0:01

Hey guys, quick one

0:04

before we start. We've

0:13

got huge plans for Between 2 Beers this year

0:15

and if you could do just one thing to

0:17

help our growth it would be to hit that

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follow button or the subscribe button wherever you're listening

0:21

to this. I can't stress enough how much it

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and would love to see this thing grow bigger

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and better with more incredible guests, please hit the

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subscribe or follow button. It's the only favour I'll

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ask of you. Thanks for your

0:34

time, enjoy the ep. On

0:36

this episode of Between 2 Beers we talk to Sir

0:39

Ian Taylor. Sir Ian has lived

0:41

one hell of a life. He was

0:43

the lead singer of a rock band,

0:45

he served in the army, worked at

0:47

a brewery, studied law, became a kids

0:49

presenter for TVNZ, then a TV star

0:51

before setting up his own production company.

0:54

Today he's one of New Zealand's top

0:56

business leaders. His team at ARL have

0:59

revolutionised how we watch sport, he's earned

1:01

a knighthood for his services to broadcasting

1:03

and business, and he's become

1:05

an outspoken columnist. In this

1:07

episode we talk about the day he went to work

1:09

to shut down his company and why he didn't,

1:12

the origin story of creating graphics for

1:14

sport and how he secured contracts all

1:16

over the world, why his company only

1:18

made their first profit in 2019, his

1:20

thoughts on politics

1:22

in the current state of New Zealand

1:24

and much, much more. Sir

1:27

Ian is one of New Zealand's great characters,

1:29

with so much wisdom to share and love

1:31

to spread. This was a

1:33

chat we felt really privileged to be part of

1:35

with one of New Zealand's greatest innovators. We're

1:38

also super stoked to tell you about the business

1:40

we've built. If you'd like to hire one

1:42

of our incredible guests to speak

1:44

or MC your event, check out

1:46

our epic line up at b2bspeakers.co.nz

1:49

and get in touch. And

1:51

while there, sign up to our weekly newsletter with

1:53

all the biggest news from us and the podcasting

1:55

space in New Zealand. Listen on

1:57

iHeart or wherever you get your podcasts from, or watch

1:59

the video on YouTube. This episode

2:01

was brought to you from the Export

2:04

Bear Garden Studio. Enjoy! Sireen

2:08

Taylor. Welcome to Between

2:10

Two Bears. Got it. Good morning, good afternoon,

2:12

whatever it is. I've lost track of time.

2:14

You have. As you know, that's why I'm

2:16

late. Yeah, we'll start on that. Welcome to

2:18

the Export Bear Garden Studio. We're excited to

2:20

have you. One of the great excuses

2:22

for running a few late is, sorry, I lost track

2:24

of time I was having coffee with Grant Dalton. Were

2:26

you guys planning on taking over the world? When

2:29

you're with Grant Dalton, it is a bit like that. No,

2:32

no. So we're just getting some plans

2:34

in place for the America's

2:36

Cup and Bus loaner this year. We've

2:40

sort of like he's got big goals, big objectives.

2:42

So I thought we better sit at a table

2:45

and face to face go, what

2:47

are you expecting? Let's figure out how

2:49

because Grant's not one who will ever

2:51

take no for an answer. And

2:54

there's nothing that can't be done. So

2:56

we were just working through the things that he

2:58

wants that can't be done, which I'll

3:00

have to go back and get the team to find

3:02

a way to do it. It's a high

3:05

level conversation. That one. People

3:08

walking past, they double taking looking at these

3:10

two luminaries of New Zealand history sitting down.

3:12

No, no, we were locked away in his

3:14

office. Yeah, of course.

3:16

Of course. America's Cup. What am I thinking? You can't

3:18

let any of those secrets out of the bag. Another

3:21

reason we're excited to have you is because we hear

3:23

you don't talk to old people anymore, which means we

3:26

have made the cut. Yeah, you've made the cut as

3:28

young people. We're quite excited about it. You made the

3:30

cut because of my son who's a young person. Oh,

3:32

yeah. A younger person. Younger. All right. Yeah.

3:35

No. So my whole idea, it's

3:37

part of a platform that

3:39

we've put into schools called Mātauranga.

3:41

And the whole thing was

3:43

to inspire initially, it was to inspire

3:45

Pacific and Māori kids that this

3:48

thing everyone talks about is STEM or

3:50

innovation within their DNA. And

3:52

it came from their ancestors. And it's a

3:55

marvelous story that I didn't know either. But,

3:57

you know, three and a half thousand years ago.

4:00

Their. Ancestors list.

4:02

The. You have. Started to

4:05

avoid you cause the pacific oceans using

4:07

nothing but the stars on a nice

4:09

and parents were that science. It's technology

4:11

that engineering that's math and a professor

4:13

for his lisa made us are Smith's

4:15

to did a D and I study

4:17

studying the whole story of human migration.

4:20

Looking at the Dna around the world

4:22

have. Major. Conclusions was the

4:24

greatest story and human migration was the

4:26

voyage in the crust mana new react

4:28

to what. I out.

4:31

And. Sisters. And you know I

4:33

just thought. It looked at. Be.

4:36

Young. Pacifica. And marty

4:38

and they don't seem to perform very well and

4:40

stamps I think the only reason that as is

4:42

because I'm be told the story. So.

4:44

We are now telling it they loving

4:46

it's but that really cool thing is

4:48

it's free ride across all the cats

4:50

and so. We've. Introduced that prime

4:53

in intermediate schools and that's where I come

4:55

from This point that's a given up talking

4:57

to all people in I do we all

4:59

people yelling and screaming at one time to

5:01

a and they'll be yelling and screaming next

5:04

year. Meanwhile. Our

5:06

younger generation of learning the value

5:08

of the saints history together. And.

5:12

They. Will change. The. Country in

5:14

one generation they will come out the

5:16

other end of this better informed, working

5:19

together and if you'd think. That.

5:22

Is. Lisa Medicine Smith said that

5:24

the first footsteps and human migration

5:26

began out of Africa. We.

5:28

Know that I didn't start anywhere else but wait

5:31

a day in. They. Ended here

5:33

and on. the tenants. These. With

5:35

a last apes and human migration

5:37

they had found everything. When. They

5:39

got to the Thames and that means

5:41

and as a country if is any

5:44

country that shit understand the rest of

5:46

the world. It's us. As

5:48

us footsteps started. the. Went. All

5:50

over the planet. In. Ended his. and

5:53

i like to tell a kid sense

5:55

and arts that's what happened humans started

5:57

as voyage and they were looking for

5:59

here And finally found it and this

6:01

story captivated you at age 70 So

6:04

is that right like it's not something

6:06

that you've grown up with you've picked it up

6:08

in later life and really embraced it I went

6:10

to a lecture by Lisa Matus

6:12

a Smith. I just happened to turn

6:14

up and this it just Unraveled

6:17

there and I just thought why? Why

6:21

didn't I know this? Why aren't

6:23

we learning this in our schools? because

6:25

it's so powerful and so

6:27

unifying and And the

6:30

cool thing is it's backed by science.

6:32

It's the ma study and I remember

6:34

telling my aunties Hey, hey auntie. I

6:36

just been with the scientists and she's

6:38

proven that you know, all those stories

6:40

We used to tell they're real auntie

6:42

said we don't need science with it We

6:46

know they're true one of

6:48

the things that I've found in researching you for

6:50

this episode and it's been really apparent in these

6:53

first few minutes is your Infectious

6:55

energy and enthusiasm for stories but also

6:57

for life and one of the questions

6:59

I had at the top is you

7:01

don't appear 74 you

7:04

know, like you don't but I wondered what it was

7:06

what what is it like to be 74? Oh I

7:10

don't think about it. I guess it's It

7:13

surprises me sometimes. I just think I think

7:16

perhaps It's

7:19

how far 74 years went past it's

7:23

It's a really interesting perspective.

7:25

You know, we we started our business 30 to

7:27

34 years ago I

7:30

mean, it feels like yesterday. I still

7:33

can see me in

7:36

roponger Pulling a radio to bits to

7:38

see what made it work and then not being able to

7:41

put it back together again I can still see

7:43

it and that comes from I

7:45

think and I didn't know this till I

7:47

started hearing more about my Māori ancestry

7:50

calling out who our top or I none he

7:52

had to eat or order more a football the

7:54

footsteps we lay down in our past create the

7:56

paving stones of where we stand today and in

7:59

that Maori World View that was

8:01

in front of us. So I

8:04

always seen them. I didn't know

8:06

about that. But when I heard it, I

8:08

thought, actually, that

8:12

is how I viewed my life. So

8:14

it's 74 years of footsteps. And

8:17

that's really rich. Oh, it's so

8:20

rich. And the lives that you've lived, they're

8:22

almost chapters you can pull out of a

8:25

bookshelf. Because 12 years in TV, I'm paraphrasing

8:27

it, 30 years in business. And

8:29

now a new outlook in your 70s and a

8:31

new outlook on life and looking to extend life

8:33

as well. It's phenomenal. I'm so looking

8:35

forward to the chat. Yeah, so we have a- You might

8:37

get a word in sometimes. So

8:41

yeah, so we have a certain way of doing things

8:44

between two beers. And we've found your

8:46

story particularly difficult to structure because you've

8:48

done so much. It's like, well, where

8:50

do you start? But

8:53

we're actually going to attempt to dive right into the

8:55

storytelling. And I'm going to set the scene and then

8:57

I'd like you to take it from there. So today,

8:59

as we record this, January, 2024,

9:02

the company that you built from

9:04

the ground up, Animation Research Limited is

9:06

a world leader in 3D TV graphics.

9:08

You do America's Cup, every golf tournament

9:11

in the world except live, Formula One,

9:13

cricket, snowboarding, baseball. You basically do

9:15

it all and seem from the outside to

9:17

be absolutely crushing it. But

9:19

I wanted to start our storytelling in 2008. So

9:23

17 years after you started

9:25

the company, when you just lost a

9:27

huge cricket contract and

9:29

you woke up that morning and decided that you had

9:31

to shut it all down, but you

9:33

didn't. I was wondering if you could just take us to

9:36

that timeframe, what was going on and what happened. It's

9:39

an interesting time. I was thinking about it

9:41

the other day in the

9:43

context of the mental

9:46

health issues of politicians because of

9:48

the pressure they

9:50

are under. And I

9:53

looked back at that time and I

9:55

mean, we didn't even talk about mental

9:57

health, but I knew that.

10:00

No, if it wasn't, my wife was, I'll

10:03

set up how it happened. And then we'll

10:05

come back to this thing of mental

10:08

health, and especially the focus

10:11

that's gone on to mental health of politicians. I

10:13

mean, you might tell that from

10:16

the way I'm going, it really annoys me and

10:18

I'll share why. But so

10:20

yes, so it's an interesting story. It

10:22

was about, we're doing, and we will

10:24

talk later about all the other things

10:26

that we did do that aren't sport.

10:29

We just do sports because we like sports. It

10:31

just happens to be a lot of fun too. We

10:35

were one of the first companies in the world

10:37

to do cricket graphics. So we were

10:39

doing graphics, and then you were doing it all

10:41

over the world. And at one stage we thought,

10:44

how it'd be really interesting to see if we could

10:46

track the cricket ball, because that's what

10:48

happens. Because we always viewed cricket as a

10:50

game of chess. So there's the

10:53

captain of one team who has chess players,

10:55

he moves around. And then the

10:57

batsman is the person, the

10:59

other chess player he's playing against. And his job

11:01

is to knock over those or get past those

11:03

chess pieces. And when you look

11:05

at that, it then fired up the idea of

11:08

that's why the fielding, that's what the story we

11:10

should start to tell. And one of the important

11:12

things is where the ball is balled and

11:14

then where he dispatches. Anyway, long story short,

11:17

we did some trials with it and that

11:19

was really expensive and it wasn't very accurate.

11:21

So we decided no one would want it,

11:23

so we didn't do it. Not

11:26

very long after that, a company from out

11:28

of England called Hawkeye did do it.

