Page 18 - Paulisms: Gold Nuggets for Small Business

We were, however, struggling to find someone to install the product. We had an installer lined up and he was going to become our first licensee, but he didn’t turn up for a job for a Solatube I had sold. I asked the customer if I could borrow some tools and worked out for myself how to install the Solatube. I ended up having to go out and install the Solatubes for a while, working it out for myself. That was a great learning experience. So now I was the marketing manager, operations, technical and sales, and installations trainer.
Paul McDonald was our first licensee out of Wellington (Paul worked for us for seven years) and we progressively set up Solatube-licensed installers around New Zealand. In the first year, I set up twenty-five licensed installers from Invercargill to Whangarei. I had to find them and train them on installation and sales. We had failures, but had to try to get the network up to speed as soon as possible, as now we were nationwide. In reflection, how this was achieved in the first year was incredible. For the next three years I spent four months a year away from home, working the Solatube opportunity. My oldest daughter came home from kindergarten one day with a picture of the family. There was my wife, her, her sister and the cat... and not me! It still hurts today. But I had to put everything on the line to make it all work.
It was indeed a honeymoon. The product was flying out the door. However, it didn’t take long for our sales numbers in the residential market to peak, so I started to diversify into the trade market (not into other products, but into other sales channels). Malcolm didn’t like this diversification, but I knew we had to, as the product was reaching its market penetration and the costs of lead generation were getting higher.
I was amazingly lucky that Malcolm gave me an incredible opportunity that July in 1992, and I was able to buy him and Bill out just