Ha ha I just had the funniest experience. We're about to head off for easter break and I thought I'd read up on some of my favourite blogs... Headed to Buzzoodle and found myself reading a post about me!

Anyway, the reason I mention this article (aside from the fact I think it totally makes me 'internet famous') is it points out possibly the best feature of blogging: how you make friends with and network with people on the other side of the world, who you potentially will never meet... But who talk to other people and low and behold, suddenly your name is mentioned in situations you really hope it would be.

Thanks Ron! 

I've taken the opportunity to try and get ahead this weekend, and while I haven't got through everything, It feels great to be getting closer to the edge of being able to manage everything as it comes in my path and have plenty of time to make all the smart ideas happen and live life at the edge

I can see what life would be like....

If you can get to the front of things, then you have more time at the forefront of who you are and what you do.

I want to build a remarkable organisation, that makes a difference. This needs a balance of continually chipping away and taking leaps.

I've been digesting feedback from people using PlanHQ, logging issues for the crew to fix, scheduling new stuff into the roadmap, and getting back to everyone. Trying to make a lean machine for helping people get what they want! Our insights and experience combined make solutions that work for others. To everyone using PlanHQ and taking to us right now, together we are building a way to help us all get on top of our organsations, bring our plans to life, and make them something remarkable.

I want an amazing life... made of great people and experiences together making our dreams real.

I bought an empty book today, and rolling into it, I have a long history of not holding much physical history, Once an idea, feeling.. moves past the scraps of paper that get hit with it first, I usually move past them. Good for carrying no baggage, but miss the chance to let some paper from the past speak its wisdom. Thanks Nat and Tom for the inspiration, Nat's done this for years and has a treasure of books over years of her life, and Tom does the same, good soul nugget here guys.

This morning wasn't a great one as Nat's Granddad passed away over night.

Nat's Granddad lived until 96, which is pretty amazing, but that never really makes a difference when someone moves on from the world, its sad and a real hit to think that someone you love is no longer living and you can't just pop up and see them anymore.

I never got to meet Nat's mum Rosemary's Dad (aka Granddad) in person, but heard a lot about him, he's one of those people you know is always there and is very special by association. He meant a lot to Nat who used to pop over and see him quite a bit, Granddad was a bit lucky when we lived up north close-by at Ohope, as in usual Nat style Nat would make a point of popping in and seeing him even more often.

Nat's family are really good at keeping close, something I never never got into enough at the time but admire a lot, sort of what you'd call family geeks (people who get right into their family), so they've popped in plenty of times over the last while to see Granddad who's been living in a bed for quite sometime, Granddad's been lucky to have a family like Nat's, and I'm sure its added to his life over his last years.

To family, and the people we love, you are the inspiration for so much of our lives, may we all get as much quality time with each other as we can before the sun goes down.

Peace and love to Granddad, Nat, Rosemary and the rest of the Fergsuon family, even though Granddads sun has gone down, may he always shine on through you.

I've been looking at our business cards for PlanHQ over the past few days and before you know it we're all standing around discussing how we can make our cards a little different, a little more useful... I set out on a short search of people who had turned this tiny space into something that truly reflected them.

I quite liked this list from nclud, especially the deck of cards someone scribbled on... There is something strangely appealing about the lack of 'design'. I'm also always a big fan of Gaping Void, taking other people's business cards and doodling on them.

These days, personalisation seems key: Cover everything with the little tidbits of information and imagery that reflects YOU, whether it's your favourite saying, a picture of you doing what you love best. But business cards themselves seem a little irrelevant, Nik is hanging out for the time his phone can just bleep every other phone and get his 'virtual card', and it does seem like a luxurious waste of trees to keep printing these little slips of information.

Places like MOO make  smaller business cards that are totally personalised, others are turning to different ways of handing out their contact information... I wonder where it's all heading...

I like the idea of the YouTube video awards... I also liked ot see that my favorite video in the world (the hugs one) go 'most inspirational', however, this little number really stood out.

Aside from being almost the cutest thing you will lay your eyes on today, I think it sums up how we do things here at the bottom of the world. Because we we are kind of stuck on 2 islands down here, we don't always have the resources available to us that those at the top of the world may have. We embrace limitations and find work arounds and we call it 'kiwi ingenuity'. Despite the ending of this little video, it makes you feel a little patriotic :)

I'm always keen to interact with the computer in a more natural way which gets us all away from having to narrow our vision to the scope of a screen and limit our hands to to tapping and clicking. In terms of interaction with our computer, heres something that brings the computer a bit closer to moving at a speed that we think as people. This pretty cool demo from Perceptive Pixel shows where things are getting to, Thanks Trent, Sam and co from Optimal Usability for the link.

