

Reading about a "resonably successful" businessman who declares he "voluntarily dis-enrolled in the education system" to make his money...

I didn't have a choice but had I, probably would of gone to Uni just for the chicks. But I knew at a very young age that spoon fed education won't get you very far.

A couple of my mates have MBA's and both work at dysfunctional corporates as CEO's. I'm amazed at the decisions they make and was in fact involved in a tender with one of them. We pulled out because they were basically stupid and wrote a 10 pages letter addressing the risks they were putting the business under. They didn't listen because they don't really care about the company they work for and sure enough, our prediction came true. Disaster.

One thing I have learnt about MBA's is that it teaches you to only look after yourself. Screw the company and shareholders and whats a customer again?

[Gremlin]

What's gonna happen when the current generation of teens become the workforce? They expect SO much for so little. Customer service will be fucked.

Already had it with a couple of potential staff...

One was completely generation I (forget Y, its I). He decided IT was a glory job, despite not knowing how to use Outlook (webmail aye?) with great working conditions etc.

Fast forward a month, time spent explaining group policies and writing pages of documentation down (helps you understand how the networks are put together as well) and suddenly, the job wasn't what he had in mind.

The real difference is that uni brainwashes them into thinking 1, they're THE shit, 2, with the degree, they can walk into a cushy job with little work. Everybody older knows that your first job was a slog, you had at least got your foot into the industry, and you started from the bottom.

Uni... pfff... my degree is a flash bit of paper, they taught just about zero stuff I use day to day, all the programming languages aren't used, and I have taught myself others that are more practical.