11:31

They spent quite a lot of time and a lot

11:33

of money doing it. And they launched it and we

11:36

were right, it was expensive. It wasn't very accurate, but

11:38

everybody wanted it. So in a

11:40

short space of time, we lost all our

11:42

cricket contracts. So really valuable lesson of

11:44

things as we start to look at do we

11:47

do AI? How do we use it? What are

11:49

the opportunities rather than the threats? So

11:52

anyway, a couple of, a year and

11:54

a half later, I get a call from a guy called

11:56

James Redjo. And

12:00

I see these footsteps lined

12:03

out. I tell another story. I see my great

12:05

mate Rod Drury in 2007 started a bureau. They

12:11

all line up because I can see them. And

12:13

irrelevant to the story, but it's just how

12:15

I see that part. So

12:18

anyway, I get this call from James Vigier and he says, look,

12:21

I know, you know, you used to do cricket. Would

12:24

you be interested in the contract up here? I

12:26

said, would we? What? We

12:29

didn't have any contract. We could do ball tracking. Not

12:31

at the moment, but give me a moment. And I

12:33

always tell the story. Turn to the team,

12:35

say, the guy wants to know, could we do

12:37

ball tracking? Oh, I don't see why not. That's a geek

12:39

getting excited. I talk about. So anyway, I say, James, now

12:41

look, it looks like we can. How long have we got?

12:44

He said eight weeks. And

12:46

we had to pay for everything. Pay going up, doing

12:48

the whole lot. They had to develop the software from

12:50

scratch in eight weeks, in the middle of

12:52

winter. So that meant

12:54

I knew we were going to have to spend money. So

12:57

we did, for the first time, I did a budget and

12:59

it was over a million dollars. And

13:02

I remember thinking, we don't have a million dollars.

13:04

And there's no banks. And we go to a bank and say,

13:06

we're going to do this in India and we've only got eight

13:09

weeks. So anyway, we do the thing about,

13:11

we didn't have the money, so we had to think. Lord

13:13

Ernest Rutherford. So we didn't

13:15

have the money. So what we thought was, why

13:18

don't we spend the money so fast the bank doesn't

13:20

notice? Then we'll go up to India,

13:22

win the contract, come back, show them the contract,

13:24

borrow the money off so we can pay it back. That's

13:26

the idea. It actually didn't work

13:28

that well. That's another story. But

13:31

anyway, so we did that. And

13:34

as long as they're

13:36

short, they designed this amazing, amazing

13:38

system. And we went up

13:40

and we got the contract. Cool,

13:43

and we're off. About a year and a half

13:45

into it, start with all the loans

13:48

we have and the America's Cup had just

13:50

been canceled, gone to court again. So there's

13:53

a tidying up storms. Then

13:55

the guy who was running the Indian

13:57

cricket, BCCI.

14:00

He did a deal with Hawkeye for the IPL and

14:03

that deal involved getting rid of us. And

14:06

so next thing we know, we couldn't fight it. I

14:08

mean, we didn't have the money to,

14:10

so we lost it. And that

14:13

was probably the worst three

14:15

months, four months of my life. I

14:17

came home, I remember ringing my wife from a grandstand

14:20

in Mumbai at about one o'clock in the morning, just

14:23

saying, you know, it's all

14:25

over. So anyway,

14:27

we get

14:29

there and I spent

14:31

three to four months just trying to figure

14:34

out a way around it, and in the

14:36

end there was none. And

14:39

I never thought of it as mental health, but as I

14:41

look out at those steps, I

14:43

understand this fine line

14:45

that you walk where you can take

14:47

a step to one side and suicide as

14:49

a result. I could feel

14:51

myself getting to a

14:53

stage where, you know,

14:56

they're better off without me. And

14:58

it was important to realize you were on that

15:00

step. It

15:05

might seem dramatic. But my

15:07

wife was amazingly supportive during that time.

15:10

But in the end, we decided that we

15:13

had to close it. And I went

15:15

in and about to call

15:17

everybody together, and Liz came down with me to do it.

15:20

And that's when Allie is still with us, was sitting

15:22

at the reception. She had this newspaper, the

15:24

ODT, and on the front page Fisher & Paykel had

15:26

just laid out 480 people out on the tairie. And

15:30

she looked at me and she pointed at the picture and said, wouldn't

15:32

that be horrible? Looked at

15:34

Liz said, we can't do that today. And

15:36

we didn't. And interesting,

15:39

you know, just to put that in context, if Fisher

15:41

& Paykel hadn't closed that day, I

15:43

wouldn't be sitting here with you having that conversation. We

15:46

would have. You woke up

15:48

that morning with the incident. It was closed.

15:52

It was closed until that newspaper was in front

15:54

of me. And I mean,

15:56

I could have easily just gone, oh, it

15:58

may be worth it. sneak under the radar here

16:01

because we're only 25 people who lose their jobs.

16:03

But it was this thing.

16:05

And I don't know. That's

16:07

why it's valuable keeping all these. Something

16:10

was there on my shoulder because

16:13

we didn't. And

16:15

really interestingly, in the

16:17

next week, I thought of a really

16:20

crazy idea that I hadn't thought

16:22

of before, which I tried, and

16:24

we pulled it off. And then

16:26

I remember it meant that I had enough money

16:28

to pay off all of our debts, which was

16:30

important. Then we had enough money to

16:32

run the company for two months. So

16:35

I got called everybody together and said, right, we've

16:37

only got enough money for two months. So

16:39

now's the time to start looking for other jobs. And

16:41

everybody went, let's just give

16:43

it a shot. Nobody left.

16:46

Does that fill you with confidence

16:48

in those situations that I've got an

16:50

idea, I've thrown it out

16:52

to my people, and they're backing it

16:54

as well? Was that reenergize you from

16:57

those darker moments? Well, I've never experienced

16:59

anything else. The dark,

17:01

those were those rare, dark

17:04

moments. And I've only had them that

17:07

time. But it did remind me how

17:10

dangerous it could be, how you have to stay

17:13

on top of it and how people around you

17:15

need to be supportive. And my

17:17

wife was amazing. She was really the only other

17:20

one I knew. I wanted to ask you that.

17:22

How wide is you? But she embraced the whole

17:24

idea that the house was gone, everything was gone.

17:26

And let's get this sorted and we'll find a

17:29

way. We'll do something. So

17:31

that brings me to that whole thing about

17:34

what we're seeing with politicians these days and

17:36

this whole mental health stuff and the

17:38

pressure they're under. I just get

17:41

back from this and think, what

17:43

about all of those people

17:46

during COVID who couldn't get home to

17:48

their parents' funeral, who couldn't be

17:51

there for the wife having a baby, who

17:53

lost their businesses, who are still losing their

17:55

businesses, who still don't know what they're going

17:57

to do? That's mental health.

18:01

So the politicians that

18:04

are talking are all on

18:06

really good salaries and I don't

18:08

take away from the fact that the expressions aren't

18:10

there. That's the kind of choice you take

18:12

too, you know you're going into that. But

18:14

when we put so much of

18:17

emphasis on a couple of politicians who've

18:19

done things wrong, who then

18:22

have been suffering mental health, but ignore

18:24

the mental health of the people who've

18:26

lost their shots while they try to

18:28

build an underground railway line here in

18:30

Auckland. What's the mental

18:32

pressure for them? Why aren't we acknowledging that?

18:35

Why aren't we acknowledging the

18:37

people who still rue

18:40

the day that they weren't able

18:42

to stand with their grandmother as

18:44

she passed, as she died? You know, those

18:47

are the things that are real. And

18:50

I'm happy for people to discuss the

18:52

mental health issues in difficult places. But

18:55

let's put it in context. Those people

18:57

up there suffering those didn't go

19:00

out and steal anything because they

19:02

were feeling bad. Yeah. We're

19:04

gonna build... See, I told it's

19:06

hard to get a word out. We'll

19:09

be right back after this short break. But

19:15

I do want to start painting the picture now

19:17

of young Ian Taylor. Rupunga.

19:20

Rupunga. Rupunga. Growing

19:23

up in Rupunga. I was born in Kaio. But

19:26

what do you remember reflecting back on your childhood

19:28

and your youth and your Maori heritage? What

19:31

do you reflect on? My

19:36

mum and dad taught in a little school called Karatu up

19:39

in Northland. And I still remember the little stream that

19:42

ran past down the bottom where we used to try

19:44

and catch fish. I can

19:46

also remember riding a three wheel

19:48

bike that had the pedal with a nail holding

19:50

it on at the Marae,

19:52

honing around the Marae and slipping

19:54

my foot off. I still have the scar with the nail.

19:57

I remember that. I remember...

20:00

learning to swim hung off a bridge in a

20:02

tire by my father who was a school teacher

20:04

he taught us to teach When

20:06

I went back there a few years ago

20:08

that stream is gone It's not even

20:10

there at all and you know you

20:12

look at all of these things and it's another

20:14

thing about nature shifting and having

20:17

those memories in Rob Pong

20:19

I remember I

20:21

suppose the strongest memory I have

20:24

thinking back I can remember riding a horse to school

20:27

all sorts of things like that but

20:30

I think the strongest memory is

20:33

my aunties I

20:35

wouldn't have thought of it back there, but it was

20:37

my aunties who told

20:39

us all the stories our aunties who

20:42

went when you went and talked and I

20:44

love this picture which I never never lose

20:46

up in the Marae because you know everybody

20:48

talks about how Waheini

20:50

women are not allowed to speak on the Marae and it's only

20:52

the men Well I used to go

20:55

up there and all the aunties would be in the

20:57

kitchen Cooking the food and you

20:59

know if you were parked here and you

21:01

walked in you'd go especially these days go

21:03

Oh, how sexist is that you know there's

21:05

all the women cooking the food. There's the

21:07

men out there Ranting and raving

21:10

away and the thing but what I learned

21:12

from that experience was the aunties were there

21:14

the Kitchen slides

21:16

were open and they were listening to the

21:18

men ranting and raving in there and waffling

21:21

up and down with this canes and stuff

21:23

and then you'd hear the auntie go Somebody

21:26

go out there and tell them that's not gonna happen and

21:29

that's where my power

21:32

my thinking of the power of Waheen is

21:36

You know our Waheenie our aunties

21:38

they led the marches our aunties stood

21:41

up on Bastian points I

21:43

mean one of our aunties. I don't know her name, but

21:45

she was the one who stood in front of the twins

21:50

You know the thing is the I'm seeing a

21:52

lot of to a top 20. We had one Yes,

21:55

well one of the aunties there stood in

21:58

front of them can't have you white

22:00

girls getting hurt by those cops. That's

22:03

our aunties. So I've

22:05

never ever thought about

22:07

this kind of gender

22:10

imbalance either. It's

22:14

not in my DNA. My

22:16

aunties are where I look to. My

22:18

mother was where I look at. And for me, it was

22:20

our aunties who got shit done. One

22:23

of the amazing things about having a guest like you in

22:25

is, as we've identified, 70 plus, you've

22:28

traversed an amazing

22:30

era. And you

22:32

speak fondly of the time electricity

22:34

is connected to your house, and a light

22:36

bulb comes on. Is that

22:38

a light bulb moment looking back for you

22:40

as well? There'll be people here who have

22:42

no concept of a life without electricity. And

22:45

you were there when it was connected to

22:47

bring a whole new world to you. Yeah,

22:49

yeah. So I was brought up in a

22:51

house. We had a couple of houses, actually,

22:53

coal fire range, which was always going.

22:56

I'm cooked on a coal fire range. And we had

22:58

one of those safes that was built into the house.

23:00

The box was outside with a mesh on

23:02

it. And you kept your food out

23:04

there. I

23:06

remember we had a battery powered radio that

23:09

I was talking about. We listened to a lot of things called Life

23:11

with Dexter with Dad. And

23:14

we read comics by the light of a

23:16

gas lamp. So you're always doing that. And

23:19

then I can still see the shirt I was wearing, 1957,

23:23

when the man from the Hawkes Bay Electric

23:25

Power Board connected the house to electricity and

23:27

the flick of a switch lit it up like daylight.

