noSh-​it! Pizza Blog

noSh-​it!, noFl-​owers!…

| By Stephen Glanville | November 12th, 2009

Hi Folks :-)

It never ceases to amaze me how, when one is at one’s low­est ebb, the ‘Uni­verse’ (so to speak), calls upon those True few, who lov­ingly cast a golden thread into the abyss, as a life­line to strengthen the heart of a fel­low explorer :-)

Thanks to The Aviary for the Image

Thanks to The Aviary for the Image

So inspired by some of these great and hereto­fore unher­alded lights of the world, I wanted to say thanks, as I’m able and in my way.

What Has Come to Pass

As you may have gath­ered from my ear­lier posts, good o’l noSh-​it! Wood-​Fired Pizza is no longer able to trade. She barely took her first steps before suc­cumb­ing to what so far passes for ‘small busi­ness sup­port’. I did my best with what I had…but it wasn’t enough. But rest assured, though a body can get bashed and man­gled, the Spirit is alive and growing…and the Phoenix will rise from the ashes.

I admit that over the past week I have strug­gled with what to tell you…moreover how to tell you. In the Spirit of noSh-​it!, it’s all noble ‘n stuff to say one is being hon­est and true and say­ing it how it is, warts ‘n all ‘n all that; but it’s a whole ‘nuther thang’ when the skin starts to dis­ap­pear under the warts. How much can a Koala ‘Bear’…indeed!

noSh-​it!, noFl-​owers!

Nam myoho renge kyo — Some of you may be famil­iar with this old Vedic/​Buddhist/​Japanese mantra/chant/spell/affirmation…call it what you will. It was made famous in the ‘West’ by among other remark­able folks, Tina Turner.

full_lotusI’m not going to pro­vide some smancy ‘qual­i­fied’ Web-​based ref­er­ence to jus­tify my use of it here. I’m just going to tell you what it means to me:

  • The deeper you go, the higher you go;
  • That heaps of shit grows stun­ning flowers;
  • It refers to the roots of the Lotus that go way down into the depths of the mud to pro­duce their stun­ning flow­ers (in other words, the Crown Chakra); and
  • Lit­er­ally, it goes some­thing like this — I bow to that I am within me the rev­e­la­tion of mys­tic truth of the life giv­ing lotus petals. That’s my take any­way. Have a play here (Ok! Just one smancy ‘qual­i­fied’ Web-​based ref­er­ence then…are you happy now? :-) ), and make up your own ver­sion if you like…but you get the drift? :-)

The Stun­ning Flowers

This is not a list of every­one that has ever inspired me. These are just the folks from the last week or so. How dare I feel sorry for myself… :-) lotus_bud_trans

Tracy & Pete Hansen — The only thing you haven’t done is sign the adop­tion papers :-) I’m hon­oured to have become part of your fam­ily. You didn’t know me from a bar o’ soap, yet, you sup­ported me and my busi­ness when oth­ers wouldn’t. You con­tinue to do so. I love your great words, great inspi­ra­tion, great guid­ance and the best bluddy hand-​forged pizza tools on the planet. Thank you :-)

Paul Has­s­ing — Geez mate! What can I say? You’ve done every­thing humanly pos­si­ble. And you absolutely bluddy gob­s­macked me today with your lat­est arti­cle. I can only say that I’m hon­oured and Thank you :-)

Charly Leetham — Charly is a great friend and small busi­ness men­tor. She has helped me through thick and thin and her great­est gift is that she lis­tens. Just her friend­ship and her con­ver­sa­tion are a great raft of san­ity and her hon­esty pro­vides a real­ity check that you just can’t buy. Actu­ally in her case you can. She is a great con­sul­tant help­ing a great deal of peo­ple. Thanks Charly, you lis­tened to me rav­ing on the other day…it helps me so much :-)

Michael Mar­tin — A strange Pommy fella that isn’t just a ray of light of a par­tic­u­lar color; he’s all of ‘em on high beam! :-) I can only highly rec­om­mend Michael to any­one that wants to enter into busi­ness and/​or take their busi­ness to the next level…even if your cur­rent level is (like mine), 6ft deep in the pooh! Michael has done it all and exem­pli­fies what for me will one day (soon I hope), become our New Busi­ness Par­a­digm. You know? Busi­ness that ACTU­ALLY ben­e­fits Peo­ple and the World?

Mal­colm J Owens — An even stranger Aussie fella ;-P, that qui­etly and deftly sews Lotus seeds wher­ever he goes. Even so, I still give him heaps on Paul’s Small Busi­ness Owner Blog :-) . Mal­colm has not only directly con­tributed to get­ting my busi­ness as far as it got, but his wis­dom and expe­ri­ence (some of which is embod­ied in his MUST READ eBook), con­tin­ues to inspire and guide me as I rebuild my business.

