Page 197 - Paulisms: Gold Nuggets for Small Business

Be Kind
Back in 1985 I met a guy called Venu Gopaul, who would change my life forever. At the time, I was working for my father-in-law, selling wooden products. Although we were manufacturing them, we were looking overseas to import cheaper models. On a sales trip to New Plymouth, I heard on the radio about a trade commission from Seattle that was going to be in Wellington later in the week with a trade delegation from Seattle, USA.
When I got back from my sales trip, I tracked Venu down through the Wellington Chamber of Commerce. We met and it was very pleasant. We outlined what we were looking for. I remember saying to my father-in-law that nothing would come of it and we went away. These were the days before faxes, email, cell phones and the internet. A couple of months later, Venu contacted us by mail and said he’d found an attic stair from North America, were we interested?
Nothing happened at the time (though I did import them a few years later), so I’ll skip forward to meeting up with him in 1987 when I decided to go out on my own. I hopped on a plane and headed off to Seattle, and from that trip there was a series of connections that led me to Solatube five years later and an incredible journey.
Venu was born in India, moved to Burma, was a starving street kid and got a job working in the hospitality industry. He then got sponsored by a rich American woman to attend Cornell University, one of the Ivy League universities in America, and finally settled in Seattle.
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