23:31

And I think, you know, I often say

23:33

this, that's in those footsteps out

23:35

there, 1957. And

23:38

for me, it's why I think I

23:40

do what I do today. That

23:43

experience I've never forgotten. But that was

23:45

technology. That was something

23:47

happening that I

23:49

didn't know how it happened, shouldn't happen, but

23:52

it just changed everything. And so this

23:54

step to here, I think it's like now AI is

23:57

the same as the light bulb, you know,

23:59

the computer. the same as the light bulb. There

24:01

were none when I was doing that and

24:03

yet here we are using all of

24:06

those things today and I still don't know anything

24:08

about them. I'm

24:10

going to pull us through the high school years because

24:12

I'm interested to know what you were like as a

24:14

student. Were you top of the class? What was you

24:17

like at school? I had it, it

24:19

was interesting. So I tell another story,

24:21

so very strong memory

24:23

of mine. Now I'm 11, so

24:25

it's 1961, I'm 11 and I was

24:27

playing in the front yard of that house that now had

24:29

electricity and a car pulled up and a priest

24:31

got out. I figured

24:34

it was a priest, I didn't know it was

24:36

a Catholic priest. Now I didn't know

24:38

I was a Catholic. Nothing

24:40

in my 11 years had indicated I was

24:42

a Catholic but this priest walked into the

24:44

house and the next thing I

24:46

remember is I'm on a rail car going

24:49

to Marstadon to a Catholic boarding school.

24:52

So he'd saved his soul, all done

24:55

whatever but I'd never known that we

24:57

were Catholic but off I went and

25:00

I often think about that. If

25:03

that priest hadn't turned up there I wouldn't have

25:05

gone to Marstadon and this

25:08

history would have been entirely different. But

25:11

the interesting thing for me was it's all about

25:13

putting things in context as well. So here's this

25:16

guy from Robfonnett. I arrive

25:18

in St. Joe's and the first week I'm

25:21

sitting in the dining room having

25:23

dinner and the Marist brother,

25:25

I even remember his name, Brother Morris, smacked

25:27

me over the back of the head and said you're not on the par

25:30

now, Hori. And it's

25:32

funny when I often mention this I'm giving

25:34

speeches and things, in this day

25:36

and age there's gasps all through the hall like

25:38

oh my god, oh my god. I

25:40

wait for that to stop and then I say so you know

25:43

what this 11 year old was thinking at

25:45

that time? I was thinking when

25:49

did I become a Hori? Those

25:51

are my cousins are the Horis. I'm

25:53

the Pākehā guy whose father's the debt master

25:55

at the school. How come I'm a Hori

25:57

now? And so it's context.

26:00

And you know, I often say that I

26:03

knew Brother Morris, I remember him

26:05

as a teacher, Brother Morris would

26:07

be incredibly proud of what we've

26:09

done and he would

26:12

understand when I said, if I said to

26:14

him today, you were right Brother Morris, we

26:16

weren't on the path, we're around

26:18

the world, you know, the globe is

26:20

our path. Were you the only Māori at that

26:23

school at that time? You

26:25

know, I don't know because it wasn't

26:27

one of the things, but I was the

26:29

one called Nugget, actually within the army I

26:31

got called Nugget, but

26:33

around there I was the kind of Hāori of

26:35

the place. But I remember, I went

26:37

back and I remember sitting outside the dormitory and it

26:41

occurred to me, well, the other thing about that is,

26:43

say, you think I'm a Hāori, well, I'm

26:45

going to show you what Hāori's do. And

26:48

yeah, I was, I did pretty

26:50

well at school. I

26:52

never really strived for

26:55

first, I think I was first in class

26:57

in some things, but it wasn't the

26:59

driver, but I did pretty well at school.

27:02

Was STEM part of your schooling? You talk about

27:04

STEM now. It didn't exist. Right,

27:06

but were you drawn to science and mathematics? No,

27:08

hell no, I hate it. I

27:11

was terrible at it. No, terrible.

27:14

Yeah. I want the context,

27:16

there's this really interesting detail, actually there's a few of

27:18

them in your lives and one of them is calculated

27:20

risk. So you go to law school and you're studying

27:22

law and then all of a sudden you're business. Sorry.

27:25

It wasn't law. So again, this is one of the

27:27

things about, I often talk about

27:29

the power of dreams and I

27:32

know we'll get to my kids say, oh no, she'll

27:34

come back to the kids when my boys get back

27:36

to dreams. But I've always

27:38

said to young people that it's

27:41

really important to have dreams. There's

27:44

a reason for that, if you don't have

27:46

dreams, but the opportunity pops up, you

27:48

might miss it. You can't see it.

27:51

So a calculated risk.

27:54

So the first movie I

27:56

ever saw in black and white, about

27:59

55. life was

28:01

Bill Haley and the Comets rock around the clock.

28:04

And I remember it so clearly.

28:06

I know my parents didn't come. The neighbors

28:08

took me to this thing so

28:11

I can still see it all. It was in Kawakawa. And

28:13

I remember going home

28:15

and thinking, that was cool.

28:18

One day I'm going to be in a band. And

28:20

then I did absolutely nothing about it. I

28:23

didn't learn an instrument. I didn't do my

28:25

mother was this great. She played piano. Uncle

28:27

Bunny was this fabulous band. I

28:29

never learned an instrument. And so now I've

28:31

gone through school. I'm at university in Wellington

28:34

doing a business degree. I've been there six weeks when

28:36

Bernie Kerry from the calculator just turned up and

28:38

said, Kyle Evanson's gone to the formula.

28:41

There'll be old people who recognize these names. Kyle

28:43

was a real thing. Kyle was a real thing.

28:45

Oh, where did they go? Oh,

28:48

yeah. And he said, and they said,

28:50

and we're in the battle of the bands this weekend. What

28:52

are you doing? You only have to learn one song. It

28:54

was a Beegee song. I started a joke. Good

28:56

song. Now we're in. Now we're

28:58

in. Yeah. So I learned the song. We went

29:01

down and I think we got second. I know

29:03

we did have to record something at the studio.

29:05

It was after that.

29:09

So what are you doing now? You

29:11

want to join the band? And honestly, that

29:13

dream, that movie came up.

29:15

It was like, oh, six

29:18

weeks, law business. I mean, so a business

29:20

degree pop band in the

29:22

60s was a no brainer. Owen

29:24

did it. I'm getting in the weeds a little

29:26

bit. But had you done any performance or any

29:28

singing in public before that? No. I

29:31

mean, that was my first that was my first gig. And

29:34

you opened for the Beegees. Not not at that

29:36

gig, but in the beach, beach, beach, beach. We

29:40

are later. Yeah. Moving

29:42

the story along a little bit. But that's a big crowd. That's

29:44

you. You're a front man for a band. Yeah.

29:47

Yeah. And yeah, I do. The

29:50

biggest lesson I had for opening for the beach.

29:52

Well, I remember I wasn't

29:54

actually a huge fan of the Beach Boys.

29:57

And I remember coming

29:59

down to the. town hall for the rehearsals

30:01

and they were up rehearsing. And

30:03

I will never... I've got goosebumps

30:06

again. I will never forget

30:08

walking in and being enveloped

30:11

by harmonies. It was live,

30:14

it was unbelievable. You

30:17

could feel it. It

30:19

was incredible. And so

30:22

the thing, the big lesson I learned, but I

30:24

can still remember standing up there looking out at

30:26

an audience, knowing that they're just going, hope this

30:28

is their last song so the BJs can come

30:30

on. Have

30:34

you retained some of that rock and roll lifestyle?

30:36

Because your dresses, you're not

30:38

your average 74 year old with the jackets

30:40

and some of your style. Was

30:42

that back then or is that something that you've adopted?

30:45

My mind says rock and roll, rock and roll, that

30:47

jacket is rock and roll. Well, mate,

30:50

you should see some of the outfits I wore in the band. Yeah,

30:52

but was it... Is that a throwback to those? I

30:55

will share some with you. Yeah,

30:58

I know. Those were the days.

31:00

So I guess it's just carried on.

31:02

I really enjoy... I

31:08

don't go out of the way to dress up, but

31:10

I do enjoy... I

31:15

don't even know how to put it. It's normal

31:17

for me. It's your style. Yeah, it's just normal.

31:19

It's your signature style. Last thing on, first thing

31:21

noticed, the new jacket is getting you noticed. That's

31:23

the hottest jacket. I'm not sure. It's

31:27

really nice. Yeah, I couldn't work out if it was

31:29

like... I knew it was some sort of ripped off.

31:31

It's giving me like Game of Thrones vibes with like

31:34

dragon skin. Because it's quite hot in here. And I

31:36

was going to say at the start, Sarien, maybe you

31:38

should take the jacket off, but no, leave it on.

31:40

That is hot. It's freezing. And

31:43

just so you know, well, if

31:45

they told me when I bought it, that they only

31:47

use the Python skins that are shed. They

31:49

shed them and then they take those and treat them. Rock

31:52

and roll days, just quickly. How

31:55

peak is your fame at that stage? Paint

31:58

us a picture of... the band and

32:00

how popular they actually were in New Zealand. I

32:02

mean, it was no, it

32:05

was pretty popular. It was the days of

32:09

God, I forgot in the morning, my memory

32:11

goes. But we toured all over the

32:13

country. We're in the Battle of

32:15

the Bands. We were on Pink Sinclair on I

32:20

can't remember what the pop show was called, but we were

32:22

on those a number of times. We made albums. So,

32:26

yeah, they were big. Yeah.

32:29

There were bigger deals, but people knew who we were. But

32:31

the context around it is then like that, you're in the

32:33

army. Yes. Yeah. So

32:36

it's one of those things again. So

32:38

I had the time in

32:40

the band and sort of getting

32:43

to a stage where I was finding it

32:45

hard to sing. I was never ever a

32:47

really great singer, but

32:49

it did the job and we had fun

32:51

and the band was good. And

32:53

I got in. It

32:55

was the time of military call ups. And

32:58

I always joke that I've never won anything, not even

33:00

a chocolate cake and a

33:02

raffle. But those military call ups

33:04

were raffles. They used to pick an age out

33:06

of a date, out of a month of

33:08

the year. And they only picked

33:10

two out of July and one of them was mine.

33:13

So now I was faced with these things. I've been called up

33:15

and it was the very last call up as well. It was

33:17

never happening again. The Labor government got rid of it. So

33:20

now I was looking at this and everything

33:22

has significance and I

33:24

was getting a bit tired and my throat

33:26

was bloody worn out. And a couple

33:29

of weeks earlier, I'd heard a guy open for

33:31

us, a band open for us, with a guy

33:34

called Willie Jackson, Willie Davidson singing.

33:36

And he was amazing. And

33:39

so I thought, actually, this

33:41

is a signal. So I didn't

33:43

have to go and do it because somebody relied

33:45

on me in the coming. So I

33:48

could easily got out. But I

33:50

just seemed everything aligned. I just said, hey, guys,

33:52

I'm going to go and do the army. I'm

33:54

leaving. Go hire Willie. And if

33:56

Willie takes the job, then I'm going to go and

33:58

do the thing. So Willie came over. I

34:00

went to the army. Yeah. Wow. There's

34:03

so many interesting details. Yeah. And

34:05

I'm going to take us to a

34:07

couple of... And I'm really... You know,

34:09

it's interesting, but I'm... It's a really

34:11

valuable... With a valuable experience, again, for

34:13

context. You know, it is

34:17

interesting to me how critical

34:19

people can be of

34:22

things that happen in war

34:24

in a way. And, you know, I

34:26

would never have thought that I could

34:28

have killed someone when I went in. Like,

34:31

I made the mistake of going in still with my hair

34:33

long from the band. On the jacket. Yeah. What

34:36

is that private... That got us going. I

34:41

can still remember by the time I'd finished... You know, you

34:43

got on to these training things. I can remember training... We

34:45

were training for Vietnam. And I can

34:47

remember racing through the bush up there, lying

34:49

down on barbed wire and stuff like this

34:51

while other people rolled over... Just over the

34:53

top of you. I can still recall running

34:55

and grabbing up, pulling up the... Because they

34:57

had tunnels. They were like... They

34:59

had tunnels. And cracking

35:01

grenades in them and shutting them. Because

35:04

that's what we've been told to do. Your life depended

35:06

on it. And you were in that

35:08

environment. And I think

35:11

that, you know, there's no

35:13

excuse for war crimes or stuff. But again,

35:15

it's that thing of context. It

35:20

has been really valuable for me to

35:22

have done that. And the other thing it

35:25

gave me was I remember sitting in the desert,

35:27

you know, on the desert road there, looking

35:29

out at the desert road, locked

35:31

in the military camp there, watching

35:33

people freely go backwards and forwards. They could

35:35

stop and have an ice cream if they

35:38

wanted it. They could stop the car and

35:40

get out. I couldn't. So that

35:42

whole sense of freedom grew

35:46

as well. Give

35:49

us the context for becoming the host

35:51

of Play School and Spot On and

35:53

getting into TV. Because this

35:55

is another life and I'm going to make our

35:57

way to Tailormade Productions. But that gig? dream

36:00

as well. But after getting your law degree

36:02

as well, so you've gone through studies and got

36:04

a law degree and then gone, eh. Well,

36:07

actually the law degree was interesting because it links to

36:09

the army because when I got out of the army,

36:11

it was now what do I do? I'm on the

36:14

side of the road at Wauroo. Now what? The

36:16

best place we played when we toured was Dunedin

36:18

and we made some great notes down there. So

36:20

I just rang one of them and said, are

36:22

there any jobs? And they got me a job

36:25

in Spatesbury driving a forklift. So

36:27

I went down and worked in Spatesbury for a year. And

36:30

while I was at Spatesbury, I got a call

36:32

from a guy that used to do these big

36:34

camping concerts and they filled out

36:36

the town hall. They were amazing. John Gadsby

36:38

and all those, they did shows, they did

36:40

stuff. And they were doing

36:43

Jesus Christ Superstar. I mean, no

36:45

halfway house, as

36:48

a part of a camping concert. And I was

36:50

asked, and a guy rang me. I wasn't at

36:52

university, but he knew me from the calculated risk.

