I was at the Ice Ideas conference last week - what a great day! There were some wonderful speakers and some very impressive people. Highlights for me were my wife (of course), Rod Drury and Derek Handley.

What came through to me was that pretty much all of them talked about the vision they had when they started out. Derek Handley was the archetypal entrepreneur, looking at sectors and trends and deciding where the opportunities were on a global scale. 10 years ago, at barely 20 years of age, he saw that mobile phones were going to be the centre of personal communications, and he set up The Hyperfactory, which has taken advertising digital. Last year he sold 20% of the company for $70M.

Derek is unusually young and unusually purist in his approach. More typical is Rod Drury who has started and sold several businesses here in NZ, working himself up to his current vehicle Xero. While he has always sought scale, this is the first time he's going truly global.

What came out for me were two things:

it's not about the money: at the Business Summit I listened to John Boscawen from ACT saying that the best thing a government could do for business owners was reduce taxes because the best motivation was greater profit. Not so. To a true entrepreneur, the money is proof that their creation worked. Most of them, on selling their business, simply look to invest in another one.

the importance of vision. When we're inside our businesses, our focus tends to be on keeping it going, keeping it alive. For these guys, it was all about progress towards a vision - and their visions tended to be about building a business of scale. Rod Drury has a great vision: to build and run a globally significant business from New Zealand.The sessions really challenged me on how we should think about our vision for our businesses. And it has to be about so much more than our own role in it or what we actually do. It has to be about this entity that is separate from us, that will endure long beyond our time.

I know most business owners don't consider themselves entrepreneurs. Ice Ideas was a great opportunity to be among those who do, and whose passion and vision shape our world.