 All right, let's talk about business this week. If you don't know, I have owned multiple businesses in the US and multiple businesses in New Zealand. So today we're going to talk about the differences. I'm going to overview my businesses and some of my thoughts on the differences. You're not going to want to miss this. It might take more than one video to go through all of this. So make sure you subscribe so you don't miss all of that. Here we go. Are you moving or traveling to New Zealand? Well, I have a resource for you that is going to be so helpful. I know that journey. I have done it firsthand. I've even done it twice. I understand what you're going through. It's so exciting, but so daunting at the same time. You have so many questions and have no idea exactly what to do about different situations, especially if you've never even been to this country. And so this resource is something that I have created. It's called the New Zealand training hub. And what it includes is video training on how to set up life here, understanding the culture, understanding how things work here. And so it gives you like that headstart. So if you're a planner or someone that like kind of, there's enough new things that it would be nice to just understand how to do things in a new country. So if you are that person, this training hub is for you. Not only does it do all of those videos, but it has a community built in. So when you join the training hub, you get access to the community of people on the same journey as you. These people could be like your best friends and they probably will because all of us have made a friend when we first moved here that we're kind of going through the same thing. And that's who we learned everything from, but they also didn't have someone like me helping them out with some video training. And in addition to that, you will have access to me every month. I'll do a live Q&A just to answer any questions that might not get answered in the training hub. You can also request additional trainings. There's really no reason to not check this out. So why does it make sense for an American to be talking about what life is like in New Zealand? Well, let me tell you why, because a New Zealander knows no different. And so it needs to be someone who has come into the culture and saying, Oh, this is different. Now, I don't know everything. I only know my own experience, but I am a really good resource to say, Hey, this is how they do this here. This is probably not how they do this in your country. Or maybe it's different. And so you really need that outside person that knows the differences. So if you're moving or traveling to New Zealand, this training hub is for you. Check it out. Let's talk about business today. I am very excited. And this is a much requested video topic. And so I am going to cover a couple things today. We are going to talk about the businesses that I own in the US and New Zealand, and then a couple of my thoughts on those. If you don't know, I've mainly been a professor. So you may be surprised that I have had so many businesses, but I just have a lot of interests. What can I say? So I have been teaching for the last 25 years, often on whether it's full time or part time. But in the meantime, I have also started businesses and side things and whatever you want to call it. And so we're going to talk about those today. So the first, let's first let's talk about US businesses. And so my business is in the US over the last decade. Oh, actually, maybe a little bit more than that. Gosh, you just get older and it goes so quick. Anyway, so I have owned multiple businesses. The first one I'll talk about is I've owned a construction company for three years. I owned it with my husband and some of his brothers. And then we eventually grew and had a crew, I would say less than 10 people total. When I think about it, we had an office and we were doing mainly home improvement type stuff. But then by the end, we had built a new house. And so that was a good learning experience. And so I'll talk about that more later. But yeah, so all different industries kind of crazy. I'm just interested in creating and process. I just love business in general. But my second business that I started was my Amazon business. And it's at amazon.com. So in the US. And so basically, I have a like a products business. So I outsource them. I find I figure out what it is that I want to sell based on like demand. And is there a missing piece in the market or designing something a little bit different. And I find a manufacturer generally in China, which I've had huge success with. I've had really no complaints. Communication has been good and the quality of the stuff. Now I know like there's typical made in China and it's not nice, but not everything is like that. And so in fact, some of the products that I sell the US, I have tried to work with US manufacturers and they're just quality is inferior, to be honest. So that changes things. And so basically what I do is I find a product, I manufacture a product, I brand package and then sell it on Amazon. Now I've had products that have been successful. I've had products that have not been successful. And so right now I'm selling about three products on there because I don't spend a lot of time on it, but certain ones just do really well. And so that's what I've kept up doing. And so I've really enjoyed that I'm still running that business. This is probably my for my fifth year running this business. And it's been profitable since year two, not like significant profit. But by year five or so like this year, it'll be significant last year was significant, significantly better for the amount of time I've put in. So basically the way that Amazon works is so nice because they take care of everything, everything like customer service, inventory, like holding your inventory, shipping, all of that, all of that, all of the crap that you don't want to do when you're selling a product space business. So that's really nice, but it obviously has its cons. Like you have to kind of fit within what Amazon will allow you to do. And frankly, that changes a lot. And I can tell you all the pros and cons of working with Amazon. But at the end of the day, I put in this year, I've put