Deserving to win....

Darren Clarke, Winner, British Open 2011

I know the prevailing wisdom is that most people really don't care about other people's success - in business and life. Sure, they might shake your hand when your hard work leads to good fortune, but deep down they believe they deserve it more.

Watching the British Open this past weekend renewed my faith. We got to see how people really root for a guy who deserves to win.

When Ireland's Darren Clarke, a 42 year old long-time professional golfer who had never won a major, raised his hands in victory? The entire golf world gave him a standing O. Not because he was an underdog. We all love underdogs, but this isn't that kind of story. They stood in acknowledgement of Clarke's refusal to give up, on a long, winding and bumpy road through life and career.

The cold, rainy, windy weather made it all the more fitting environment for Clarke's big moment. After losing his wife Heather to cancer five years ago, some thought his considerable "talent would be lost to personal tragedy," according to one sportwriter. Yet here he stood, a slightly overweight, average looking everyman; a guy who had kept on keeping on - trying to find his greatness.

Approaching 18, on the verge of prevailing over Phil Mickelson and one of golf's new stars Dustin Johnson, and it all seemed so right. Even Mickelson, whose own wife has battled breast cancer, had his arms around the guy at the closing ceremony.

The television announcers, even the American ones, gushed; couldn't happen to a better more deserving guy, they agreed. He thanks his parents, his fiance, "someone looking down from up there;" his manager, Chubby Chandler (who apparently admonished Clarke to lose a few pounds - some kind of irony from a guy named Chubby); even the greens keepers for their hard work in maintaining a beautiful course. Frankly I can't remember ever hearing a golf champion say that. Certainly not Tiger Woods.

There's something about never giving up, and an attitude of gratitude, that makes the crowd really roar. We all intend to be that way. Clarke shows us how.

As leaders, I think it's not an unimportant question to ask...do people root for you? Because being a winner is great. But we should raise a pint of Guiness to the winner that people cheer for.

Article by Suzanne Bates- Bates Communication

Money Makeover…NZ bills to get facelift

It’s been more than a decade since NZ has given our banknotes a little makeover. The National Reserve Bank has announced their plans for the revamp after conducting research in 2010.

On the whole, it was found that NZ consumers and businesses were happy with the current notes. This will mean the key elements of the notes will remain the same; however, new notes will also have added security feature.

New Zealand Governor Alan Bollard has confirmed the changes. ''We will not be making significant changes to the overall theme of the notes themselves,'' Dr Bollard said. ''This includes continuing to use the five respected individuals currently depicted on our notes.''

In 1999 we saw the notes switch from a traditional paper made cotton notes to the longer lasting, harder to forge polymer propylene made notes. Despite the material swap a decade ago and the soon to come “refresh” of the notes, we will still see the same familiar faces of Queen Elizabeth, Sir Edmund Hillary, Sir Apirana Ngata, Kate Sheppard and Lord Rutherford.

The new notes, which will be introduced in late 2014 will feature a slightly older Queen on the $20 bill. The illustration above gives a teaser of what Queen Elizabeth's makeover on the $20 bill might look like.

Air NZ’s gotta good rep…thanks to sets and reps?

We’d like to think it’s purely because of the quirky in-flight videos with Richard Simmons, but Air New Zealand pulled a first place rank in the Corporate Reputation Index. This means Air NZ has the country’s number one reputation on the corporate side of things.

Research Company AMR and the Reputation Institute compiled data for the second year in a row to determine which of our country’s 25 biggest companies made the index. The list will show household company names, including The New Zealand Post, which topped the list last year.

Companies were ranked according to seven different criteria, including: products, governance, innovation, workplace, leadership, citizenship and financial performance. Inventory of leg warmers, sparkling outfits and incredible aerobics moves were not part of the ranking criteria. Gutted.

Here’s a list of the top 25 companies when it comes to Corporate Reputation Index.
1. Air New Zealand

2. New Zealand Post

3. Fisher & Paykel

4. ASB

5. HJ Heinz

6. The Warehouse

7. Goodman Fielder

8. Foodstuffs

9. Shell NZ

10. ZESPRI

11. Fletcher Building

12. Harvey Norman

13. Fulton Hogan

14. Sky Network Television

15. Vodafone

16. Bank of NZ

17. Woolworths/Progressive Enterprises
18. ANZ Bank

19. Westpac

20. Fonterra Co-operative

21. SkyCity

22. Chevron NZ

23. BP New Zealand

24. Telecom NZ

25. Exxon Mobil

Kiwis voted as most generous people

Well we already know how dashingly good-looking, considerate and wonderful we Kiwis are…but did you know that we us Kiwis have been rated as some of the most generous people in the world?