36:54

He says, I want you to be Herod in

36:56

the thing. So I went and was Herod. So

36:58

I got going with all the students again. I

37:00

thought, oh shit, this is, I better go

37:02

back. And that's when I thought medicine

37:04

law law was shorter than medicine. So I did

37:07

law and went back. And

37:09

so I finished my degree. And

37:11

this is about dreaming again. When I was in

37:14

Marstorden, one day a boarder took

37:16

me home for a dip Sunday night dinner. And

37:18

we went to the house and they had one of these new

37:20

fangled things called a TV. And

37:24

I remember watching the Donna Reed show on

37:27

a Sunday night on this thing called a

37:29

TV thinking, I'm

37:31

going to be on one of those one day. And

37:33

that was it. So now jump

37:36

forward to the law job. I'm sitting there.

37:38

Um, but actually just to put it

37:40

up, I changed the

37:42

stories that been highlighted. The true story

37:45

is in my last year of

37:47

law, somebody came to me and said, they're

37:49

looking for someone for play school. Why

37:52

don't you audition because you can make more

37:54

money in two and a half days doing

37:56

play school than you make in three weeks

37:58

working in the pub. working in there if

38:00

you get the job. So I thought, oh,

38:02

you're missing two and I never went to the lectures anyway.

38:06

So I went down, auditioned, got the job. So I

38:08

did that. And then the end of

38:10

the year, got my degree ready to go. And

38:12

I'm about to head off. And

38:14

somebody, Mike Steadman from Spot On says,

38:17

what are you doing? We just

38:19

raised, Ray is just leaving. Do you want the

38:21

job on Spot On? And I

38:23

thought, because it was a great

38:25

show. I mean, it was wonderful. I just saw it.

38:28

Law, Spot On, no brainer.

38:31

I had to audition. This was

38:33

my audition, right? So Mike

38:36

gets us together and he gets the presenters,

38:38

Douglas, Erin, and says,

38:41

right, we're going to the city hotel. So

38:43

we go to the city hotel and we drink

38:45

them out of all of their German wine. So

38:47

there's no New Zealand wine at this time. So

38:49

we stagger back to Mike's office and

38:51

it's big office and he gives me a bow and arrow

38:53

and there's a target on the wall. And he says, if

38:55

you can hit the target, the job's yours. And

38:58

we still joke to this day, neither

39:01

of us remember when I hit the bar.

39:04

But that was the start of it.

39:06

But again, a dream. And that rolls

39:08

for 12 years, a television career. I

39:11

love the thought of a listener. I didn't know it

39:13

was that long. We'll

39:17

be right back after this short break. I

39:23

love the thought of a listener who's tuning

39:25

into this episode and they don't know who you

39:27

are. They're like, what is this? Where is it

39:29

going next? Okay. So now is

39:32

kind of like, and we've got a lot to unpack here.

39:34

I'm so interested in this whole story. So 1989, what

39:37

is the motivation? What do you see that

39:40

makes you start TaylorMade Production? What's the later

39:42

land? It was really simple.

39:44

So I'm working at TV, loving

39:46

the job. And I've decided really

39:48

love to need. I'd been offered a job on a current

39:50

affairs show in

39:53

Wellington. And I

39:55

thought not very long and hard about

39:58

it because I'd really... I decided

40:00

Dunedin was where I wanted to live. I liked

40:02

it, Central Otago. So I didn't take that. But

40:04

not long after that, TVNZ announced they were closing

40:06

down the Dunedin studios. I mean, there are 340

40:08

people there. We made

40:10

30% of all the television that was made in the

40:13

country came out of Dunedin. And now

40:15

they're closing it down because it wasn't economic. And

40:18

the only thing I knew how to do, I wasn't

40:20

going back to law. Only thing I knew how

40:22

to do was TV. So that's where I had this crazy

40:24

idea. At the time I was doing Funniest Home Videos. So

40:27

I was flying up to Wellington, Auckland, do Funniest

40:29

Home Videos and fly back. So on one of

40:31

the trips up, I called up the CEO

40:34

of TVNZ, just

40:37

forgotten his name now, and just said, really

40:39

good guy. He said, look, you're closing all that stuff

40:41

down. What would it take if we were to buy

40:43

it? And

40:46

if you give us just one show, we'll make it and

40:48

see where we can go from there. Anyway, long story short,

40:50

I needed half a million dollars and we could buy it.

40:53

I didn't have that. And

40:55

I love this story because this is my married

40:57

mate, he's a accountant, Phil Broughton. So

40:59

I come home, now I need half a million dollars. And

41:03

I ring up, I go up to Phil's place. Phil

41:05

tells the story, he's in bed on a Sunday morning

41:07

and I knock on the bedroom window. And

41:09

he pulls the curtain open. I said, Phil, I need to borrow half

41:11

a million dollars and we need to talk. So

41:14

I come in. So then we go into the

41:16

kitchen table, we sit down, he gets all these

41:18

papers out. He says, right now we're going to

41:20

have to do a business plan, cash flow, this,

41:22

that. If you go into the bank manager. And

41:24

I said, I looked at all this and I said, Phil,

41:27

we're molding. We

41:29

don't write things down. We talk,

41:32

we tell stories. I'm just going to go and ask the

41:34

bank manager on Monday. And he said,

41:36

good luck with that. But

41:39

I went down to the bank manager, name of

41:41

his name, Andrew Wilson. I went in and

41:43

I mean, he had my bank account and you could see it only

41:45

had about $500 in it. And

41:48

I said, Andrew, I need to borrow half a million dollars. And

41:50

Andrew said, ah, let's go for

41:52

a walk. And we walked the full

41:54

length of Dunedin and back and I told him what I

41:56

was going to do. And we got back and

41:58

he gave me half a million dollars. What were

42:01

you seeing in the late 80s,

42:03

early 90s that convinced

42:05

someone to take a punt

42:07

like that? Well, I don't know why he

42:10

took the punt. It's a hell

42:12

of a story. Yeah. Was it another

42:14

one of those German wine ones? No, no, I don't know. I don't know. But

42:16

I mean, I was pretty confident that if

42:19

we got a shot at this, there was

42:21

no reason to shut down the studio. If we got a

42:23

shot at it, what we got,

42:25

we got a TV show that had

42:29

quite a decent budget, but we had to do it with

42:31

it as well. So TV said, you can have this for

42:33

one year. And so that

42:35

was going. And we just had to back

42:37

ourselves to say, well, one year we'll turn

42:39

into two, we'll turn into five, we'll turn

42:41

into... And we went. And

42:44

it did. And it was

42:46

while we were there. Now I've got the studio.

42:49

Somebody came in one day and said, you should

42:51

see what they're doing down at the university with

42:53

computer graphics. I'm like, geez, what is those? So

42:56

anyway, I go down and take a look. And

42:58

it was incredible. It

43:00

just occurred to me. And again, no

43:02

thinking about it. I said

43:04

to Jeff Wyville, who was a professor who taught everybody,

43:06

I said, you know, Jeff, if we put

43:08

what your students are doing in graphics

43:11

with what we're doing in TV, I was

43:13

just so one day we might get a job in Auckland. So

43:16

on a handshake, four of them,

43:18

three of them to start with came over. I

43:20

put them in an office and we just started doing shit. And

43:24

you know, that was a good idea or a great

43:26

idea. Like we're thinking it could work. You didn't know

43:28

that this was going to be. It had to be

43:30

a good idea. You know, I mean, it looked like

43:32

it was going to be fun. It did look like

43:34

the future. You know, you knew this was

43:36

going to happen and it's kind of like, well, why

43:38

not? The other thing that I did know was

43:41

that if I was I now had a

43:43

business in Dunedin. So if

43:45

you are going to succeed, you had

43:47

to do something at a

43:50

world class excellent level. And what I was

43:52

looking at was, I mean, four of the

43:54

guys down there, they just won the World

43:56

Computer Programming Jams. They'd beat Harvard, Caltech, all

43:58

those plays. The Will class. Two.

44:01

Of them came across. So now. The.

44:03

Idea was if you're going to get people coming

44:05

here you have to be will pass. This is

44:07

our chance. They will class. And.

44:10

And. What were the graphics at? that? Early

44:13

stage that was so groundbreaking. What was a sort of

44:15

stuff that you were working on before you got into

44:17

sport? Wealth the Young if

44:19

it was interesting and I could

44:21

see with used as a video

44:23

ahead of. What? They did

44:26

between Ninety Ninety Two. this a decade of

44:28

making Tv commercials and when you look at

44:30

them if you around in those days you'll

44:32

see they will all. Over

44:35

the top commercials made in the country at

44:37

the time are coming out of the students

44:39

and the name. M. One

44:41

of the things about it was that

44:43

there was dumb computer software all over

44:45

the world. Was really expensive. What we

44:47

were using was the one that the

44:50

students had built with the final. In.

44:53

The. And I target university. It was

44:55

called the Touchy. It was the first

44:57

right tracing and software in the world

44:59

because that's what academic studies I just

45:01

a this crazy shit for doing crazy

45:04

shit but we bought that over and

45:06

suddenly we were able to do things.

45:08

Like commercials. That. No one

45:10

asked to do at the time. So. You know

45:12

one of our ads speaks king penguins? Met.