Dr Stephen Saun­ders — The SHOP­POL­O­GIST — This bloke takes the ‘strange’ cake, and he’s got more bluddy nation­al­i­ties than even I can poke a stick at…but I’ve sucked up enough to him already on my Blank Can­vas Con­test post. ;-P

rain_lotus

Melody Lea Lamb — Melody is one of those rare peo­ple who, sim­ply by nature, makes you believe in ‘Good’ whether you want to or not. I only know her via Twit­ter, as I do quite a few of these folks. But in her own lit­tle ways she has made such a big dif­fer­ence. She is like the Sun. And she is a gifted artist. Thanks Melody :-)

Kate Gilby — Wow! All these strange Pommies…and there’s more to go :-) . I met Kate via good ol’ SpikeTh­eLob­ster. Both amaz­ing writ­ers from whom I will always be learn­ing a great deal and hav­ing a lot of laughs. There respec­tive Blogs — ITISI - well the name says it all :-) and Spike’s Blog — Scrawl­bug are like great books that you just can’t put down. Thanks guys :-)

Bambi Gor­don, Debra Tem­plar, Rebecca Der­ring­ton, Rae Brueck­ner and Dear Sheila Nearly Evil Bas­tard (don’t believe me?.. check her blog ;-) ) — Absolute bluddy nut­ters the lot of ‘em…except Rebecca, who’s just so bluddy nice it’s almost scary ;-) . These guys are like my Twit­ter fam­ily; all bluddy ‘moth­ers’ though…Geez! They don’t let me get away with any­thing! But don’t let their car­ing exte­ri­ors fool you…within each of them beats the heart of a lioness and they are all amaz­ing and very suc­cess­ful busi­ness women in their own rights. I have a great deal of respect for them and con­tinue to learn heaps. And luck­ily for me they are the good eggs…they so often give of their knowl­edge openly and freely…too rare these days. Thanks ‘per­sons’ (gotta be care­ful, Debra will kill me if I’m polit­i­cally incor­rect :-P )…I appre­ci­ate your death defy­ing support.

Car­lie May­hem & Steve Galvin — I met Car­lie & Steve on Twit­ter too. Fine folks from the town where I was born. Though I don’t assume any­thing, in the short period that I have known them via Twit­ter, they have sim­ply been good, authen­tic friends. Fun, seri­ous, light and dark, all of it inef­fa­bly and tan­gi­bly real. They have made a dif­fi­cult week so much more enjoy­able and valu­able. They have some­where to stay down my way when­ever they like. Thanks guys :-)

Joi Muru­gavell — I’ve saved Joi for a spe­cial rea­son. Joi did an amaz­ing thing this week for which I am both hon­oured and grate­ful. And this amaz­ing thing that she did directly inspired me to do this arti­cle, as a kind of a homage and a thank you. I won’t attempt to describe what she did; best if you just have a look for your­self. It puts all the ‘Twit­ter­ated’ ‘Rec­om­men­da­tions’ and other online attempts at ‘mass pseudo you’re so spe­cial’ stuff to shame. Thank You Joi…It meant a great deal to me :-) lotus_dragonfly

And last but by no means least Karen James — Karen is my part­ner and best friend. Yes, that old say­ing — ‘behind every great man there is a scared woman’ — works both ways. There is a truly great woman behind this very scared man. Though her strength and love holds me up, I’m secretly hop­ing that some of it actu­ally rubs off; I’m sure I’m not alone in that hope :-P . She is a truly great woman…and not just because she can stand to be around me for more than 5 min­utes at a time; which is a feat of heroic pro­por­tions in itself. She is ‘sim­ply the best’…and I love her as best I can. Thanks Dar­lin’ for keepin’ me smilin’ and breathin’ :-)

So, thank you all for help­ing me through a dif­fi­cult time. Rest assured that you have not heard the last of noSh-​it! Wood-​Fired Pizza.

The Phoenix will rise from the ashes, and great flow­ers will bloom…noSh-it!

Cheers

Stephen G

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Office of Fair-​ly Stu­pid Trading…

| By Stephen Glanville | November 4th, 2009

In The Beginning

Don't worry...It's just a feeling!

Don’t worry…It’s just a feeling!

22 Octo­ber 2009 — I paid my $152.00 (plus postage & money order, because it can’t be done online in 2009), to reg­is­ter my busi­ness name in NSW. It’s ridicu­lous enough that I have to reg­is­ter my busi­ness name in 2 States, when one of those States (The ACT), cov­ers a grand 2432 km^2 (0.032% of Australia’s Total Area); but your gunna love this…

03 Novem­ber 2009 — The let­ter I received today from the NSW Office of Fair Trad­ing, informed me that my NSW Busi­ness Name Reg­is­tra­tion was declined because the name — “NOSH-​IT WOOD-​FIRED PIZZA”, “is con­sid­ered offen­sive to some mem­bers of the community”.

The Offense

My busi­ness name and the heinous act of try­ing to reg­is­ter it in the sen­si­tive new age State of NSW.

Clearly I only rep­re­sent a minor­ity com­pared to the over­whelm­ing major­ity of ‘com­mu­nity mem­bers’ that find my busi­ness name offensive.

So one can only assume that the over­whelm­ing major­ity of ‘com­mu­nity mem­bers’ that are offended by my busi­ness name, are clearly not offended at bar­ing the cost of pro­tect­ing them from being so offended.

Their Evi­dence

None!