Beyond the Mouse and Keyboard

It's one of the first things I say when people ask what they should do to grow their business: build relationships and find partners!

Dependency & Cross Over = Good

A good partnership will mean that you focus on doing something really well and build a reliance/dependency on your partner doing something well in a different area. The idea is that both partners are required to make your customers happy. Often there will be cross over between what you and your partners do which can be percieved as competition, but you need to get past this quickly and decide who's 'BEST' suited to do which part, cross-over is a healthy sign that you're both focused on the same value proposition for your customers, which is key to you delivering good service.

Risky Business, but a risk you can't afford not to take 

Naturally all this means risky business because you now need your partner to perform in order to succeed. This dependency and the chance of having too much cross-over are the 2 big reasons why so many business don't partner, I've seen and continue to see it so many times, people just can't get over the hurdle of letting another business look after something thats key to their business, even if they need to solve a problem.

A Magic Partnership with SilverStripe

I've known the founders and directors of SilverStripe web developers and makers of the worlds best Opensource CMS for years and have always admired their energy, persistence and commitment to making it happen. So when things were getting a bit tough with the development of our first web product I started chatting to MD Tim Copeland a bit more. 6 months later and into last year when we needed some work they threw us a bone, which meant a lot to me and helped our business out a lot. Last year after meeting up with Rod Drury and getting online business planning software service PlanHQ started, me and Nat were keen to grow Decisive Flow so we could take on someone else to fill the gap, so was on the hunt for an acquisition, we quickly found one and together Decisive Flow and SilverStripe jointly acqucired GoodUse, and together can deliver more than ever before, sharing sales responsibilities, they do tech we do design...

New Base for the Business

I've been chatting to Tim Copeland about shifting the business down next to their cool offices for the last couple of months, and we've just this week moved right next door to SilverStripe, which is great so they're now just through the glass divider.

Failures are part of the journey in any success and partnering is no exception 

Nat wrote about When Partnerships go Bad the other day, and she was referring to a very average finish to a partnership we setup with an Australian web design business about a year and a half ago, which ended up being a pain for sure. I was pretty aware upon entering into it, that it was not the best match, decisions are all about circumstances and timing and the business had just burnt through the last of the $150k I had invested into getting Decisive Flow (Then evolutionone) off the ground, and while I had a 90% finished web product, and we'd built-up some good capability in Nat and another guy and good mate involved at the time Sam, I could no longer afford to support the product development and team financially and needed to get some income from services ASAP.

The Good side of the bad 

The most important thing about that partnership was that we had web design work flowing within days of engaging with them, which solved priority 1 for the business at this particular point in the journey, so to me the partnership had already served its purpose, it limited my requirement to go into any significant debt. The fact that they didn't pay their last bill and were slow on projects was a right pain, but by that stage, our business was in a very different position, and while a nuisance, it was no longer critical to our success.

So if you're on the verge of partnering, or not too sure if you've got the right ones lined up, Get into it and make more happen : ) 

After 5 months in Development, the last 3 of which we've had a couple of hundred people on our beta, I'm really happy to say that we've launched our online business planning software PlanHQ.

The Problem PlanHQ is solving

Business Plans have become known as static wordy documents that get out of date quickly and don't get achieved. 

Bring Your Plans to Life 

PlanHQ is all about bringing your business plan to life. We make planning a collaborative ongoing process, something that you keep tweaking, updating and logging your actual performance against as the journey of your business growth evolves.

Grow your business 

If you're serious about growing your business, then PlanHQ will become a must have. PlanHQ helps you set your direction and move towards making it happen, one day at a time.

What do you think?

Geting a lot of feedback and thoughts from people on PlanHQ right now and turning this straight back into the product, very interested in hearing any thoughts, if you've got anything to say about it, hit me up @ tim at planhq.com

A friend of my boyfriend is a pretty active Trademe user and the other day (for reasons I am unsure of) decided to look up my profile. Next time he saw Nick he said 'umm, did you realise Natalie has been previously married?'... Turns out, my mum, who used my account to sell some craft left a comment under my name saying 'my husband makes the cots, and I paint them', which means that now every stranger (and friend) who sees my account starts to question the skeletons in my closet.

And here I was totally unaware that the whole of New Zealand is finding out stuff about me that I didn't even know existed. I find that quite funny.

