This is a story about not giving up when you think something is really worthwhile. It's a great message if pondering how the New Year ahead might look.

Our team work out of home offices to bring you what the Alliance does, and one member had a badly needed clean up very recently.

This is a story about not giving up when you think something is really worthwhile.

Our team member found a piece of paper with some notes on it, headed up with the words:

• This Is Basically Impossible

This note was written around March 2025 and the words were about bringing in the change needed for the election. When this was written – at one of those sleepless at 3am times in life - the thoughts were it was basically impossible to achieve what was in front of our team.

Bullet points were on this page to why it was impossible.

The context behind this is the team had worked out a strategy and a detailed plan of what everyone in the team would do to bring the change needed. This was then put in to a timeline of all the actions everyone needed to take in just over 6 months. On paper the actions could just be squeezed in to the timeframe available.

• But it was a huge undertaking for everyone.

So, what were the bullet points on this note of why this was impossible in March 2025 ? (This team member realised a couple of others in the team also weren’t very confident):

• A new Mayor was needed – at this stage it wasn’t obvious who could beat Neil Holdom – if he stood again.
• Around 6 to 7 new councillors - who thought differently - were needed around the table in October.
• We had a first new candidates session where more people pulled out after the meeting than stayed in the running.
• In a month’s time we needed to have an idea who these 6 to 7 new people were and get them up to speed with how to campaign. In the words on this note - “Where the hell are we going to find these people ?”
• In March we had around 1000 followers on Facebook and about 300 e-mail supporters. We had on paper we were looking for around 20,000 people “following us by September” – in 6 ½ months’ time. We were looking for around 3,000 new people - a month - to be interested in what we had to say – on this note it was written “How the hell are we going to do this ?”
• We needed 10,000 flyers a month going out for 3 months – we had no idea who could possibly make that happen.
• By August 2025 – in 5 months’ time – we needed to put on multiple candidate events – to meet the new people running – we knew of maybe 2 new people running when our plan was written.

On paper this looked Absolutely Totally Impossible.

This team member spoke to a couple of people they were close to and trusted. The response they got was - this is important - and even though it seems impossible you need to try, you need to do all you can to make this happen.

So, nothing was said to the rest of the team about it being impossible – the whole team just got on and worked the plan. It seemed solid - and it was the best we could think of between all of us.

We were trying to get the attention of a lot of people who would end up voting. We thought how we would see this was working was through how many followers were on Facebook, or how many people joined our e-mail list. 

Many, many people did do both of those things but for a couple of months we weren’t sure if the plan was working, as obvious measures of the people supporting us weren’t showing up quite as we had expected.

We tweaked the plan a bit, but carried on just trying to make more people aware of what we were trying to do and around July we started to realise, and see, people were definitely getting on board.

• We hoped to reach 20,000 people to follow us – that didn’t happen – but over 44,000 people read what we had to say - often – and they all talked to other people. We reached more than the number of people we needed to, in a different way than we originally thought we would.
• So many volunteers helped our cause – which we had never expected.
• And by the time the cut off came for standing as a candidate so many new people had been convinced to put their name forward.

The result we got at the end of all this wasn’t perfect (with our ideal goal) – but it moved the dial quite a way with local politics in New Plymouth – and that is what we set out to do.

• So, how does this story fit with the beginning of a New Year

If you’ve got a great idea, and a solid plan, and you really believe in what you are doing, then don’t give up, keep trying and you never know, you might just pull it off.

Good luck if you have big plans for this year - and -

All the Best to Everyone for 2026.