Exhaus­tive Research NOT DONE Prior to Their Decision

Not check­ing the Aus­tralian Secu­ri­ties & Invest­ment Commission’s National Busi­ness Name Reg­istry Data­base, where they would have found this — PDF of Reg­is­tra­tion Search Results — and had they actu­ally read these FREE ONLINE SEARCH RESULTS, they may have noticed this:

  • That there are already 7 busi­nesses reg­is­tered in Aus­tralia that use a vari­a­tion of the name ‘nosh it’;
  • That 4 of those 7 reg­is­tered busi­ness names are already in NSW;
  • That 3 of the 4 busi­ness names already reg­is­tered in NSW use the name “NO SHIT”; and
  • That 1 of the remain­ing 3 busi­ness names reg­is­tered in Aus­tralia is “NOSH — IT WOOD — FIRED PIZZA”? It’s reg­is­tered in the Aus­tralian Cap­i­tal Ter­ri­tory (ACT), AND IT’S REG­IS­TERED TO ME!!!

The NSW Office of Fair Trad­ing also exhaus­tively didn’t:

  • Check to find out that my cur­rent ACT Reg­is­tered Busi­ness is also a Reg­is­tered Food Busi­ness in the ACT;
  • Check to find out that I have a Tem­po­rary Trad­ing Per­mit issued by the National Cap­i­tal Authority;
  • Check to find out that I already have a NSW Food Busi­ness Noti­fi­ca­tion Cer­tifi­cate; and
  • CHECK THE FRIG­GIN’ DIC­TIO­NARY to find out what ‘NOSH’ actu­ally means!!!

Com­pen­sa­tion

Don't worry...you're perfectly safe, we have you best interests at heart...this is normal...just come a little closer and sign here.

Don’t worry…this is all per­fectly nor­mal and rea­son­able and I’m ok with it..Really!.

They kindly offered to refund my $152.00, less $26 pro­cess­ing fee, which will slightly off­set the $300.00 + $xx,000.00 in poten­tial rev­enue that it’s cost me to sub­mit the “Inter­nal Review” doc­u­men­ta­tion and wait for them to review this wise deci­sion for the pro­tec­tion of the community.

In The Middle

Seri­ously, any more said by me at this point, is going to amount to noth­ing more than fur­ther spleen vent­ing. I reckon you get the pic­ture and can at least begin to extrap­o­late and com­pre­hend the ‘good’ this is doing for our country?

Well, now that my busi­ness has, despite my best efforts, been ‘small busi­ness sup­ported’ into obliv­ion, I’ve got noth­ing left to lose!

So! Chocks-​out, Flaps-​up, Hats-​off, Stand-​back, Smoke ‘em if ya got ‘em! I’ve had ENOUGH! And no, I don’t mean I’m giv­ing up…not by a long shot! :-)

I’ll keep you posted…

Cheers

Stephen G

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You can Bank on it…

| By Stephen Glanville | October 29th, 2009

Strap your­self in; I reckon this might well be con­sid­ered my ‘Rantiathan’.

Before I start, I reckon it is only rea­son­able to pro­vide some per­spec­tive. I con­sider myself very for­tu­nate. I don’t live in a War-​Torn Third-​World Coun­try where most of my fam­ily has been killed in the name of ‘World Peace’ or ‘Democ­racy’ or ‘The Com­mon Good’ and the rest of the world con­sid­ers me a ‘Ter­ror­ist’ by birthright.

Not sure if this is copyrighted...just in case, I got it from http://www.sodahead.com/genXer/

Not sure if this is copyrighted…just in case, I got it from http://​www​.soda​head​.com/​g​e​n​X​er/

I’m not starv­ing to death, I have a roof over my head (for the moment :-P ). I’m healthy, happy, deter­mined, unmed­icated, have a cou­ple of really good friends, a fan­tas­tic part­ner and that frig­gin’ dog that barks all day every day, doesn’t live imme­di­ately next door.

I have noth­ing to com­plain about. Yet here I am com­plain­ing my vir­tual breasts off. Why? Because it’s what’s in front of me to do. It’s hap­pen­ing now. It’s rel­e­vant and it needs to be said (if for noth­ing else but my own san­ity). And because there are some dis­turbingly seri­ous flaws in our Econ­omy and unfor­tu­nately there­fore our Soci­ety (’unfor­tu­nate’ because that dynamic should be the other way around…major dis­turbingly seri­ous flaw No: 1), and because I’ve said all along that I would come here and say it how it is (from my per­spec­tive, which is all I have), warts ‘n all. There has been plenty of really great stuff…this just hap­pens to a ‘warty’ bit…but like all things, includ­ing me, it will pass. :-P

Over the past cou­ple of days I’ve been talk­ing with my ‘Per­sonal Local Busi­ness Bank­ing Offi­cer’, to whom I wrote a big let­ter on Mon­day explain­ing my cur­rent sit­u­a­tion and that I need some help to con­tinue my business.

I was sent an over­draft appli­ca­tion. I sent this to my Accoun­tant (who inci­den­tally is great), to get her views. She sug­gested that although it wasn’t an ideal option (and none that are cur­rently avail­able really are), that I should go for it. So I did. The appli­ca­tion was sub­mit­ted yesterday.