in more time. But in general, like when it can be very passive, like 40 hours a year that I put in and I'm making money doing it. So overall, that's why I probably keep doing it. Okay. And so then another business that I've had in the US was a organic skincare line. And I started this with my friend because she created this formula that was amazing that actually helped people with eczema like significantly. And some of my kids had that. And so I'm like, let's create it, let's bottle it. And so we sold it in some local stores and then we sold it on Amazon. But as it was growing, all regulations with any sort of product like that, any sort of lotions, or we had like this organic bug spray, that was really nice. And so we sold at local markets, but like in order to take the next step in terms of getting approvals by all, you know, all these organizations and all the things that you had to go, the amount of money that you would have to pour in in order to continue that was not something we were willing to do. And then because you might not get approval, and you have to go through this whole process, and it's just not something that a small business owner could actually do. It was quite a bit of money. And so, and I was moving back to New Zealand and so that didn't really work out. I believe she still sells it in the local stores and at some local markets, but that's the frustrating thing about some businesses in the U.S. There's high regulation on things. And in one sense, that's good. Like I understand why they have it, but there's just, there's a lot of barriers to entrance. Let's just say that. So those are my U.S.-based businesses that I've had. I've also owned real estate, did some house flipping, all was actually quite successful doing that. And so, and those were all done probably in my late twenties and thirties really. And so I kind of look at that time as, you know, you're just kind of getting out there and trying. And it isn't, you need to try. You cannot learn everything at school. You can't learn, especially in business. Now, you need to like go out and do it. And then what you need to do is take all the lessons you've learned, because you're going to make lots and lots of mistakes. And then you need to keep going. Like the worst thing you can do is stop, right? Because you've just learned all this. And now you can do it better and you can improve on it. And so when I moved to New Zealand, I have been teaching for quite a few years here and just started to get that bug again, if you will. And so I have three businesses here as well that have all started quite recently. So you guys will be most familiar with my personal brand here with my YouTube channel and my TikTok if you follow me there. So this business is like a personal brand. And so I have it set up as a sole trader. And it's doing really well. You know, I've just started my training hub. If you're not familiar with that, if you're moving here, you're going to want to check this out. I have, you know, lots of brand deals that I work with for all of my platforms. And I'm just kind of growing and kind of figuring out, I'm really only interested in providing people with things that are helpful. And you'll see this quite consistently in the way that I do things. So even when I teach, I'm a practice, I teach communication and marketing. And I teach very practical things. I'm not interested in theory. I'm not a theory based person. I'm like, let's figure out how we can do this better. Let's teach you so that you can improve. And so that's generally I'm a, I'm a very much of that kind of person in the way that I think about things. And so you'll see that in my other business. So another business that I have is called growremarkable.com and it is a digital marketing coaching business that I started with a another marketing friend of mine who lives in New Zealand, but she is originally from Finland and is in Finland right now. So I'm very excited about this. This business has been doing really well. It just started last year and basically we coach businesses and small, large, you know, whatever size businesses you have, but generally smaller ones on how to get your company, your product, your service out in front of the right customers, how to just engage in digital, whether it's on TikTok and short form video or YouTube videos or just social media in general. And it's really great because it's all built on kind of my philosophy around it, you know. So when it comes to marketing, it is not an exact science and you're going to hear lots of different ways of doing things. And so what we believe the way to do things is to coach businesses to do it themselves, whether that's the actual business owner or somebody that works with them, their team and just really showing them because the realities of where social media, for example, is moving is it's very authentic based and you cannot have an outside person creating that for you. Now, so what we do is we kind of come beside you and we just show you how to do it, have you do it, you know, evaluate what's working and, you know, kind of hold your hand really until you're comfortable doing it on your own. And, you know, we'll help you, we'll create things like look at it this way. And because if you're a business owner, that doesn't mean you care about marketing or want to do marketing, right? And so there's all different things that we offer. One of the best things that we offer currently is a social media marketing course. And what we offer in that is something that nobody else is offering because like I said, I tend to do things that nobody else is doing and that I really feel that there's a need in the market. So this is what happens. So a business decides, hey, we need to be better at social media marketing. So they take a course learning it without doing it gives you nothing. And so what we did is we teamed up with a company in the US actually who does a simulation and they actually have a real company with real numbers, real products. And so like we'll teach you Facebook ads and then you practice doing it. We'll teach you organic posts and then you practice doing it and getting real numbers analytics saying, did that work well? Why didn't this work well? What could you tweak next