Mobile: 027 5321 999
"After the meetings we felt energised"
– Harvey & Melissa
Allenco Marine
We had been feeling we needed a bit of direction, so when we were contacted by Elžunia it just seemed to be the right time to engage some outside help. Elžunia gave us a clearer idea of where we should be heading and what we should be doing by clarifying a lot of ideas that we had. In talking our ideas through with her, and brainstorming with her, she helped us make our ideas more objective, and as a result we came to feel our ideas were good. Helping validate our current ideas and clarify where we could go with those ideas was really helpful for us – this was the direction we were looking for.
Elžunia was honest with us - she told us what she thought. If she didn’t like one of our ideas she would say so, but would also add how she thought we could possibly turn that idea around. We were really impressed. She has a good knowledge of what she is talking about and we got a lot out of just having the meetings with her. It’s hard to put into words … but after the meetings we felt energised, that we could just go forward and do it. She gave us the clarity and validation to say “hey, this is the right thing to do, and we can do it, so let’s go".
Without question I would recommend Elžunia to anyone - she was the sounding board that we needed, she “gave” us the ability that we knew was already there to move forward into our potential - she was brilliant. We definitely got a lot out of the time we had with her.
"The main benefit was the great increase in the product sales."
– Gurjinder Nahal
Yello K Wash
My objective was to increase sales of a product. I was new to business and I was hoping Elžunia could help me with that. However first Elžunia and I did a business plan together and she taught me some things I needed to know about being an employer. She was helpful in every way. We threw some ideas around, and she would say clearly if she felt an idea would work or if it wouldn’t. It was also good to have someone there to support you; you know you’ve got backing behind you when she’s only a phone call away.
I found though that it was better to follow her instructions … well suggestions may be a better word. I didn’t always do that and the result was that I got off track on our improvement program, and then the progress slowed. But apart from that glitch everything went well.
The main benefit was the great increase in the product sales. I’d recommend Elžunia because she does what she says she will do, there’s no guessing, and no being pampered. And she also has a good market knowledge which is helpful.
"She gave us several different business tools to use and taught us how to use them."
– Jennifer Neal
Aroha Catering
The business side of things is not my strong point, so I was open to having the free consultation. It was really well presented and we thought straight away it would be a good idea to use her service. However our business was really small and financially it felt like a lot of money to me, even though we could pay it off in instalments. It was a big investment for us but the service seemed to have a promise that was attractive.
I immediately clicked with Elžunia which made it easy from the start. I also really liked that she came to us, which kept it fresh.
She gave us several different business tools to use and taught us how to use them but as I said that side is not my forté so we never applied them much. I’m more creatively minded than business minded. Although I can see the time coming soon when I cannot disregard those things anymore, and I know it won’t take me long to pick them back up and apply them, thanks to her previous efforts. But back then it didn’t seem to matter that we didn’t apply those things to the business, because she definitely got the energy round the business really moving anyway.
She was like a breath of fresh air; every time she came we felt a renewed energy around the business. The business had become quite stuck and with Elžunia coming every month and talking to us the energy became less frozen, started loosening up, and we started feeling more connected to the business, feeling it was our business. And as a direct result from that alone our sales increased. I know we felt really pleased with our time with her, it was really useful. I’d recommend Elžunia because I feel she gave my business a direction and focus that it really needed at that point.
Even today sometimes I might find I need to do something specific and I’ll think about how Elžunia would have done it. I admired her professionalism and I got a good feeling from her.
"Elžunia came at a time when I was fragmented, needed to slow down & rebuild my foundation"
– Hamish
Bullshirt NZ
Initially before the free consultation I was a bit sceptic, I thought “what can you do that I can’t do?”. Also as a business owner I felt this was going to cost time and money and I was wondering whether it would be justified. But having met her I signed up because I found Elžunia to be quite experienced in several fields. In my business journey at the time I actually really needed some fine-tune directing.
What Elžunia can do for you is up to you in a way. It’s probably different for everybody. For me Elžunia helped me fine tune my company. It was in the early days and it was a bit silly, crazy hectic I mean, and Elžunia helped me simplify things. She pinned things on me, she doesn’t micromanage you. I was able to refine my time, refine my energy and direct it more purposefully in my business, create more ongoing momentum. She helped me change some habits that I was too busy to get onto changing just on my own.