On the appli­ca­tion form I noticed that it said the following:

“The XXXXXXXXXXXX Bank will nom­i­nate an appro­pri­ate limit based on the infor­ma­tion within this application”

I thought “Great!, the bank is going to tell ME what MY busi­ness needs, yet again!” You can see what that amounted to the first time round, in one of my recent com­ments over on the myBRC Small Busi­ness Owner Blog. (Inci­den­tally, this blog arti­cle was ini­tially a rather large com­ment on the same Small Busi­ness Owner Blog…different arti­cle though…if you want to check to see if I’m fib­bing, it’s here. :-) )

still_toadily-insaneSo, I decided to include an Annex­ure to my appli­ca­tion. This con­tained my full and prop­erly updated Finan­cial Pro­jec­tions from my Busi­ness Plan, which very con­ser­v­a­tively project a busi­ness income of $335,000.00 for the next 12 months (if I’m able to trade that is), along with how much is invested in the busi­ness to date in terms of establishment/​setup (time, labour, etc over past 18 months – esti­mated at $195,494.00 – not includ­ing Gov’t/Institutional wages, processes etc at the Tax Payer’s expense), cur­rent cap­i­tal assets of over $45,000.00 and a suc­cess­ful launch last month with over $3500.00 income and cur­rent debt level of approx­i­mately $28,000.00…and other details per­tain­ing to my actual income sta­tus over the past 12 months. (In the cor­po­rate world, with fig­ures of these pro­por­tions, it would be con­sid­ered an extremely healthy com­pany, wouldn’t it?)

I explained what I need the money for; what trad­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties I have in front of me (trad­ing licenses and per­mits I have acquired for local venues and precincts), that I’m now licensed to trade in 2 States and that I need a real­is­tic financ­ing solu­tion to con­sol­i­date minor debts, to bring my Credit Card up to date (I’m 2 min­i­mum pay­ments over­due – $606.00), pay cur­rent bills and pro­vide a mod­est but sen­si­ble cash-​flow plat­form from which to develop my new whole­sal­ing strat­egy and gen­er­ally progress my busi­ness. I asked for a $25,000.00 over­draft, from within a pro­gram that boasts up to $50,000.00 for busi­nesses that qualify…mine qualifies.

I got a phone call from the bank this morn­ing telling me that my appli­ca­tion was declined because my Credit Card Pay­ment is out­stand­ing. I said “Yes! THAT’S WHAT I SAID IN MY LET­TER ON MON­DAY , AND IN THE ENSU­ING PHONE CALLS AND IN MY APPLICATION…ISN’T THAT WHAT AN OVER­DRAFT IS FOR???!!! And you did send me the appli­ca­tion know­ing this didn’t you?” She said that the Credit Card account is con­sid­ered by the bank to be “Delin­quent”. Like that’s an answer?…!

I asked her that if I pay the out­stand­ing Credit Card Pay­ment, will my appli­ca­tion go through. The answer – “I can­not advise on that. I can only tell you that we can try to resub­mit the appli­ca­tion.” I trans­ferred the only avail­able money I had; a stan­dard ‘Main Busi­ness Account’ over­draft amount of $500.00 which I have left for a ‘life & death’ sit­u­a­tion. This was trans­ferred this morn­ing (NB: FROM WITHIN THE SAME ONLINE BANK FACIL­ITY!!!), into my Credit Card Account. I rang my ‘Bank Offi­cer’ and asked her if this will get me out of ‘delin­quency’ and legit­imise my appli­ca­tion. She said that she won’t be able to answer that ques­tion until tomor­row when their extremely fast and con­ve­nient online bank­ing facil­i­ties make the ‘instant, real-​time’ adjust­ments. Bluddy Hell! And we won­der why we have cyclic Eco­nomic ‘Cli­mate Change’?

Now bare in mind that in my first let­ter (the one I sent on Mon­day), I high­lighted the fact that I saw this sit­u­a­tion com­ing in July 2009 when I applied for an increase to my Credit Card ($5000.00 only), which would have ame­lio­rated if not pre­vented this situation…and that too was declined.

You know, I don’t con­sider myself an entirely stu­pid or com­pletely illit­er­ate person…but I must admit, I’m begin­ning to won­der. Am I just so frig­gin’ stu­pid that I’m miss­ing some­thing bla­tantly obvious?

blob_toadily-insaneI’ve been through a Gov’t run Small Busi­ness Pro­gram, con­structed a Gov’t Approved Busi­ness Plan, earned a Cert IV in Small Busi­ness Man­age­ment, been men­tored and advised by ‘Busi­ness Experts’ for over 12 months…

Am I the only small busi­ness in his­tory that has had chal­lenges in start-​up and found it nec­es­sary to ask for assis­tance from a lead­ing bank that spends lit­er­ally ‘gazil­lions’ a year adver­tis­ing how fan­tas­tic it is with stuff like this – “Whether you’re an expe­ri­enced com­pany or just start­ing out, we’re ready to help.”

