ReachDesign

30/08/2026

Last day of August — a real story to close the month. 🔧

A builder that never really knew how his business was doing until his accountant told him, months later. By then it was history. He was flying blind and just hoping.

Set up a dead simple one-page tracker: money in, money out, what's owed to him, what he owes. Updates in five minutes a week.

Now he checks it every Friday. For the first time, he can see a slow month coming before it lands, instead of finding out when the bank balance tells him.

He said the best part isn't the numbers. It's finally feeling like he's driving. 👊

Do you know your numbers, or are you hoping?

30/08/2026

To keep the business alive, I took out a loan.

Sitting in my office looking outside and what I remember clearly is the feeling that needing the loan meant I had failed at something. Real business owners did not need propping up. That was the story running in my head.

That story was rubbish, and it was expensive. Not because of the interest. Because of how long I sat with it before I asked. Every week I spent deciding whether I was allowed to need help was a week the problem got to keep growing.

Borrowing was a decision, not a verdict. Asking is a decision too.

Ara Hui, first session Thursday 17 September. Theme is Setting Up. $75 plus GST, six seats: https://reachdesign.nz/services/ara-hui

26/08/2026

Ara Hui is open.

It is a small group for pakihi owners. Ninety minutes on Google Meet, six people maximum, three minimum. It is not a webinar and it is not me talking at you for an hour and a half.

Every session runs on one theme. I open by sharing something real from my own pakihi about that theme, the actual version and not the tidy one, and then it is over to the group. Everyone gets follow up notes afterwards.

First session: Thursday 17 September
Theme: Setting Up. Foundations, tools, structure, the basics done properly.
$75 plus GST per person. Six seats.

If you have been figuring it out on your own, this is the low cost place to stop doing that.

Book here: https://reachdesign.nz/services/ara-hui
Or just email me: [email protected]

$75 plus GST per person, 90 minutes, small group, monthly via Google Meet.

26/08/2026

Quick tip: if you type it more than twice, template it. 📝

Think about the messages you send over and over; quote follow-ups, booking confirmations, "running 10 minutes late", "here's your invoice". You're rewriting the same thing every week.

Save them as templates. Most phones and email tools let you do this for free; saved replies, text shortcuts, canned responses. Write it once, reuse it forever.

It's not lazy. It's the same care, delivered faster, without the mental drain of starting from scratch every time.

What message are you sick of retyping? 😄

24/08/2026

In the first week of COVID I lost half my clients.

Not over a few months. In a week. I had the list open in front of me and I did the maths twice, because I did not believe it the first time.

Then I told nobody. For weeks. Someone would ask how business was going and I would say good thanks, busy, you know how it is. I was too ashamed to say the true thing out loud, which was that I did not know if there would still be a business by the middle of the year.

Here is what I know now that I did not know then. The silence cost me more than the clients did. Not one of the people I was hiding from would have thought less of me. Most of them were carrying something of their own and saying nothing about it too.

I have built something for exactly that. More on Thursday.

23/08/2026

Behind the why. 🌱

We're at the tail end of winter here in the Wairarapa. The mornings are still icy, but if you look closely the first blossom is starting to think about it. Spring's coming.

For a lot of businesses, spring means the phone starts ringing again. Which is great unless you head into your busy season already running on empty, with the same messy systems that burnt you out last summer.

That's the bit I care about most. Not just growth; growth you can actually sustain. Getting more work shouldn't cost you your weekends, your sleep, or your patience with the people you love.

Sort the systems in the quiet, so the busy doesn't break you.

How are you heading into spring; sorted, or hanging on?

19/08/2026

Real story. 🔧

A woman running a mobile business was doing everything twice. A client would book by text, she'd write it in her diary, then copy it to her phone calendar, then remember to send a reminder the day before. Every. Single. Booking.

By the time she came to me she was spending her evenings on admin instead of with her tamariki.

Set up one online booking link that sends the reminder automatically. One entry, done. No diary, no double-handling, no 9pm "did I confirm tomorrow?" panic.

She reckons she got three evenings a week back. 👊

What are you doing twice that could be done once?

19/08/2026

Ara Hui on 17 September is filling. Capped at 6 people on purpose, so the kōrero stays real, not a webinar with a hundred faces on mute.

If you've been meaning to book, now's the time. Theme is Setting Up: foundations, tools, structure.

reachdesign.nz/services/ara-hui

16/08/2026

Quick tip: give your week a 15-minute reset. ⏰

Pick a time, Friday arvo or Sunday night, and run the same short checklist every week:
✅ What jobs are locked in for next week?
✅ What quotes or invoices are still hanging?
✅ What's one thing I keep forgetting to do?

Fifteen minutes. That's the whole system. But it's the difference between reacting to your week and running it.

Want help building a reset that fits how you actually work? That's exactly what a Koha Session is for, one hour, pay what you can from $34, no jargon. Flick me a message. 😊

What day would your reset land on?

16/08/2026

One thing I tell almost every business owner who comes to me feeling behind: you don't need more tools, you need one place where your work actually lives.

A shared calendar. A simple naming system. One inbox that's actually checked. That's Setting Up, and it's the first theme we're working through together at Ara Hui on 17 September.

$75 per person +GST, 90 minutes, capped at 6 people.

reachdesign.nz/services/ara-hui