Business School
T e Kur a P a k i hi
What’s challenging New Zealand
Business owners?
Summary of findings
Dr Jodyanne Kirkwood
Dr Tarja Viitanen
What’s challenging
New Zealand
Business owners?
PAGE 0NE
Introduction
We distributed the survey for eight weeks between May-July 2015. It was distributed via two
LinkedIn groups (NZ SME Business Network, Otago Masters of Entrepreneurship Alumni and
Associates), Enterprise Dunedin, NZ Entrepreneur, NZ Business Magazine and personal referrals
from business owners.
Two hundred and seventy nine people answered our survey. For ease of comparability, this report
is based on the 217 respondents who completed the survey in full.
First, some demographics of the sample are useful in order to help interpret the findings:
64% of the respondents were male
Only 13% of business owners surveyed were under 36 years of age.
One-third was over 55 years old
Most respondents were married/in a de-facto or civil union (85%)
Three-quarters had children
The business owners represented the whole range of industries. They were primarily from services
(professional, technical, scientific) (36%), followed by education and training, manufacturing,
Information Media, accommodation and food, and retail (each accounting for around 10-14%).
This report is a summary of the 8 main components to the survey. We hope you find it useful and
interesting as a means of benchmarking yourself against other Kiwi business owners.
WHAT’S CHALLENGING NEW ZEALAND BUSINESS OWNERS • PAGE TWO
Business ownership and Size
54% of respondents owned one business at present. The remaining 46% owned two or more.
Ten percent of respondents owned four or more business at present.
Figure 1. Number of businesses owned currently
Figure 2. Numbers of businesses where respondent is owner-manager
As shown in Figure 2 above, it can be seen that business owners tend to be involved in the majority
of the business they own (rather than being silent investors or shareholders for example).
PAGE THREE
In this study therefore, the majority of the responses (73%) are from micro-businesses (fewer than
6 staff), as indicated in Figure 3.
Figure 3. FTE employees (across all businesses if own multiple businesses)
Almost one-third employed no staff (sole trader or zero employee firms). This is different from the
New Zealand average, where 69% of enterprises have no employees (The Small Business Sector
Report 2014, MBIE). This could be due to the fact that we asked for the total employment across
multiple businesses.
Ninety-one percent had fewer than 20 Full Time Equivalent (FTE) staff. This is in line with the
total population of New Zealand’s businesses with 97% employing fewer than 20 people (The Small
Business Sector Report 2014, MBIE). On the whole, the businesses who responded to this survey
are slightly higher than the national average in terms of number of employees.
Figure 4 below indicates the annual sales turnover for these business owners’ companies.
Figure 4. Annual sales turnover (combined if have multiple businesses)
WHAT’S CHALLENGING NEW ZEALAND BUSINESS OWNERS • PAGE FOUR
Motivations for becoming
a business owner
As with most international findings around motivations for business ownership, a desire for
independence is the number one ranking finding in this study (76%), followed by financial gain/
profit (40%) and seeing a gap in the market (34%). Figure 5 shows the motivations (people could
select more than one).
Figure 5. Motivations for becoming a business owner
Those in the ‘other’ category described specific issues such as:
Balancing work/life
A way to go into semi-retirement
Contributing to NZ/the world, develop new interests
A way to work around ill health or family members with ill health
Having a sense of mission/purpose
Passion for product/service
PAGE FIVE
Contribution to the
entrepreneurial ecosystem
Only 35 percent of respondents say they have a business mentor themselves. Interestingly, just over
half (52%) act as mentors to other business owners (or prospective business owners).
Most business owners (76%) actively network with other business owners, as indicated in
Figure 6 below.
Figure 6. Networking with other business owners
Just over half (53%) actively volunteer to assist others in developing businesses or current
business owners.
Figure 7. helping other business owners/prospective owners
These results are encouraging, showing that business owners are well connected and are assisting
each other with their businesses. These actions all contribute to the entrepreneurial ecosystem of
New Zealand.
WHAT’S CHALLENGING NEW ZEALAND BUSINESS OWNERS • PAGE SIX
Defining Business Success
Oftentimes we assume or it is implied that all business owners want to grow their businesses and
are interested primarily in financial success.
As indicated in the motivations for business ownership in Figure 5, the reasons are varied.
Similarly, when we ask people how they define business success personally, a wide range of answers
emerged.
