Whanganui Chronicle
  • Whanganui Chronicle home
  • Latest news
  • Sport
  • Business
  • Opinion
  • Lifestyle
  • Property
  • Death notices
  • Classifieds

Subscriptions

  • Herald Premium
  • Viva Premium
  • The Listener
  • BusinessDesk

Sections

  • Latest news
  • On The Up
  • Sport
  • Business
  • Opinion
  • Lifestyle
  • Property
    • All Property
    • Residential property listings
  • Rural
    • All Rural
    • Dairy farming
    • Sheep & beef farming
    • Horticulture
    • Animal health
    • Rural business
    • Rural life
    • Rural technology

Locations

  • Taranaki
  • National Park
  • Whakapapa
  • Ohakune
  • Raetihi
  • Taihape
  • Marton
  • Feilding
  • Palmerston North

Media

  • Video
  • Photo galleries
  • Today's Paper - E-Editions
  • Photo sales
  • Classifieds

Weather

  • New Plymouth
  • Whanganui
  • Palmertson North
  • Levin

NZME Network

  • Advertise with NZME
  • OneRoof
  • Driven Car Guide
  • BusinessDesk
  • Newstalk ZB
  • Sunlive
  • ZM
  • The Hits
  • Coast
  • Radio Hauraki
  • The Alternative Commentary Collective
  • Gold
  • Flava
  • iHeart Radio
  • Hokonui
  • Radio Wanaka
  • iHeartCountry New Zealand
  • Restaurant Hub
  • NZME Events

SubscribeSign In
Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.
Premium
Home / Whanganui Chronicle

Go Local: Whanganui entrepreneur finds new focus with home-based business

Liz Wylie
By Liz Wylie
Multimedia Journalist, Whanganui Chronicle·Whanganui Chronicle·
4 Aug, 2020 05:00 PM3 mins to read

Subscribe to listen

Access to Herald Premium articles require a Premium subscription. Subscribe now to listen.
Already a subscriber?  Sign in here

Listening to articles is free for open-access content—explore other articles or learn more about text-to-speech.
‌
Save

    Share this article

    Reminder, this is a Premium article and requires a subscription to read.

Entrepreneur Jessica Anne markets her Key Planner tool from a home-based office and warehouse in Whanganui. Photo / Supplied

Entrepreneur Jessica Anne markets her Key Planner tool from a home-based office and warehouse in Whanganui. Photo / Supplied

GOLOCAL

Most of us know the folly of making New Year resolutions and setting ourselves up for failure and disappointment.

And in a year that has posed a raft of brand new challenges and disruptions, Whanganui entrepreneur Jessica Anne is offering a nifty tool designed to help individuals and business owners reset their schedules and goals.

"The Key Planner is a tool I devised to provide a personal accountability system," she said.

"The calendar covers 52 weeks but it does not have dates so it can be started on a day that suits the owner."

Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.

In 2018 Jessica Anne had established an international career as a brand strategist and keynote speaker whose services were in demand with celebrity clients and hotel chains around the world but she suddenly hit a wall.

"As I sat at my window overlooking the London skyline I realised I had hit a plateau.

"I was caught in a directionless daze of uncertainty after a health scare which led to personal problems, business failure and the feeling that I failed myself."

Jessica Anne had a high-powered career as a brand strategist and keynote speaker in London before she returned to Whanganui.

Photo / Supplied
Jessica Anne had a high-powered career as a brand strategist and keynote speaker in London before she returned to Whanganui. Photo / Supplied

Heading home, the young businesswoman settled in Whanganui to be near her mother and set up a home where she provides live-in support to her grandmother and disabled aunt.

Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.

"My grandmother was living in Auckland and her health wasn't good.

"It is part of my Cook Island heritage that I should care for the grandmother who raised me and I love my nana and Aunt Rose."

Discover more

Rasmusen's Egg Farm seeks merger approval

03 Aug 05:00 PM

Crash victim's skydive dream completed by sister

04 Aug 05:00 PM

Why iwi and council want to change name of Maxwell village

04 Aug 05:05 PM

Durie Hill land proposal to go to public consultation

04 Aug 05:00 PM

Once settled in Whanganui, Jessica Anne began using the strategies she had devised for her clients to reflect on her own life and her journals, diaries and notebooks grew into a big stack of paper.

