Faisal Zahid

Really well illustrated diagram on Growth Loops - an essential part of product led growth. Your key takeaways: -Reduce friction to getting to an Aha moment -Make it easy to share and add others to your product in a free/viewer mode -Make it easy to pay -Make sure your product gets more valuable the more people use it What are your thoughts? #product #design #plg #quantana

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I completely agree with this post shared. It's a common misconception that startups need millions in VC funding to be successful. At IntelliOptima, we're living proof that this isn't the case. We've been bootstrapping for 8 months now, and despite the challenges, we've made significant progress in building a platform that enables users to collaborate with multiple AI agents in real-time. Our platform allows users to communicate with AI models like GPT and Perplexity Sonar, which can validate answers and provide a more dynamic interactive experience where users can share prompts and responses as if they where the one prompting, while also chatting each other. It's like teams, but SuperPowered with all your favorite AI models, but the cool thing is they can interact with and on each other. We've received great feedback from our users, and we're excited to see how our platform can solve real-world problems. We're focused on building a product that our customers love, rather than trying to appease investors. By doing so, we're able to maintain control and equity, and we're confident that our platform will speak for itself.

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Do you work with Startups or Scaleups? When our Founders, Startup / Scaleup Leaders, or Startup Employees join Aussie Founders Club's free membership on Frontcover, they then unlock exclusive offers for products and services. On the list, we currently have offers from companies like: Rapha: 6 months FREE on their recruitment system Heatseeker: A 30% disount on their subscription which gives you access to tools for generating value propositions, conducting live competitor audits, and running in-market experiments Mayfly Ventures: A free 45 minute Product Strategy Session HubSpot: Discounted access to Hubspot for Startups which opens you up to MANY MANY offers for startups BetaTrends: A 25% discount on their analytics subscription Granton: A free 30 minute consult to discuss eligible grants for your startup ScoreApp: 50% off your first month (I love Scoreapp) Informly: 10% off your Idea Validation report (I've used this - their reports are incredible) Also offers from my own businesses: Kairos: Offering exclusive AFC rates for your first hire placed through Kairos Mployd: Discounts on services for startup employees looking for work I've got many more in the works but if this sounds like something you and your business wants to get across, getting you in front of your target market and supporting them with an exclusive offer - you can! Fill out our EOI form and we will be in touch - link here: https://lnkd.in/gWqN32cb

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We recently crossed $19M in ARR at Buffer… for the second time. It's been a journey, to say the least. We first crossed $19M in ARR in September 2018. It's hard to believe that's six years ago. The chart tells the story well - it's been a rollercoaster and the hardest thing I've worked through as a Founder CEO. There's a lot of pain represented in that curve. To be declining for multiple years is demoralizing and exhausting. But I always planned to build a long-term business and was determined to lead us back to thriving, so I remained optimistic despite the fact it took some searching to find the path to new growth. In many ways, this is a failure for me as CEO and for us as a business. It truly is. I fully own that as a fact. And yet, I see it as a success too. We plateaued, declined, and rediscovered growth as a business in those years. I grew significantly as a leader, and we'll soon cross 14 years since I started the company. We went through this cycle without doing layoffs, thanks to the fact we entered our decline with profitability and a healthy cash balance. Most importantly, we figured out what we are for as a business; who we're serving. For me, that involved reminding myself why I even started Buffer. I love building for and serving entrepreneurs, and I love helping creators and small businesses get off the ground and thrive.We re-committed to the business model that serves these folks, and drove our early growth, which is a highly generous freemium SaaS offering. I get a kick out of delivering immense value compared to what we charge for the product, and challenging myself to continually improve our tools. Through the low lows of our multi-year decline, we rediscovered our DNA and the vital components of our culture. We found a way to blend that with what the world and our space looks like today, to arrive at a strategy and way of working that's helping us thrive again and ensure we can exist for another decade and beyond. I found a new level of passion and conviction for what we're doing, for the potential we have as a business, and the ways I can lead and do work that fuels me to help us fulfill those ambitions. The first time we crossed $19M, the writing was on the wall for our looming decline. Pace of product improvement and innovation had stalled; we were debilitated by tech debt we didn't yet know how to manage. We succumbed to squeezing revenue out of existing customers, and were already seeing a steep decline in new paying customers. This time around, we are moving faster and more boldly than we have in years, and we've re-centered ourselves around growing by serving more customers and continually adding real value, rather than through price increases and short-term growth hacks. There's no doubt we will run into challenging cycles again in our future. I'm confident we'll find our way through those too. To me, that's a natural part of building a long-term business. Onwards to $20M, again.

