A blog for startups and small businesses

Tax is actually a relatively simple thing to work out, once you know what you’re doing. It can be easy to put it off when you don’t know what’s required or you’re unsure of how to set yourself up to make the process easier.  This article sets out what you need to know to stop […]

Most people think that if they make a good product and put it out into the world, customers will automatically roll in. It generally doesn’t work like this, even with a great product. Because getting someone to buy something new requires a change of behaviour and people are resistant to change, especially for a new […]

Effectively running meetings is an important skill for business leaders, but much too often meetings can miss the mark. A good meeting creates a space for important discussions to be had to get the right people on the same page in order to collect information, make decisions and strengthen relationships. From the perspective of a […]

Creating compelling copy for your business, and it’s products is a critical part of your selling strategy. What you say about yourself plays a major role in how your customers perceive you. However, it’s not only what you say, but rather how you say it. Being sufficiently captivating, engaging, and descriptive could be the difference […]

Creating and implementing a social media strategy for your business can be a seriously time-consuming task. If you want to be successful on social media it’s all about meaningful content and understanding your customer, creating compelling content your audience wants to see and knowing when and where to post to reach your audience. However, this […]

This article sets out a process for how to use keyword research to improve your search engine optimisation (SEO) results. This process requires writing articles, either in blog form or another webpage form, intentionally for the purpose of having the webpage discovered by your target audience when they are searching for information on a search […]

When we think about business development, the focus tends to be on specific business functions – product development, sales, marketing, finance, planning and strategy. But what about the specific behavioural skills that tie everything together and significantly impact leaders and their team’s ability to get things done? These small invisible nuances of leadership add up […]

Frances Dickinson is an award-winning vocal coach who has worked with some of NZ’s most successful artists, including Lorde, Six60 and Theia through her vocal coaching business, Establish Music. Frances also works with business leaders to help them develop their voice. I’ve had the pleasure of learning from Frances over the past year and she’s […]

A while ago I posted a blog called, ‘If you want to be successful in business, start practising’. At the time, the message I was trying to get across was that business, like everything else in life, requires practice to become good. There is more to these words than I realised at the time. In […]

In this blog, I want to address the time and energy spent in between doing work. This time in between work can be highly valuable and productive, and it can also be highly unproductive, depending on how a person uses it. I will speak from my perspective, as I do not want to put words […]

Here are five simple principles for making something your customers love: Deeply understand what they value Have a good reason for existing Be open and honest as a company Make something that solves one of their fundamental needs or wants better than anyone else. Charge a fair price. Seems simple.

This blog post is derived from an excellent article by Paul Hammerness, MD, and Margaret Moore in the Harvard Business Review, called Train Your Brain to Focus. At the time, I was doing research on how to regain focus. The concept shared below helped to address a root cause of the lack of focus I […]

‘Brand’ is the perception of your company held by people external to it. It is created by all the touch points between your company and the outside world. This includes what people see, hear, feel, and in some cases smell (I’m thinking about Miss Higgins Cookies here). When you are starting a company, it is […]

This is a short and sweet post on principles for improving productivity. I am writing this post at a time when I have removed all distraction and minimised all other tasks that take time out of my day – travel time, cooking, life admin etc. My calendar is clear. So I have no excuse for […]

Money is available if you know where to find it, and you know how to pitch for it. Some people are good at looking for it, and getting it, and some people are not. I am someone who is not particularly good at it when it comes to my own business. I like to just […]

Convertible notes are becoming increasingly common as an instrument for startups to raise their first round of investment. The primary advantage of a convertible note over equity financing is that it doesn’t require the company to be valued at the time of issue, avoiding what can be a long and expensive process. Find out how […]

Not sure about you, but at school, I liked science class. But I didn’t like English. Science had a degree of… exactness to it. You go through a process and figure something out, with a high degree of certainty. English was much more wishy-washy and opinion based. When I was taught about the concept of […]

You don’t have to raise money to build a successful business. There are plenty of examples of big companies who haven’t, Hotjar being one of my favourites. But capital does help. So does having the backing of intelligent people who can give you good advice when it’s needed, and keep you accountable to achieve what […]

Customer discovery is a process that involves talking with the people who are your customers or could be your potential customers. When you’re beginning the process of starting a business, the aim of customer discovery is to find out the truths about: The problems people have, which you could potentially solve. This will help you […]

To be successful in business you need to become good at influencing people. This means communicating your intentions in a way that people feel compelled to take the action you want, which might be buying your product, changing their behaviour, joining your team, or just giving you the time of day to hear out your idea. […]

AIESEC is a the largest youth-led organisation in the world, providing leadership development through global internships.