We were rated according to how much time and money we gave and devoted to charities. According to Dennis McKinlay from UNICEF, one fourth of New Zealanders donate their time and money to support developing countries.

Looks like it was quite a decent chunk of time and quite a few pretty pennies. We share the ranks of awesomely generous people with that Aussies as the top givers in the global index.

We should take a moment to pat ourselves on the back and keep up the giving. Keep being givers and make a big difference on the global scale.

Treble Cone Opening day video, finally!

If you missed it, you missed out! This video edit will leave you totally gutted if you couldn’t make it up for the freshies. For those of you powder hounds that did make it up, take a peak and you might see yourself ripping some lines down the untouched awesomeness! This video will leave you frothing, literally.

Opening Day 2011! from Treble Cone on Vimeo.

People waited in lines to charge the white stuff on TC this week. Opening Day conditions were PRISTINE with bluebird skys and an excess of smiles all around. Locals of Wanaka were claiming this was the best day they have EVER had. Looks like all that waiting was worth it!

O for Olympics!

It’s official! The 2014 Olympics in Sochi will be hosting two new events, men and women’s slopestyle events for BOTH skiing and snowboarding. AHH!! This is big news for New Zealand skiers, boarders and snow industry as a whole.

The International Olympic Committee met in South Africa and approved snowboard slopestyle and free-style skiing for the big games. This move has been in the cards since 1998 when the halfpipe made it’s Olympic debut.

This is BIG news for New Zealanders. Why? Because we’ve got the talent to fill the podium. New Zealand ladies Rebecca Torr, Shelly Gottlieb and Stefi Luxton are top internationally competing women on the snow. Wanaka’s hometown hero, freeskier and 2010 Overall World Champion Jossi Wells has plans to go for the gold in both halfpipe and slopestyle.

No doubt all this talent will bring eyes to New Zealand skiing and snowboarding. Good things for tourism and possibly put NZ on map for future winter Olympics???

Young money: Kiwi Gen Ys’ financially savvy after recession

A recent study has found that it’s the younger kiwi folks who’ve got the brains when it comes to financial technologies and here’s this big surprise. ..responsibility? Are you scratching your head over this news?

A survey by AMP-Colmar Brunton has found that Generation Y New Zealanders (aged 18-29) were becoming savvier in their use of savings accounts and KiwiSaver, but still struggled to understand interest rates. Honestly, don’t we all though?

After the economic recession, younger people are shying away from credit cards, sighting their availability and desire to be cautious when it came to making payments. Two-thirds of Gen Ys do not have a credit card versus the 14% of 30-44 year olds.

They are savers too. The survey also found that a big chunk (one third) of the young polled New Zealanders actually make regular deposits into a savings account. Could it be a generation brought up on money managing technologies has an interest in actually managing it?

Lights, camera, Spotlight…Check out our new partner

We’re pretty excited to give you the run-down on our latest client, Spotlight Reporting. Basically, Spotlight provides awesome, easy to use financial support for your personal finances or your business.

Have a wizard do your importing for you. Xero has an easy-import tool, which uses Spotlight’s Wizard. Quick. Easy. The wizard, shall we call him Merlin… will import your client data from Xero securely. The Spotlight Reporting interface then allows you to amend and sort the Xero data and to add non-financial data too. Simple and Sweet. Thanks Merlin.

Customize your ride. Business ride that is. Spotlight has a hefty bag of tricks and templates for start-ups, micro businesses all the way up to advanced options for high-growth and larger organisations. Customisation options are extensive – add or amend data, report pages, charts, advisor commentary and more. They’re tried, tested and have been for years. The kind of thing you like to hear.

Share the love. Spotlight reports are made to be shared. Whether you are discussing performance with a business owner, Board or CFO, Spotlight Reporting allows you to present via PDF, email or online. That’s one last thing to make your life easier.

You get your own wizard; a customized ride and you get to share the love. Like we said, they’re awesome and they’re with us.

Are you scrimpin?

