OzLeisure Pty Ltd

www.ozleisure.com.au

1. Tell us about your business

OzLeisure.com.au is an Australian owned and operated website catering to tourists. Aimed at both the Australia resident and overseas visitor markets, we aim to provide comprehensive details of leisure activities across the country and across all leisure sectors.

2. When and why did you start your business?

The business was started in 2003 under a different name, and later changed to OzLeisure to better reflect the information that we were providing to our site visitors. OzLeisure.com.au was born out of the interests of the founders' interest in leisure and travel, and their dissatisfaction at the level of information available to the public with regard to the activities available in the local area for them and thier families.

3. On a personal level, what have you achieved with your business?

With running your own business - either on your own, or in the case of OzLeisure.com.au, with a small group of people - it changes ones perspective on how a business is perceved in the outside world. As an employee, you take for granted that a business is known and has clients, but when you start a business it has neither of those. These are attributes that must be built, and it's a huge achievement to be able to make progress on those fronts; personally, being responsible, at least in part, for those changes gives a large amount of satisfaction, tinged with the thought that it is a job that is never complete.

4. What are some of the challenges you’ve faced in growing your business?

Marketing is without doubt the biggest challenge to be overcome. A business is not a business without clients, and clients will not just arrive at your door - you must let them know that you exist. When we launched OzLeisure.com.au all that time ago, we had barely a few site visitors per month ... maybe a few hundred or so. To build that up significantly as we have done, now that we are getting tens of thousands of visitors per month shows that the challenge is being met.

5. What activities have been successful in promoting your business?

Online marketing has worked best for us without a doubt. We have someone dedicated to getting our name out there to as many websites as possible, and that has worked fantasitcally.

6. What activities were less successful for marketing your business?

Flyers were a big disappointment, and an expensive excercise.

7. Name your favourite thing about your business

It is immensely gratifying that people actually come and use a service that we all built. A person\'s leisure time is very limited and prescious to them, and that they use the OzLeisure.com.au service to guage the best way to use that time is very pleasureable.

8. Who or what other businesses or business people inspire you?

All businesses are an inspiration as most - if not all - of them would have started in the same position as OzLeisure.com.au. No clients, no branding, no reputation and little money. If they have build good businesses, why couldn't we. As for people, I guess Bill Gates would be the choice - back in the 70s he took something new and turned it into something that very few people nowadays can live without.

9. What are your plans for the future of your business?

In the shorter term we will be expanding exponentially the range and depth of information that we provide to our users. In the longer term, we have plans to copy the format into other markets around the world.

10. Share your best business tip with our readers.

Don't be afraid to try something new. It doesn't matter if it fails because it might just work.

Visit us at: www.ozleisure.com.au