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Feedback is the secret to startup success!   In this episode of the DevReady Podcast, Mas Abdi (PhD), the founder of Easy Apply, shares the hard truth every startup needs to hear: your product isn’t complete without honest customer feedback. Mas discusses the emotional challenge of taking critique on something you’ve built from the ground up, and why it’s necessary to constantly iterate and refine based on what your users actually want.   If you're a founder, you’ll find this clip packed with golden advice on building tech products that hit the mark.   Check out the full episode. The links are in the comments!   Let’s take your ideas to the next level with DevReady. Whether it’s startup guidance or full-scale app development, we’ve got you covered.   #TechInnovation #Entrepreneurship #CustomerFeedback #AI #DevReadyPodcast #ProductDevelopment

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I got renewed! $11M in pipeline. $7.1M in revenue. So we are back for another instalment of the Diary…Soon! This was something I joked about in the first book, even with this kind of revenue impact it would make no sense to write a volume 2 if I had nothing new to share. Luckily nothing stays still in marketing or at Cognism for long and even more luckily I haven’t been fired yet, so I am still very much on this journey of first time CMO. But it’s a new phase, with new challenges, new mistakes and new learnings. All of which I am going to share with you all…very soon. I’d love to hear - if you read my first diary - how did you read it? The physical book, the digital book or the audio book? Please leave this in the comments! It will help my team motivate me for those long nights sat recording audio that are looming. Excited to share this next phase of the journey with you very very soon. #b2bmarketing #demandgeneration

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This just keeps getting better and better 😍 ... As a recovering perfectionist, the scrappy early days of building something from 0 to 1 are highly uncomfortable for me. Add in the variable of about ~14 other people you need to work with to pull something off, and you've just taken that discomfort level from 10 to 100. But I'm learning to love it - this process of being OK with something evolving over time, learning and improving as you go and I'm growing a lot as a person as a result (if I can say so myself...!). I am SO proud and grateful for the amazing team of volunteer correspondents we've gathered to bring together Pulse Check (the new monthly newsletter from Overnight Success). They've been super patient and flexible as we've worked through the scrappy bits of pulling it together and now we're all seeing the rewards in the form of not only more subscribers (we'll crack 400 this month! 🤞 ), but also genuinely valuable, engaging content people are loving! 🎉 . If you haven't already, check out this month's edition and you'll find these gems... 💎 Kirstin Hunter & Preethi Mohan launching the first ever Investor Leaderboard for our 'Funding the Balance' initiative. Gav Parry offering a super insightful perspective on the role of tech innovation in the music industry. Lea Rausch's insights about Aussie startups going global, as gleaned from chats with Gecko.rent founder Ben Kennedy and Maxine Minter of Co Ventures. Berenice Chong putting a spotlight on the new Curtin University Venture Studio. Andrew Harding talking about Main Sequence's investment into the fascinating world of sustainable apparel dyeing via Xefco. Erin Howell answering the question - WTF is the Bitcoin halving...? Dickie Currer giving the 101 on how Australia's innovation ecosystem stacks up globally. Leila Oliveira with tips from Bae Juice founder Tim O'Sullivan on lessons from their recent fundraising round. Holly Clark explaining why agritech innovation is so challenging, feat insights from Olympia Yarger at the recent FutureAg Expo. AND Anna Mackenzie sharing her ever-insightful and perfectly articulated case for 'optimising for creativity' (and ideas on how to do it!). Phew..! It's a lot of amazing content all in one edition! 🤓 Check it out 👇 🚀

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Here's why your tech products don't last long... In this world of information overload, everyone feels like a pro at picking tech. We compare specs like crazy, but forget what really matters - will this gadget last for what I actually need? People who are in a tech business, see what people use products for every day. Listening to their suggestions might not be a bad idea. They can help you find a device built to last for what YOU do. Sure, they want to sell. BUT Everyone loves repeat customers. So next time you upgrade, think about how you use your gadgets. Chat with a vendor who knows the products. You might find a hidden gem that lasts for years!

