ELITE : SIX Think Tank meetings are discussed over ZOOM with our members every Friday at 9:30am.
Facilitated by DANNY : DE HEK meetings are recorded for our Podcast, we’ve been doing this since COVID-19 if you’re interested in joining in with us check out our Website.
Transcribed by Otter
Danny de Hek 0:00
Welcome to elite six business networking Think Tank, facilitated by your host, Danny de Hek. The place where decision makers come together to share their experience, knowledge and skill.
Okay, well, let’s get the meeting underway with the SEC 92. Maybe we should
maybe we should say hello, first everyone. Should we do the audit? Now? What are we gonna see, I’m gonna click more buttons and just get rid of a few extra screens.
But lots of names on here. Everyone’s getting busy at the moment, I had a guy who sent me a lovely request to come along to his event on LinkedIn. I said, Why don’t we get together have a meeting? And tell me about it? Because I’m a bit busy at the moment. I said, So am I good luck with your event. But everyone’s busy me.
Paul Starling 0:50
Yeah.
Danny de Hek 0:54
If you really want people to come to the event, you don’t just sort of give them a long email and measure we can just live life like that as you want I want out of my business is I just want lots of clients using my services, what, just put that all on one big email and send it to everybody. And then when they’re not busy, they can read it and give me money.
just brilliant.
David Clarkson 1:16
Adds like an ideal solution, Danny.
Danny de Hek 1:21
And the guy doesn’t remember it was really funny, but he’s an accountant. This guy and he’s been watching me on LinkedIn for a wall and I don’t know from our site, but I was out mountain biking with a group of about 15 or 20 people we were walking through McCain’s Island. I know we were biking and there was a big group of people and we’re blocking the track and he comes fast on his mountain bike and yells out Get out of the way and afterwards at the coffee coffee place I went up to him I said you know those your language was atrocious. I said you didn’t need to talk to us like that. We just having a good time and then you can find pass with that. I said just get a hold of the woman. Oh, well, I shouldn’t be on the track and and he doesn’t realise I know he’s the same accountant.
Anyway, you’ve got to be hate yourself all the time. It would
David Clarkson 2:19
be a Rick. Danny recommend him to the clients you don’t want. Yeah.
Danny de Hek 2:28
Very nice.
To see that. That’s good. Nice all the time. It’s amazing though. I think it’s um, the thing we do here though, isn’t that we always got to watch your P’s and Q’s. Alrighty. We’ve got a pretty good topic today. So why don’t we introduce yourself? Anyway, remember, welcome along to Think Tank, podcasts.
Zoom
meeting based on the internet. Today’s topic is actually bringing fun into your business. That’s what we decided we talked about last week. So why don’t we introduce ourselves first? Start with David klaxon.
David Clarkson 3:09
I am David Clarkson from dynamic communication. We public speaking and business presentation school trainers and also business trainers. We also promoting ourselves these days as spokesman for organisations that feel like they can’t do it themselves and they would like somebody to do their their presentations or their promotion for them. And one of the things that I think about fun is that the more we’re able to smile, the more we encourage others to smile, and a smile is only a tan away from a lot.
Danny de Hek 3:46
It’s a virgin again.
Mark Scown 3:49
smirk off your face David.
Danny de Hek 3:54
Like it cool smiling people ask me what I’m up to. Excellent. Hello.
Helen Oakes 4:00
I’m Helen and I have my own photography business motivate photography. Plus I have my own online businesses to two of those and I’m a mum to two boys. And I What else do I do?
Danny de Hek 4:21
Like cook me dinner
Helen Oakes 4:22
cook Danny
and yeah, that’s me in a nutshell creating memories for a lifetime
Danny de Hek 4:32
wonder where the expression in a nutshell came from.
Helen Oakes 4:35
Maybe that means Rector
Danny de Hek 4:37
hmm not does not contain everything you need to mark can you tell us about yourself?
Mark Scown 4:42
Yeah, hi, I’m Max scam insurance broker
of the last four years previous life was a school principals so complete 180 degree change in my life and been huge and just loving the the freedom I have without the government bureaucracy, breathing down your back your neck. But I specialise in restructuring individuals personal insurance to ensure that long term sustainability and affordability and to get away from that exponential rising premium prices as you go into your early 50s and beyond. So I can save clients who are probably age 55, and lease, potentially more than $100,000 of future premiums. So that’s, that’s what I do. But I will say, look out for small businesses and cover that risk for them, particularly if they’re new to business when it’s more difficult to get some business cover. So I work in that space as well.
Danny de Hek 5:49
Brilliant, and Chanel and stiff
Helen Oakes 5:52
to me.
Danny de Hek 5:55
conversation about
Mark Scown 5:58
two years before you say
Helen Oakes 6:00
we practice yesterday.
Stef Pietroiusti 6:04
That’s cool. So there’s two main
ways. We help small to medium sized businesses with the e commerce, data problems and getting the systems working well together.