I’m sim­ply gob­s­macked and floored to think that this is the level of busi­ness acu­men that is avail­able in our coun­try in 2009! Am I expect­ing too much? Am I the one that is com­pletely insane?

I can only hope that there is a bank or finan­cial insti­tu­tion out there that actu­ally can and is will­ing to help a small busi­ness like mine? If there is, are you will­ing to take on a new client that has done absolutely every­thing he pos­si­bly can, has a viable busi­ness with great trad­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties in front of it and just needs a bit of real­is­tic and sen­si­ble help to progress his busi­ness to the next level? Is there? If there is, I’m all ears :-)

Well, there you have it folks…I just wish I had bet­ter news…and rest assured I’m not giv­ing up…I’m deter­mined to con­tinue until I can pro­vide that ‘bet­ter news’.

Cheers

Stephen G

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The Impos­si­ble? No Problemo!

| By Stephen Glanville | October 26th, 2009

Hi Folks,

I said I’d give you the tri­als & tribu­la­tions of noSh-​it! Wood-​Fired Pizza, warts ‘n all, didn’t I?

Ok! Well strap your­self in for some inter­est­ing news along with a cou­ple o’ warts :-P

Never give up, never surrender!

Never give up, Never surrender!

Inter­est­ing News

noSh-​it! Wood-​Fired Pizza is now reg­is­tered to trade in NSW.…well, so close to it any­way. I have my NSW Food Busi­ness Noti­fi­ca­tion Cer­tifi­cate and I’ve sent my NSW Busi­ness Name Reg­is­tra­tion stuff in…just wait­ing to receive the certificate…should arrive this week.

But before you reach for the phone to book me for your next School Fete in Bro­ken Hill, I would like to empha­sise the following:

IMPOR­TANT ADAPTATION:

I’ve con­tin­ued work­ing toward the refo­cus­ing of my busi­ness. I spoke about this in an ear­lier post — The Rock Star Strategy…

As this is devel­op­ing, the empha­sis of the busi­ness is shift­ing more toward whole­sal­ing piz­zas than retail­ing. Why?

Own­ing my limitations

My out­door trad­ing expe­ri­ence to date has taught me one inescapable truth — I’m one per­son. Pro­vid­ing such high qual­ity piz­zas, I’m sim­ply not fast enough to gen­er­ate the turn-​over needed doing ONLY EVENTS and doing them by myself…and I have no inten­tion of sac­ri­fic­ing the qual­ity of either my prod­ucts or my ser­vice. And with­out proper/​adequate busi­ness financ­ing, I’m not in a posi­tion to hire any­one else at this point. Take home mes­sage — Don’t start this kind of busi­ness by your­self. Oh! And don’t rely on Banks who say they “Sup­port Small Business”!

The Great Big Upside

By sup­ply­ing to retail out­lets I can gen­er­ate the turn-​over I need to get the busi­ness on its feet. Once this occurs, I can then get the assis­tance I need to be able to back-​up the whole­sale side of the busi­ness with live per­for­mances. This could be at local events…it could be a pro­mo­tional activ­ity for your business…anything is pos­si­ble. The great big upside is, that by whole­sal­ing to retail out­lets the busi­ness has an improved short-​term via­bil­ity, will then be able to sup­port retail­ing at events, and a lot more peo­ple will be able to get deli­cious noSh-​it! Wood-​Fired Piz­zas on their tables in a lot more places.

Can I take Orders Now?

Yes I can! :-) Can I process them imme­di­ately? It depends on the size of the order. My cur­rent capac­ity is 300 piz­zas per week. I could prob­a­bly stretch that to 500, though I would be reluc­tant to do so imme­di­ately with­out at least prop­erly inform­ing poten­tial cus­tomers that:

  1. Pack­ag­ing — needs to be tested to find the opti­mum cost effec­tive method. Espe­cially if large orders over long distances;

    2. Sample Sticker for cold pizzas - Feedback welcome :-)

    Sample/​Draft Sticker for Whole­sale Piz­zas — Feed­back wel­come :-)

  2. Stor­age - logis­tics to sup­port this capac­ity need to be adapted;

  3. Cash Flow — I don’t have any. This means that I would require at least part pay­ment up front.

That said, if I received orders for up to 500 piz­zas per week, I could then take those orders to the bank and raise the cap­i­tal I need to ser­vice them quickly.

And don’t worry, I wouldn’t expect any­one to order any noSh-​it! Wood-​Fired Piz­zas for their cus­tomers, with­out try­ing them first.

So if you’re keen, just give me a yell and I’ll send you a sam­ple. So far my sam­ples, even to the few local folks I have spo­ken with, are deliv­ered cold for re-​heating, so that you get exactly what your cus­tomers will be getting.

So! Can I ser­vice the orders that are placed?

Yes. How­ever it is impor­tant that you under­stand that I’m work­ing with what I’ve got. For those intre­pid folks that would love to pro­vide top qual­ity organic wood-​fired piz­zas to their cus­tomers and sup­port noSh-​it! Wood-​Fired Pizza towards becom­ing a fully-​fledged organic wood-​fired pizza provider, a lit­tle patience would be required to estab­lish a reli­able and sus­tain­able rhythm.