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There's a glaring irony among NFPs in the Australian startup ecosystem... They preach "know your customer" but often fail to practice it. Want to see how? Let's break it down... 👇🏾 What NFPs preach: "Always talk to your customers." What NFPs practice: Making assumptions about customer needs. What NFPs preach: "Use data to drive decisions." What NFPs practice: Relying on gut feelings and outdated information. What NFPs preach: "Build for diversity and inclusion." What NFPs practice: Creating one-size-fits-all solutions. Remember... NFPs in the startup ecosystem give great advice to founders. But the real winners are those who don't just preach, but actually practice customer-centricity. Have you noticed this disconnect in the startup ecosystem? Share your observations in the comments. ---------------------------------------------- Found this useful? Repost for your NFP startup ecosystem to "know their customer". ♻️

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How Dovetail grew to a $970M (Australian) valuation in 5 years—and created a new SaaS category: I chatted with 4 members of their team, and 4 UXR leaders, to learn the details. 1. Product-led growth, design-led company Dovetail's business model is decidedly product-led growth. The company relies on the product, and inherently viral features like research reports, to acquire, convert, monetize, and retain users. But design-led is its culture. CEO and co-founder Benjamin Humphrey has been in the details of the design since its beginning. And the product "feels" like it as a result. 2. Creating a hub for a neglected persona Rewind to 2016. While engineers had JIRA, Designers had Sketch, PMs had Google Docs, and analysts had Tableau, User Researchers had... nothing? Their workflow was a mess of hopping between different software. Ben had lived it as a product designer at Atlassian. There was a plethora of software focused on how to build, but there was almost nothing about what to build. So, after proving out the idea with an MVP, he recruited his Atlassian Engineer friend, Bradley Ayers, to join him. 3. Mastering the PLG motion Dovetail excels in all layers of PLG: → Acquisition: they don't use any outbound sales, focusing on product acquisition → Core problem communication: the home page emphasizes improving how you make product decisions → Reduced friction: its onboarding is focused on a standard walkthrough, but it is 10 steps → Activation: Dovetail has an intuitive product, examples, and templates to take you from setup to habit → Retention: as a system of record, the product gets stickier as more (qualitative) data is put in it → Monetization: the free plan has unlimited functionality, but only 1 project → Expansion: it has a natural growth of free users, who eventually become editors 4. Creating powerful, reinforcing growth loops Dovetail 2 two core loops: • More paid seats helps them build a better product, which helps UXRs succeed, which drives more UXRs and paid seats                                 • UXRs succeed, driving collaborators to join, which go from free to paid seats As well as 2 ancillary loops: • The more paid seats, the more it can invest in inbound sales • The more free seats, the more expansion products like Channels (to analyze customer support data) it can build 5. Building towards a category of one While there are competitors in the research insights space, Dovetail is building out its own category. It's not quite transcription. It's not quite a hub for research. It's that and more. This has helped it create its own, new category in SaaS. As Benjamin, still the CEO, told me: "We're building a system of record for all insights... It's a friggin' long, 20-year journey. You need to be a little nuts to have that level of ambition. "

