Kristin Savage

There is a school of thought that sports facilities are cheaper to maintain than hospital beds. Olympian John Walker has recently launched a great new initiative in south Auckland based around sport.

“Mr Walker acknowledged high obesity rates among children due to the lack of exercise…”

John Walker, Olympic Gold Medallist.

The current Government are also concerned about the obesity problem. Perhaps even those not on a sports field will cease to be at risk of obesity due to petrol now costing $2 per litre. Shortly everyone will be walking or biking to work.

But beware if you walk to work via alleyway! This might be a common occurrence for the first few weeks:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_83ceKXbK4

A short while ago I wrote a post called want wins. It was nice to come across bullet point #13 on this list today.

Need v want.

And the winner is …. want, most of the time:

• Some people NEED to lose weight, but they WANT to eat chocolate

• Homeowners NEED to reduce their mortgages but they WANT to buy that thing

• The All Blacks NEED to take drop goals but they WANT to score tries

• Alan Bollard NEEDS to reduce the OCR but WANTS to keep his job

• Dr Cullen NEEDS to calm down but he WANTS to be re-elected

• Sellers NEED to let the auction run to get the best price but they WANT a quick sale.

• Tradesmen NEED a to market themselves better, but they don’t WANT to spend time on the internet.

• Real Estate agents NEED to admit ‘the times they are a changing’ but they WANT 2005 back again.

Maybe business needs wants to focus more on the want element?

Roger Kerr recently wrote an article about the productivity statistics released for New Zealand.

It’s not looking great. Especially when viewing the graphs on page 4.

Small talk/cliches such as the following probably don’t help:

” Don’t work too hard”

“Take it easy”

“Whatever happens happens”

Here’s some popular blogs about productivity, as found on reddit, just in case you’ve got some …spare time.

Being someone who constantly has ideas entering my mind, I need a filter.

A close friend of mine quoted a fellow start-up founder he’d been speaking with:

“I like to succeed quickly, and fail quickly, because it’s cheaper either way.”

With this in mind, I’m in the process of developing a semi-formal idea filter ready for when inspiration comes. It’ll help remove unnecessary head noise. I’m talking early idea conception, not so much the business planning stage, of which there are already helpful tools.

The filter currently includes:

1. Is it an idea that will need to rely on a heavy sales pitch? If so it probably already has competition.
2. Does it have a viable market? Unless it’s art or a hobby, it’ll need to be financially viable.
3. Will new technology deem it obsolete when the sun sets? (sunset tech-industries have a closer horizon)
4. Do I care enough about the space I’ll be getting into to get through the hard times?
5. Will anyone join me? What resources will i need other than my own?
6. Is the problem i’m solving real or just my obscure problem?

Of course there are hundreds more, this is a nice brief start.

I’ll be continually adding to the filter. On that note this helpful post just came along.

Please feel free to add suggestions yourself.

All ideas about ideas and idea filters aside, even if one gets through the filter, it’s a hard road executing.

Popping down to the dairy for milk, eggs, bread or other ‘ingredients’ usually purchased at the supermarket used to feel to me like a lazy option. Now i’m thinking it’s not so lazy.

I ‘popped down’ to the dairy quite abit last weekend due to time pressures and it got me thinking. Am I being lazy or economical?

Obviously bulk shopping at a supermarket is still a good economic idea. But let’s look at the quick trip for one or two things a little tiny bit closer. If i’d driven to the supermarket, the $1-2 margin added by the dairy would probably have been lost in driving costs. Actually, let’s do the sums (on fingers and thumbs):

2 Litre Milk

Supermarket $3.80

Dairy $4.50

Saving $0.70

So, estimating that a trip to the supermarket would be a drive of between 1-2 kms for most folk, at the estimated rate of $0.50 per km overall to run a vehicle, that is a saving of $-0.30. This doesn’t count the return trip in the car and it doesn’t include any real factual basis. Rather, broad guesstimates. But hold on, supermarket petrol vouchers to the rescue! There’s how you get some of your $0.30 back. Maybe the petrol voucher could even be ‘counted’ as another item on your shopping list to justify the trip all the way there. I’ve never used one of the ‘petrol voucher/3 cents off per litre’ thingees, and don’t intend on doing so anytime soon. But some folk must use them. All that receipt paper used to print them must be evidence of demand.

Anyway, back to planet earth. If you have one or two things missing from your cupboard and need them asap, I would venture to say that the economic benefit of driving the further distance (for most people) would be minimal, if not extinct.

It’s kinda like the time I was on a surf trip in Fiji on a student budget in the late 90’s. I’d bought a coke from the store shack some 300m from the resort in 30 degree+ heat (cost approx NZ$1.00). Upon return to the poolside I asked a mate “…you bought a coke from the bar, that’s like $2.00 more expensive.” To which he replied from the comfort of his deck chair: “Yeah, but it’s a $1.00 walk!”

One of these for tagging would be good!

OK, the cost would pale in comparison with the War in Iraq, but i’m sure it would still be enough to motivate Michael Cullen to do something, given his desire to save cash.

Frustrated about tagging and want to get something off your chest? You could email your thoughts here. I doubt however that the taggers will be reading.

I heard a suggestion a while ago to chop taggers index fingers off. One chance, then second time… CUT! That wouldn’t just prevent tagging, it could make it an impossibility.

It sounds really obvious, but i’ve vocabularised for myself why owning is better more secure than renting (a house) in the long term.

Look at the cost of both renting & repayments.

e.g.

The Homeowner: Grovels to save a deposit for who knows how long, finds a house, pays rates, insurance etc, makes weekly repayments of, let’s say $500 per week.

The Renter: Chooses a place, moves in, pays $400 per week, no rates or house insurance to worry about.

Here’s the thing… The Homeowner purchases not just a house, but the right to the security of having ever-lessening repayments each week year. The renter forgoes that security, and whilst paying less now, is at the mercy of rent increases and supply of good rentals forever!

I really don’t care either way…. it’s an old fashioned kiwi cliche the whole “get into a house mate”. Just had a moment of clarity about how it all works.

… So it’s a smaller slice, but it’s a bigger pie, and a real pie. It’s also most likely that there’ll be things you can do better than most of the current providers of the ‘old product idea’.

Rowan Simpson made some thought provoking comments a while ago in this post about the need to solve a problem, rather than just doing ’something’.

I’ve learnt that Innovation for the sake of innovation won’t take you anywhere without a market. I also learnt from this post that the importance of a market is paramount. Product and team are sideshows.

• Innovation applied well: Where something with a different angle solves a problem; supply then meets demand, and there you have your market.

• Innovation applied badly: Where something is flash but unwanted. Supply is there but not demand. What use are underpants with rockets when they burn your bum? Who cares if they’re innovative.

Ahh, the bigger pie.

A friend who is currently staying with us put me onto this 2008 election year gimmick.

Cameron Brewer, a guy from Auckland has set himself up as Charles Ashe MP, showing a day in the life of an MP in election year. Pretty funny. Check it out here. Looks pretty authentic. Apparently he used to be Jenny Shipley and John Banks’ media spin doctors/PR secretary.

;^)