No man is an island
A disparate group of New Zealand business owners find themselves on a reunion trip to the Chatham Islands. Mark Revington joined them
Wednesday, January 27 2010 || Features || BY Mark Revington
“I was nervous,” says Croon who flew across to the mainland especially for the course. “I expected people to be at my level but 70% of them had serious businesses with revenue up around $40–50 million and one with revenue of $98 million. But I was never made to feel any less important than anyone else. They could see I was genuine.”
It was Croon and his dad who met us at the airport when we finally made it the following morning and whisked us off in a bus to the hotel. We took a small detour on the way, bumping across a paddock to a hill overlooking the coastline. Much of the Chathams reminds me of a blasted heath, low lying, covered in a sort of tussock with an enormous lagoon running down one side. The trees all lean away from the prevailing wind and on a good day, the beaches sparkle like rough-set diamonds. On a bad day the place feels like the end of the earth.
Further to the east, and officially the first place in the world to see the new millennium, is Pitt Island. It is smaller and much hillier, with a population of 30. Some of the families have been on the island for five generations. They farm sheep and cattle, and fish. We went across on Sunday and while some drove to the other side of the island and walked up to the millennium sculptures on a hill overlooking the Pacific Ocean towards South America, the hunters took their rifles and quad bikes in search of wild merino.
Malcolm Clark is a hunter, and managing director of Airpro Airconditioning in Henderson, Auckland. You would think that, after 25 years in the business with revenue approaching $30 million a year, Clark would know all there is to know about business.
“I can assure you, you don’t and you never stop learning and you still make mistakes,” he says. “I think on the first block of the course, I said to someone, ‘how the hell did I last this long with all the things I haven’t got right?’ It was quite overwhelming really but it soon became quite comforting because just about everyone else on the course was or had been in the same position.”
Clark reckons the course gave him more confidence to take on challenges.
Philip Dixon, who walked to the statues, is a director of Sabato, the Auckland-based gourmet food company he started with his wife. It was Dixon who handed out the flash Italian sweets on the flight over, bless him. Sabato imports, distributes, retails and manufactures gourmet foods. Fifteen years ago he was the first off the block. The market is becoming crowded now and Dixon was looking for an edge.
“We’d been running the company for 15 years and doing it by instinct and this was the first real outside influence. I never really worried about how much of an investment it was. I knew I needed to do something and went in on blind faith.
“I turned up and thought ‘gee these people are really smart and they know what they’re doing’. By the end of it you realise everyone is really smart but everyone has some issues. No matter how good their business is, they all got something out of it.”
We had lunch on Pitt in a half-finished luxury eco-lodge. We ate paua fritters, blue cod and crayfish. The sun was out on the water and after lunch we sat on the deck drinking beer while the divers in the group went off the wharf for some paua.
All weekend, we ate crayfish, paua and deliciously fresh blue cod. At night we drank in the public bar and played pool with the locals, until the last night when the bar was closed and the Croon extended family put on a feast. But first there was a challenge devised by tutors Kolb and Shepherd. We were split into groups of three and given a brief to develop: a marketing concept for Hotel Chathams. My group came up with a great story based on low-impact, high-value branding and marketing. We didn’t win. That was followed by a long party in the bar and I got to bed around 4am after smoking possibly the largest Cuban cigar I’ve seen in my life. Others were much later, and looked it the next morning when we got on the bus to the airport. Worryingly, bus driver and hotel owner Val Croon was among them but he handled the gravel roads carefully.
One singular impression everyone in this group experienced while on the course was the requirement to be totally open about their business. “You had to be brutally honest,” says Philip Dixon. “It forces you to admit some things that you might not want to even admit to yourself but there was no hiding.”
What they faced in common were the issues and challenges faced running an SME, and the loneliness. Now they have an informal network to call upon for advice.
“It’s interesting, the emails between us in the group,” says Graeme Kerr. “I’ve had a couple ring up and say, ‘hey Graeme, what would you do in this situation, can you help me out here?’
“Business can be lonely. Here you’ve got people you can lean on who aren’t in competition with you. We are really a tight-knit group, which is cool. What it builds is respect for everyone. They want to get something out of it so I guess we all shared the same goals.”
Says Dixon: “If you think someone in the group can help, you jump on the phone and they will.”
This isn’t a paean to the owner manager courses at the Icehouse, although they meet a valuable need. But while everyone wants to find or build a Nokia of the South Pacific to grow the economy, imagine if the hundreds of SMEs throughout New Zealand raised their performance by 10% by taking time to work on the business, not in it, says Clare Davies who, at 32, is managing director and a shareholder of a hotel, restaurant and catering business in Nelson.
“When you’re too busy and hands on, you can’t see where you will grow. It would be amazing for New Zealand if every SME could do this but it’s out of reach of many. They don’t have the cashflow or time.”
Mark Revington’s trip to the Chathams was sponsored by the Icehouse