Jaline Pietroiusti 6:20
And all new e commerce not
Danny de Hek 6:24
always good stuff. Ecommerce is keeping me alive at the moment. Ironically, we didn’t have tried some new software. We’re all everything we say today, I can scribe it. And I hit some brilliant software. And then I found some more brilliant software. But I listened to the podcast that took about an hour and a half to try to fix up all the spelling and match everyone’s names. And when I got from listening to the podcast with set of headphones on as we have a good time in here,
and a lot of
quite a few laughs going on. And the laughing was weird. But it was great
Helen Oakes 7:01
to come up with the laughing
Danny de Hek 7:02
Oh, blinks it, actually, it must notice it when we’re having ridiculous bits of laughter and all that sort of stuff at weights into an understanding of it was actually really good baby ever look it up the blog, you’ll see the words aren’t too bad, but didn’t really work as good as the other clever software. But I think it’s worth persevering with, what the you can do is you can actually change the wording and it will change the sound of the podcast. So you can in 30 minutes or 60 minutes reading a piece of paper and it will record your voice. And then when you stuffed it up or replace this re scribe and read it. There’s the audio. The wireless technology for unit pulls down, pulls down what do you do?
Paul Starling 7:47
Paul? calorie Computer Services in rang euro and I help small businesses with their computer solutions, primarily office 365 and SharePoint services to get people’s it up in the cloud and secure. also offer cybersecurity solutions to protect people’s data and keep their computers safe.
Danny de Hek 8:13
Hmm. Cool. Shawn Are you serious is
Shaun Jin 8:21
is obviously I got a mask on because I’m on pest control them. Again, pest controls, and also doing one step services for property improvement. Working with quite a few local
property management companies and helping them to give solutions for rental properties. And doing other niche market cleaning as well including mesh testing and a DICOM. And others stuff like water restorations for flooded house, something like that. That’s me, Shawn, from quality clean.
Danny de Hek 9:11
Thank you very much. Sounds like you did some fun in your business. You got to make it sound more fun. I kill animals and get rid of them. Already. So welcome along. As I said, I’m Danny de Hek on the facilitator of the meeting. I’m also the owner of elite six business networking. And I have a passion for technology. I love telling people how to manage life when you can’t read and write. They’ve got a reading level of 9.3 year old I got told which I thought was pretty good at the time. And that’s why I can’t remember people’s names. I had a good conversation with Helen about that the other day and I said it doesn’t matter what I do if I can’t get somebody’s name in my head. It doesn’t matter what techniques I use. It just doesn’t stick. And that’s quite embarrassing sometimes. But that does not mean I do not love you all.
Shaun Jin 9:59
What’s my name? Again.
Danny de Hek 10:02
Funny enough, I had this Oh, you name and if you voice your name Shawn doesn’t come up very good. Because it’s like your new dog.
Helen Oakes 10:10
Well, there’s many different spellings on the sheet. Yeah. The black sheep, the black sheep.
Danny de Hek 10:17
Yeah. So, right. So bringing fun into your business is the theme today, and I will I have got through life using my humour, and my humour is a 5050 win or lose, because if people don’t get my humour, I’m Baggett and I can often insult somebody because I think I went serious, but it might have been my way of trying to use my humour. I don’t know that’s fun. But sometimes it’s fun. But I just recently did a quote for a comedian and he used to be the sidekick for
Helen Oakes 10:49
belly tea, James and hematite said that the MacFarlane Gatsby.
Danny de Hek 10:57
So when I did my quote forum, I thought I’m gonna get into this and make it really interesting. I’m going to publish it as a blog because I thought it was quite good. You know, when he got the quote, he didn’t read it. He just sent it off to the guy who’s gonna pay it. And then he and I said, Oh, did you he read it? Yeah, yep. Yep. He said, and I said, they got no humour, obviously, because he didn’t read it. Because he couldn’t have because he would have had to have a reaction. But anyway, someone in Auckland is still debating whether to pay my invoice or not? Because they may have not. So they could have
backfired. Who knows? But what are you guys? What’s your experience of trying to be more jovial or funny? Or bring a bit of humour or reality or how you find that?
Mark Scown 11:40
Well, I’m on like you, Danny I, I am people who know me well, and especially in a face to face things that I I like the quick clip, and a good sense of humour and be self disparaging rather than picking on anybody else. But it has to be super situationally appropriate, of course, but I like to think that 90% of the time I pitch it right. And I guess by bringing some level of humour into conversations, you can ease people in and make them more comfortable, particularly if you’re reading their body language, and you’re seeing a bit of a smile coming back at you.
Danny de Hek 12:23
Hmm.
Helen Oakes 12:24
And it has to it’s really important, it has to be humour, that is not getting it anyone like you sort of said Mac, and like at the expense of anyone being, you know, trying to make yourself look funny and at the expense of other people. Because Yeah, we’ve actually come across said a few times, not in this group, but you know, just in everyday life, and yeah, it’s not called
Mark Scown 12:46
if you got to beat up on anyone. for human, it’s got to be yourself. Hmm.
Danny de Hek 12:51
It’s been the bane of my career, because it doesn’t vary. It is hard to flip her but a human into serious stuff. Basically, you’re talking money. Mm hmm. The people that think it’s funny when they’re paying your bill, doesn’t matter what. Funny, that’s very serious money. What some other experiences you might have had.
Helen Oakes 13:16
I had, I think I said last week, I had a competition on my Facebook. So it was kind of like a fun thing. And people had to guess, how I took a certain photo. And then really went to nothing. And it was just a fun thing to do and get a bit of engagement on my Facebook. So that was quite a good way.
Danny de Hek 13:36
Yeah, competition. That is fun.
