From December 2018 Business Whangaparaoa had been formerly incorporated as Business Whangaparaoa Incorporated and stepped away from Future Whangaparaoa Trust with an MOU in the pipeline for working alongside each other.
During 2019 we started to refine our activities based on a business survey and from the experiences gained over 2017-18. We'd firstly like to acknowledge and thank the following businesses who supported our 2109 events allowing us to work alongside our local business community -
A huge thank you to the sponsors of events held in 2019 including -
We continued running our monthly co-working sessions at the Whangaparaoa Community Hub with a change in hours from 9.30 am to 12.30 am as we found most attendees came earlier and there was little activity in the afternoons
We continued with our brainstorming/networking opportunities however changed the structure of our free professional advice from having experts in attendance at the sessions to online opportunities for business owners to contact the person directly when they had an issue.
These sessions continued on the second Wednesday of each month from 9.30 am to 12.30 pm until the end of the financial year (June 2019) when we opted to no longer offer these.
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We refined our network events to grow these and opted to make these quarterly and support local venues. Over 2019 we had 4 keynote speakers who were paid speakers.
Being our official launch event for Business Whangaparaoa Incorporated we made this event free. It was held at the Hibiscus Coast Raiders Clubrooms and our speaker was Barbara Kendall CNZM, MBE. Barbara discussed business success using the S.U.C.C.E.S.S principles.
Barbara Kendall is one of New Zealand’s legends in Sport. She competed in 5 Olympic Games in the sport of windsurfing, winning 3 Olympic Medals, including gold in 1992. She has won 11 World Championship medals over her career of 21 years. Barbara was awarded the New Zealand’s Sports woman of the year 4 times and been inducted into World Sailing and New Zealand’s Hall of Fame. Over the last 12 years she has represented New Zealand, Athletes and Women within the International Olympic Committee on 13 different commissions, executive boards and working groups. Last year Barbara was the chef de mission to the most successful New Zealand Youth Olympic games team in Buenos Aries. Barbara has been recognised for her contribution to sport with the New Zealand Sport Leadership Award in 2014. This year she was honoured with the Companion of the NZ order of merit to go with her MBE in 1993.
At the time of our event Barbara was consulting and developing key talent within organisations, focusing on laying down the foundation for success. Barbara was also , at the time, a non executive director on Arria, an artificial intelligence company that specialises in complex data sets and generating natural language reports.
This was a very well attended event with over 80 attendees and was sponsored by Hibiscus and Bays Local Board. At this event we took the opportunity of introducing our large team and new branding.
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We enjoyed a fascinating evening with Murray Thom. Murray has a long-standing connection with Stanmore Bay and has been described as “a serial entrepreneur with the Midas Touch” and with good reason. After leaving school at 15 with no qualifications, he went on to become the youngest MD of CBS Records in the World, Murray left the music world to found Personalised Plates, which under his leadership, had a turnover of over $30 million pa.
After selling Personalised Plates Murray moved back into the music industry and Thom Music has produced numerous albums from the likes of Carl Doy, Dave Dobbyn, Margaret Urlich and Rob Guest. Two of his productions, “Together” and “Miracle”, a collaboration with Celine Dion and Anne Geddes, have featured on the Oprah Winfrey show and his latest creation, “The Offering Project” includes some of New Zealand’s top musicians.
Producer of “The Great New Zealand Cookbook” and “The Great New Zealand Song Book” we held the event at SportsCave.
The event was sponsored by Hibiscus and Bays Local Board, Duncan Building Services, G J Gardner Homes and C Café. We had a turn out of 63 attendees.
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One young 20 year old local is blazing a trail for gender equality. Alexia Hilbertidou from Red Beach has joked with the Queen, flown with NASA, had lunch with Jamie (Oliver), tea with Teresa (May) and rubbed shoulders with David (Beckham). Finding herself dismayed by the under-representation of women in leadership roles Alexia founded GirlBoss when she was just 16. Encouraging young women to embrace STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths), leadership and entrepreneurship, GirlBoss is now New Zealand’s largest organisation for young women. Its members are shrugging off the statistics and preparing themselves to take their seats at the table - the boardroom table that is.
At 17, Alexia was the youngest person to lead a research project at the New Zealand Treasury - at 18 - she was selected to seek new stars and planets on the NASA SOFIA mission and at 20 - she spoke at The United Nations Headquarters at the largest UN Forum in the world today. She was named the most influential young leader under the age of 25 at the Westpac Women of Influence awards and recently returned from Buckingham Palace where she received the Queen’s Young Leader medal for services to the Commonwealth. She is the youngest Commonwealth citizen to ever receive this honour.
Alexia was an inspiring, funny and very insightful speaker and everyone had an excellent evening. The event was well attended with 52 attendees and was sponsored by Simpson Western, ABA - Associated Business Advisors, iLender and Hibiscus and Bays Local Board.
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Mark was very humble and wanted a very short introduction to his talk. He shared with us his journey in business and leadership from his South Wales working class roots in underground coal mining through to becoming CEO of The Warehouse Group and sitting on a range of Company boards. He opened up and told us many insights into what he’s learnt on that journey.
Mark was again an excellent and insightful speaker and he very generously donated his speakers fee to our local CYC Trust supporting local youth.
The event was well attended even at such a busy time of year with 46 attendees and was sponsored by ABA - Associated Business Advisors, Forrest Funeral Services, Club Physical and Hibiscus and Bays Local Board.
We took the opportunity to also introduce and welcome 5 new members to our Business Whangaparaoa Executive team being Sharna Salthouse, Kayleen Martin, Troy Clarry, Michelle Clark and Gwenda Holster-Dowler.
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We also hosted a number of informational or networking events run by local business owners including information on -
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The end of 2019 also saw the introduction of what would become a bi-annual casual networking event being Christmas and Mid-Year Christmas. An opportunity for business owners to come together in a more casual setting and just enjoy meeting and greeting over drinks and nibbles.
Business Whangaparaoa provides all nibbles free of charge and offers discount drinks vouchers to Business Whangaparaoa members to thank them for their membership support. This first event was also a celebration of our first birthday as Business Whangaparaoa Incorporated!
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Monthly meeting of the Business Whangaparaoa Executive Committee. Held on the second Thursday of each month in the side room at The Archer from 4.30 pm to 6.00 pm If […]
Join Business Whangaparaoa and Forty Thieves co-founder and owner; Shyr Godfrey. From selling at Farmers Markets to supplying over 450+ stores nationwide and 3 main export markets, Shyr shares how Forty Thieves started and its journey over the past 7 years. She dives into the importance of a strong […]