Been listening to the SXSW coverage and there is a really interesting conversation around that topic and our current insistence of having everything we do and are documented on the internet and how the next generation may rebel by NOT using the internet. Well worth a listen, as are the rest of them.

Tis a crazy time and I think this sums it up nicely:

I've built internet based businesses for many reasons, but none so big as location independence and the ability to grow the business from anywhere, where ever life decides to go.

Take your internet business to the beach

Nat and me spent the 2nd half of a 5 month journey around South East Asia working on an online business application from our hammocks in spurts in between putting around islands on scooters and boats, eating fresh food, diving, swimming, having a beautiful evening meal in a hut on the waters edge. Not a bad mix of business and pleasure.

We lived up in Ohope Beach for a year odd following that, nestled in the sheltered west-end front of a stunning 11km beach backset by a beautiful hill covered with Pohutukawa's. In the mornings, I would rise to find Nat beavering away on her laptop on the deck in bikini with whatever glare guard contraption she'd thrown together so she could work at the screen, while still maximising her tan. With an active Volcanoe White Island just a glance away on the horizon, not a bad office.

Bringing the holiday back with you

I've continued to clock up some good time at Ohope over the last few months, and after some regular weekends up there on return to Silicon Welly I began to really notice the contrast between my 2-3 days at the beach house; surfing every morning, coming back to fresh fruit salad on the deck and a litre of juice, walking over the hill, playing beach soccer swimming and playing chess in the shade gently chatting with good friends about everything in life and ideas for the businesses over the course, and life living in Wellington city.

So When I started getting that funny feeling of how will I start my day tomorrow as good as I have been for the last few days, I let my good mate and social marketer Tom Stokell from Bikewise and Tim Copeland from Silverstripe know about it. We decided to keep swimming every morning 1st thing, just like we'd been doing on our holidays at Ohope @ Wellingtons inner city beach Oriental Bay. Simple idea, always there, but just hadn't taken the opportunity yet.

We're just about a month through morning swims, but I've missed the last few, as I've been having pretty/very late nights working on our online business planning software business, PlanHQ, and haven't been quite as ready to leap out of bed early and run for the beach. But then when I was making my way home this evening just before sunset, and cruising past Oriental Bay I threw on my boardies and in. Looking out of the harbour then back at the lighten up city, reflecting off the water all around, its quite a different view of things. The city feels at peace and the buildings are crowding around the sea water with envy, they want to come in for a swim too.

No matter how full-on things are, Life can be a holiday everyday. 

We're on the tail end of a marathon weekend that at 8pm on Monday evening, is still going.

Buzzzz at HQ

We're hours away from launching our online business planning software PlanHQ and I'm taking a few moments to write this post and order half a dozen curries for the crew while the latest test system is temporarily being rebuilt. Everytime I've been involved in a product launch it gets pretty full-on, and this time is no exception, everyones been going pretty hard, especially over the last couple of weeks. This time around with a few more lessons learnt from previous web business developments we're focused on creating a simple business planning experience that works really well, and have got some amazing experience and passion in the team, the best I've been involved in by miles, the perfect balance

Right Now there is a buzzzzz in this office filled with dance beats, passion and a weeks productivity jammed into one evening, really quite unlike anything else, we're connected together and pumping, and PlanHQ is improving and getting shinier by the minute.

Making it Happen PlanHQ style

It's been 6 months since I had the first yarns with our awesome investor, co-founder and chairman Rod, about making some new web based software to help businesses grow and just several weeks later pulled together the PlanHQ team.

Start with the end - Design Driven

I tend to think in final products, and this is particularly useful when looking at solving a problem using the web where your business is all about the actual experience customer will go through, so very early on sketched out a the first dozen screens in a couple of days on paper. For those who don't know but have heard this, these are called wireframes in the web/tech/design industry.

Nat: Over the following few weeks I worked as is often the case, perched at master designer Nat's side bringing them to life as beautiful 'this is exactly what it will look like' graphics, well round 1 'exactly' anyway : ) Nat continues to do a fantastic job with the design, which is always getting tweaked, and we are all about design driven development, this meaning- before we make anything, we mock it up on paper/whiteboard and then get it into final quality graphics.

