For Wellingtonians intending to do business in Sydney, I offer the following tips for a day or two in Sydney.

-Keep a budget umbrella on hand at all times. You can pick one up from the CBD on the day for $6, anything more than $10 is midnight robbery for these things. If it rains, it usually is torrential rain. In Wellington you can get a good judgement on whether it’s going to rain, or at least have some warning. In Sydney you might find yourself in the middle of thunder and lightening and drenched. Sydney CBD also does not have the sort of street awnings to hide under in the rain that Wellington does. Your only option might be to wait it out for up to an hour until it settles down – they are usually over quite quickly.

-Look up all your destinations on Google Maps before you go – http://maps.google.com – and compare this to where you’re going to be meeting people. If it says it is a 7 minute journey you want to be very wary of this because the traffic conditions can change in a heartbeat in Sydney, particularly before 9:30AM, 11-1:30 and 4PM onwards. The train system is efficient, but again if the walking part of the journey looks short it probably isn’t.

-Make sure you allow plenty of time to get to your meetings. Arriving early is better than arriving late.

-If you have a chance, I would recommend visiting a BNI chapter (http://www.bni.com.au) while you’re there, where you can meet 20-30+ business professionals for a structured but friendly business meeting and gain some new contacts or even pick up some work unexpectedly. I am at these meetings once every week and can invite you along as a visitor. Just contact me through the website @ http://www.opmc.com.au

-Wireless internet is not as readily available as is in Wellington with services such as Citylink’s CafeNet. If you are a regular visitor I would recommend buying a data card from Dick Smith from a company called “Unwired” – http://www.unwired.com.au. This is an excellent solution, there’s no contract and there is ubiquitous coverage in the CBD. Otherwise try a Vodafone store where you may be able to pick up a one month data plan for $20-$30 – no promises though.

-Plan your trips to meetings carefully, and take plenty of water especially in summer. Once you are in the middle of nowhere in some Sydney suburb with no shelter, no water and no idea where you are, things will go downhill quickly from there.

-Take a map with you of the area you’re going to, CBD or otherwise. Ask what approximate location your meeting is at on any street – some streets stretch from one end of the CBD to the other, so if you start at the wrong end it may be like walking from St John’s Bar to the Ferry terminal under the motorway bridge in Wellington, to get to your meeting.

I have been over in Sydney for the last 2 weeks and this trip has been focused more on establishing our network over here.

This has been a good challenge, especially as we don’t have an established network here. One might ask how you can start operating your business in Sydney if you’re not into big budget advertising or don’t have an existing strategy in place. The first thing I would recommend is BNI (Business Network International). This is a structured networking member organisation that has weekly breakfast meetings on virtually every day of the week in multiple locations across Sydney.

You will need to call ahead, but you can find out more about times and locations on their website at http://www.bni.com.au.

It is an excellent way to meet new business professionals, and who knows? You might establish a great new business contact by taking an hour and a half of your morning to meet 15+ other business professionals.