Say if you rang me and wanted to explore order­ing. I’d send you a sam­ple. You’d try it, love it and want to make them avail­able to your cus­tomers. This might mean tri­al­ing a small order. That’s not a prob­lem. I could get a trial order of say 20 piz­zas to you within 3 days (same for 100 piz­zas by the way :-P ). 3 DAYS!??? Yes! You want gen­uine qual­ity and gen­uine fresh­ness? This is how it happens:

  1. Day1 — You order your 20 pizza trial (at this stage you’ll have to pay up front);

  2. Day 1 still — I process the order to deter­mine what ingre­di­ents I’ll need. I pre­pare the fresh organic stone-​ground dough;

  3. Day 2 — I go and get all the fresh yummy ingre­di­ents, and pre­pare them. I cook the piz­zas and let them cool;

  4. Day 2 still — your noSh-​it– Wood-​Fired Piz­zas are indi­vid­u­ally pack­aged and pre­pared for shipping;

  5. Day 3 — Your piz­zas are shipped and/​or per­son­ally deliv­ered if local.

The Warts

If you have been fol­low­ing the baby-​steps of noSh-​it! Wood-​Fired Pizza, via it’s var­i­ous web-​based venues (i.e. here, Paul Hassing’s Small Busi­ness Owner Blog and My Twit­ter ), then you’ll know I’ve faced my fair share of chal­lenges along the way…as do most nubile small busi­nesses. For­tu­nately, on a chal­lenge by chal­lenge account, I have pre­vailed. How­ever, cumu­la­tively, these chal­lenges have taken their toll. The busi­ness has been severely dam­aged and just between you and me, real­is­ti­cally, I’m won­der­ing whether or not it will survive…the next month is pretty much do or die. No! This doesn’t mean I’m giv­ing up…not by a long shot! I’m just say­ing it how it is.

Hope­fully, in a month or 2, I’ll be regal­ing yet another tri­umphant return from the abyss and doing guest speak­ing appear­ances at Lion’s Club con­ven­tions, telling folks how to sur­vive the impos­si­ble :-P

More Inter­est­ing News

I’ll be sell­ing noSh-​it! Wood-​Fired Piz­zas at the South­ern Farm­ers Mar­ket at the Can­berra Insti­tute of Tech­nol­ogy (CIT), Woden ACT from Sun­day 08 Novem­ber. As the mar­ket runs from 8.00am-12.00Midday, I’ve opted for sell­ing cold noSh-​it! Wood-​Fired Piz­zas, so folks can take them home. Hope to see you there.

Any­way, that’s the cur­rent state of play…The impos­si­ble? No prob­lemo! I’m off to cook my next batch of sam­ple piz­zas to show off my wares to poten­tial whole­sale customers.

Never give up, Never Surrender! :- )

Cheers

Stephen G


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What the Hell are you doing?…

| By Stephen Glanville | October 14th, 2009
a hint?...:-P

a hint?…:-P

So glad you asked…

I thought some folks may be inter­ested in some of the more gory details about the birth and baby-​steps of noSh-​it! Wood-​Fire Pizza (even up to the minute ones, like today). So why not just point you to where most of it is already chron­i­cled ? It may fill-​in some of the blanks until this blog cooks a bit more…

For sev­eral months before start­ing this blog, I have been a fre­quent com­menter on the very excel­lent Small Busi­ness Owner Blog, authored by renound Copy­writer, damn fine Author and damn fine Human (IMHO), Mr Paul Has­s­ing. It would be remiss of me if I did not also heap praise upon our beloved ‘Deep Ocean of Mys­tery’ Megan, who mag­i­cally admin­is­ters the Small Busi­ness Owner Blog and MYOB’s myBRC web­site.

I con­sider blogs to be con­ver­sa­tions. In con­ver­sa­tions I meet peo­ple; I learn about them and from them, I learn to respect them, I’m con­stantly and most often hap­pily amazed by them.

I have no inten­tion of walk­ing away from peo­ple I now con­sider friends, great con­ver­sa­tion­al­ists, and great pro­fes­sion­als in their own rights, just to try and cor­ral folks onto my blog…to me such prac­tices run counter to the spirit of good will and social everything…not to men­tion that I don’t want to, and if I did it would for me feel just plain dishonourable.

I haven’t slowed my con­tri­bu­tions to the Small Busi­ness Owner Blog…on the con­trary, since most of the sto­ries of the birth of noSh-​it! Wood-​Fired Pizza were ini­tially pub­lished there, I feel priv­i­leged to be allowed and even encour­aged to con­tinue those conversations.

Any­way, I said I was going to point you there didn’t I? Ok! But rather than exhaus­tively list­ing every com­ment I’ve made, here are just the lat­est cou­ple. Enough to give you an idea of ‘What the Hell I am actu­ally doing’ right now. If you want to go fur­ther, just back-​track through the posts at your caprice:

Thanks for drop­ping by… :-)

Cheers

Stephen G

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The Rock Star Strategy…

| By Stephen Glanville | October 10th, 2009

So, it’s just over 2 weeks since the tri­umphant launch of noSh-​it! Wood-​Fired Pizza.