Elžunia came at a time when I was too fragmented, when I needed to slow down and rebuild my foundation, the business plan itself had gone a little bit off course. She gave me several different skills to recognise this kind of situation, change tactics and action new things. My profits then started to move and rock.
Now my business and also myself are in a far stronger position, completely in much more control, and I’m comfortable with that too. She helped me recognise that in a business your personal life is a factor that can have a big impact on the success of your business too. She’s not a bull-shitter, she will go through your issues, give you several different turning points, places to find the resources you need, and get you to bring yourself to your situation in a more galvanized way. She is one of those people who is driven, who wants to see you succeed, she will not lead you down a fairy-tale path, she keeps the focus pretty blunt and straight, and she loves to see a small business get to those places and become bigger, or get to a point where you want it to be yourself. She’s very capable, she’s been around a few different sectors.
I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend her – she can help you with your business processes and managing your time. And for me, I was able to test myself to the limit of where I wanted to go, with what I had. And I surprised myself, my company went from a small concern to creating much more income than I thought it would – it actually worked.
"Professional, personable and affordable."
– Cathy
Geyserland Bakery
We have owned a family business for a number of years and felt we may need to freshen ourselves up, to look outside of our own world, in order to move forward. So we decided to see what Elžunia had to offer. I thought her service was something we needed to gain a different thought path, to move the business forward.
The service was professional, personable and affordable – which is important for a small business like ours. It was a little challenging and thought provoking at the beginning, looking at and criticising yourself, looking at ways you can do things better. It’s not easy but sometimes you absolutely need to do that if you want to really change things, nothing is going to change unless you change your mind process, and Elžunia facilitated that well.
Being small and in a specific industry, on the odd occasion we struggled to fit what Elžunia was suggesting to our actual business. Mostly however she came up with some good ideas, and she helped devise a strategy which opened up new avenues for business. This strategy is proving very successful for us and we have taken on a number of new clients. If she hadn’t taught me these things this growth wouldn’t have happened, so even though it was a hard process at times I’m very grateful Elžunia helped us in that way. It was also good to just have another ear in business to talk to each month.
I’d recommend Elžunia because she’s very honest and forthright; she genuinely does wish to make a difference and believes she can make a difference. These things are supportive and I had no doubt whatsoever that Elžunia was going to help me change my thoughts and the way I operate my business, and she did that.
"Most assuredly I’d recommend her; in three words – realism, encouragement, punctual"
– Phillipa & Gordon Crocker
Bespoke Flowers
When Elžunia came I connected well with her straight away, and from then on was very keen for her to help us. Elžunia could see that I was very talented and I was doing very well anyway. But she could see I still had a lot of potential and she encouraged me to really go for it, to expand, so I increased my marketing efforts to very good effect. - Phillipa
I was doing some data analysis of our advertising and Elžunia came up with other ways to look at it, and links between different types of data that was helpful. As a result we ditched a whole lot of advertising that was not bringing much in. I appreciate her realism, she knows it’s a small business, and collectively we came up with something to aim for, some really achievable goals. I find her a real encourager.
Elžunia is good at evaluating whether a business idea would fly or not, and it’s always useful to have someone outside the business to bounce things off, and we did run some things past her which was helpful. She understands you need to let momentum around an idea build up before creating any goals for it, so we focussed on that in our discussions.
In our meetings we would throw everything on the table or the computer screen, she would do a little bit of accountability stuff regarding things we were going to do from previous sessions, following up, and then move onto dealing with the next stage with our various issues, or sometimes move into new issues/areas.
Most assuredly I’d recommend her; in three words – realism, encouragement, punctual (she doesn’t waste time), and I always looked forward to her coming, it’s a pleasant time. And a very concrete result of our time with her is we’re now more focussed on very exciting marketing potentials. - Gordon
"Since we started with Elžunia our business has reached new heights as far as turnover goes"
– Adrian Whistler
Outer Spaces Landscaping
Our company has been running since 2007 and every year we have gone from strength to strength, but that’s not necessarily a good thing, it carries with it a whole lot of challenges, e.g. we were a growing company but with a lack of capital, and the workload on me was huge.
I wanted to keep growing the business but I wanted to know how to do it better, know what I needed to do to put myself in the right place because the way it was growing I just couldn’t cope. I also wanted more consistency in our bottom line results. With all this expansion I was in new territory and I needed to identify the areas of my business I needed to focus on.