PlanHQ Developers = the best

Koz: I wanted to use Ruby on Rails and after having started, self-funded and lead a not quite right web 2.0 business wanted the best developer(s) who could lead this side of the business and make this product a reality. My search ended after 2 hours when I finally scanned the Ruby on Rails core team page properly only to see a curly haired smiley dude staring out of the page at me, backset by a lake or inlet and mountains covered with bush. It felt very New Zealand, and there he was, Koz, and he lives right here in New Zealand's Hi-tech capital, excellent! The first meet with Koz lasted a couple of hours in a little meeting room with me and Nat, with the sketches, a whiteboard and heaps of ideas and connection. It seemed pretty clear to all after that 1st meet that Koz was to be a new business partner, and that was just massive. Koz is the pillar of the PlanHQ development, I trust in him entiely that the application will be entirely scalable, secure and reliable and as a note he never ever hacks anything, it's all architected beautifully ; )

Ben: I Hit-up Ben after I heard he was contracting solo and he got on board within a week or so keen as to kick some ass on a good rails project with Koz. Ben's done some awesome work with Koz especially getting PlanHQ to Beta, he's moved to Germany recently and been working remotely when we need him, but we've also grown the crew by 2 more since we started.

Oli: I found Oli through the summer of code and me and Koz thought he was pretty on to it, and after Koz combed him, he was on board, 2 weeks later hammering out a Sunday evening on the day before beta fixing bugs on the fringes of the PlanHQ code base, quietly eating his way in to the core where he's more often in now.

Nik: Nik came on board just 2 weeks ago (feels like I've always had a Nik now, what did I do without him) and has gobbled up 10's and ten's of features and bugs. Nik seems genuinely discontent with the 2-3 minute downtime he's faced at least twice while Nat and me start a fresh review of PlanHQ and find and prioritise everything that needs to be done, and after adding the ability to autosave pages on PlanHQ n about 5 hours on his second day in, I'm pretty sure he's a complete madman, like I said, PlanHQ has the best developers : )

As ready as we can be 

I've been less stressed than ever before on leading up to launch, because I feel like we've done everything we can to be ready for this. With hundreds of sign-ups and just under 300 businesses on the beta for the last 2 and a bit months, from some pretty subtle , low key communication on the web and in the press, PlanHQ is just about ready to come out of the oven and into the lives of people growing their businesses and bringing their plans to life!

Thanks for reading, it's great to have a few hundred people connected to this blog to talk to about it.

Back to it, The fun is really just beginning ; )

We were working with another small company for a while as sub contractors. They let the last project drag a lot and as a result we were working for well over a year, with no contact with the actual client while trying to get some kind of flow going. Finally, the project was complete, and we received payment for part of our work. Basically, we were ripped off. To be honest, I'm not sure if the company has gone bust because all of a sudden, they stopped replying to our emails.

It's a fact of small business that you have to have a lot of faith in your partners, especially if they are overseas (which this one was). We find ourselves in a position where we can't do anything.

It reminds me of a web 2.0 style app we were jokingly talking about one time, where you can go and report 'baddies' - businesses that owe you money or refuse to pay, kind of a public courthouse where each side can debate in the open - which gives people in our situation an outlet to at least inform others and use peer pressure to force some kind of payment or recognition. Yes, it has all sorts of flaws, but I hate it when people abuse the trust you are forced to have.

I know this is a negative post, and I also know the amazing people we work with every day far outweigh this situation, but c'mon, we're a small business. It really hurts to be ripped off.

Tim, Michael and I checked out Webstock Mini last night at the Paramount Theater here in Silicon Welly. One of the discussions that arose was what's happening on the startup scene in Auckland. I have no idea what's happening in Auckland but it occurred to me that the fact it's kind of spread out makes it a lot harder to get everyone in one place regularly. I think this highlighted something very cool about Wellington, here we are, all in one big room buzzing with startup fever - and that is exactly the kind of environment that inspires new ideas and businesses. Maybe small cities are the best small business hubs?

Anyway, I took advantage of having my camera and managed to wobbily film Tim giving his 2 minute talk about 'how the internet changed his life' - Gives me an excuse to join the YouTube crowd - it's very shaking and a long way away (I'm one of those kids who insists on sitting in the back row). Check Tim out:

This topic also raised another interesting thought. How has the internet changed your life? We heard everything from a woman who found she could still earn an income despite being a fulltime mother, to a hard core technologist who found that the solutions he created were actually saving lives in conflict ridden countries. I have no idea what I'd be doing if I hadn't 'discovered' the internet a few years ago... It makes you think...

There's a lot of talkers in the world, but what separates those with a voice from those who just make noise, is doing - making things happen!

A $700 million company in 7 years

After reading a blog post by friend Rowan Simpson (Development Manager and ex-shareholder of New Zealand's auction / marketplace site Trademe) who was looking back upon a time when he was out round the country pushing his business flathunt.co.nz, he reminded me that it was 1 year ago today that Trademe was sold to fairfax f