Jaline Pietroiusti 13:39
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
David Clarkson 13:43
Yeah, I mean, it’s interesting. I, one of the things that I used to like was shaggy dog stories. And so I still love telling them because gave me a chance to act up a little bit. And this Danny will tell you, I like I like playing up a little bit in that sort of way. And in, so I have a lot of fun. But on the other hand, the guys that really impressed me, these are the people who can do the stand up comedy, and who can engage you, you know, that takes a takes a lot of takes a lot of thinking to get it right and get the timing and everything right. Yeah.
Danny de Hek 14:25
I really there’s a place in crush. It’s called the green room. And somebody said, Does anyone want to have a go? And I said, Yeah, I will. And I got the and I hit this joke that goes on for about five minutes. I won’t tell it now. And everyone was in hysterics and laughed. I thought it was really good. And they said you should do this again. So they have their letter. They said, Oh, you’ve got another one. And oh in year, the second joke didn’t work.
Helen Oakes 14:48
That’s funny. I had a really good person to bring out with you as Attorney because I had a I had some photoshoots with Dennis Come with me. And he’s like the sidekick He tells all the jokes, like super funny laughs I can get some decent photos. And we had these young journalists that I know them know the gymnasts and I know most of the parents. But Danny came along, we went to a little town and we took all these photos. And he had the parents and stitches. And it was great because I could concentrate on my job and he was entertaining all the parents. So it’s awesome.
Danny de Hek 15:24
That there’s probably a good example, you see, because we went in to todos pool Brown, and he’s a bit nervous at the start. So then we have to, you know, edit them all and get the conversation going. He was more relaxed, and you could literally see the photos at the end of the shoot. We’re actually starting to get him as he was. Yeah, sir. That’s
Helen Oakes 15:43
way tight, my son to this social group. And whenever we go and pick up, pick him up at the end, or the kids come out, and Daniel has his stroke about all make sure you get your right the right child, and I nervously stand there giggling away thinking, I don’t think they’ve got you. They don’t understand you.
Danny de Hek 16:07
That’s cool. All right, guys, what about you? We’ve been let you guys talk.
Stef Pietroiusti 16:12
Yes, as the last company, we used to have a baby Yoda. That used to like, React every time there was movements. And that was a reward that we give rewards to like, people that heard like, just like, either performing or doing something good during the week. And if one with dark self nominate so I think maybe be software voting or like reward yourselves like every now and then because it is hard winning a business. But like, off the sets and congressmen I mean, just running a business in itself is a big success. Yeah,
Danny de Hek 16:50
sure. That’s actually a really good way of looking at it. That’s not necessarily something that you perform in front of your clients. What you’re really saying is it’s rewarding yourself have a bit of fun in your business. What some ways that we could give us some fun.
David Clarkson 17:06
Yeah, is it a similar one to stiffs there is the company a company that I work with back in the day when I was still working as a chartered accountant was a packaging company called was in those days UVB industries, which was the second biggest packaging company in the country. And any our boardroom we had this big ball and had these eyes on it in this big sticky out nose, and this big grin and these ears like this, you see, and it was sound sensitive. And somebody would make a comment, you know, just a throwaway comment about something or other and you’d say Oh, crap and go like this and and as soon as you did that, the ginger here would pop up on the on the bull he is would go like this, the mouth would go like this and the nose would pop out and used to bring the house down every time. Yeah.
Danny de Hek 18:00
I went I waited genius co working nice additions, they got a bell. And every time somebody hit something good happen in their business, they had to ring the bell. That’s really cool. That’s very animated that David was really appreciated to public speaker training there was
video
Stef Pietroiusti 18:23
The other way
you can also decorate your office with by funny things like this. All right. This would be the thing. I work with my wife so sometimes when I want to talk to somebody that doesn’t answer back I talk to him.
Danny de Hek 18:40
Any one of those? I might have a kid.
Stef Pietroiusti 18:44
Yeah, nice. Not Probably not.
I should be here.
Danny de Hek 18:50
Yeah. I’ll get a cube that’s got a D on it. Talk to the D it’s a green cube. Would you believe it? Because it’s green. Black? Yeah, yeah. It’s like what’s just gone?
Oh, there is Yeah, yeah, that’s
Helen Oakes 19:09
weird. It is actually great.
Stef Pietroiusti 19:13
Oh,
I got it.
David Clarkson 19:15
Hi. Sorry, mate. Cuz that matches with your screen Danny behind.
Mark Scown 19:22
Yes.
Helen Oakes 19:23
Friday afternoon drinks. That’s always fun.
Stef Pietroiusti 19:26
Yeah.
Danny de Hek 19:29
social engagements.
Stef Pietroiusti 19:31
Yeah, sometimes so easy to get caught up in work which frankly it’s
Danny de Hek 19:37
a bit of a stressful weekend. Alan said yesterday let’s go out and have lunch are shouting and drinking wine and you’re drinking as well and I mean, okay. But you know, sometimes some simple stuff like that it’s quite good.
Helen Oakes 19:47
Oh, it’s nice to just chilled out and it was a nice sunny day and, and we we still sort of talked work but the funny thing was, I said I’ll pay for it on my my work credit card. So I get my card out. And the cast already got gone over the limit. So here’s my personal card.
Danny de Hek 20:10
I’m paying off a credit card every every week, by the way.