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Sam Altman published by surprise on X: chat.com Which is the story behind the scenes? Dharmesh Shah founder and CTO at HubSpot acquired a year ago the domain of chat.com for 15.5M$. Then he shared he had sold the domain to an undisclosed buyer (Sam. A) A year ago he published: “𝘐’𝘮 𝘱𝘰𝘴𝘵𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘣𝘦𝘤𝘢𝘶𝘴𝘦 𝘴𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘳𝘢𝘭 𝘧𝘰𝘭𝘬𝘴 𝘩𝘢𝘷𝘦 𝘯𝘰𝘵𝘪𝘤𝘦𝘥 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘤𝘩𝘢𝘵.𝘤𝘰𝘮 𝘥𝘰𝘮𝘢𝘪𝘯 𝘯𝘰 𝘭𝘰𝘯𝘨𝘦𝘳 𝘳𝘦𝘥𝘪𝘳𝘦𝘤𝘵𝘴 𝘵𝘰 𝘮𝘺 𝘱𝘰𝘴𝘵, 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘴𝘰𝘮𝘦 𝘢𝘳𝘦 𝘴𝘱𝘦𝘤𝘶𝘭𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘐 𝘮𝘪𝘨𝘩𝘵 𝘣𝘦 𝘨𝘦𝘵𝘵𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘥𝘺 𝘵𝘰 𝘭𝘢𝘶𝘯𝘤𝘩 𝘴𝘰𝘮𝘦𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘣𝘪𝘨 𝘰𝘯 𝘪𝘵. 𝘞𝘢𝘯𝘵 𝘵𝘰 𝘤𝘭𝘦𝘢𝘳 𝘶𝘱 𝘢𝘯𝘺 𝘤𝘰𝘯𝘧𝘶𝘴𝘪𝘰𝘯. 𝘐 𝘢𝘮 𝘯𝘰𝘵 𝘭𝘢𝘶𝘯𝘤𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘴𝘰𝘮𝘦𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘣𝘪𝘨 𝘰𝘯 𝘪𝘵. 𝘐 𝘢𝘮 𝘯𝘰𝘵 𝘭𝘢𝘶𝘯𝘤𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘢𝘯𝘺𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘰𝘯 𝘪𝘵. 𝘐 𝘩𝘢𝘷𝘦 𝘴𝘰𝘭𝘥 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘥𝘰𝘮𝘢𝘪𝘯 𝘯𝘢𝘮𝘦. 𝘐 𝘩𝘢𝘷𝘦 𝘴𝘰𝘭𝘥 𝘪𝘵 𝘧𝘰𝘳 𝘮𝘰𝘳𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘯 𝘐 𝘱𝘢𝘪𝘥.” After Sam’s announcement, Dharmesh published: “𝘐 𝘬𝘯𝘰𝘸 𝘮𝘢𝘯𝘺 𝘢𝘳𝘦 𝘤𝘶𝘳𝘪𝘰𝘶𝘴 𝘢𝘣𝘰𝘶𝘵 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘴𝘢𝘭𝘦 𝘱𝘳𝘪𝘤𝘦 𝘱𝘳𝘪𝘤𝘦. 𝘚𝘰, 𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦'𝘴 𝘢 𝘱𝘳𝘰𝘮𝘱𝘵 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘎𝘗𝘛 𝘰1 𝘥𝘰𝘦𝘴 𝘢 𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘭𝘭𝘺 𝘨𝘰𝘰𝘥 𝘫𝘰𝘣 𝘰𝘧 𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘴𝘰𝘯𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘵𝘩𝘳𝘰𝘶𝘨𝘩.“ --- PROMPT BEGINS HERE --- ROLE: You are a smart, curious person on the Internet. CONTEXT: You have been given the following facts: * Dharmesh buys chat .com for $15.5M * He bought it for a project. He doesn't usually sell domains. * When he does sell a domain, it's almost never at a loss. * OpenAI was the perfect home for this domain, do he decided to sell it. * He's known Sam for over a decade since before OpenAI * Dharmesh doesn't like profiting off of people he considers friends (and also doesn't like referring to himself in the third person) * He has repeatedly declared his love for OpenAI: The platform, the developer experience and the company. * He's always wanted to own OpenAI shares. * He made a non-humble brag earlier this year that he's now an investor in OpenAI. * He doesn't need the cash from a domain sale, he's doing OK. How much do you think he sold the chat .com domain for? What percent of that was in shares of OpenAI? Provide an approximate range and show reasoning. --- PROMPT ENDS HERE --- Who is the smartest guy here? What’s Sam trying to prove with it? #ai #genai #openai #chat.com

