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I’ve been writing a newsletter for yours2share for nearly four years now. Except for the first few months all of them have been managed through the excellent ConstantContact. I only recently realised that I could have an archive of newsletters. So here is the yours2share newsletter archive. Click here if you’d like to subscribe: you can unsubscribe at any time if you wish. I haven’t heard too many jokes about sharing, so I thought I’d shout about this one. I saw British comedian Jenny Éclair at the Norwich Playhouse over the weekend, and spent an hour and a half laughing myself senseless. Anyway the joke:
It’s good to know that Jenny fully understands fractional ownership and rotating use. Over the next few days most of you will be celebrating Christmas and New Year with family and friends. I’m guessing that some of you will end up discussing plans for the future, including the purchase of boats, cars, motor homes and holiday homes. When you think about it, these major assets are almost always bought to share. The real return on your investment is the joy of inviting your immediate family, extended family, friends, colleagues or even like-minded people you met through yours2share to share it with you. (To make life easier, and so that I don’t have to constantly use the word “assets,” which gets a bit tedious, I’m going to use a boat as an example of an asset.) There are two types of boat owners:
Over the last couple of months I’ve been talking to ShareZen, a new website that helps both types of sharers manage their sharing arrangements. ShareZen has been designed by Drew Bernard, Shawn Kemp and Adrian Pike, who together have shared several holiday homes, a boat and a light aircraft. Drew and his partners wanted a simple online system that made sharing simpler, so they designed ShareZen. I have been impressed with the user friendliness of ShareZen. There are some excellent short videos on their website that explain the details, but the six key tasks ShareZen makes easier are:
I’m delighted to see the arrival of ShareZen, because it completes the sharing process:
ShareZen has several packages. For single owners who simply want to manage friends and family sharing their boat, the basic package is free. More complex packages are priced on a monthly-fee basis. There is also a free 30-day trial period for anyone. This is extended to a 60-day free trial special offer for friends of yours2share, if you sign up for the trial before 15 February 2011. (They don’t require a credit card at the free trial stage, so you won’t be caught out if you forget to cancel. I like this.) If you’re sharing a boat or any other asset and want to try ShareZen out, or are considering sharing and want to see how it might work, sign up and try it out. Car hire isn’t usually something I enthuse about. It’s one of those essentials that I need virtually every time I go abroad, and working out which is cheapest and what insurance is included etc etc, is usually a right pain. Anyhow, I was supposed to be on my way to Barcelona as I type, but for long and complicated reasons, completely unrelated to the snow around us, I postponed my trip yesterday. When I was planning this trip, I thought I’d have another look around to see where the best/cheapest car insurance could be found and I consulted the oracle that is Martin Lewis’s Money Saving Expert. There was a strong recommendation here for Economy Car Hire, specifically because their basic insurance includes the bit of insurance that covers the excess, which you usually pay quite a bit more for. It also allows more than one driver and I always want that and most companies charge more for that too (goodness knows why because two drivers would probably be a less risky option, I assume they just charge because they can). So I checked Economy out, and the price was just a couple of pounds more than the cheapest without the excess cover and with only one driver: about £70 for six days from Barcelona airport. This was a no brainer. A couple of days I realized I might have to postpone my trip, so I rang Economy to see what their cancellation charges were. (It was easy to ring them too, this doesn’t normally happen with websites like this.) If I cancelled 48 hours or more before pickup, the charge was £15 plus the credit card charge of £3. I was expecting something like £30-50. Within 48 hours, the cancellation charge is 50%, again I was expecting more like 70-80%. The final cream on top was that Economy Car Hire is actually based about 20 miles away from me in Dereham, Norfolk: a local company. I’m rarely impressed by websites like this, so I thought I’d let you know. I’ve just stumbled upon this article written recently in the FT – a crafty investment. I’m pleased to see any proper debate about fractional ownership: too often the discussion is either, oh it’s just timeshare, or it’s just a way of pretending you are a millionaire. Not that I have anything specifically against timeshare applied to boats, it’s one of many shared ownership models and all have their place as long as the purchaser fully understands what they are buying and in the case of timeshare, aren’t cajoled into the purchase. (Not that that happens too much nowadays.) Anyhow, the FT looks at the sharing of several types of boat, mainly in the 40-60 foot bracket, and if you are considering a managed fractional ownership yacht share, it’s well worth a read. They don’t mention the type of arrangements that yours2share enables: private syndicates for small groups, usually just 3-5 owners. This often provides an even more flexible solution. Private syndicates also often engage a company to manage and maintain their boat, and charter it if required: because they’re in a private syndicate, they have more choice over the company that they choose. Andy Sirkin, one of the world’s legal experts on sharing, gives his views on fractional ownership. I couldn’t agree more. One of the most important points he makes is the importance of the contract. The people who need a contract are usually those who don’t have one. Simply discussing the arrangement sufficiently to write a contract usually means everything has been thought through, understood and agreed. In these cases, the contract is often put in a drawer and never needed again. And that’s just how it should be. On yours2share there is plenty of guidance on setting up a sharing arrangement and template contracts to help you get started in your discussions. Then get professional legal advice to check it all through. I’ve just heard about this book by Lisa Gansky The Mesh: Why the Future of Business Is Sharing I’ve also still to read Rachel Botsman’s book What’s Mine Is Yours: The Rise of Collaborative Consumption I was delighted to read about The Business of Sharing in the latest edition of the Economist. There have been several mentions of various sharing ideas recently in the newspaper, but this is the first time I’ve seen a longer look at the subject. I’m also delighted to see its last sentence:
Maybe at last the concepts of sharing will begin to permeate the mainstream. Last Friday I was part of a group of women who belong to the WiRE (Women in Rural Enterprise) network who met minister for business Mark Prisk in his constituency Bishops Stortford. It was a fascinating day. The meeting was held to demonstrate to the minister how effective networks can be in supporting women in business and demonstrate the role WiRE plays in supporting rural businesswomen. As well as running yours2share, I am also the network leader for WiRE Norwich and I was one of the speakers, together with WiRE members Hanne Grice of Walk the Dog and Rebecca Rayner of Glebe Farm. Several WiRE members I know well were also there with stands illustrating the range of business products and services in the rural community. They included Penny Lindop of Penny Lindop Designs, Gabriella Buckingham of MooBaaCluck, Claire Martinsen of Breckland Orchard soft drinks, Kate Elliott of Active Marketing and Design, and Jane Pennington of Stone-Me jewellery. Our short presentations lead the room into a great debate about how to cost effectively help small businesses and businesswomen. Our view is that organisations like WiRE are an essential component of the Big Society – we are all volunteers except from a very small central team. However collectively the WiRE networks provide considerable support and a path for businesswomen to share knowledge and help each other. This video about car sharing was the winner of the Liftshare member video competition - enjoy! See yours2share for more information about car sharing, car shared ownership and lift sharing. |
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Copyright © 2012 yours2share – sharing stuff & collaborative consumption - All Rights Reserved |
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. I haven’t read about it yet: it seems to be an internet entrpreneurs inside view of the many internet startups related to sharing.
but I understand it is packed with helpful information about making sharing work for you. It’s on order!