time? So that when you're actually done with the class, you can actually go and be successful in marketing and having actual experience because just learning about it and concept and in practice are totally different. I mean, I have been teaching marketing forever and like you can write an amazing marketing plan, but that doesn't mean it's going to work, right? And so so yeah, hence the simulation, we have another course starting near the mid to end August. If you're interested, so you can check that out. I don't know if any of these, I'm not trying to promote my businesses. I'm just trying to tell you what's going on. And if you're interested, I have a course with love, anybody in my community to be one of my customers in another area. If that makes sense for you, our courses are available around the world. You're not limited to New Zealand. Anybody can take them and anybody can be coached by us. We do one-on-one coaching. We do group coaching and we also work with the regional business council. So hit me up if that's interesting to you and I can help you with that. And then my third business in New Zealand is a consult, a communication called consulting firm that I started with my research partner. And we did some research around how to communicate better online. So again, another area of all of a sudden we're in COVID, everybody has to meet online. Everybody has to take school online and like, and people are struggling while let's figure out how we can do this better. So we've done research, we found some actual ways to do it better. In fact, my business partner has implemented them in all his teaching right now. I'm not teaching right now and 100% completion rates in his online courses teaching really boring courses like statistics. Because the way that you do it online is very different. The way that you teach online is very different than how you do it face to face. And so we offer a free course on that. I will link that below if you're interested. If you're a teacher and that's helpful to you, you might as well do that it's free. And so we also meet with schools or if they want us to do a training with all the teachers and say, Hey, you know, and then we can kind of customize it to what you're going on and just showing what our research shows and like some practical ways and implementing that. So as you can see, like very practical. So that's, I know that was a lot actually that was quite long on all of the businesses that I've been. But now you know. All right, let's talk about the differences. And so in this video, I'm not going to go into like the numbers game because I can get a bit boring. I'm going to just go through some overview, some obvious differences in running a business in New Zealand compared to the US. So the first thing I'm going to say is that you can just tell when you come to New Zealand that they value small business. It's everywhere. Every town has all sorts of different businesses. There's not a lot of chains. So there's not like big conglomerates that own huge amounts of businesses. And so yeah, it's noticeably different. I would say it was pretty easy for me to just kind of dive in and do things. Like it's encouraged through the programs, through the grant systems, through all the different government support. It's encouraged. Whereas in the US, I don't think that small businesses necessarily discouraged. I would say that there are just a lot of barriers to entry that you don't have here. And so it's a bigger place and there's just a lot more competition. Like you guys don't understand a New Zealand competition. Let's just start there. So it is different. But I would just say that you definitely felt like everywhere I turned, I was charged more money, taxed on this, need extra insurance for that. And you know, and it could just be the industries I'm in. I'm only talking about my experiences. So I'm happy for you guys to share yours. And I don't know everything. And I haven't been in every situation. But like, man, it was yeah, it's, it's, it was difficult. It was difficult to make money as a small business following the rules in the US. And so I built my construction business on being that person that has integrity, that company that you can trust, that we weren't going to be those contractors that run out on you. And the interesting thing to note that I learned through that business was that it wasn't the contractors that were the problem. It was the customers. I was shocked at how awful people were. We would do all this extra work. And then they just wouldn't pay you. Or you would, you know, send an invoice and they'll just pay half. I had a customer who was so difficult him and his wife were through going through a horrible divorce. And so, you know, they had their reasons. And we were trying to build like, it wasn't a small project. It was like a whole home extension. And they ended up suing us because they're saying that we didn't communicate about this. But let me tell you, communication was really difficult. And I'm a communications professor, you know, like you say it to him and then she doesn't hear it. And then he, she gets upset. And anyway, decisions are made with her. And then anyway, it had really honestly nothing to do with me. But then like the threat of something like that on your small business is huge. And then you have to get a lawyer and you have no money for that. And the way that the laws work is just, I'm just telling you, there is a lot counting against you in the US that made it very hard to be successful. Number two, let's talk about the ease of setting up a business. I would say between New Zealand and the US equally as easy. We had, I had all LLCs in the US, which is limited liability companies. So basically, I don't have to pay like necessarily a whole extra tax thing. I could pay through my own personal taxes, but all my personal assets were protected through my LLC. Anyway, so it was pretty easy. It was like a hundred bucks took an hour to set up. Same here, about an hour to set up 200 some dollars New Zealand dollars. And yeah, it was easy. We have a limited partnership in one of my businesses. I have a sold trade or ship and another one. And the other one is US based. I just keep it there. So yeah, but it's easy to sign up