It's Pizza Captain, but not as we know it...

It’s Pizza Cap­tain, but not as we know it…

Hav­ing learned so much I have arrived at an adap­ta­tion in response to what I learned. Call it a change of tack.

Ini­tially the busi­ness was focused almost entirely on out­door events. As dis­cussed in my pre­vi­ous post (To Trans­pare or not to Trans­pare…), I’m refo­cus­ing the business.

The ‘Rock Star Strategy’

This means that the focus will shift from out­door events to whole­sal­ing to retail out­lets. The events will then become more of a pro­mo­tional exer­cise. Like doing an album and then doing a gig to pro­mote it…hence the ‘Rock Star Strategy’.

I’m in the process of build­ing a sim­ple pre­sen­ta­tion to deliver to local busi­nesses (i.e. gourmet food retail­ers in par­tic­u­lar). In respect of the fact that other busi­ness own­ers are busy too, and are often del­uged with offers from other busi­nesses on a weekly, if not daily basis, I’m try­ing to keep it sim­ple and tangible.

I don’t want to annoy folks try­ing to explain any­thing while they’re try­ing to trade…I sim­ply want to drop some­thing off that they can expe­ri­ence for them­selves and absorb in their own time. It is this:

A free noSh-​it! Wood-​Fired Pizza (cold and pre­sented as it will be sold). A brief explana­tory let­ter to get the ball rolling and a menu.

As a busy busi­ness owner, what would your response be to such a presentation?

Would you chuck it in the bin with all the other offers you’d received?

Would you try the pizza?

If you liked the pizza and thought it might sell in your shop, would you call me or would you wait for me to follow-​up?

The risks for me are great because of my finan­cial posi­tion as a new/​start-​up busi­ness. It’s kind of all or nothing…if this doesn’t work, I’ll have to…and likely for some­one else, until such time as I can get the busi­ness on its feet. (You can check-​out some of my rants on this at the fine Small Busi­ness Owner Blog, authored by ‘The Blog­meis­ter’ and Copy­writer extra­or­di­naire Mr Paul Has­s­ing (@PaulHassing).)

The alter­na­tive is to keep going on the orig­i­nal tack, which in prac­tice does not cre­ate enough short-​term turn-​over to get me through this ‘cash-​flow-​less’ patch?

What would you do?…What have you done with your business?

What do I like about this new strategy?

Well aside from the prospect of increas­ing short-​term turn-​over, it also opens a door to a much larger demographic.

I’ve tried my piz­zas cold. They are great cold (I like cold piz­zas), and they reheat beau­ti­fully. The open­ing door means that I may be able to say ‘YES!’ to all those folks around the coun­try that have asked if I can send them some yummy noSh-​it! Wood-​Fired Pizzas.

Your thoughts?

I’ll keep you ‘posted’ with mine…

Cheers

Stephen G

alibi-​wealth

alibi-​wealth

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To ‘Trans­pare’ or not to ‘Transpare’?

| By Stephen Glanville | October 6th, 2009

It seems that after years of pub­lic demand that the 15 year or so old ‘Trans­parency’ dis­cus­sion has almost run it’s course.

Now, busi­nesses every­where (I use Twit­ter), seem to be strug­gling with how to do it…or are they ‘strug­gling’ because they are actu­ally try­ing to fig­ure out how to ‘appear’ to be doing it?dice

Well there’s no bluddy strug­gling here…not with trans­parency anyway…

The whole idea behind the noSh-​it! brand is sim­ply say­ing it how it is…warts ‘n all. Doing any­thing else would be  a bit ridicu­lous con­sid­er­ing that my cor­po­rate premises is a trailer with a wood-​fired pizza oven on it :-P .

But I’m not here to con­tinue a warn out discussion…I’m here to tell you about the tri­als and tribu­la­tions of a small pizza busi­ness in a big scared world, and to find out what you reckon so I can stay a small pizza busi­ness in a big and hope­fully less scared world.

Though I don’t par­tic­u­larly like the man­gling of a Mid­night Oil clas­sic, this vid does rein­force the mes­sage of ‘change’ where IMHO busi­ness prac­tice must be the pri­mary focus if any­thing else is going to ‘actu­ally’ change…


Since my first post a few days ago, I’ve been busy refin­ing and even refo­cus­ing my business.

Refin­ing — enlist­ing the help of other pro­fes­sion­als to reduce my workload.

THE biggest thing I learned from my launch and the hard­est pill to swal­low, was that although my busi­ness is a good one (i.e. good idea, good inten­tions, good prod­ucts etc), and I am one of it’s strengths, I am also and with­out a doubt it’s WEAK­EST LINK! What’s your Weak­est Link and what did you do to address it?

I’m in the process of organ­is­ing with Richard O’Dell to have my beey­oo­ti­ful organic pizza dough made to my recipe by his fine baker. This will dra­mat­i­cally reduce my prepa­ra­tion time.

