Page 17 - Paulisms: Gold Nuggets for Small Business

downgrade and move my young family (wife and two children) to live in a small house that smelt of cat pee! But I was honest and didn’t go bankrupt and managed to get through. I had laid everything on the line like in a Craps game (in Craps, if you throw up a seven, you lose everything.) In my career I’ve put everything on the line three or four times. Yes, high risks but also high reward. I had tried and I was broke, well, more than broke, at 32 years of age.
When a phone call came in July 1992 from Malcolm Hughes asking me if I was interested in introducing Solatube, a tubular skylight business, to New Zealand, I was ready. Initially I turned it down, as I was not motivated by the thought of an Australian skylight (thinking of a boring bubble on a roof). But he sent me a brochure, and I looked and thought, ‘Hey, this is different’, and I was on a plane three days later to secure the rights.
By October 1992 I was in business with two people I had first met a couple of months earlier: Malcolm and his business partner, Bill Wilcox, who had made their money in the construction industry before the 1987 crash. Malcolm had come to me through a mutual friend who had been part of my business journey.
Solatube was really going off in Australia. It was a great product (still is), but the business infrastructure wasn’t there. We bought a flawed franchise model for A$25,000 (funded by Malcolm and Bill) and got underway. We didn’t have all the products and we didn’t have anyone to sell and install the products. However, we pushed ahead and launched on 3 December 1992 in Petone, Wellington. We set up a small office, warehouse and one small room that had a Solatube installed. We then placed a full- page advert in the free local newspaper on the Friday night, saying we were open all weekend. Boom! We had people lining up at the door to come to see the Solatube. It was like a honeymoon for the next three or so years.