What it was like to attend the Unfiltered Wellness Conference

Like all good ideas, this article started out while drinking cocktails in a pool in Fiji. I was an attending Nurture Change.

Nurture Change is an awesome business and wellness conference – when I met Jake Millar – the 20-year-old founder of Unfiltered.co.nz.

Jake interviews entrepreneurs and business leaders from around the world (including Richard Branson!) and so after telling him about our Travel Massive community he invited us along to attend his next event in New Zealand. I got in touch with our Auckland chapter and Michelle Copeland took up the opportunity to attend and share her experience from the event.

– Ian (founder, Travel Massive)

Start-up Life – Unfiltered

Entering the start-up world is daunting: Bootstrapping, Seed Rounds, Angels, Venture Capitalists, IPOs. What? Wait. Hold up. The buzzwords are just the beginning.

At a start-up, every day is a learning day.

Until I began working on a new start-up myself, I had little idea of what any of those words meant. I learned as I went along. I’ve worked in a few start-ups before – in the early days of internet and unlimited dial-up (yes that long ago!), in fin-tech and travel, but it wasn’t until I started working with the two co-founders of HerePin that I was truly exposed to the actual doing of a start-up business. The planning, budgeting, funding, re-planning! Nothing else compares to the satisfaction, frustrations and oh-so-many unknowns of starting something from the beginning. The learning is continuous. And so it should be.

Several weeks ago I was fortunate enough to be offered a ticket to Unfiltered, an entrepreneurial speaking event in Auckland. It was a chance to listen to, and network with eight of New Zealand’s most successful founders – founders in the worlds of bungy, rockets, jetpacks, media platforms, and more. Some worth in the region of $200 million. I had no idea what to expect.
I typically avoid having to sit still for 9 hours in windowless conference rooms, but as it turns out, it was worth every single minute. What I didn’t expect was to walk out of that room at the end of the day with 20 pages of notes (blistered writing fingers and all). I didn’t expect to hear such humility about each of their successes, such brutal honesty about their challenges, frustrations (and sometimes regrets). I didn’t expect to hear such candid discussions about their lessons learned. I didn’t expect that the things I would learn would be the most invaluable of my business career so far.

To anyone who is in the process of starting a new business or about to embark on this rollercoaster (or, perhaps, bungy-like) journey, here are the six gems I took away from Unfiltered.

No one knows what the heck they are doing.  No one. Everyone is learning and making it up as they go! (I found this one particularly refreshing)

Be crystal clear on your vision. What does your product offer? What is your competitive advantage? Create (and document) a plan for your vision.

Review your plan regularly. At least quarterly. Be agile when you need to be. Change your plan/strategy as you need to, so long as it keeps steering you towards your vision.

People will always tell you, you can’t do it. Don’t listen. Just because they couldn’t, doesn’t mean you can’t. Have a dream and do it anyway – just do it with passion.

Always keep innovating your product. Know what your customers want, speak to them, get in front of them, travel to see them. Never stand still, or your competition will catch up!

Never stop learning.

There’s no doubt that starting a new business is tough. Whether you’re setting out alone, or working in a team, there will inevitably be days where throwing the towel in seems like a tempting idea. But few things in life are truly rewarding when they don’t entail some kind of risk – and working in a start-up is, without a shadow of a doubt, one of the most rewarding professional experiences you will ever have. You’ll learn things you never knew existed (and a few things you’ll wish didn’t).

And even if you’re not learning about product development or marketing, strategy or how funding rounds work, then I can assure you, the least you’ll learn is a heck of a lot about yourself.

Michelle Copeland is a Travel Massive Rockstar in the Auckland chapter! She is also a part of the HerePin team which is a community of travelers sharing the best places to go and things to do. HerePin is for the person who loves to travel and meet people because it keeps them young at heart.