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Why stick to kanbans, swimlanes, or gantt charts when your roadmap could be... A tree? 🌲 That’s exactly what Aussie banking startup Up has done with their public roadmap, called "The Tree of Up." This approach does a fantastic job of visualizing: 🧱 𝗙𝗼𝘂𝗻𝗱𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝘀 -> Showcase key features on top of which you iterate and innovate. 🔗 𝗥𝗲𝗹𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝘀𝗵𝗶𝗽𝘀 -> Highlight how initiatives connect to form a cohesive plan. 🚀 𝗩𝗶𝘀𝗶𝗼𝗻 -> Convey the product's direction and purpose by following the branches. 🍒 Cherry on the Tree - they’ve also included a delivery plan for short-term initiatives and a changelog for recent releases, making this roadmap even more powerful. An inspiring way to rethink how we communicate product roadmaps! Link is in the comments 👇

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$230m in total funding . To make a product "The Worst Product I've Ever Reviewed... For Now" - Marques Brownlee (18 million youtube subscribers) ‘Worst product ever’ - the times "The Humane AI Pin solves nothing and makes me feel stupid" - Engadget We could keep going and you get the point . There's a few things to learn here. 1. We believe brands way too much. "they're ex apple and they have a new paradigm - they must be the second coming ...lets give them $200m and reap the rewards". The VC's spent a lot of other peoples money partially based on a weak confirmation bias about the apple brand and people who worked for it. It cant be that hard to be a success at apple can it ? 2. AI - It has been really cool for us at times at inward . We have one particular use case that is saving us a lot of time and money and IS amazing . BUT largely ....currently ? It's just not all that. 27 years ago in 1997 I entered the tech market . At the time ? Every sales person I spoke to wanted to sell document management software . Filenet and tower were the heroes of the moment . Then it was ERP ....the successor to MRP 2 ...everyone wanted to sell that. Then dot com this and dot com that . and so on ! Now ...every candidate wants to sell something "AI" . Its just not as simple as that . Its so much more nuanced . Companies are throwing a chat GPT api key into their products and declaring themselves Ai companies . They aren't. Personally ? If you asked my advice ? I'd watch the shit fight, let the casualties accumulate and then in about a year carefully target the real winners as employers . For now ? sell something you know customers WILL buy off someone. I know your mum wont be able to brag about you selling that AI stuff to her mates at bingo but you'll be earning a living . 3. The future . Seriously . If i could have ordered a humane ai pin i would have . (glad I didnt!). I am a rampant crazy early adopter and when i saw it it just looked like the ......THE FUTURE . They haven't quite executed ........YET. Nothing stays the same and there IS a lot of change coming to all of us technologically . Humane might get it right? or someone will and things will change What do you think ? ever chased the latest tech stuff and fallen flat on your face as a sales person?

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The IPO markets are back? Service Titan set to go public at over $7bln valuation Not quite…. I met the awesome team at ServiceTitan 6 years ago and was so impressed at the trust they had built in their brand. They are the operating system for houses and offices. One stop shop for all your needs. * $685mln revs growing 24%. * 110% net dollar retention & losing 183mln (but wait my VC is telling me you need to be profitable!) * 70% of revenue is subscription Two points. Firstly that means they are will coming at at 10x revenue (which is on the upper end of what a company like this would trade at in public markets). That is just where software is these days Second, the reason they are going public now is that they have a “compounding ratchet” which put a deadline of May 24 after which they the series H investors compound at 11% IRR quarterly and effectively own more of the company. These ratchets are rare but they do happen and push a company to go public even if they don’t want to or market conditions aren’t favourable. Every VC investor will be praying that Klarna Service Titan kick open the doors to the >1k unicorns that are in the stables ready to roll out.