The main success factors that were mentioned were:
Time to spend with family. Work-family balance
Financial security/wealth/stability/earn comfortable amount
Having a better lifestyle, work-life balance
Freedom/independence
Satisfaction, achievement, accomplishment, pride, personal fulfilment
Other factors:
Making a positive change, give back to others
Balanced workload, be in control of workload/time
Have a good retirement
Security/peace of mind
Be able to offer people employment
Looking forward to getting up in the morning
A legacy for future generations
Respect and recognition in the industry
Content customers
Ability to manage stress
Enjoyment
On the whole, the answers given to this question offer insights into Kiwi business owners and
what they believe success is. For those respondents who talked about money, very few (only two or
three) spoke of wanting to be extremely wealth. Most talked in terms of having a steady income to
provide for their families, have the ‘extras’ in life and having a reasonable financial return. Very few
talked about wanting to grow their business substantially (discussed more in the next section)
The main factor discussed was business owners want to have a good lifestyle, and do work that is
fulfilling and enjoyable to them.
PAGE SEVEN
Growth objectives
Most business owners (88%) want to grow their business in the next three years. Of those which
have growth plans, the majority plan to grow their annual sales turnover (99%) while substantially
fewer plan to add new staff (47%) over the next three years.
Figure 8. Types of growth expected
Those business owners who planned to grow the business talked of how they planned to achieve
this. There was a wide range of issues, including:
Opening more outlets
Opening for longer hours
Expanding nationally and internationally
Increasing marketing
Introducing new products and services
Having better staffing
Finding new customers/markets
Those business owners who were not planning on growing explained why they were not
intent on growing. The main reasons were:
Being almost ready to retire
Did not have time to grow the business while they were working in
the business
Did not want to manage too many staff
Saw a negative effect on profitability if they grew (particularly
employing others)
Wanted to be a sole trader
Wanting to balance their work with time off
No-one talked of issues such as insufficient skills, or external factors such as the economy, the size
of their market or other factors preventing growth. The good news is that people who don’t want to
grow their businesses are choosing not to for personal reasons (mainly their age) and not wanting
to employ anyone/more people.
WHAT’S CHALLENGING NEW ZEALAND BUSINESS OWNERS • PAGE EIGHT
Challenges business owners face
What is interesting here is the breadth of challenges faced, and in some cases, multiple challenges
were discussed by business owners. Oftentimes when business owners are surveyed they are given
a checklist of challenges that they should tick off if they apply to them. We decided to ask business
owners to explain their challenges in their own words. This was extremely interesting, and as noted
here, many reasons were noted.
The main group of challenges appear to be of the financial variety. This challenge is often
described by business owners in other surveys. The issues relating to finances were:
Lack of capital | Access to capital | Cash flow and Profits | Debt | Bad debts
Another highly mentioned challenge is related to time:
Many business owners felt there was not enough time in the day
There was little time for strategy and planning while trying to actually run the business
on a day to day basis
This is an issue for those who are sole traders, and can affect business growth – if the owner is
too busy actually doing the work they may find it difficult to implement their growth strategy
The other common issues raised were:
Lack of acceptance of their business from local/NZ customers particularly
Small size of the local market in New Zealand and the physical distance from markets
People not prepared to pay for quality service/products. Customers wanting ‘freebies”
Staff – hiring, not being able to afford to hire staff and/or retain good staff
New Zealand’s labour laws
Isolation/loneliness/lethargy
Lack of understanding from others about what it takes to be a business owner
Attracting customers/sales
The fluctuating Exchange rate
Intellectual Property
Balancing capacity with demand
Keeping up with technology
Competition
Compliance/bureaucracy – particularly around GST, Tax and resource consents
Access and knowledge of where to go for advice, on relevant courses, and networking
opportunities
Lack of marketing skills
PAGE NINE
Tall Poppy Syndrome (TPS) and its
impact on business owners
Around three-quarters (76%) of business owners believed that Tall Poppy Syndrome exists in
New Zealand. Forty-two percent of respondents believed that they had experienced TPS in their
position as an entrepreneur/business owner. Of these people, around half believe it to be a mostly
New Zealand phenomenon, while half have seen it in other countries as well.
Figure 9 below indicates that friends, competitors and anonymous commentators on social media
were the main sources of negativity.
Figure 9. Who are the main detractors?