45:15

Went to be that one is a

45:17

big finals in the big themselves and

45:19

allies It actually got screened. They have

45:21

this and big theater exhibition that runs

45:23

five nights and they choose the top

45:26

and a my sense. Of

45:28

the whole festival. Go into

45:30

here. And. A slice

45:32

of people turnouts Watson or mean the week

45:34

we've we got tickets it's we went were

45:36

sitting in the back rights and on what's

45:38

in the stuff come out Toy Story the

45:40

early stages of Toy Story with it. Since

45:44

what are we doing and less and

45:47

then up came asking penguin through the

45:49

bluebirds up a little bit live attempts

45:51

improve Hfcs up a tab or and

45:53

and i honestly I'm sitting they sing

45:56

it was gonna it's at all you

45:58

could he was the last. start at

46:00

the front and it just rolled up the

46:02

theater to us as it happened

46:05

and it was just overwhelming

46:07

and the thing the reason

46:10

it was there was we had our

46:12

guys had designed some of the first computer

46:14

animated water in the world that

46:17

could splash I mean didn't

46:19

happen but they did that and this

46:22

was a commercial that was originally designed

46:24

to be hand-drawn it was a kind

46:27

of one of those and no one would have thought

46:29

that you could actually turn it into a 3D but

46:32

a guy up here trusted us

46:35

put us in and out it

46:38

came. Now I don't want to I don't want

46:40

to rain on your parade but are you hands

46:42

on tools doing some of these things or are

46:44

you pulling the strings in the background? No I

46:46

don't even pull the strings. Come up with the

46:48

idea. Well it is true the first commercial we

46:50

ever made the

46:53

way that happened I was looking at all this really cool

46:55

stuff and a guy had made

46:58

made the dick a

47:00

dick chair ad for AMP beautiful you

47:02

know it's just groundbreaking and I looked

47:04

at what our people were doing and

47:06

I thought David Green was

47:09

his name and I thought he would

47:11

understand what we're doing maybe so I sent this I just

47:13

found his address and sent it to him and he

47:16

came down and he had a look and he said really

47:19

interesting I'll be back one day and

47:21

a year later he rang up and he

47:23

had this ad for United Airlines out

47:26

of America and

47:28

he said I think your team are the only

47:30

ones who could do this so

47:32

he came down we had to buy a new

47:34

computer cost us fifteen thousand dollars and was one

47:36

gig and and

47:38

and it took and it

47:41

took uh 14 minutes

47:43

to render a single frame so

47:46

we're talking about a 60 second commercial with

47:48

25 frames a second so

47:51

it took a long time to render after they'd

47:53

done everything and we used to we

47:55

used to take turns one of my

47:57

jobs the only job because I couldn't do anything else but

48:00

was to sleep under the desk at night, just

48:02

in case the computer stopped. So

48:04

I could ring someone up and say, it's stopped because you couldn't

48:06

afford it to stop because it would

48:08

be another week gone past. So

48:10

that was my job. One

48:13

of your first contracts you got in sport

48:15

was with Steve Crawley, who is now the

48:17

head of Fox Sport Australia. And I spoke

48:19

to him on the phone yesterday and asked

48:21

him for a good story. And he told

48:23

us to ask you about the first test

48:25

you did for him in Hobart. Do

48:28

we remember? Do we remember? Great reaction.

48:31

Great reaction. Oh, no. I

48:34

mean, the... I'm going to get them for

48:36

that. It's like you sort of only have

48:38

vague memories because you've got to try to

48:40

rule it out. But Hobart,

48:43

well, first of all, you know, you have

48:45

all this high-tech equipment. I mean,

48:47

you're there to track a cricket ball from

48:49

cameras out the side, a couple hundred frames a

48:51

second, this little red dot going down the thing.

48:53

You have to get the gear there. So the

48:55

first thing that happened was actually getting gear to

48:57

Hobart was this absolute nightmare. I

49:00

think we had to get... One

49:02

of our guys had to take a truck and drive

49:04

it for 14 hours across

49:06

Australia to get it somewhere dead. Anyway, logs

49:08

to his shoulder. I don't know which part

49:11

of the disaster he's talking about. But

49:15

there's this whole thing, you know, everybody

49:18

watches the cricket all the time and

49:20

you expect the target to be there. The

49:23

key thing is that you've got this high-tech stuff

49:25

sitting there and you don't know

49:27

if it's working until the

49:29

first ball is bowled. And

49:32

that maybe, I don't know if it was Hobart that it happened,

49:35

but it possibly did. The first ball that

49:38

was bowled was probably an LBW appeal, you

49:40

know, and it's like, holy shit. So

49:43

he said that your team were working your asses off.

49:46

There was, you know, tension and stress and all the

49:48

work. And 20 minutes before it started, you didn't have

49:50

it right. You weren't sure it was going to work.

49:53

And it did. And it worked fine. But

49:56

he said you were running around like, was it bezeling at a

49:58

faulty tower? It was just like... What

50:00

we did was in those days, we took our

50:02

programmers with us and they stood at

50:04

the back and in Dunedin, the programmers were working as

50:07

well. And so when he

50:09

saw us running around like blue-ass low flies, actually

50:11

what was happening was the guys, it wasn't working.

50:13

These guys were writing code, sending it back to

50:15

the other guys who were writing code, sending it

50:17

back, putting it and going, now does this work?

50:20

Will that work? Will this work?

50:22

Because you could tell when they chuck balls down the side, you

50:24

could see whether it was doing it. But

50:26

the real big question was when that first

50:28

ball gets bowled, is it going

50:30

to work? And you know, the

50:32

relief is huge. But we did, the

50:35

last thing you ever want is an LBW on the

50:37

first ball. And we have had one

50:39

of those. And thankfully it worked.

50:42

I'm going to attempt to cover sort of

50:44

30 years in one hit and I'm going

50:47

to lead you up to COVID. But...

50:50

Actually, I will remind Steve Crawley that that

50:52

20 minutes before a game wasn't just Hobart.

50:55

It happened for all the time. I

50:58

wanted to jump in quickly and wonder that, like fast forward

51:01

down the line, is it still sometimes fly by the

51:03

seat of your pants with the stuff that you do?

51:07

Cricket, golf, all that sort of stuff

51:09

is really slick now,

51:11

you know, people. Like when we used to

51:14

do the golf, we would be

51:16

at a golf tournament, we would arrive at half

51:18

past four in the morning at the golf tournament

51:20

and probably be back at the hotel at half

51:22

past nine. We'd be the last to leave as

51:24

well because of everything that had to

51:26

be done now. Well, actually now

51:28

we do it remotely from the meeting, we don't

51:31

even turn up. But if we do, you know,

51:33

everything gets turned

51:35

on. Or if they can't turn it

51:37

on, they're turning it on from the back here,

51:39

they walk in, shut the door, sit down and

51:41

it goes. I think that's where Steve was going,

51:44

right? As the reframing of your business. Well, I've

51:46

heard you say that. And that's what happens now.

51:48

You know, Steve, Crawley and Fox have been

51:51

amazing to work with. Just

51:54

amazing. No, I want to know

51:56

how the business grew year on year because I heard

51:58

you say that I think 30 years. years you didn't

52:00

make a profit and then you were sort of 2019 was

52:03

about to be your biggest year and it all fell

52:05

apart. But before we get to that, like how did

52:07

it grow? Like did you got the

52:09

cricket and you got the America's Cup and like

52:12

why weren't you turning over a profit when it

52:14

seemed like everything was sort of blowing up? So

52:17

I guess there's two things. So that we

52:19

were doing a lot of stuff. I mean, some of those

52:21

good commercials had good budgets as

52:24

well. I can remember the one we did for the

52:28

seagulls, holding on to the theory

52:31

going across Cook Street.

52:34

We said no to that. I

52:36

said no to it. The team said no to it

52:39

about five times because you know, there was just no

52:41

space to do it. It looked really cool, but they

52:43

were too busy. And then in

52:45

the end, the ad agency came back

52:47

with a budget and it was like,

52:49

okay, so I went back into the room and said

52:52

to the guys, if I

52:54

came in here and put 5000 and

52:57

dropped a brown paper bag with $5,000 on

52:59

it on each of your desks, could

53:02

we do it? And they went, yep.

53:06

So I think to

53:08

put it in perspective, it

53:10

wasn't when I talk about

53:12

not making a profit, it's about not making a

53:16

profit that you could take. So we've even

53:18

today, I've never taken any money out. So

53:20

we're taking no dividends, none of

53:22

that. It always was getting reinvested. The

53:24

key always was nobody to lose their

53:26

jobs. They always had to make enough

53:28

money so that they all had jobs

53:30

next year. You had to

53:32

pay all those other things. And

53:35

then we were always investing in

53:37

stuff so that we didn't have to borrow money from anybody

53:40

else. So you know, these days, you

53:42

have all the startups, and the first thing they do

53:44

is go out and do a round of fundraising or

53:46

whatever. I don't know what it's called. And I don't

53:49

think we even had it in those days, it was

53:51

either the bank or yourself. And so

53:53

we just have always done it ourselves.

53:56

And we got to a stage in 2019, where

54:00

after we'd done all of that, there was

54:02

this stuff left over. And

54:05

that's what I call the profit. It's only a profit

54:08

if you can. Because it's probably a misconception like TV,

54:10

it's a glamorous area. So the thought from the outside

54:12

looking in is you'd be rolling in it. But it's

54:15

interesting to hear that you wanted

54:17

to reinvest and you wanted to keep building the program

54:19

to be able to do more cool stuff as you

54:21

progressed. Yeah, we're still not rolling in it. You

54:23

know, I mean, that was never the

54:25

driver for me anyway. You

54:28

know, I talk from a Maori perspective,

54:31

and this is only me looking back.

54:33

I didn't start like that, but it

54:35

was really interesting. I was given

54:38

Maori Business Leader of the Year

54:40

and I thought, how did that

54:42

happen? I was actually going to turn it down.

54:45

And somebody said, you can't, I mean, look at what

54:47

you do and how you do it. And I thought,

54:49

really? And then I look back

54:51

at how we worked and where the values lay

54:53

on the company and the final and the family

54:56

and all of that. And, you know, that was

54:58

the stress of that day of

55:00

closing. That was so hard because all I

55:02

could see was all of the families, the

55:04

children, everybody. So somebody

55:06

highlighted that to me. And as I looked at

55:09

it, I thought, actually, it is

55:11

a Maori business. And it is. And

55:13

one of the things about that is it's intergenerational.

55:16

We're not thinking about what

55:18

is the taken 15 months time? What's

55:20

this? What's that? What's the exit strategy? We

55:22

don't have an exit strategy. We

55:24

don't have a business plan either. No, we don't have one of those either.

55:28

My son, my son's working on those. He's

55:30

working on that. Yeah. So we

55:32

thought, well, actually, you know what? I

55:35

think that again, there's a concept of

55:37

a business plan. I

55:39

think we, well, we I

55:41

always had business plans. They just weren't written

55:43

down. You know, there was a vision.

55:46

There was a plan. You knew if we

55:48

could do this and we could do that. It was going

55:50

to a lot of the time it went. If we

55:52

could do this, we could do that. God, it's going to be a lot

55:54

of fun. Yeah. Not we'll make a whole lot of money. But

55:57

the other side of that plan, as we went through

55:59

was. know what, if

56:01

we do these things right,

56:04

doesn't matter what it costs us now, if we

56:06

do these things right, one day

56:08

someone will post them and

56:10

that's what's happening. There's an analogy you use, I think,

56:12

which is laying in the hull of the Waka. Can

56:15

you explain or expand on that for our audience?

56:18

Yeah, so that's a really

56:20

good idea of the business

56:23

plan. So again, this was the

56:25

Waka Horuwa, this came from the voyaging and

56:28

Hautarouaku was telling me about it,

56:30

like they train young Maori

56:33

navigators and he was telling about it, but

56:36

that whole navigation was understanding and

56:38

learning about how you navigate using

56:41

the sun, stars, sun

56:43

and ocean currents. They all go

56:45

together. And he

56:47

told me about training this young Maori guy and

56:49

they went out for their three day training and

56:52

the clouds were over, there wasn't

56:54

anything, and he could see, he was a little

56:56

bit worried, a little bit confused and he said,

56:59

I said to him, look, it's the

57:01

sun and ocean

57:03

currents, go lie on the

57:05

Waka and listen to it, feel

57:07

it. And he went down and

57:10

sometime later he came back up and I

57:12

know where we are. Now it's a

57:15

great story, but for me, it's

57:17

a message to all business owners.

57:20

So when I look at animation

57:22

research, so take the business plan

57:24

idea, look at animation research, it's

57:27

my Waka and I have

57:29

always never realized it. So

57:32

I heard that story. I have always laid in

57:34

its hull and felt where

57:36

she was taking us, not

57:38

where I was going. And

57:41

you feel that and then you knew that

57:43

I'd go up on stairs and saying, she

57:45

says it's this way. That's why

57:47

she's going that way. And you knew you had the

57:49

A crew to help her go that way. And

57:52

for me, it's one of the reasons why just about everything we've

57:54

done as a world first, because you lay

57:56

on the hull of the Waka. And so what

57:58

I say to see. and business

58:00

people everywhere. Ask

58:03

yourself tonight, when did you

58:05

go last, go lay in the hull of

58:07

your water? We'll

58:10

be right back after this short break. Being

58:16

world first is where I want to go

58:18

next. And the framing of it is COVID,

58:20

right? So 2019 comes, you are... Well,

58:24

well, 1989, 1992. 1992,

58:29

the graphics for the America's Cup were

58:31

a world first. Nobody had

58:33

ever done real time

58:36

sports graphics from a real

58:38

event. Nobody. And

58:40

why did we do it? Because

58:42

we had discovered that New

58:46

Zealand was in this and we're going to have to

58:48

watch this boring stuff on TV. That was America's Cup

58:50

where boats disappeared for hours and didn't come back. And

58:52

it was sort of like, what do we do to

58:54

make this interesting? And the

58:57

team got together. Well, if we get that off the back,

59:00

we do this, do this. And that was the beginning in

59:02

1992. And that was the first time

59:04

it had ever been done in

59:06

the world. And so when we did golf, it

59:08

was the first time it had ever been done.

