Page 16 - Paulisms: Gold Nuggets for Small Business

chosen when I left school. It broke my mother’s heart that I didn’t go to university and get a civil engineering degree. Luckily I didn’t go, as I wouldn’t have been a good civil engineer, nor would my eventual career have been as successful.
I wanted to set up my own business. It was then that my father-in-law approached me about working for him in his woodworking factory which was also exporting staircases, which I did for four years. I started at the bottom, working on the factory floor using machinery, which I hated. I had to go backwards to go forwards. It was a trainee manager-type role, and eventually I was involved in product development and export.
I learnt a great deal from Rob (and Beryl), but I still wanted to do my own thing. Rob and Beryl wanted to get out and I was being primed to take it over. I appreciated the opportunity to buy it, but it didn’t feel right. By now I had the knowledge and awareness to know it was not a viable business for the dollars I was going to invest. I was proved right when the company that eventually bought it went bust in a very short time. I decided to go out on my own, selling home improvement products. That was in October 1987. I borrowed against the family home to fund set-up costs like legal fees, stock, leasehold improvements and general costs associated with setting up a new business. It took seven banks before one would give me any money.
Well, you know what happened in October 1987 – the share market crash. Everything started to crash, but I was now so committed there was no way back. I was naïve, but I wasn’t going to fail. However, I did. Before I went into setting up that business, I had reasonable equity in my home (swimming pool, half an acre in the country) and I was only 28 years of age. When I got out of that business in October 1992, I was minus $50,000 (I still have my position of statement today) and in trouble. I had to