Mark Scown 20:17
If you’ve got staff and you know, my past life, I had 15 staff sitting up fun afternoons where you’re actually giving them time off work or rewarding them. We used to go out sometimes play nine holes of golf or 10 pin bowling or something. So it was a fun activity, but it also was acknowledgement to the staff for their hard work and dedication.
Helen Oakes 20:42
Yeah, I totally agree with that. I think that’s really important. And it keeps your staff engaged and motivated. I was listening, I just did my morning walk. And I was listening to my book about the atomic habits. And the guy that’s narrating said that Google do 80% work and work time and 20% the employees are allowed to choose their own projects to work on. And they said, That’s why that’s how Google Mail happened in Google ads, because of just people coming up with these ideas.
Jaline Pietroiusti 21:16
Oh,
Danny de Hek 21:19
interesting. I just thought of when you said that. I’m recording again. Oh, that’s raised to have a guild that used to be my pa when I travel around. But I did have to try and to reward her and keep her interest in motivated when I tried to do financial rewards eventually become taken for granted. And it was just like then, or expected, and I had to keep it up, which was a pain in the bum. So that was that’s probably a problem with it. Really? Yeah. Problem.
Jaline Pietroiusti 21:50
Yeah. It’s much better to have a barbecue or do something social in the workplace, then reward with money.
Danny de Hek 21:57
In jealousy, perhaps it could be the other one you find for the hard work. And then the other one. Yeah. So here’s some problems we could have then let’s go into problems was problems with bringing fun into your business people don’t take you seriously. Yeah, yeah.
Paul Starling 22:12
Friday Night drinks can become a liability. They can be
Danny de Hek 22:18
doing drinks tonight, this guy.
Stef Pietroiusti 22:23
Huh? and also their fans. Agree. Be careful. Like, what’s fun? Because it could be cultural differences. They could be
Jaline Pietroiusti 22:38
family oriented.
David Clarkson 22:40
Yeah. being culturally sensitive as pretty as pretty important, actually.
Mark Scown 22:46
Yeah. So yeah, I’m saying the problem actually is being culturally insensitive.
David Clarkson 22:51
Oh, right. Yeah,
Mark Scown 22:53
that’s the problem. Yeah.
Paul Starling 22:55
Culture.
Danny de Hek 22:57
When I used to work in the supermarket, they used to have the yearly Christmas do and you’d see all these 17 year old girls who’ve never had alcohol before. 18 year olds at the time, tune up, and then a half an hour later, they would literally be running to the lows, because they’re gonna throw up. And you think this is literally innocent chick at girls who wouldn’t normally make them melt in the mouth, they were just getting as much alcohol down themselves as they can because it was free. So that would
David Clarkson 23:28
Wow, that’s amazing. That’s, that’s very common. That’s very common occurrence in larger companies, especially if you’ve got people primarily employment from lower socio economic groups. I remember one out that that I worked for boys used to have a Christmas party. And it was the same thing was held in a decent restaurant, there would be a couple of hundred people going booze would all be the booze and food will all be paid for and for a lot of the people. And that was literally their own major social outing for the year. And man did they did they get input something terrible, and in the end, he had the the guy who was running it had to cut down and so there were no spirits for people and may be had to be confined to beer and wine. And even so, my wife saying to me the last season the last time we went to the ladies was an A shocking Miss. Because, man, it’s just because often times a lot of people just not used to having
Jaline Pietroiusti 24:35
Hmm, you know,
Helen Oakes 24:36
they they get the mentality of it’s phrase, I will get as much interest as we can. And that’s the problem.
Mark Scown 24:43
Yeah, we used to have paid for staff things. So the board would pay for the meal and put out a couple of wine, bottles of wine per table, and that was it and if people wanted to drink Additionally, then it was on their own tab.
Stef Pietroiusti 25:00
Yeah, yeah, it’s good. Yeah.
Danny de Hek 25:04
I have another idea I had a insurance guy is telling the story too. And he’s looking for ideas to keep as client base stimulated. And what he said he used to do is when he got a new insurance job, used to see a pair of socks to them every month, and he said it used to cost them 120 bucks. But every month, his client that he had signed up their insurance would be receiving a different colour pair of socks every month. Oh, that’s a bit weird. I’ll tell him It might be a good marketing idea. And this is what I do. You must have heard it from one of my friends
Paul Starling 25:42
from a company fairly frequently, and I just put him straight in the bank because the quality is crap. And I don’t want to ruin their logo on my socks. I think it’s a waste of money.
Danny de Hek 25:55
I’ve got zero socks. I quite like those. I want them in a zero thing. They’re the most multicoloured socks ever. Oh, yeah. So what should we only give quality gifts was the gesture.
Paul Starling 26:09
Should be quality. Yeah.
Helen Oakes 26:14
Damn, we had gifts for you from AliExpress Yeah, we got
Danny de Hek 26:26
it always getting these posh hits it.
Paul Starling 26:29
I got a bag with five gifts, including a pair of socks and some other stuff from soft solutions this week, and the only thing I’ve kept is the mouse mat. The rest is what in the bed or gave away.
Jaline Pietroiusti 26:40
Wow.
Mark Scown 26:43
Never captured 20% of your attention that ball.
Paul Starling 26:46
Nah, just needed mouse max and the other one was tattooing.
Mark Scown 26:51
And you’re here to shop on site.
