Author Archives: sambarclay1970

This article should not be controversial, but seems to be. For some reason this is the one people want to engage with me about. But I stand by it – for MOST New Zealand growth businesses, Australia will use up more valuable time and capital than it is actually worth in revenue or valuation. SoContinue reading “Everything in Australia is Trying To Kill You (Not Just the Spiders)”

Every kiwi business person who has done business in the US has a hiring story.   And not one of the good ones. The most consistently made mistake in the US market is hiring the wrong people.  Why? I have a theory (from 20 years of living in the US) that Americans – and in particularContinue reading “Hire Locally. Don’t Screw it Up.”

In a previous post I discussed the mistake of trying to be too many things to too many people.  American business, by and large, is about standardization and scale – think McDonalds or Walmart.  Business trends towards customization and personalization are never allowed to get in the way of scale and the powerful leverage thatContinue reading “Yeah Definitely!”

OK we’re all in survival mode right now, and

New Zealand businesses – particularly high growth businesses – routinely sell for less than they are really worth.   There are a number of reasons for this: for instance the use of historical financial metrics (like revenue multiples) often doesn’t help New Zealand businesses because of our naturally smaller market and revenues.  You may have builtContinue reading “Start With the End to Get to the Beginning”

I speak often with Kiwi entrepreneurs about their US strategy.  I ask how they decided on the customers that they have, and the markets they serve.   The answer is almost always something like ‘I got a call from a potential customer in x…..’   If you answered this way, then your customer chose you, you didn’tContinue reading “Opportunism is Not Strategy”

In the previous post, I was at pains to point out that some New Zealanders think of the US as a single market.  That is a mistake – but there are circumstances where geography is important.   This post is, therefore, a more ‘practical’ one in that we will discuss some do’s and don’ts for determiningContinue reading “Geography is Not Destiny”