Today I attended Thrive, a local wgtn event held at the Embassy Theater for local business people to go and listen to successful Kiwis who have essentially ‘made it’. Speakers included Karen Walker, Trademe founder Sam Morgan, Callum Davies founder of Hell Pizza (I remember buying ribs from his first shop in Kelburn back in the day with Scotty!!!), the CEO of NZ Post, the director of the Mc Diamond institute, the owner of L’AFFARE coffee, Doug Haines a tax guy from BDO spicers, Andrew Stone the CEO of Saatchi and Saatchi, Paul Weavr from Haines recruitment advertising company, and Tana Umaga the captain of the All Blacks. Given I’m not the worlds biggest follower of Rugby, Tana I discovered is a really nice guy and I actually believe he is good captain material – it was good to hear him say that one of their biggest weaknesses is how the board keep replacing their coaches and how it really disrupts their style each time there is a change. In a way that really sucks that there are a whole lot of pencil pushers firing coaches and thus contributing in a really major way to the shortcomings of our team.

The NZ Post guy was such an amazing speaker, he had me emotionally charged, he talked a lot about CEO’s and CEO material. Basically if you’re not interested in the business and dont have the passion for it, if you don’t like or get on with people you’ll fail as a CEO. He was awesome… and he didnt go to Uni either!!!! The Saatchi guy was the next (or equally) inspiring guy, he was talking about every sale being emotionally driven and all down to people – and by god I knew I was right!!! One thing that the NZ Post CEO said was that he has failed lots in his career but he kept on getting up and going again which is kind of how I like to think I am – gutsy like that, well maybe not gutsy but believing in yourself. Karen pimped apple big time – she has the new Nana and boy she loves it. She was saying that when Madonna wore her pants on stage she wore them because it made her ass look sexy. She couldnt give a shit about who made it. Essentaily she was saying “product” is everything. She also talked about emulation and its failures and I guess its probably true enough for the fashion industry, but she gave the example that the person wearing the sexy French top doesnt want a copy of that top they want the sexy French top – so don’t waste your time creating fake rolexes, create your own que was her message. The science dood was awesome, it was great to find out how much input we’ve had in the scientific realm – obviously there was the guy who split the atom but there have been plenty others such as one guy who was in the team of four that originally did all the ground breaking DNA research (it’ll be damned if i know exactly what) but it was very inspiring. The tax guy talked about trusts and how that if you and your partner buy a house and sell it to the trust at market value you can avoid lots of tax on the mortgage – you see the trust would owe you 500,000 dollars (if that was the price of the house) but because you can gift the trust 25,000 per year each in just a matter of years your house belongs to the trust and your greedy children will never be able to fight over it if you become incompetent!!!! or die.

What else to say. Thanks to PWB for the invite, it was well worth the time I took off from work. I will be going next year and inviting Dad!!!

Lets go PiMS! Lets go Instinct! Lets go go go!!!!

Update: Sam Morgan!!!! was a star, he won the most points for making people laugh and dogging Telecom. I thought Sam’s story was much the same as my own except I think he mentioned he’s had more university study then me, and Trademe is already a huge success whereas a lot of my own online inventions are still babies. Trademe was in part born by his dislike and frustration with traditional paper based classified papers. When Sam was asked what his definition of success was he said success is when there are no more classified papers for sale…

He also said his family can not help but talk shop all the time. Its just like when Dad and I are together… its all lemon tea and bullox for at least 5 minutes (this could be an attempt to please the ladies in our life) and then its work work work. And quite frankly I love what I do and so does he!!!! And so do the ladies come to think about it – Amber talks about TePapa at the drop of a hat so she cant talk.

The only other thing about Sam I’ll say was that I enjoyed hearing his concepts on online communities and Internet transparency, I thought to myself theres a guy who has read the clue train manifesto!

Sam also had some rules. If you read this Sam can you tell us once more…