Coming from an artistic and teaching background, business wasn’t something Lynda Meads thought she would be attracted to.
But when she opened her home to paying visitors she knew it would be handy to know more about running a business.
Lynda operates Lynda’s Log House, a guest house in the hills around Kaitaia, and enrolled in the Level 4 Certificate in Small Business and Project Management programme at the Kaitaia campus of Te Wānanga o Aotearoa to help her understand more about successfully running a business.
“I know the tutor Val (West), and she said come and do the business course, it’s free, and I thought wow, that sounds cool and so I did it. I find it interesting and creative,” she says.
Along with her accommodation business, Lynda also plans to develop a business selling her art.
“So I’ve been learning to use the ideas from the course doing Lynda’s Art, because we had to do a business plan, a proper one, then I just shared it with the accommodation,” she says.
“It’s the same principle all the time, you’ve got to have your vision and your ideas and then you write it down. It’s good writing it down, a lot of businesses don’t work because they don’t write it down.
Then you’ve got to do promotion, and research and all that, it’s really good.”
To further enhance her skills, Lynda also enrolled in the Certificate in Money Management programme and says that helped her focus on the bottom line.
“That made me think numbers,” she says.
“You had to think of things like percentages and ratios, not airy-fairy dreams and goals and ideas, you have to have it right.”
“The course covers everything from what your attitudes are towards money and how the way you were brought up contributes to that and it teaches you things like budgetting, insurances, wealth building, investments, it just covers everything. I should have done it before.”
She has enjoyed the learning and getting to know her fellow students.
“I like the networking and finding out what everyone else is doing, that was one of the best things, you can pick everyone’s brains. I’m learning to try and not do lots and lots of businesses, so I’m concentrating on one. I’ve doubled my money and doing less work, and it's passive income and that’s my ultimate.”