We were also interested to find out how business owners were affected by TPS. Primarily, these
business owners were affected emotionally by Tall Poppy Syndrome. This is rather concerning, but
there is also quite a significant amount of financial and reputational damage that business owners
have experienced due to Tall Poppy Syndrome. These results are shown in Figure 10 below.
Figure 10. How have business owners been affected by Tall Poppy Syndrome?
WHAT’S CHALLENGING NEW ZEALAND BUSINESS OWNERS • PAGE TEN
In the ‘other’ category, there were comments such as it hasn’t affected them very much, negative
articles in the press, lack of support from others, being ignored by people, and affecting their
confidence.
Figure 11 below indicates the types of decisions that business owners believed were affected by
TPS. This question was answered by 58 people, so around ¼ of the business owners considered
TPS in their business decisions (people could answer more than one decision).
Figure 11. Do you consider TPS when making business decisions?
As Figure 11 indicates, visibility of the business owner/entrepreneur is the key factor that they
consider with respect to TPS. This may be important as few business owners may be willing
to step out from the radar and tell others about their success. However, when looking at the
entrepreneurial ecosystem results above, it would indicate that business owners are connecting
directly with other business owners, and perhaps this is more on a one on one basis which is more
comfortable for business owners.
Is there anything that can be done about TPS?
This question elicited a general view that there is little, if not nothing that can be done about Tall
Poppy Syndrome in New Zealand. Responses such as “it’s a sad fact of life”, “it’s part of the NZ
culture”,” change the culture? It’s a hard one” were common here.
Some people thought there was something that could be done – particularly around celebrating
success, being proud of achievements, and being proud of being a New Zealander. Some also spoke
about encouraging movement from old boy’s networks/more diversity on boards as things that
might help with Tall Poppy Syndrome.
PAGE ELEVEN
Childcare and business ownership
As Figure 12 below indicated, one-third of business owners started their businesses while their
youngest child was younger than five years old.
Figure 12. Age of youngest child when became a business owner
The main types of childcare that are used by those with children under 14 years of age currently is
a combination of the following (participants could select as many options as applied to them).
Figure 13. Main methods of childcare
WHAT’S CHALLENGING NEW ZEALAND BUSINESS OWNERS • PAGE TWELVE
Over half of those who currently had children younger than 14 years old indicated that the
Government could better support business owners who had young children.
When asked what support they require regarding childcare, the comments were primarily around
cost of childcare:
Subsidies for childcare
Tax deductible childcare
More free childcare (ie. 30 hours ECE)
Making after-school care/holiday programmes more affordable
Conclusion
The results of our study show that for most of these Kiwi businesses, they are in a good position
in terms of being able to meet their own definition of what business success is, which is having a
good lifestyle, earning a good living and doing work that is fulfilling and enjoyable to them.
Most business owners wanted to increase their sales turnover but only half wanted to grow their
FTE employee numbers over the next three years. This may be related to how business owners
define success. Maintaining a good lifestyle and employing more staff might not be seen as
particularly compatible – some business owners noted that as they employed more staff, their
profits went down and the time spent managing staff went up.
The challenges these New Zealand business owners faced were varied, but not insurmountable. For
many the issue was raising capital to grow their business, and there are now new ways of achieving
this rather than traditional banks. Equity crowdfunding is an option in New Zealand now and is
successfully allowing businesses to raise capital.
We are still concerned about the level of Tall Poppy Syndrome that business owners seem to face in
New Zealand. The results showed it was a factor in decision making for business owners and there
was a sense that little could be done about TPS.
We are interested in knowing more about how business owners manage childcare costs and/
or availability. We are going to interview a group of business owners who started their business
when they had young children. If you indicated you would like to participate further in the study
and had children under 14 when you started your business, we will be in touch shortly regarding
participation in an interview.
Thank you and we hope you find this report useful. Please get in touch if you have any questions
or comments.
For more information
If you have any questions, please contact:
Dr Jodyanne Kirkwood Department of Management
University of Otago
Principle researcher
jodyanne.kirkwood@otago.ac.nz
Phone 64 3 470 3536
Or
Dr Tarja Viitanen
Department of Economics
University of Otago
Associate researcher
tarja.viitanen@otago.ac.nz
What’s challenging
New Zealand Business owners?
July 2015
Business School
T e K ur a P aki hi