Paul Starling 26:54
The other thing I’ve been getting recently is cases of beer. Oh, I was quite surprised that
Jaline Pietroiusti 27:01
yes. Well, maybe you can put two years at least through it’s a nice little God and something you can eat and drink will go a long way instead of friends that you wear out. Which doesn’t mean the worst thing
Paul Starling 27:15
I got was through the post was boxes of dates.
Danny de Hek 27:19
Obviously, we’re in the wrong position.
Paul Starling 27:22
Not all horrible because they’d been in the post for somebody weeks.
Danny de Hek 27:28
Another suggestion, I had peter king from giggle TV and what he did he decided to go around and get bars of chocolates to all his clients because they hang upside down. They Yeah, he’s just going Hans bar of chocolate because he couldn’t do much for the summer him and in his industry have forgotten what it was. Okay, tell us about that. David, can you hold up your picture?
David Clarkson 27:51
I got that sent to me. And it works. Thanks. Right It’s a five away so you know, I and I kept it for years. Yeah.
Danny de Hek 28:05
Well, he’s gonna AliExpress and think of things that we could send their clients the quality.
Helen Oakes 28:12
Good guy, Chris.
Jaline Pietroiusti 28:15
Oh, and we can’t find any. So that’s a great idea. Yeah.
Helen Oakes 28:19
really heavy duty garlic presses from AliExpress brilliant. This thing I brought the
Danny de Hek 28:26
novelty gift.
Jaline Pietroiusti 28:27
bling killin roses. You can find good ones.
David Clarkson 28:31
Yeah, and the other thing that can cause offence is inappropriate language. Yes,
Jaline Pietroiusti 28:37
absolutely.
Danny de Hek 28:39
This What? I’m checking the spelling.
Helen Oakes 28:42
Ah, I think so. Is it the Americanized spelling? Yes. Yeah.
Mark Scown 28:47
Yeah, there’s two spelling.
Helen Oakes 28:48
Yeah, that one? It could be See if
you can see, I think SEO sees the correct
Mark Scown 28:57
Okay. See myself.
Danny de Hek 28:59
I can’t wait to edit this on my editing software. Because that last conversation the last minute it’s going to be a real goodie. Oh,
Helen Oakes 29:07
no, two weeks to it.
And you can see
Danny de Hek 29:12
see? I’m perfect now.
David Clarkson 29:16
All right. And inappropriate language.
Danny de Hek 29:19
Oh, and just add a something that might rain on David’s is quite well, when I were editing the software at sea. Would you like me to remove the filler words? Apparently, we did. 159 words. Really? Hundred 50 Now that was great. We’re gonna break that record today. See if we can have more filler words. Least? Yeah. So what’s a good tip technique, instead of saying Ah,
Paul Starling 29:52
pause. Yeah. Oh,
Danny de Hek 29:59
and then if there was anything Like a silence for more than three seconds. I could also trim that out, which is quite amazing, right?
Mark Scown 30:04
The other thing is Think before you speak.
Danny de Hek 30:07
Mm hmm. Apparently that works. Alright, so problems with people’s experiences, what’s his and solutions with bringing humour into our business? Make sure people get us before we tell them a joke and appropriate jokes if we’re gonna use humour. Nothing worse when you’ve mentioned something about politics, religion, or swearing in offend people. So we’re not culturally sensitive sometimes when we add humour may not be understand your audience. That’s cool.
David Clarkson 30:42
Yeah, yeah. And I think one of the big things is when you’re speaking with people be in the moment because oftentimes they’ll say something which can you can use as as to generate some humour?
Danny de Hek 31:01
Well, yeah, I’m just thinking of the lady who asked for her pictures Wasn’t she was very well, I taste that funny story is that a lady wrote to me who passed or been delivered yesterday. So she wrote that in capital letters. And then she said, and I don’t think this is very professional, she right there in capital letters as well. So I wrote back a nice explanation to her and then cut and paste it into my editing tool and made the whole lot capitals and sent back the most lovely as email to her explaining that we’re not a courier company, and it’s probably being dropped off at any neighbours, but I thought I’d write it all in capitals. And that wasn’t very funny, but I did enjoy it. I’ll be honest. That’s
Paul Starling 31:45
not appropriate.
Helen Oakes 31:47
Probably not appropriate, but it was funny.
Danny de Hek 31:52
Sometimes it doesn’t matter what you say. You can’t win anyway. So I thought, Oh, well. Let me enjoy those.
Stef Pietroiusti 32:02
marks. Yeah.
Helen Oakes 32:05
Yeah. Expert x planation. No, what does that exclamation? marks? Yeah, um, question max. We get those all the time.
Stef Pietroiusti 32:16
What’s just one, not three. And
Danny de Hek 32:19
a lot of the line? Yeah. So this would be a good topic in itself is using email. Often people can’t listen to your humour or see your expression. So maybe email humour isn’t really that good. Because the amount of people that as you get offended by my last little bit of my emails where it says I’m composers, using voice recognition with Bluetooth enabled as a dyslexic person is my sort of signature I seem to everybody. But some people write back and give me a barreling for that. And other people don’t even read it. But it’s always been an interesting thing. Seeing the reaction I get from having a tagline that sort of humorous and silly at the same time. I should take it out.
Mark Scown 32:59
Yeah, you possibly could even find that the refund humour is better in a sort of softer medium like texting rather than into email.
Helen Oakes 33:10
Yeah, even texting can be a problem. They can’t You can’t tell if someone’s joking or the tone because there’s no tone of voice I think that’s the most difficult thing, isn’t it?