59:10

When we did cricket, it was

59:12

the first time. So if you always look around and

59:14

goes, nobody's doing that. Why aren't they doing that? Do

59:17

you celebrate those firsts? Or

59:20

do you go, yeah, we've done that. Now what can we do?

59:23

Exactly that. So

59:27

it wasn't only sports at the same time, we're

59:29

building air traffic control simulators. So we built an

59:31

air traffic control simulator. And just when I was

59:33

down there last week, I was watching that. So

59:35

this is 2004. I think it was 2004. We

59:37

built an air

59:43

traffic control simulator and we'd

59:45

never built one before. See, I say we, I didn't have anything to

59:48

do with it. I just said, yes, we can. We

59:51

built this air traffic control simulator. And

59:53

all these years on, it's still being used around

59:55

the world. We've never had to do

59:57

anything with it. And it wasn't an any better. business

1:00:00

plan, but we've just finished

1:00:02

building airports for the

1:00:06

airport and Katmandu and now started a

1:00:08

contract for five airports in Croatia that

1:00:10

are going to be operating in the air

1:00:12

traffic control simulator we built. I

1:00:15

mean, where did that come from? Yeah,

1:00:17

where did that come from? But I've heard

1:00:19

you talk about, you don't like the word

1:00:21

challenges and often trying to bring COVID and

1:00:24

I hate talking about COVID, but it's a

1:00:26

really important part of this journey for you

1:00:28

guys. COVID is really important. Because it reframed

1:00:30

what you did, right? It made you work

1:00:32

remotely. It made you get more, I've

1:00:35

forgotten the word, you had to get

1:00:37

more creative with what you're doing because you were on the verge

1:00:39

of covering all the sport all over the world and everything got

1:00:41

shut down. Yeah. Can you take

1:00:44

us to that period? Yeah. So again, it

1:00:46

wasn't that, it wasn't any light bulb

1:00:49

moment. That

1:00:51

there, the light bulb with

1:00:54

the team of people I've been working with is

1:00:57

always going on. So this

1:00:59

was just another wake up in

1:01:01

the morning, holy shit, they just closed everything.

1:01:04

Now what do we do? And I

1:01:06

do talk about the fact that I

1:01:09

was over in America to go off on it

1:01:11

when it happened. We had 14 people overseas,

1:01:13

I think, 12, 14. And

1:01:15

so we knew we had to get them

1:01:18

all home because the borders were closing in

1:01:20

America two weeks later. So

1:01:23

before I got on the plane, I rang up Cheryl

1:01:25

as our CEO and just said, Cheryl, we're just getting

1:01:27

on the plane on our way home. What

1:01:29

I'd like you to do is when we

1:01:31

land, you and me, we need to just gather everybody together

1:01:33

so we can tell them no one's going to lose their

1:01:35

jobs. This is when we've just

1:01:37

gone to zero income. And

1:01:40

so could you just figure out how we're going to do that?

1:01:42

Bye. And jumped on

1:01:44

the plane. I flew home and

1:01:46

I apologize to anybody who's

1:01:49

heard my speech. So they're going, oh, I've heard this before.

1:01:51

But I flew home and Cheryl had solved it. And she

1:01:53

said, well, first of all, you know that profit, that's gone.

1:01:56

So we're going to use that to do it. And then

1:01:58

she weathered that get us to she's. July

1:02:01

and I said okay and then she said but we

1:02:03

thought we better see what else we could do

1:02:05

just in case we needed to do something else.

1:02:07

So what she'd done was got the team together

1:02:10

and said she'd made this decision that no

1:02:12

one who was earning $65,000 or less would

1:02:14

have to have a cut because she said

1:02:16

if we can get 20% off the salaries

1:02:19

we will be able to get guarantee around their jobs

1:02:21

till December. It's pretty big. That's

1:02:23

March. So she shared that

1:02:25

with everybody so everybody below

1:02:28

$65,000 didn't even have to say at

1:02:30

the table. Everybody above thought

1:02:32

about it and then quietly emailed

1:02:34

back to her what they thought

1:02:38

they could do and when she got them all together

1:02:41

it was down by 20% and she

1:02:43

always jokes she started it by cutting hers by

1:02:46

50 and she always jokes and she

1:02:48

told me that she'd cut mine by 70 while I

1:02:50

was on the plane. So that kind of

1:02:54

what happened and then the idea was she'd already

1:02:56

planned it before just send her send everybody home.

1:02:59

She was sending everybody home but

1:03:01

even on that flight back she was thinking ahead all

1:03:03

the houses were equipped with all the gear from work

1:03:05

so that if we needed to they could work from

1:03:07

home but we didn't have anything to do. So

1:03:09

now we're sending them home and they're

1:03:12

only the job description was look after yourself and anybody

1:03:14

in the house and we can pay you to

1:03:17

do that till December. You don't have to do anything else

1:03:20

but it would help if we thought about

1:03:22

how we're going to come out and that's

1:03:24

where we used opportunities. Don't think of the

1:03:26

challenge we're challenged with COVID. What

1:03:28

are the opportunities COVID will present and

1:03:31

a couple of days later John Rendell who's

1:03:33

our head of innovation I've got this opportunity

1:03:36

and the opportunity sounded like a challenge. He

1:03:38

said what if the board

1:03:40

is the sports start

1:03:42

again but the borders are still closed

1:03:45

and we can't get there. We're

1:03:48

still in the same and the risk

1:03:50

there is they'll have to hire companies

1:03:52

and we might not get them out.

1:03:54

So yeah so

1:03:57

not saying what's the challenge there. John

1:04:00

he said well, it's a really cool one. We'll just do

1:04:02

it all from Deneed and that's

1:04:04

really where it started I said can we do that? He goes

1:04:06

yeah, I got some ideas I'll

1:04:08

just work on them and it was I

1:04:11

think eight weeks later The first

1:04:13

and we were in lockdown to the

1:04:15

first got first sports event in the world went back

1:04:17

to here golf tournament out of

1:04:19

Texas and We did

1:04:21

it remotely from the need and for the first time

1:04:24

ever in the world And

1:04:26

we can still Do that

1:04:28

the really interesting thing is we've got all this

1:04:30

stuff we can do these events The Ryder Cup

1:04:32

was in Paris this year and

1:04:34

somehow the team convinced us all

1:04:36

that you can't do the Ryder Cup in Paris remotely

1:04:39

We have to go Yeah,

1:04:46

is that revolutionize you personally because prior to

1:04:48

that were you here I mean, I know

1:04:51

it impacted everyone because everyone was grounded but

1:04:53

but post that Prior

1:04:56

to that had you been here there and

1:04:58

everywhere on planes? Yeah. Yeah Yeah, I you

1:05:00

know, you might have you might have heard

1:05:02

about the in New Zealand have this elite

1:05:04

priority one secret group You

1:05:06

have to travel a lot of miles, but I

1:05:08

was in there. I was one of the first dinner and

1:05:11

the I

1:05:14

mean I tell people there was a period over four years When

1:05:18

I was only in Dunedin for

1:05:21

a full week four times That

1:05:23

included traveling around New Zealand But I have

1:05:26

a map of two months of

1:05:28

my flights that the guys had animated over

1:05:30

two months that was called all the way to the moon and

1:05:34

So I was always flying and that's

1:05:36

another thing, you know That's why you know, I

1:05:38

just so grateful my wife brought up two kids

1:05:41

while I was having fun. She had a real job

1:05:43

She was a lawyer because she had the real job.

1:05:45

I swan around the world doing this but

1:05:47

now This whole remote stuff.

1:05:50

It's just changed everything

1:05:53

and it's come at a really cool time

1:05:55

too because now if I have to make

1:05:57

a choice between traveling overseas or spend the

1:05:59

weekend with my morsel. It's no-brainer.

1:06:02

I'm staying with my morsel. This is

1:06:04

a really good point to have

1:06:07

a little bit of a family detour and you

1:06:09

mentioned Liz and if you're open to it I

1:06:11

was hoping you could tell us about the difficult

1:06:13

time in her 30s I

1:06:15

believe she had an aneurysm right and she

1:06:17

was like you see the high-ranking high-powered lawyer.

1:06:19

She was a partner with a partner with

1:06:21

Ian Galloway. And from what I understand it

1:06:24

took sort of between six to 12 months

1:06:26

for her to come right. No it was

1:06:28

a yeah it was it

1:06:30

was an amazing experience and she'll kill me for

1:06:32

talking about it but you know I think it's

1:06:34

a it's a story worth telling because it

1:06:36

came out of nowhere as well and

1:06:40

what started to happen was she started having these

1:06:42

headaches and she's

1:06:45

from in the cargo so she never complains about anything

1:06:47

you know his no complaint so anyway it got to

1:06:49

the stage where she had to go and see a

1:06:51

specialist and they all told her it was a migraine

1:06:54

and it was really interesting she just

1:06:56

said it's not a migraine you got to get

1:06:58

to the stage where you know you know some

1:07:00

people do understand their bodies it's

1:07:03

not it's not but it went on

1:07:05

and went on and eventually

1:07:07

her father rang me and said look we

1:07:10

need to get a brain scanner I'm gonna ring

1:07:12

the hospital tomorrow and we'll just pay for one

1:07:14

because you know this is just bugging Liz let's

1:07:16

just get it out of the way so she

1:07:18

can get back I mean I think even I

1:07:20

was starting to doubt so anyway

1:07:22

that was gonna happen on the Monday he's gonna make

1:07:24

phone call it was a Sunday night I

1:07:27

woke up she was that bolt upright in bed

1:07:29

that he gibberish

1:07:31

the whole lot I won't get into too

1:07:33

much detail but long story short she had

1:07:36

had this massive aneurysm and we

1:07:38

got her to hospital and

1:07:41

she was paralyzed she lost

1:07:43

all her language she I

1:07:46

remember weeks sitting

1:07:48

beside the bed you had to

1:07:50

do things like change nappy you

1:07:53

know she it

1:07:55

it was really severe so we've been incredibly

1:07:57

lucky and that was one of those cool

1:07:59

things things about the way we work then.

1:08:01

I remember John Knowles was a boss at

1:08:03

TVNZ at the time and I remember going

1:08:05

in and telling him that I couldn't work

1:08:07

and this had happened to Liz and

1:08:10

he said, you go, take as long

1:08:12

as it takes, you're on full pay. It

1:08:14

was just great.

1:08:17

But it was a long, long journey back. And

1:08:20

I've just admired and I

1:08:22

remember one day going

1:08:24

down to the hospital because they used to give her

1:08:26

these tests where she'd have to try and have a

1:08:28

finger hit her nose and she

1:08:30

was determined because she knew that if she could get

1:08:32

that, do that, she could get out. And

1:08:35

I remember walking in one day and walking

1:08:37

into the room and the curtains were pulled

1:08:39

like this and all I could see was

1:08:42

this finger going across the curtain. No,

1:08:44

she was amazing. And if we can stay

1:08:46

on Liz as well, when

1:08:49

your son Sam was born, she was a

1:08:51

rock as well in terms of his

1:08:53

journey. Yeah, he had an amazing journey.

1:08:56

And again, well, it was

1:08:58

an interesting thing because he was born deaf and

1:09:01

nobody diagnosed it. And

1:09:04

I remember it was kind of a different

1:09:06

story. I mean, I think I really passed

1:09:08

Liz off because I remember walking and then

1:09:10

he was lying on the bed one day

1:09:12

and the door slammed behind him and I

1:09:14

was looking at him and he didn't flinch.

