Sun sets on the Bill Day Show
The Wellington entrepreneur is preparing to sell up, learn Italian, and repay his family for the years of financial instability as he chased his dreams
Tuesday, July 06 2010 || Features || BY Keri Welham
In his day, the best and brightest entered the diplomatic corps or became lawyers. Now, he reckons, they are running their own businesses.
“I like entrepreneurs for a start. I love people with dreams.”
Spotting an entrepreneur is not an exact science. There’s no definitive checklist, but, like the difference between pornography and art, Day says you definitely know when you’re face to face with an entrepreneur or a pretender.
When judging last year’s Ernst and Young awards, Day says he was on the lookout for a sharp idea, and outstanding implementation. He never judges the contestants on their written submissions alone. So many household names in this country suffer from dyslexia or a simple inability to sell their idea on paper, that he reserves most of his opinion for the interview segment of the judging.
He says in a country that boasts about half the population of a decent sized city, the vast majority of entrepreneurs are looking to sell overseas.
And today’s entrepreneurs have much less cause to feel isolated from the rest of the world with First World telecommunications. They also have the support of incubators and mentoring systems and sophisticated investment structures — all of which makes a veteran like Bill Day bristle. “Real entrepreneurs don’t have time [for incubation and mentoring],” he says, sounding unapologetically old school. “People talk about their mentors and I think: harden the fuck up.”
On his path to entrepreneurial success, he had no grand plan, no incubation, in fact no sense of caution or fear of obstacles whatsoever. He employed what he calls the ‘neat eh?’ strategy. If he heard of or dreamt up an opportunity, and he found himself saying ‘That’d be neat, eh?’, he’d leap on in. “You see opportunities and take them.”
Day says he is not a risk junkie, but he had to be able to live with risk to build Seaworks into an international success. He tells a story of accompanying some of the world’s most accomplished entrepreneurs to a casino in Monte Carlo. While many advisers, friends and family were having a flutter, none of the entrepreneurs were gambling. Day says entrepreneurs don’t take risks for kicks. They take risks because it’s the only way to achieve the dreams cluttering their heads, to secure the success they’ve dreamed of while those around them deal with the reality of the failures along the way.
“We’re goal setters.”