My only concern was would I get value for money from it given my situation - would I just get a whole lot of mentoring but not see any results? Not necessarily plain financial results but I definitely expected some kind of improvement or knowledge gain, to come out of the whole process and feel “Wow, that worked, we made some steps forward there.”
Well these expectations were fulfilled as I got a whole lot of results.
Firstly I got a great deal of a personal kind of growth, a whole lot of confidence, which was really big. She also helped me ask the right questions, get myself better organised, and imparted the confidence to move forward and just get on with doing things - like more active marketing, better sales planning, managing crisis with strategy rather than worry etc – all this made a huge difference, eased my mind. And it’s just uncanny how it works ... you go out to work each day with a different way of thinking, a new attitude, and things change.
Since we started with Elžunia our business has reached new heights as far as turnover goes. She looks at the work/life balance as well, which is so important for small and/or growing businesses, as keeping that healthy so often gets swept aside.
Elžunia provides insight into your business, its structure and situation, teaches marketing techniques, helps identify and strengthen your uniqueness, provides alternative perspectives, and really boosts confidence.
She posed a lot of questions and once I started thinking about those questions it had a ripple effect on the way I run my business. There was no problem about value for money. I looked forward to our meetings, even if things in the business hadn’t been so flash in the past month or so; I always used to come away from them feeling good.
"Being in a rut as I was at the beginning, this was the perfect antidote for me"
– Melissa Firth
Maison Design
I decided to use this to give my business one last shot, so to speak. I was able to pay the consultations off in quite small amounts so that enabled me to sign up.
After the second meeting she got me thinking that doing what I was doing was such a good option for me - given the type of situation I was in. She made me feel the positives in what I was already taking on and doing, and she then just set things in place and made me start to feel, “Well OK, these are things I can do to make my business work better, be better.”
She guided me to a point of being proactive about having more work coming in; I had to get out there and find it, rather than just sit back and wait for it to come to me, which is what had been happening for years when the building industry had been booming.
Elžunia facilitated me to create a Marketing and Sales plan, which detailed prospective work sources, with contact schedules etc. From that I got some repeat business which was an encouraging increase in orders.
Elžunia stood behind me and helped create the drive and thoroughness in me to really leverage my existing network of clients and other contacts, really wring every drop of juice out of my lists. It definitely was out of my comfort zone to approach people seeking work like this, and not every attempt worked. But enough did that it turned everything round for me.
Elžunia also got me to look much more objectively at my financial position than I had been doing, and this proved to be surprisingly useful. All in all everything she helped me to look at and create in the business all motivated me.
Being in a rut as I was at the beginning, this was the perfect antidote for me. It facilitated me to keep going out there and getting more work, as I now knew much more astutely what was really at stake. I’d definitely say that was very helpful.
"I thought this person doesn’t know anything about my trade, how’s she going to help me?"
– Jim
Printer
I had some doubt about how the service Elžunia was offering was going to improve my business. Just being a small business … once I saw she was from Sydney I thought maybe she was basing herself on bigger businesses. I also thought this person doesn’t know anything about my trade, so how’s she going to help me? But I gave her a go.
Probably the biggest thing Elžunia did for me was making me get into gear and do something.
Really the key result was “motivation” to action the things I had written down. In other words instead of just writing goals down, actually doing something about them. And I’m naturally a very motivated person who helps motivate others so I don’t need to be motivated in any way at all.
But she was still helpful because she was able to get me to focus better, which is different to motivation. When you’re a one or two man band and super busy all the time it can be constructive to have someone help you streamline your efforts, so you work more efficiently and manage the business better with less effort.
I absolutely know my trade and business inside out, and I’ve worked in a corporate business where I knew way more about every aspect of the business than the CEO did. So I still had a bit of doubt even after we’d been going a while. But Elžunia came up with some marketing ideas that proved useful, and prompted me to think outside the square which also was helpful.
Because I am so experienced at what I do you’d think it would be hard for me to benefit from a business consultant. But I wasn’t actually doing all the things I knew I should be doing to full effect, so having Elžunia come to see and understand this, point it out to me, was in fact good. There are always benefits when you get someone else to give an input, i.e. a different perspective to how businesses can be run.