We’re excited to launch our online community membership, to make it easy for you to get access to resources, support and connections to help grow your business, all the time.

The small habits and routines that you perform consistently add up to have a material impact on your life. Here are some suggestions for building an effective daily routine. We’ve broken it down into a night time ritual, morning ritual and how to organise your day. Night time ritual A productive day starts begins with […]

In this post, Taranaki-based entrepreneur, Adnan Belushi, shares his views on how New Zealand can better position itself as a global leader in innovation.         Article by Adnan Belushi, co-founder of Johnson Corner

At Mum’s Garage, we help people turn their ideas into businesses. We’ve spent a lot of time understanding the catalysts for turning someone with “just an idea”, into someone whose properly executing on the idea.  

Blog content is a great way to share your story with the world, and to add value to your target market.  “Blog posts are still the #1 asset for engaging with your audience and generating warm leads for your business.” – Neil Patel Getting into the swing of creating content is something many people struggle […]

Christine Jensen launched Fityou during our  Ideas You Can Execute Programme in 2017. Find out more about her story from idea to launch, and some of her learnings and challenges along the way. Q: What were you doing before you started the ‘Ideas You Can Execute’ programme? A: I was working part-time at a Creative […]

Here are eight indications that you should consider a career and lifestyle change, by pursuing the ideas you’ve been thinking about. We’ve also shared some of the problems that might be stopping you from getting started, and how our Ideas You Can Execute programme can help. You’ve had ideas and ambitions to start a business […]

The author of this article, Carl Thompson, is the co-founder of Contento. Previously co-founder and CMO of TradeGecko, founder of Momentum Marketing and a few other companies in between.  Over the past five years, content marketing has exploded thanks to easy promotion channels like Twitter and Facebook. Businesses could quickly knock out 500ish words, publish it on their […]

One of the hard things about starting a company is that you’re new to the world and no one knows or trusts you yet. Your target customers haven’t had enough engagement with your product and business to think about you as a solution to their problems, and they don’t have proof that you’ll deliver what […]

Part of the core value we provide at Mum’s Garage is a community, helping like-minded people connect with one another, to support each other along the business development journey.

Through our own journey of starting a business, and helping others, we know that there are a lot of stories about what success looks like that are deeply ingrained in startup and business culture. Who can start a company, what needs to be done in order to be successful, what the definition of success is, […]

  The author of this article, Carl Thompson, is the current co-founder of Contento. Previously co-founder and CMO of TradeGecko, founder of Momentum Marketing and a few other companies in between. I’m a yes person. To my detriment and I’ve only recently realised saying yes to everything can actually be damaging to my goals. I got […]

HubSpot For Startups Partnership Mum’s Garage is excited to announce the launch of its partnership with HubSpot for Startups. In our continued effort to provide founders with the essential tools for their success, we are now able to offer HubSpot’s Marketing and Sales software at a 90% scholarship for the first year — an average savings of $17,000!  HubSpot is the […]

I think everyone wants to start their own business. Why? It satisfies the highest levels of human motivation. Enter Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, the only thing I remember from my Management 101 class. If you’re not familiar with Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs, it’s a motivational theory in psychology comprising a five-tier model of human needs, […]

One of the hard things about getting started in business is the number of decisions that have to be made, what to call the company, when to quit your job, how to build or source your product, whether it’s an idea worth spending time on. There is a high degree of uncertainty and personal responsibility […]

We’re excited to announce that our programme, ‘Building a Viable Business’, is open for its first intake, which will start in the first week of April 2018. This programme is the second stage in the Startup Series and designed for founders who have validated their idea and are committed to building a high growth, high […]

Most things people do are guided by a rhythm. How we structure our days, spend our time, when we breathe, when we sleep, how we feel, our habits and routines, the list goes on. Businesses have rhythms too. These are regular activities that once perfected create a consistent output for a period of time. For example, […]

This post is to remind you of the importance of moving forward towards creating a viable business model, so you don’t run out of steam before you build something financially sustainable. I’m conscious that a lot of our blog content is focused on helping people understand what they are creating in the early stages of […]

No matter what you’re working on, learning and practice are essential for getting good. It requires practice to become a good founder, like anything else in life.