Paul Starling 33:21
Yeah. You’re not allowed to put a full stop at the end of a sentence now because the snowflakes will get upset
Danny de Hek 33:31
Let’s be an English thing. Yeah.
Paul Starling 33:34
It was up on the news last week some research apparently the texting generation find it
upsetting because it’s too forceful apparently.
Helen Oakes 33:45
Oh, stop.
Paul Starling 33:48
Yeah, it was because that they’d grown up with texting with no grammar. Oh God Oh, my God. Oh, generational thing that we haven’t really talked about as well.
Mark Scown 33:59
And perhaps many of them are wondering why they don’t have a job either.
Paul Starling 34:05
Because they all did Communication Studies degrees. Yeah.
Danny de Hek 34:13
Just thinking about topically What about advertising or marketing as something we use fun or is it always a bit like some companies can you think of maybe like the telecom companies always using a bit of humour or maybe the pic and save commercials? So they they’re brilliant. Yeah, only some people either hate them or love them but i think
Helen Oakes 34:34
i think they cry Yeah.
Danny de Hek 34:38
Hmm. unnamed pitches. Yeah.
Helen Oakes 34:40
And the countdown comes up.
Paul Starling 34:45
The wonder how they get away with that advert because they never compare like with like
Jaline Pietroiusti 34:52
that yeah.
Mark Scown 34:54
I thought that they did actually know if you
Paul Starling 34:56
read the small print at the bottom. It tells you that it was similar. Products not the same products. You could be buying premium brand and the same thing in the cheap brand. Yeah, and they’re comparing the prices though they’re the same which obviously be odd.
Jaline Pietroiusti 35:12
Yeah,
Danny de Hek 35:14
of course.
Jaline Pietroiusti 35:15
Oh in in South Africa, we had a food chain called Nando’s. I see it’s here in New Zealand as well, but the advert oh my gosh, they’re really used to take the Mick out of politicians in South Africa. And some of the things they used with Nando’s and advertise. It could be racial. It was ripping off a specific politician or and they used to get away with it. left it? Yeah. Yeah, that’s just the way South Africa was different. Yeah. New Zealand. Yeah, I’m sure.
Paul Starling 35:49
Capitalism changed over the years as well because in the UK, you can see them on the internet. The Carling Black Label adverts are Black Label born they took like they took the gene Levi’s advert and then they reshot it with the same actors and put their own spin on them and they’re brilliant. They’ve done a whole series.
But you don’t see anything like that anymore.
Helen Oakes 36:11
No, no,
Paul Starling 36:12
no everything probably cuz everything’s become to PC PC. Right?
Danny de Hek 36:18
Can we use humour to get us in the right frame of mind? When we’re not having that spark in our business? Like, I love watching Rowan Atkinson, or I love watching fraying my slipper in the toilet. I can’t get my foot out. We’ll be gay.
Mark Scown 36:39
Yeah
we’re laughing with it.
Danny de Hek 36:45
Was that some john Cleese?
Helen Oakes 36:47
No no. What was the programme some others do and was Yeah,
David Clarkson 36:50
yeah, yeah. Some of those old some of those old English programmes used to be really hilarious like a week of it and
Mark Scown 37:00
our Blackadder
Paul Starling 37:01
in drop the dead donkey
David Clarkson 37:04
it just amazing. And I always remember one in one of the john Cleese clips where he said that it was set in an hour if base and obviously during World War Two and he was giving a briefing for a flying mission over over Europe. And he said and so Cleese’s now I’m sorry chip son haven’t got very up to date map so you’ll have to make do with what we’ve got. So when you fly over Europe turn lifting goal and carry on
Mark Scown 37:44
a couple map out on the back of an Asterix book
Danny de Hek 37:49
one with a guy used to strip his clothes off and then go jump in the ocean at the start of every programme that was wrong original pattern
today you know by
Paul Starling 38:00
rational parent wasn’t it? rational parent?
Danny de Hek 38:03
Yes. And life isn’t butterfly was a good butterfly and they had butterflies was good and many with a flag on it. Remember, we bought those programmes closer to today? What? What television thing is quite funny. Now we’ve got reality TV. That is just Yes, I still sit there and watch certain thing these people acting or is this the real life? Do they think this is real? I
Helen Oakes 38:29
think reality TV is it’s just real fascinating, you know, being a fly on the wall in someone else’s life. Even if it’s dribble, you know, you think
Mark Scown 38:44
renji
Helen Oakes 38:45
do you? Yeah, I find things like the Kardashians. cringy but Oh, yeah. But other ones are quite funny.
Paul Starling 38:56
Watch them.
David Clarkson 38:57
But yeah, there is sort of reality I go for is things like Mastership which I quite enjoy. Oh, yeah.
Danny de Hek 39:07
So we were going to do a reality TV show with elite six. Anything we’d get on
David Clarkson 39:21
watch the run for the hills Danny. Yeah.
Mark Scown 39:25
It probably wouldn’t get pass upon it episode.