Richard is one of my main sup­pli­ers via his long estab­lished and pio­neer­ing organic Butch­ery & Bak­ery here in Can­berra. Find out more about the fine fair found at the Grif­fith Butch­ery.

Refo­cus­ing — Orig­i­nally noSh-​it! Wood-​Fired Pizza was focused on out-​door Events. As I have learned, as a one man show, although I can do this well it doesn’t pro­duce the short-​term turn-​over I need for the busi­ness to get her feet…especially when I’m prepar­ing every­thing myself by hand. Then there are the setup and pack-​up times. Actu­ally cook­ing the piz­zas isn’t a problem.

An Answer — I’m now speak­ing with sev­eral local busi­nesses (includ­ing Richard above), to see if I can get some deli­cious noSh-​it! Wood-​Fired Piz­zas into shops to be sold to cus­tomers to take home and heat up. What do you reckon?

I can per­son­ally vouch for the qual­ity and taste of my piz­zas when cold and re-​heated. I love cold pizzas…do you? And mine are the best cold piz­zas I’ve tried…and I’m not just say­ing that…I think it’s got a lot to do with the organic dough. You know how most pizza crusts go either really hard or really rub­bery the next day?…well mine don’t! :-)

What else?…ummm! That’s about it for now…

Cheers

Stephen G

alibi-​wealth

alibi-​wealth

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Go 4 Launch!

| By Stephen Glanville | September 30th, 2009

Hous­ton! We’ve got a problem!

But don’t worry, I’ve got a note pad and a pencil…I think I can man­age not to smack into the planet and turn myself into a noSh-​it! Wood-​Fired Pizza in week one! :- P

Hi Folks :- )

Wel­come to the noSh-​it! Blog, was until recently called ‘no Anchovies’ and is now, not called that. Though it was was an excel­lent name that was con­jured by my bril­liant best friend, rock, com­pass, earthing-​point, reality-​checker & part­ner Karen.

The name ‘no Anchovies’ is also a bit of a dig at a good friend and men­tor I’ve made on Twit­ter. She knows who she is, and she will hope­fully and in due course, become well known to you too.

Any­way, this blog is lit­er­ally born out of the Launch of my new busi­ness, noSh-​it! Wood-​Fired Pizza. Here’s a pic­cie of the Day 1 setup:

I learned so much from the launch that I felt the need to share my expe­ri­ences with and learn from my cus­tomers and any­one with an incli­na­tion to dive in.

noSh-it! Wood-Fired Pizza - Launch Day 22 Sept 2009

noSh-​it! Wood-​Fired Pizza — Launch Day 22 Sept 2009

I don’t want to cre­ate the impres­sion that this is some kind of a ‘Busi­ness Blog’ in the tra­di­tional sense. There is noth­ing tra­di­tional about my busi­ness, save for the oven and the style and qual­ity of my piz­zas. But my busi­ness approach could be con­sid­ered, for bet­ter or for worse, a tad more ‘actu­ally’ WYSI­WYG than some.

The noSh-​it! Blog — ‘no Anchovies’ has been greatly inspired by great busi­ness peo­ple & blog­gers like:

  • Mr Spike Wyatt (aka SpikeTh­eLob­ster & ‘The Gram­mar Nazi’). Spike unabashedly exposes his inner-​sanctum as an emer­gent & now suc­cess­ful Free­lance Writer to the entire Uni­verse via his exem­plary (espe­cially gram­mat­i­cally ;- P), blog Scrawl­bug;
  • Mr Mal­colm Owens — CEO, Mar­ket­ing expe­ri­ence akimbo, Blog­ger, Enigma & DMCGG (Devil May Care Good Guy). Malcolm’s rel­e­vant irrev­er­ence, shear expe­ri­ence and will­ing­ness to share tran­scends all bound­aries. He’s a decent bloke with buck­ets of knowl­edge and reck­ons every­one should have the right and means to know. His mas­sive lit­tle eBook ‘100 Mar­ket­ing Tips’ is a MUST HAVE…it’s on his web­site ‘The Suc­cess Surfer’; and
  • Many, many other amaz­ing folk that can­not pos­si­bly list here, but that I sin­cerely hope you will get to meet as our respec­tive jour­neys, unfold, coa­lesce & interconnect.

I’ve been try­ing to think of a con­ve­nient, yet still rea­son­ably res­o­nant way to con­vey some of the flavour of my approach to busi­ness and the world at large. For now I reckon this lit­tle vid I found on TED gets the ball rolling in the right direction:

Jonathan Zit­train: The Web as ran­dom acts of kindness.


Jonathan Zit­train: The Web as ran­dom acts of kindness.

Ok, I reckon that’ll do for an intro post. If you want a bit more detail about the Launch and stuff I learned & am learn­ing from it, I’ve chucked up a report on the Small Busi­ness Owner Blog. I’ll be teas­ing out and explor­ing just about bluddy every­thing along the way. So I’m up for your views;

e.g. Are you start­ing your own small busi­ness? What’s hap­pen­ing in your world? Don’t you just love deal­ing with all the lit­tle things? etc etc etc…etc

Cheers

Stephen G

alibi-​wealth

alibi-​wealth

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