1:09:16

I thought that's odd. And then Liz

1:09:19

talked about, I used to go around going boo boo

1:09:21

doing all this because I thought there's something not right

1:09:23

here. Anyway, we finally got somebody to

1:09:25

look and they said I was probably glue here. So

1:09:28

we went down to have the glue here,

1:09:30

but I'd been so naggy naggy that the

1:09:32

guy doing the glue says, come on, we'll

1:09:35

go upstairs and we'll do a test just to put

1:09:37

it at ease. So we went upstairs, I'm holding Sam

1:09:39

in my arms and I've got

1:09:41

all these wires on his brain and they started

1:09:43

feeding the sound in and I'm watching

1:09:45

this dial thing. And

1:09:48

the guy stops from and he comes out, I must have put it

1:09:50

in wrong. I tried again, went back

1:09:53

and the things playing, I

1:09:55

can hear them through the headphones

1:09:57

and I'm watching the brain thing and it's

1:09:59

flat. And the

1:10:01

guy came and said, we've got to do more tests.

1:10:04

He was there. And

1:10:07

that was the really cool thing. We had listed the

1:10:09

whole thing. Liz said, all right, we've

1:10:11

got a day. You know, this is terrible.

1:10:14

So we cry for a day, and then

1:10:16

we make sure he talks. That

1:10:19

was it. He's now a surgeon. Yeah.

1:10:22

I spoke to Ben about Sam

1:10:25

and your family. And I sort

1:10:27

of asked how it reframed,

1:10:29

perhaps, how you looked at life.

1:10:32

And his words were, Sam rewrote

1:10:34

the rules, and it made

1:10:36

Ian perhaps aware that anything is possible.

1:10:39

Is that fair? Well,

1:10:41

I mean, I do look at

1:10:44

what he did. And again, as

1:10:47

I sometimes hear people

1:10:50

talk about how hard things are,

1:10:52

it just seemed

1:10:54

like Sam never treated

1:10:56

anything as hard. Like

1:10:58

he couldn't hear. So long story short,

1:11:00

he just did all of these amazing

1:11:03

things. Nothing stopped him. He

1:11:06

went off. As a deaf person,

1:11:09

he went off and taught snowboarding in

1:11:11

Canada. Really? Yeah.

1:11:13

He did a degree.

1:11:16

He did a physics degree. Did an honest

1:11:18

physics degree. Got to the end of that

1:11:20

and then decided that. And I remember when

1:11:22

he got to the end

1:11:24

of that, decided that he wasn't going

1:11:26

to be all that good at it. He said,

1:11:29

other people are cleverer than I am. I'm going

1:11:31

to do medicine. And so again, we were told

1:11:33

he probably couldn't do that, because by now he

1:11:35

had a cochlear implant. But I remember saying to

1:11:38

him when they first started suggesting, no, it's probably

1:11:40

not a good idea. I remember saying to Ben,

1:11:42

Sam, look, Sam, you've already got a degree. You've

1:11:44

got a disability. And you're

1:11:47

Maori. No one's stopping us going in those doors. So

1:11:49

he went. And here we

1:11:51

are 10 years later this year. He

1:11:54

sits as big final, final exams

1:11:57

to become a vascular surgeon. And.

1:12:01

He's never ever doubted.

1:12:04

And once we got to know who he was,

1:12:07

we never doubted it either. That's

1:12:10

such a cool story. And on the other

1:12:12

side of it, you've got Ben who works

1:12:14

for your company. That must be such a

1:12:16

cool experience. You talked about sort of intergenerational,

1:12:18

having your son, you know, just

1:12:20

with you as much as possible, as much

1:12:22

as anything. Yeah, so Ben always tells me,

1:12:25

of course, he says I'm always talking about

1:12:27

Sam. He describes Sam

1:12:29

as the black sheep of the family. He's

1:12:31

a surgeon. He hasn't got a real job. But

1:12:34

Ben was really interesting as well.

1:12:36

So Ben always, they were different.

1:12:39

I remember when they were working,

1:12:42

Ben was overseas and Ben

1:12:44

was overseas working for us at one time. And

1:12:47

Sam was in Kenya working

1:12:49

in a jungle, in

1:12:51

a hospital in the jungle.

1:12:53

And he sent me this picture of him

1:12:56

in the jungle with all these little kids

1:12:58

on his shoulders around his legs. He

1:13:00

was staying in an orphanage to work

1:13:02

at the hospital in the middle of a jungle. And

1:13:06

the same day, Sam, Ben sent me

1:13:09

a photo that said, how do you like

1:13:11

my new pad? He was in the five

1:13:13

star hotel in Dubai, in

1:13:15

Abu Dhabi on the racetrack. And

1:13:18

it was them to a T. But

1:13:21

Ben did some amazing things as well. So

1:13:23

he went to school and then he decided

1:13:26

that he was going to go

1:13:29

to America and get

1:13:32

a degree in America. He's going to get a scholarship for

1:13:34

tennis. And he was playing tennis

1:13:36

in Dunedin and they weren't good enough. So anyway, he

1:13:39

decided the competition there wasn't good enough. So without us

1:13:41

knowing, he did this whole thing at the start of

1:13:43

a season. And then he came home one

1:13:45

day and said, I've just been talking to our headmasters. He's

1:13:48

organised for me to go to a school in Lower Hut

1:13:50

so I can play tennis. And I'll leave on Monday. Can

1:13:52

you take me there? What?

1:13:55

So anyway, we dumped them at this college and what

1:13:57

school is about? I'm going to play here. I need

1:13:59

better tennis. because I want a scholarship because I'm going

1:14:01

to college in the States." Well, we

1:14:03

didn't think that was going to happen. At the

1:14:06

end of that year, his mother had to pack

1:14:08

everything up as we flew him

1:14:10

to the States to that college where he

1:14:12

did his business degree. And

1:14:15

then came out of that and he's run our business

1:14:17

all over the world. But I like to share that.

1:14:20

Remember I mentioned the dreams. I

1:14:22

had to speak at his college breakup

1:14:24

when he was, not college, in pro school.

1:14:27

And he was eight. And

1:14:29

he came in and said, Dad,

1:14:32

I need to see your speech. That's great.

1:14:34

All right, here it is. So anyway, he read

1:14:36

the speech and he came back and he said,

1:14:40

It's not bad, Dad. And I like the stuff

1:14:42

about dreams, you know, that stuff about Bill Haley

1:14:44

and the dreams and things. And he said, But

1:14:46

you know, you've missed out the most important thing.

1:14:49

And I think here I'm about to get advice from an eight year old.

1:14:51

I said, Yeah, Ben, so what

1:14:53

have I missed out? He said, Well, you

1:14:55

can have all the dreams you want, but they'll come to

1:14:58

nothing if you don't get out of bed. And

1:15:01

I've never forgotten that. And

1:15:04

when I look at what, if I look,

1:15:07

if anybody asks, What have you done at

1:15:09

your company? We got out of bed. How

1:15:15

has grandchildren changed your perspective on

1:15:17

life? Oh, it's the only reason we're

1:15:19

here. I mean, I remember

1:15:21

people always used to say, Well, you think

1:15:23

this is called Well, you've got grandkids. Well,

1:15:25

I'm one of those terrible, terrible people that

1:15:27

tells everybody that I just

1:15:30

absolutely love it. And, you

1:15:32

know, it's had a, it's actually had

1:15:34

an impact on my life and the

1:15:36

way I live. And

1:15:39

it's the to

1:15:41

the, to the state that

1:15:43

now I've got

1:15:46

a new focus on how I

1:15:48

live, because I have a reason, you know,

1:15:51

often everybody says, you know, if you're going to change your

1:15:53

life, you're going to do this, there needs to be a

1:15:55

reward or there needs to be a result that you can

1:15:58

point to. And what's your why? Yeah, your why. This

1:16:00

is even bigger than the why really. The

1:16:04

whys are important, but it seems bigger.

1:16:07

But it just occurred to me that

1:16:10

the most important thing for me now is

1:16:12

to live as long as I can

1:16:17

so I can spend as much time

1:16:19

as I can with my morgue. And

1:16:22

that is meant producing

1:16:24

or taking alcohol away. What I

1:16:26

eat. Hey, welcome to the club.

1:16:28

Yeah, what I train, I walk, I'm

1:16:30

just doing all these things. And

1:16:33

I walk past a cream bun

1:16:36

and I look at it and go, nah,

1:16:39

another day with some more coffee. And

1:16:42

it's made it really easy. But

1:16:44

I get such joy from

1:16:47

watching. And it's a reminder of how

1:16:49

powerful the brain is. There's

1:16:51

a little story I know we're going to go on

1:16:53

for hours, but there's another one I want to share

1:16:56

that I'd heard the story about a little girl called

1:16:58

Evie. And it

1:17:00

was given in a speech by somebody

1:17:03

I was watching on YouTube. But Evie

1:17:05

was in school and her teacher saw,

1:17:07

she's busy drawing away. This is the important of

1:17:09

arts. Busy drawing away at something and

1:17:11

she went over to Evie and said, Evie, what are you drawing?

1:17:14

She said, I'm drawing a picture of

1:17:16

God, Miss. And she said,

1:17:18

they just said, oh, that's going

1:17:20

to be difficult. No one knows what God looks like.

1:17:23

And Evie said, they will when I

1:17:25

finish my picture. And

1:17:28

the question is, where

1:17:31

does that confidence get knocked out of us

1:17:33

as we go? That's where I'd go crazy

1:17:35

about our education system. We

1:17:37

start with a spark. I see it

1:17:39

in my morgue. I see it in

1:17:41

our young people. It is

1:17:44

our job with our education system

1:17:46

to keep that spark alive, not

1:17:49

douse it with a whole lot

1:17:51

of stuff that doesn't

1:17:54

interest. This brings us

1:17:56

nicely to outspoken Ian. It's

1:18:01

kind of like a newer chapter

1:18:03

in your life, but since

1:18:05

COVID you've continued to challenge the government.

1:18:07

You were incredibly outspoken about our COVID

1:18:09

response. You I think hung up on

1:18:11

a conference call with the health minister.

1:18:14

You've had a crack at what you called

1:18:16

the Labour Party. You used to know a

1:18:18

very high profile response to the Greens wealth

1:18:21

tax proposal. There's a lot

1:18:23

of of Ian out there in your opinions. I

1:18:25

was wondering, is a great place, it's a great

1:18:27

platform to have this conversation now. So

1:18:29

in 2024, what is your

1:18:31

overall perception of the country, how it's

1:18:33

tracking and what we can do better?

1:18:36

Well, I know who we are, you know,

1:18:38

and I think it's really important that we

1:18:40

are, you know, that's why I'm really stoked

1:18:42

about the reception Marta Rung is getting in

1:18:45

our schools. But I think,

1:18:47

you know, we're a small country. There's a there's

1:18:49

a and we come

1:18:51

from our Pacifica people. Maori didn't

1:18:53

arrive here. Pacific

1:18:55

people arrived. So we come from

1:18:57

all over the Pacific Ocean. And there's

1:18:59

a Pacifica concept,

1:19:03

which is called Tala Noa. And

1:19:05

Tala Noa is when you gather, so

1:19:07

you gather, you talk and listen with

1:19:09

respect. You can have totally

1:19:11

different views, but you talk and listen with

1:19:13

respect. And as a starting point, wouldn't

1:19:16

it just be a change if

1:19:18

our parliament operator had

1:19:20

Tala Noa written on the door when

1:19:23

you came in? And

1:19:26

I guess maybe it's now having the mukor. I

1:19:28

don't see a vision for the country.

