What is Get Bizzy?
Get Bizzy is an online portal for New Zealand businesses to network, share resources and grow together inexpensively. When offered the opportunity to help someone out for a mutualy gain would you take it? I believe most Kiwis would! Get Bizzy capitalizes on this by allowing businesses to showcase what they’re about, publicising their strengths. Then, use those strengths as a commodity to barter with other businesses who have skills business A lacks.
When you’re just starting out every dollar counts! Any opportunity to get things done for cheap or free is pounced upon. This is why I believe Get Bizzy will be a success.
Example:
Business A has a strong network of business partnerships in a particular town and a command of its customer base in that area. Business B is an online social media marketing company just starting out and looking attract customers.
Business B approaches Business A with the following proposition:
We will set up / optimize your social media profiles, create a social media strategy and help to market your business on social for 2 months.
In return, we ask that you allow us to use you as a case study for our website, this will include recording an interview with you and taking snapshots of the starting and finishing stats so we can track the progress etc. We also ask that if you like our service you promote it to some of the other businesses in your network. For every 2 new customers referred by you, we will offer you another 2 months of free Social Media Management.
Our Mission
To speed up the development of innovative businesses by creating positive, mutual partnerships!
Why was Get Bizzy created?
The idea came to me years ago rising from the ashes of a previous business…
Frustration was high, Failure a word I didn’t fully understand yet was about to get the better of me. My first business venture was slowly dying, no matter how hard I tried to steady the ship. Succumbing to the pressures of business I gave up, I’m not too proud to admit that… For a time I dwelled on the what-ifs:
What if I’d tried harder…
What if I’d just kept at it…
What if I’d tried this different…
You get the idea! I was a mess, a failure, a quitter, not good enough in my eyes. To escape this depression I took an optimistic approach and learned from my ‘failures’. I focussed on what I could do better next time and where I went wrong. This exercise drew me to a realization that I went into business for the wrong reasons, and I neglected some of the most important factors of business. Thousands of hours of research and planning later I was ready to start making Get Bizzy a reality.
Success is walking from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm.
Winston Churchill     Â
I’m happy to share our first blog post with you!
Get Bizzy has been a long time in the making… Over 2 years of planning, learning and preparing to bring the idea into reality. In those 2 years, I encountered hundreds of obstacles and opportunities to give up! Scrapping and starting the website from scratch 5 times in the process. The cost emotionally and physically in terms of time far exceeds the tens of thousands spent getting this up and running. But… I wouldn’t change a thing if I could! I’m in it for the hustle, the learning, the growing, and finally the opportunity to share it all with you with the hopes it adds some value to your situation.
This is a special occasion as we unravel our business in its entirety, and lay out our plan for the future where everyone can see. We believe in creating a transparent business, operating in the open and sharing the majority of what we’re doing.
Our VISION
To revolutionize the way businesses network and grow.
 How will We get there?
The world is changing! Everyone is sharing more and more of their personal lives online through social media, the winners are the ones who share the most quality content, and provide massive value. It’s called personal branding and it’s changing how people conduct business. Gary Vaynerchuk is a pioneer in this now popularized field, check him out on Youtube @GaryVee, I also (as he would say it) implore you to read his book Crush It if you haven’t already! It’s a real eye-opener into the power of social media, and although written back in 2009 it’s still massively relevant!
This is why we’re active on all the major social media outlets: Youtube, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and soon to be Pinterest and Linkedin. You’d have to be crazy not to open up all these portals to potential and existing customers. What’s more, they are all free! And most are relatively inexpensive to market compared to more traditional marketing. Initially, our content production will be staggered as we learn the ins and outs of producing quality, native content for each platform. But with perseverance, patience and hard work; we know this will set us apart from the competition.
We believe we can achieve success by following the below steps (loosely)
Step one:
Launch a basic free service, learn from user feedback and tweak/make improvements. This is expected to take around 1 year and will include:
Learning the ins and outs of social media marketing/publishing. (especially Youtube and Facebook)
Populating the blog with content. (I’m also looking to partner with people interested in contributing to the blog, check out here)
Updating the website 3 times throughout the year with new features and tweaks (roughly every 4 months)
Approaching local businesses in the Manawatu area in attempts to create a local community.
Attending local business networking events and spreading the word.
Growing my mailing list and learning how to use MailChimp.
Earning enough money through affiliate sales, ads and donations to make the site self-sustaining.
Plus a whole bunch of other things, including stuff I probably haven’t thought of…
Step two:
Release a more feature rich affordable service alongside the free version. I expect development to take around 3 Months and then around 6 Months of tweaking for a total of 9 months until my baby is ready…
Important steps:
Continue adding to and perfecting the free service, and using the above-mentioned growth strategies.
Double down on social media marketing using paid marketing to promote the website.
Update the website 3 times during this period (once every 3Â months)
Hire 1-3 full-time employees to assist with the growth of the website.
Consider launching an affiliate program.
Step three:
Release a “Pro” service for those who want to take their business to the next level. The addition of our Pro service will see a large injection of cash into the business, we will invest the majority of it directly back into the business but we will also start looking for businesses within our community to invest in and advise. Much of the work involved in this step repeats what’s already listed above so I won’t drone on…
Obviously, this plan isn’t set in stone as a business needs to be adaptable! Who knows if the public hate this Idea you could be looking at a completely different business in a few years…
