Entrepreneurs are brilliant at starting things. They're usually terrible at detail.

The accountants and process people they dismiss as boring?

Those are the people keeping their ideas alive.

There's a strange disconnect in New Zealand business at the moment. On paper, things are meant to be improving. On the ground, many businesses feel anything but stable.

What we're living through isn't a collapse. It's something more grinding and more dangerous: a long, uneven unwind.

About 20 years ago, a very smart lawyer sat me down and gave me a piece of advice that has stuck with me ever since.

"You're really good at getting advice. Maybe one day you should try taking it."

It wasn't said unkindly. It was said accurately.

One of the most expensive mistakes I see business owners make is asking their lawyer for business advice, then treating it as gospel.

Lawyers are very good at telling you what you can't do. They are usually not good at telling you whether something is commercially sensible.

By the time a creditor is angry, the problem is no longer just the debt. Something else has broken first. Usually trust, timing, or expectation. Money is simply the last visible symptom.

The common mistake is to treat anger as noise. It isn't. It's information.