either way. It doesn't matter. So it's easy to start. It's just what comes after that that matters, I guess. Number three, the third thing I'd like to mention that the big difference is two things I think that are huge barriers in the US to be successful as a small business is taxes, the tax system and the suing culture. So when you have a suing culture, you have to have a lot of extra insurance. Now try to throw in a construction company in there and you've got a lot of extra expenses just in case this happens and just in case that happens and blah, blah, blah and yeah, Uber expensive. Okay. And then the tax system is very difficult to understand always threatening and difficult. Like I have a CPA now who is familiar with both New Zealand law and the US law is very, very good. And if you need a reference for that, let me know because they are really good. And they, it's just frustrating. It's just like they're like set up your businesses in New Zealand if you can, you know, and there's, you know, I don't know all of the accounting reasons for that. I'm pretty familiar with tax law and so I understand but like, yeah, like basically I actually had one accountant say to me, who are you more afraid of the IRS or the IRD? And like literally that's how you're making decisions because the tax law is very complicated and you know, and it's changing, you know, as it should, but yeah, definitely kind of out to get you kind of feeling and that you have to do everything correctly or, you know, you're gonna get a huge bill and then it takes, you know, like I've had that $20,000 bill because I checked the box wrong and it took me a year and a half to get that off my record and I didn't owe it. But it's just like, so it's just like a whole added level of stress and tax and fines if you're late into that, you know, and so that's a huge thing. I won't say too much more about that. And then the suing culture, like, yeah, so the insurance and then just all these things that could come up and you're like, what? Like, I'm like the nice guy trying to do the right thing out there and I just couldn't believe how much trouble I ran into. Now, with that being said, I had some customers that were absolutely amazing. And so, but then I would say though, the majority were very difficult and sketchy at best. And so just not impressed. Like, that's the reason I went into education anyway from the business world originally because it's just just like the business world was too sketchy. And I didn't really love that. So I thought it could be different if I just ran my own. But, you know, you're still falling under those laws. And then if you are unwilling to be unethical and have and continue to have integrity and want to sleep at night, then you can't be successful because everybody else is cheating. So that was my experience. I would love to hear a better one. I didn't have that experience with all of mine. But, you know, that, yeah, they the lotion company was fine. It was just again, we hit regulation, we hit rules, we hit I had to invest $30,000 to go through this testing. And then, you know, and then if it passes anyway, it's unaffordable for a small business. And then number four, last comment that I'm going to make is there's just a lot more red tape in the U.S. And you kind of have to when you have so many people and processes become more difficult and doing things become more difficult. And it's just a little bit intimidating, you know, whereas in New Zealand, it's not intimidating. It's great if you just want to start something you can and everybody encourages you to do that. It isn't, you know, you go to the paperwork and then do this and everybody's like, well, have you thought about this or did you know this and everybody has their horror stories and, you know, there's just a lot of red tape, like a lot of details that you have to take care of and, you know, and if you don't know, then they find you. And yeah, so all of that is just people are like, I'm not going to do it. And so this is why, like buying a franchise is very appealing, if you will, because all that's kind of taken care of, even though anyway, I have different thoughts about that are like multi-level marketing companies are very popular. And that's because this is so much that you have to know, or you get taken advantage of. Whereas generally the attitude in New Zealand is going to be very reasonable. People are going to be like, no worries, if you didn't do something right, they'll help you and they'll fix it out. It won't destroy you. You won't go bankrupt on it. And so that's kind of the difference. And for me and my experience, so Amazon has been fine. I have run some other things that have been successful and that was fine. And that was all, yeah, it all depends on a lot of rules. And so the rules change and can drastically affect your business. And I think that that's true in both both cultures. Anyway, I hope you enjoyed the video today. I know it really long, but please take a moment and comment below and let me know your experience in business, whether it's in New Zealand or the US, I would love to hear it and share stories and learn from each other because it's just a great learning experience. And I had to learn that the hard way because I'm a firstborn and so I don't like to make mistakes and I don't like to lose. But what you learn in business is that you're going to make mistakes. You're going to make a lot of mistakes. And that those mistakes and that learning is just like another expensive education and that you just can't get without trying. So if you're thinking about starting a business in New Zealand or the US, I personally think you should. I'm not trying to deter you. I'm just literally talking about what I know and really nothing more. But like, you should try it. I mean, that was, there's no better time. Like you can literally start a YouTube channel for free, if that's of interest to you. You can literally do so many things on the internet so easily. If it's interest to you, I highly recommend you only doing things that are you are interested in you're passionate about because it's a lot of time and it's a lot of talking about it if you don't love it. But anyway, I hope you feel encouraged. I'll see you guys next week.