Kiwis continue to be the trans-Tasman poor cousins come retirement. While Australians' retirement savings are building into substantial sums, Kiwis are either dithering over whether to join KiwiSaver or simply not saving enough.

At current rates, many Kiwis will have just a few thousand dollars a year over their New Zealand superannuation, which won't fund the lifestyle many are anticipating.

Changes to KiwiSaver in the May Budget, with employers contributing more, are likely to see KiwiSaver pots increase. Even so, financial advisers say it may not be enough.

Research by the Retirement Commission found once owner-occupied property was excluded, people were saving on average 5 per cent of their gross income. Australians are estimated to have on average more than A$56,000 ($72,000) of superannuation funds, whereas New Zealanders have about $5500 each in KiwiSaver.

Australian employers pay 9 per cent of employees' wages into super funds.
"Most [Kiwi] people cross their fingers and hope by the time they get to retirement it is enough,"…

Read the full article at… http://tiny.cc/hgn29

Slow motion stampede!

You might have been in a hurry this weekend, but about 150 New Yorker turtles were defiantly not.

At about 6:45 Wednesday, officials at Kennedy Airport in New York scratched their heads as the slow and steady stampede made their way onto the runways.

According to aviation officials, the turtles were in search of beaches to lay their eggs. The turtles may not have caught their flights but they did catch a friendly ride to nearby beaches, courtesy of JFK transport trucks. There were so many shelled guys out on several runways to cause a dozen delays.

Apparently, Kennedy airport is built at the edge of Jamaica Bay, a federally protected par. The annual migration of diamondback terrapin turtles only last a couple days but it’s still quite funny.

Luckily there were no reports of turtles damaging any planes at JFK; however, "We hope for faster animals next time," JetBlue said in a statement.

We’re not sure if slow and steady wins against a Boeing but we give mad props to the slow motion stampede.

Do the 5-step savings shuffle....

We need to make a change in our savings habits…quick. Consider our economy. It’s seen better days. Our national treasury is predicting that by 2015, our foreign liabilities will shoot up from a current 78.6% to over 85%. Not good.

We Kiwis have always been a proud type. It’s a no-brainer that “keeping it local” works in our favor. Here’s what could help us out. It’s as simple as savings.

Our national savings is low. Lowwww. Because this rate is basically sleeping on the floor, our country must offer very high interest rates to balance out this debt. In turn, this keeps the national exchange rate high. The ultimate outcome is that we cannot get our amazing exports out there on an international market at a competitive and profitable rate.

This leaves us stuck. But as the can-do culture we are, here are some ways we can help improve our national savings jar…

* Step 1: Keep it local. Seriously. If we want to keep the money in NZ we have to stop throwing money at the imported stuff. Try switching to locally made goods.

* Step 2: Pay it back. Chip in a little of your savings to repay any existing bank debt. The less you owe, the less the bank owes. This means less need for banks to borrow dollars from overseas.

* Step 3: Be a neighbour. If you can, try to use and work with locally owned businesses. If we employ the Kiwis we get to keep the salaries in NZ and not off to foreign owners off in Timbuktu.

* Step 4: Shuffle and save. Open a savings account and save with a NZ bank. This will reduce foreign borrowing and make a big difference in our national savings.

* Step 5: Ex your exes. For those of you investing in NZ businesses, thank you. To make a difference, research and make sure you are investing in a business that exports; is a direct competitor to imports and a business that pays their local employees well.

It’s a 5-step, so save, save, save New Zealand!

New Zealanders on a winning world stage

Next week Mark Elliot and Michael Sidey (now a local in Wanaka) are presenting an informative and entertaining evening at the Lake Hawea Community Centre to raise money for the new proposed Community Centre. The night will be MC-ed by local radio Host Ed Taylor.

Mark will be presenting a number of topics based on my last 12 years in HP sport, his observations from the athletes and people he has met along the way including his work with the AUT ICEHOUSE strategic business programme.

The evening will including an overview of how World class Athletes apply themselves to win on the Worlds Stage, attributes they live by, how this relates to both sport and business success, and how we can all apply that to our own personal and business challenges.

With Michaels extensive experience with Forsyth Barr he will be focussing on the opportunity and growth of the Dunedin Stadium and his wide ranging knowledge across his business and sporting interests.

Tickets are limited so drop a call to Sheryl on 03 4432524 or pop into Racers Edge to pick them up.