What I've learnt by running my own company

The Web Social logo.

For the past four years I've been running my own small business called Web Social. I started it in 2010 with $100 of capital, and looking at the books have done pretty well to build up the companies assets. I did the final run of invoicing the other day before closing the books on 31 March, the end of the financial year. As a part-time venture it's been fun, but to really get stuck in it would've been better to have run the business full time.

Running my own company has been a great experience and one that I'll probably come back to later in life. I've grown up with this self-employed small business mentality. My parents run their own specialist building product company, Holden Architectural, and despite often trying market conditions have survived. I'm very aware that government can often make the lives of businesses unnecessarily hard, or put in place bureaucratic hurdles, or poorly written law resulting in pointless litigation. These are things that can crush small businesses.

It's small and medium businesses (which are officially defined as any company employing less than 20 people full time) that make up 97.2% of New Zealand business, employ 30.2% of all employees and generate 27.8% of our GDP, according to the MBIE. One of the motivating factors for me to stand for parliament is to make sure these businesses have a voice in parliament.