David Clarkson 39:32
Find the part of match Yeah,
Danny de Hek 39:35
Marry a Millionaire would have to be married, marry a poor self employed
Helen Oakes 39:41
Another one. Another solution would be because Danny and I used to get a lot of grumpy emails. We decided to do some funny responses back and they were rude. Funny. They were like, no, they were quite entertaining funny. And Danny went through once like I’m sorry, but I think your parcels taken home. die in the Bahamas. Hopefully it’ll be here. So a fan, you know, that sort of thing. So I think a good solution is to send fantic comical emails if you can just lighten the load
Danny de Hek 40:15
in some of the grumpiest people around, ironically, and it’s funny, I see Well, we had a suspicion that your goods may have gone missing. So we’ve actually put a secret camera in with it this time. And I’ve just turned it on. And all the other parcels I have in a party they had a good time. And the plane so on haven woods with them, and hopefully they won’t have a hangover tomorrow. And it’s um, yeah, the people deserve it. They love it.
Paul Starling 40:46
The recipient might not find it as funny as you
Helen Oakes 40:49
know, some of them do. Some of them send a funny email back but and then some of them are like, Oh, you’re so unprofessional.
Jaline Pietroiusti 40:56
Oh, wow.
Danny de Hek 40:59
By the way, fine. I’ve had a couple this week, he did receive the goods even though that took ages nine had already refunded them. And they offered to pay.
Jaline Pietroiusti 41:09
So that’s good. That’s positive. Yeah.
Danny de Hek 41:12
So he so you know, even though you’ve said as he I used the humour to build the relationship with them, because what they don’t like about our company at the moment is the automation. So imagine when you ring up by NZ post, or some other organisation like the AI rd, and you get the automated system or the bank, and it’s never real. And as soon as they get to speak to a real person, then they feel like they’re getting their attention they think they deserve. Yes. It’s a difference for a lot of emails and tips in it. Where do they just obviously don’t think we’re human or something?
Jaline Pietroiusti 41:44
Mm hmm.
Danny de Hek 41:45
All right, guys. Well, we can talk about takeaways, because we don’t have to stretch this out for an hour. I’ve been listening to a book about meetings at the moment. And the mission of the meeting was to come up with some ideas on bringing fun into your business. So any takeaways that you thought that you’ve got from the meeting? Some of you might think I might try something different?
Jaline Pietroiusti 42:05
Yeah, don’t talk about work and work parties.
Helen Oakes 42:09
That’s a good thing. Yeah. Because people do. Yeah. And especially if you’ve got people at your work party that don’t work with you. And then you’re talking work and they like so bored. Yeah. All right.
Paul Starling 42:24
Colleagues get up to work parties.
Jaline Pietroiusti 42:27
Yeah, it doesn’t end well.
Danny de Hek 42:31
Ireland’s working at a party this weekend. Ironically. Yeah. Which would be quite interesting because she will be working trying to catch her photos. And then the people there will be drinking and having a Happy Fourth. You want to get along and blend in
Helen Oakes 42:46
help. You can be my light person. I am Yeah. He can be my lighting man.
David Clarkson 42:55
Yeah, takeaway for me is that you can grease the wheels of business.
Stef Pietroiusti 43:00
Yeah. Hmm.
Danny de Hek 43:04
And what compared him to do
Paul Starling 43:06
utterly destroy
Danny de Hek 43:09
destroying your relationship with lift?
Paul Starling 43:13
Hmm, inappropriate humour.
Mark Scown 43:18
And sometimes the tragedy is that there are some people out there who just do not have one funny bone in their whole body. And they tried to do that and it just doesn’t it goes down like a lead balloon. Yeah.
Danny de Hek 43:31
You’ve got a funny guy, Max. I mean, how long have you always use your human like you when you’re looking at the start?
Mark Scown 43:38
Yeah. Well, I guess I, you know, my old man, he was a baller laughs But But even when I first started off as a teacher, that was one of my main teaching tools in the classroom with kids was just jiggle them along in bits and pieces. And yeah, but I like to react on the situation. So rather than trotting out a joke, sometimes I find that so but I just like to pick up the humour of the things that are happening and turn that into something. Yeah.
Danny de Hek 44:12
Yeah. I didn’t meet my real father properly in tours. 23. And he lives in a North Island and a pub. So I thought it’s a good excuse to go meet him. When I meet him, would you believe he had the same type of humour as me? And I thought, oh my god I was doing before I even started. So you mess in here at some of you hear
David Clarkson 44:33
a mark just talking education. And one of the things that are still stuck in my mind now after all these years is the math teacher who when we were were explaining to him our solutions used to pull when we’d finished he would pause and then he’d say, No, again, kid, I don’t get your drift.
never forgotten.
Danny de Hek 45:01
Huh, yes.
All right, do we Okay, what about next week’s topic? Russian you guys along that way? We were meant to figure out how to set up a poll because Laughlin gave us the topic, which isn’t here today, either, by the way, just saying Laughlin, if you’re listening to this afterwards, it was the theme. If you give us the theme, you’ve got to be here too. Maybe he’s watching on the Facebook Live. And he said that we chuckled to himself. Or it was next week. Who needs a holiday?
Mark Scown 45:37
Yeah. Oh, yes, please. Oh. I’m
David Clarkson 45:44
Thomas. And I’m in Monaco, the week after next.
Danny de Hek 45:49
Oh, we’re gonna go to the coast this weekend.
Mark Scown 45:53
My only problem is going to Queenstown next week is as I think it’s going to be full of aucklanders. None of
them will have current passports for the summer.
Danny de Hek 46:09
Funny to aucklanders in the window.