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This drove a 26% CR increase 🚀 A 30% ATC increase... 🚀 And 16% more orders... 🚀 Liz Fedorak @ Ethique came to Because🌈 with this problem: How do I quickly stand up personalization on my website without getting my developer involved? And once I know it works, do I really have to ask my developer to now hard code it long term? This is one of my favorite things about the platform we've developed at Because🌈. It's a CRO solution like you've never used before. We don't BS you when we say it's no code like most of the legacy personalization platforms out there - it REALLY is. You can actually use Because for not only messaging AB testing, but also long term personalization implementations on your site. Once an AB test performs well, you can choose to publish the campaign live to 100% of the audience... (like for example what Ethique did with a quiz personalization message to a Klaviyo segment of users with a specific quiz result). This would traditionally take weeks to scope and build with developers (or a painful process in legacy platforms), but with Because, the Ethique team was able to stand it up in less than an hour. Fully connected into their Shopify site 🤝 Fully integrated into their Klaviyo data 🤝 Anyone else recently struggled with this problem? I'm happy to chat personally and walk you through a demo of how Because works. Booking time for first week of December right now so shoot me a DM ✨

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🌟 The Pocket Guide of Essential YC Advice 🌟 Startups, here’s your go-to guide for success: 1) Launch now 🚀 2) Build something people want 🛠️ 3) Do things that don't scale 📈 4) Find the 90 / 10 solution 🔍 5) Find 10-100 customers who love your product ❤️ 6) All startups are badly broken at some point 🤕 7) Write code - talk to users 💻🗣️ 8) "It’s not your money" 💸 9) Growth is the result of a great product, not the precursor 🌱 10) Don’t scale your team/product until you have built something people want 🏗️ 11) Valuation is not equal to success or even probability of success 📉 12) Avoid long-negotiated deals with big customers if you can 🕰️ 13) Avoid big company corporate development queries - they will only waste time 🕵️‍♂️ 14) Avoid conferences unless they are the best way to get customers 🎤 15) Pre-product market fit - do things that don’t scale: remain small/nimble 🦎 16) Startups can only solve one problem well at any given time 🎯 17) Founder relationships matter more than you think 👥 18) Sometimes you need to fire your customers (they might be killing you) 🔥 19) Ignore your competitors, you will more likely die of suicide than murder 🚫 20) Most companies don't die because they run out of money 💀 21) Be nice! Or at least don’t be a jerk 🙂 22) Get sleep and exercise - take care of yourself 🛌🏋️‍♂️ ~~~~~~ Credit: Geoff Ralston, Michael Seibel ♻️Repost to inspire your Startup Network💡 Interested in Startup Business Strategies, Venture Capital & Fundraising? Let's connect!🤝 LinkedIn: Dr. Michael Tadros Agile | PMP® | cPgM® | BSc. | MSc. | PhD. #startup #startups #michael_theprofessor #startupfunding #success #research #partnerships #fundraising #investing #entrepreneurlife #innovation #founders #projectmanagement #smallbusiness #entrepreneurship #entrepreneur #entrepreneurs #venturecapital #investment #venturecapital #siliconvalley #technology

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"Business is tricky, but we have seen this movie before. We must ensure that decisions are not made from a place of fear." In today's economic climate, this statement couldn't be more relevant. New Zealand is grappling with a technical double-dip recession, marked by back-to-back GDP contractions due to rapid interest rate hikes​. The recent economic challenges, including inflation and a sluggish recovery, have put many businesses in a difficult position​ However, history has shown us that fear-based decisions can lead to suboptimal outcomes. In these challenging times, it’s crucial to: Stay Informed and Agile: Keep up with economic trends and adjust your strategies accordingly. Focus on Long-term Goals: Short-term pressures shouldn't distract us from the bigger picture. Stability and resilience are key. Innovate and Adapt: Embrace new technologies and practices to stay competitive. New Zealand businesses have faced tough times before and emerged stronger. By avoiding fear-driven decisions and focusing on strategic growth, we can navigate this tricky business environment and thrive. If you are feeling STUCK taking a CALCULATED Risk can pull you out of a rut!

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