For every business, there is a core value proposition that sits at the heart of everything the business does. This value proposition drives the product, the brand, the culture, the strategy and everything in between. As a business, if you’re weak on your value proposition, everything else will be weak. You need to know what […]

You can’t be great at everything.

Society screws with aspiring entrepreneurs Most people don’t start out with the skillset and mindset required to build a successful business.

So you have a business idea and you want to kick it off, but you’re still working? We’ve put together 7 tips for starting a business when you’re still busy with work.

This article is designed to help you understand the importance of learning at least some basic code. Consider the two ‘realities’ where we spend most of our time; the physical reality (offline), and the digital reality (online).

Market Validation is the science behind an idea to business development. It requires a disciplined approach to identifying and validating assumptions, to find the answers that are as close to the truth as possible

When you understand how new ideas are formed, you can improve your ability to come up with better ones. This article covers how ideas work, what gets them flowing and 10 tips to help you improve the process. Your Brain and Ideas The left-hand side of your brain is the analytical side, where logic and […]

We recently chatted with founder Kathryn George, who has just gone through our latest CO.STARTERS cohort with her new company KG Design Consultancy.

Over the last 12 weeks we’ve been busy delivering an entrepreneurial program for the Wellington ICT Graduate School, as part of their Software Development and Professional Business Analysis Masters Program. They’ve just written a great Medium post announcing the founders who went through the program, and their products.

A highly effective digital marketing strategy is essential to the growth of your startup.  

We recently chatted with the founders of TinySkinScribbles, Zanda & Kyle, who have just gone through our latest CO.STARTERS cohort.

Techweek’17 is fast approaching (6-14 May) We’ve pulled out our top picks for startups. You can check out the entire Techweek programme here:

We’ve teamed up with Momentum Marketing to kick-off ‘I WANT GROWTH’  during Techweek’17.

Want to know what services are out there for startups in New Zealand? We’ve created an NZ-wide resource for anyone interested in what support is available.

We recently chatted with founder Cameron Stewart, founder of d-i-ply, a company offering stylish, affordable furniture kits for crafty people. Cameron completed one of our programmes to help launch his company. Q. Cameron, what does your company do? d-i-ply scours the internet for the best and most innovative parametric furniture designs, then makes them in […]

Market validation is one of the most important steps when trying to build a business, but it’s something that most people don’t do well, or don’t do at all. It’s a process that you can go through to help develop your idea into a refined concept for a product and go-to-market strategy. We’ve written a comprehensive […]

The NZ China Entrepreneurship and Innovation Forum is coming up this weekend, so we sat down with organisers Kevin and Xilu to chat about our mission at Mum’s Garage, and how people can kick-off their entrepreneurial journey.

The next MUV Talks is happening 4th April at Studio One Toi Tu in Ponsonby, and we’re privileged to have been invited along to speak. The topic for this series is Community Builders.

China has tripled it’s venture capital funds from 2013’s US$118.5 billion to 2016’s US$335.5 billion.

Crowdfunding is a very viable fund-raising alternative for startups, and recently we helped PledgeMe come up with their brand new Crowdfunding Canvas.

Starting a business is slightly overwhelming, to say the least. Although there are a tonne of great, cost-effective tools available to help you get off the ground, finding and deciding on the one that fits your needs best can become a time consuming task.

 

In late 2016, Mum’s Garage partnered with 2016 Lightning Lab Digital Programme Director, Jeff Mann of Double Shot, to deliver New Zealand’s first pre-accelerator programme called The Validator. The programme was delivered for Creative HQ leading into the Kiwibank FinTech Accelerator.

Late last year we connected with The Happy Startup School in Brighton, and loved the format of their Lean Coffee events. We’ve now been running them monthly in Auckland ever since, and are currently hosting them at our Eden Terraces offices towards the end of each month.

Our Entrepreneurs Unleashed event series has has now bought together over 150 aspiring entrepreneurs in 2016, and we’re looking forward to bringing together many more in 2017.

A couple of weeks ago our founder Natalie was invited to talk at The Fantail Network’s Mindmatter Symposium life hack sessions about the mindset behind starting a business. Following on from this event, Idealog asked me a few questions around raising investment as a female founder – a hot topic at the moment.

Earlier this year we teamed up with Carl Thompson, former co-founder of TradeGecko and currently Director of Momentum Marketing & co-founder of Bronami, to help startups solve a problem that a significant number of them seem to face – the topic of digital marketing.