Jaline Pietroiusti 46:13
Don’t worry, we’re not coming down to South Island. We’re not gonna give you COVID remarks on the news by everybody. We were like, Whoa, okay. Oh, my sounds like South Africa.
Danny de Hek 46:30
He is ago you took all electricity, you seem we’ve never forgiven you for that.
Jaline Pietroiusti 46:34
Ah,
Danny de Hek 46:37
we don’t run out of power.
Here we may well, after going on here, I have to eat it there.
David Clarkson 46:51
might have come up with a lot of solutions. We’ve had a bit of fun along the way.
Danny de Hek 46:57
So does anyone have any good successes this week? That’s a different slightly different topic. It’s been good.
Jaline Pietroiusti 47:05
Finishing projects, finally.
Mark Scown 47:10
And I got paid.
Danny de Hek 47:14
payment. That’s good. I got I use picking up clients. I’m mad because I know that things have been a different view lately.
Mark Scown 47:20
Oh, yes. Last last two months, Sam at a high levels of activity. Really? It’s just sort of quietening off a little bit now until I saw some more. But no, the first the first six or eight weeks of COVID. Were not great. But now
Danny de Hek 47:42
people still need it. That must be is like a utility insurance in a way. Yeah. Yeah.
David Clarkson 47:48
And I sold another book last week. Oh, God.
Mark Scown 47:52
Deliver?
David Clarkson 47:53
Yep. Hmm.
Danny de Hek 47:56
Yeah, I caught up with a whole lot of emails, which I was really wrapped about, we we obviously do a lot on AliExpress AliExpress have got this cutting system that we’re sort of trying to keep up with. But if you haven’t received a product within a month, you have a better window of a month to put a complaint in to get a refund. If you missed that window, you can ever could put a complaint in and you lose your money into goods. So Alan had 1500 of these that I had to go through and open them up at one of the time, check the date and try to put a complaint in. And it was kind of at one point, I think about one in every 15. But I’ve been trying to work through this list for the last six weeks. So I managed to finish the list this week. So now I have no more complaints. Because that doesn’t matter what you do, because Helen will get a customer who waits three months to say we haven’t hit our parcel yet. And then you go and go all door chase on it. Oh, it’s still in transit and we can’t get the money back and we lose everything. Is there was quite a good to get up to date. Get on the pulse with it. But that was all from probably five months ago stuff.
Paul Starling 49:01
Increase the time to three months now.
Helen Oakes 49:04
Yeah, they have yeah. Oh, yeah. It used to be 60 days sort of Money Back Guarantee type thing. Now it’s 90 days. Oh, wow.
Danny de Hek 49:15
Okay. But literally, just by asking for those refunds. Are they actually a business in itself? Probably is Yeah, five or $600 out of doing that. So it’s another job that you can do, but it’s just crazy.
Helen Oakes 49:29
Yeah. So Janine. Steve, have you got some new projects coming up after you finish your other ones?
Jaline Pietroiusti 49:35
Um, yeah, we were busy with about eight but September has gone a little quiet. So it’s giving us time to focus on our own thing.
Yeah. Yeah, we needed that little gap. Yeah, yeah.
Mark Scown 49:51
And have you got kids, you guys?
Stef Pietroiusti 49:54
Oh, yeah, we got three here. three daughters. Also, both small straight.
On and for, yeah.
Got a little puppy as well.
Danny de Hek 50:11
I’m starting up a pet website soon. So we’ll be in touch motoring products. It’d be great. All right, guys. So what topic can we pick for next week that we love to have something to come back with? It’s worth sitting here for 45 minutes or an hour discussing facts about to get another kiss. Right?
Stef Pietroiusti 50:42
destination?
Danny de Hek 50:45
leave Don’t leave home alone. Does anyone watch the chase?
Mark Scown 50:51
Yeah, occasionally,
Danny de Hek 50:52
yeah, quite enjoyed, actually, sort of a five o’clock thing. We miss it, we’ll make it a six o’clock. But then he says, This is how I got my education, my friends. I don’t even think you need.
Helen Oakes 51:09
It’s funny. We go to this. We’ve started to go to a Monday night quince. And we used to go to the pub just to wait for my son when he was at his activity. So it sat there and we chat. We do work on our iPads. And then we thought, Oh, we should join them with the quiz. Because we’d sit there and we go, Oh, I know the answer to that. Oh, I know that when I know that. And we took the like we knew at all. And then we turn that we go the quiz. And the first week, we had these other two women that joined us. And they were so knowledgeable and we came food out of five. And then last week, we there were three of us and we didn’t waste time fourth out of four. And really fourth, we were so far behind everyone. So it looks real easy. And you think you know the answers, but it’s so much of what you think. Yeah,
Danny de Hek 51:59
there we go. topic for next week.
David Clarkson 52:04
Yeah, general knowledge and business tips.
Helen Oakes 52:07
Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And that all had some good nuggets.
Danny de Hek 52:15
Yeah. All right, guys. Well, when might you hang around any longer did we buttload of numbers today. So if you are watching this on our podcast, please do be in here next week. And we’ll discuss the topic, general knowledge and business tips which will be I’ll try to come up with some questions and some facts fun facts that make it more interesting and we can ask people to see how good we all are. Anyway, thank you for your attendance and I shall stop the live broadcast now. And more information on elite six dot coda is it
David Clarkson 52:46
Thanks Thanks.
Transcribed by Otter
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