"I thought to myself 'No wonder I was a mess and had hit plateau'.

"All my thoughts, desires and strategies were all over the place."

Unable to find a stationery item that met her needs, she set out to design one and realised the Key Planner might be a useful item for others.

"It is a yearly diary, combining the elements of scheduling calendar, habit tracker, expense tracker, goal-setting tools, diary, sketchbook and bullet journal so you can keep your goals, thoughts and ideas in one place."

In a portable B5 format (the size of an iPad pro), the planner comes in pink or black with an expandable envelope for keepsakes in the back and there are plenty of pages designed for writing, drawings and graphs.

Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.

"I believe it is the perfect tool to help people gain clarity on who they are, what they want and helps them to actively schedule the action they need to take to get to where they want to be."

Setting up a home office in her sleepout and a warehouse in the garage, Jessica Anne is now marketing the Key Planner online and in Paper Plus stores.

Running a home-based business in Whanganui may lack the glamour of her previous life but the 35-year-old said she realises she is where she wants to be.

"I am with my loving whānau and they are my cheerleaders for this venture.

"I set out on a mission to create a product that allows people to become purposeful, intentional, to boldly dream and chase after what they want to achieve in life and I hope it works as well for them as it has for me."

The Key planner is available to order online from thekeyplanner.com

NewsletterClicker
Save

    Share this article

    Reminder, this is a Premium article and requires a subscription to read.

Latest from Business

Whanganui Chronicle

'Time to lead': Airline founder hands over to son after 40 years

Premium
OpinionAnne Gibson

Property Insider: Foodstuffs' $380m expansion with new Pak'nSave sites in the works

Premium
Property

All rentals must meet five Healthy Homes standards by July 1


Sponsored

Solar bat monitors uncover secrets of Auckland’s night sky

Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.

Latest from Business

'Time to lead': Airline founder hands over to son after 40 years
Whanganui Chronicle

'Time to lead': Airline founder hands over to son after 40 years

Craig Emeny founded Air Chathams in 1984, alongside his wife Marion.

03 Jul 06:00 PM
Premium
Premium
Property Insider: Foodstuffs' $380m expansion with new Pak'nSave sites in the works
Anne Gibson
OpinionAnne Gibson

Property Insider: Foodstuffs' $380m expansion with new Pak'nSave sites in the works

24 Jun 12:00 AM
Premium
Premium
All rentals must meet five Healthy Homes standards by July 1
Property

All rentals must meet five Healthy Homes standards by July 1

17 Jun 11:00 PM


Solar bat monitors uncover secrets of Auckland’s night sky
Sponsored

Solar bat monitors uncover secrets of Auckland’s night sky

06 Jul 09:47 PM
NZ Herald
  • About NZ Herald
  • Meet the journalists
  • Newsletters
  • Classifieds
  • Help & support
  • Contact us
  • House rules
  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms of use
  • Competition terms & conditions
  • Our use of AI
Subscriber Services
  • Whanganui Chronicle e-edition
  • Manage your print subscription
  • Manage your digital subscription
  • Subscribe to Herald Premium
  • Subscribe to the Whanganui Chronicle
  • Gift a subscription
  • Subscriber FAQs
  • Subscription terms & conditions
  • Promotions and subscriber benefits
NZME Network
  • Whanganui Chronicle
  • The New Zealand Herald
  • The Northland Age
  • The Northern Advocate
  • Waikato Herald
  • Bay of Plenty Times
  • Rotorua Daily Post
  • Hawke's Bay Today
  • Viva
  • NZ Listener
  • Newstalk ZB
  • BusinessDesk
  • OneRoof
  • Driven Car Guide
  • iHeart Radio
  • Restaurant Hub
NZME
  • NZME Events
  • About NZME
  • NZME careers
  • Advertise with NZME
  • Digital self-service advertising
  • Book your classified ad
  • Photo sales
  • © Copyright 2025 NZME Publishing Limited
TOP