1:19:31

And there are some visions that I think we

1:19:33

can create. And the

1:19:36

way for me, the way I construct

1:19:38

my vision is if we're going to

1:19:40

do this, this and this, I've got

1:19:42

to be really comfortable that I will

1:19:44

put my arms around my mukor and

1:19:47

say, you're going to be OK. I

1:19:49

can't do that at the moment. In

1:19:51

fact, it's really difficult to do

1:19:53

that at the moment. But there are ways we

1:19:55

can do it. And I'm working with a group

1:19:57

we're trying to call ourselves the Coalition of the

1:19:59

Willing. and politics goes out

1:20:01

the door and we're just hoping

1:20:04

and a lot of the stuff we should

1:20:06

get on and do ourselves But you do need

1:20:08

governments to put regulations and things

1:20:10

in place But just going out there and

1:20:12

slicing this and cutting that and yelling at

1:20:14

each other and trying to score points It's

1:20:16

not what we need right now so

1:20:19

in we were talking on the phone

1:20:21

yesterday and prep for this and you

1:20:23

you you spoke about how Upset

1:20:26

it made you when politicians talked

1:20:28

about Kiwis losing their mojo or

1:20:30

losing their way because you're surrounded by so

1:20:33

many capable Young energetic

1:20:35

thinkers and workers and doers.

1:20:38

Yeah, can you talk to us about that? Yeah, and

1:20:40

you know, I think that is the risk, you know,

1:20:42

I don't know Why this

1:20:44

well, I think I do, you know They

1:20:46

they'd like to find these controversial points and

1:20:48

that they're gonna fix it or something like

1:20:50

that But the more you say that the

1:20:53

more it becomes real and we've

1:20:55

got to stop that because it's true You

1:20:58

know, I saw mojo everywhere I still

1:21:00

see mojo everywhere and as I said,

1:21:02

you know, I go to my case

1:21:04

is farm on the you know The

1:21:06

the fossil free farm mojo

1:21:08

to beat the band Rocket

1:21:10

lab mojo to be you know, it's

1:21:12

everywhere. Why are we

1:21:15

taking this other stance? When

1:21:17

it's not true or maybe the

1:21:19

reason we seem to have lost our mojo

1:21:21

is because of our politicians Maybe

1:21:24

if the politicians actually did a better

1:21:26

job We'd all feel

1:21:28

the mojo back. They're

1:21:31

the ones maybe destroying it So that's

1:21:33

why you know I just think I need

1:21:35

we need to be out telling these stories

1:21:37

of Wayne Mulligan and his bio forestry staff

1:21:39

of my case He I've just everybody there's

1:21:42

a Māori Iwi group down and I

1:21:44

think it's around the Lower North Islands And

1:21:47

they're doing this amazing stuff with passive

1:21:49

housing. Now, who knows

1:21:51

about that? You know architecture van

1:21:53

Brandenburg who just opened this stunning

1:21:56

fashion house in China

1:22:00

That is, six times the size

1:22:02

of Te Papa, made entirely of

1:22:04

recycled materials, designed using 3D printers,

1:22:06

all out of Dunedin. It's

1:22:08

been declared a business, a building of

1:22:11

national importance by the Chinese government, and

1:22:13

nobody even knows about them. And

1:22:15

it's stunning. So, it's time to get

1:22:17

our mojo back. It

1:22:21

never went away. It's time to stop

1:22:23

talking about losing it and

1:22:25

shining a light on it. Have you

1:22:27

ever considered getting into politics? No. Or

1:22:31

with you? Not even... no. No. And,

1:22:34

you know, I mean, it is...

1:22:39

I've worked alongside a lot of politicians, you

1:22:41

know, and I mean,

1:22:44

I think it would just...

1:22:46

It would drive me crazy. You

1:22:49

know, we're in a space

1:22:51

where you have to make decisions and you take risks

1:22:53

and you have to move fast. And

1:22:57

it's fair to say that, you know, you

1:22:59

can't really do that with the government. You know,

1:23:01

there are consequences that you've got to be careful

1:23:03

of. We need to be moving a lot faster.

1:23:06

And we do need to be taking some of

1:23:08

those risks and reducing the

1:23:10

risk, gathering the right people around

1:23:12

to reduce the risk. But

1:23:15

no, I definitely couldn't be a politician. We'll

1:23:19

be right back after this short break. Tell

1:23:26

us, taking a slight detour, tell us

1:23:28

a little bit about Tech4Good and what

1:23:30

that is. Well, you

1:23:33

know, there's quite often people look at Silicon

1:23:35

Valley and say, you know, that can

1:23:38

be defined as Tech4Greed, you know, what can

1:23:40

we do with technology to make more money

1:23:42

or this, that, and that. And so we

1:23:45

have looked at Tech4Good. So we have a

1:23:47

little kind of segment that we

1:23:49

just call Tech4Good. And that's where Marta Aranga

1:23:51

comes from. So, you know, with a Paki,

1:23:53

our businessman out of Christchurch called Dennis Chapman,

1:23:56

we've funded a million dollar platform that's gone into

1:23:58

schools because it has to. go into schools to be

1:24:00

free. It's got to be free anywhere in the

1:24:03

world. And it's part of

1:24:07

tech for good. And the other

1:24:09

one we've done was Numeracy in

1:24:11

Literacy in Prisons teaching. One

1:24:14

of the guys from Methodist Mission in

1:24:16

South Internedon, Jimmy McLaughlin,

1:24:18

amazing guy, used to be a

1:24:21

lawyer as well, really high quality

1:24:23

lawyer. He gave it all away

1:24:25

because he wanted to do something else. And

1:24:27

one of the things he was doing was

1:24:29

designing programs to teach Numeracy in Literacy in

1:24:31

Prisons. And he came to me and said, we

1:24:34

are trying to teach these people in exactly

1:24:36

the same way that failed them in the

1:24:39

first place. What could we do? So

1:24:41

anyway, we showed him some stuff, some AR stuff

1:24:43

and things. And it got going. It was like,

1:24:45

this is incredible. So one

1:24:48

of the reasons for putting it under our

1:24:50

tech for good was that, again, from a

1:24:52

Māori perspective, we're overrepresented in prisons. But

1:24:55

on a bigger perspective, when

1:24:58

I look at my mukor growing, they're

1:25:00

unlikely to ever end up in

1:25:02

prison because they're loved, they're

1:25:04

engaged, they do things.

1:25:07

A lot of these

1:25:09

people were somebody's mukor as

1:25:11

well. And they ended up down this path

1:25:14

that took them to a place that was

1:25:17

inevitable. So what do we do to give

1:25:19

them a chance? Because if you bring them out and they still can't read

1:25:21

or write, they'll be back. So anyway,

1:25:23

the first thing we did, they designed a whole

1:25:26

thing that's in a whole virtual garage. And

1:25:29

basically, you come to the class, you put

1:25:31

on the headsets, and you're standing in

1:25:33

a street. And part of the numeracy and literacy and

1:25:35

all sorts of things is how you get the doors

1:25:37

open, you go inside, there's cars in there, then you

1:25:39

have to read stuff to see how you hop them

1:25:41

up, how you do this. And what was really interesting,

1:25:43

the first day we took it down, it was a

1:25:46

bit scary, really. But the first prisoner

1:25:48

comes in, puts on the headset, looks around,

1:25:50

goes, Hoobrogh, we're out. And

1:25:54

if you think about that, that

1:25:56

is a thing that technology

1:25:58

just did. and

1:26:00

food them from there, out

1:26:03

of there, to learn. Whereas

1:26:05

if Jimmy was doing his normal class, they'd be

1:26:07

sitting in a classroom in a prison with

1:26:10

a board, with some papers, here

1:26:12

they were gone. And everybody

1:26:14

turned up, they kept turning

1:26:16

up. So, you know, that's a

1:26:18

tech for good. And we potter away with that,

1:26:20

hoping one day government will step up and go,

1:26:23

right, here's some funding to make it

1:26:25

accelerate. Haven't happened yet, but we'll

1:26:28

just keep plugging away. You guys are on

1:26:30

the cutting edge of technology. What

1:26:32

do you see looking into AI into the

1:26:35

future? Are you filled with excitement? Are there

1:26:37

concerns? It's interesting because

1:26:39

AI has been around for a while. I mean,

1:26:41

we've called it machine learning, you know, so there's

1:26:43

a whole lot of things that we do to

1:26:46

teach our computers, to do

1:26:49

things that we don't want to,

1:26:51

it started with a young student,

1:26:53

actually, Ryan. He came

1:26:55

to us for a job, for

1:26:57

a Christmas holiday job. And at

1:26:59

the time we had about 30 golf courses to build.

1:27:02

And this was a number of

1:27:04

years ago. And we had to hand draw

1:27:06

around the fairways, the greens, the lakes, the

1:27:08

footpaths. And it took, you know, maybe a

1:27:11

week or week and a half to do one golf course.

1:27:13

So anyway, we gave them all these golf courses with some

1:27:15

other people and I went away on holiday. And

1:27:18

I came back and walked in and here's Ryan.

1:27:20

I'm looking at what have you done there, Ryan?

1:27:22

He says, oh, I've written a neuro

1:27:25

something. I can't even remember what it was called now. I've

1:27:27

written one of these things I was really slow doing

1:27:29

it by hand. So I've just taught the computer to do it.

1:27:32

And I said, well, show me, show me the

1:27:34

thing. How

1:27:37

long, because knowing it took, you know, a week to

1:27:39

two weeks to do hand draw. I said, how long

1:27:41

does it take the computer to do you? And oh,

1:27:44

if you got me a good computer, it could do it faster. I

1:27:47

said, well, how long does it take? He said, oh, a

1:27:50

minute. So I

1:27:52

was doing the job in a minute. That

1:27:54

was machine learning. AI is another

1:27:57

step above that. But I think

1:27:59

again, I've been. So there's lots of

1:28:02

positive things about that, but also

1:28:04

lots of dangerous things.

1:28:06

If we don't treat it

1:28:08

right, if we don't get it into schools and teach our

1:28:10

kids how to use it, how

1:28:13

to ask the right questions. But

1:28:16

Ben gave me this really good

1:28:18

perspective on AI. Ben,

1:28:20

my son again, not an 80 year old, but still.

1:28:23

He said, could he take that whole thing?

1:28:25

He said, dad, you know the footsteps you laid down in

1:28:27

the past? Well, AI

1:28:29

has the ability to look at

1:28:32

every footstep that's

1:28:34

ever been laid down and it does it

1:28:37

instantly. So that's everything

1:28:39

that's on the web, anything. That's what AI does.

1:28:41

They can see all of them. What

1:28:44

it can't do is have a vision for

1:28:46

it. What it can't do is think

1:28:49

about how we break the boundaries.

1:28:51

What it can't do is look you in

1:28:53

the eye and smile and say, what do

1:28:56

you think about this? He

1:28:59

started talking about how

1:29:01

we need to make sure as

1:29:03

a company, we've got authenticity running

1:29:06

human, authenticity running

1:29:09

through everything we do.

1:29:11

So it comes back to caring, looking

1:29:14

after each other. But this AI

1:29:16

does this. But the vision

1:29:18

and the changes that AI will be

1:29:21

reading about next time will be done

1:29:23

by human, taking all of

1:29:25

the stuff and going, there's something

1:29:27

over here that I need to do. Can you

1:29:29

just give me the tools and all the information

1:29:31

I need, but this bit that's coming out of

1:29:34

my brain, you're helping me get

1:29:36

it out of my brain, but that's where

1:29:38

it's coming from. And he has this thing, he

1:29:40

has this process now. People

1:29:43

got into Zoom calls. It's even

1:29:46

more than that for him. So he's

1:29:48

gotten to the practice now where he gets

1:29:50

an email. It could be the

1:29:52

head of PGA, somebody like this sends an email

1:29:54

or sends a text. The first thing

1:29:56

he does is ring them back. But

1:30:00

it's amazing because that's what brings the

1:30:02

authenticity again. And he said he rang

1:30:04

somebody back the other day and he was at a swimming pool

1:30:06

with his kids. And the first

1:30:08

part of the conversation was, turn the camera around.

1:30:10

I've got the kids. What's the weather like at

1:30:12

your place? Yeah, you're in Dunedin. Here it is.

1:30:15

You know, and they chat like that. That's

1:30:18

the authenticity that AI can't bring

1:30:20

you. And it's not a Zoom

1:30:22

call. It's taking the

1:30:24

time to connect. Is that your

1:30:26

part of your mojo in

1:30:28

the company? Is that relationship

1:30:30

management element? Because

1:30:33

you're so engaging. You're so enthusiastic. It will

1:30:35

be impossible, I think, on the other side.

1:30:38

Well, it's interesting because another thing

1:30:40

coming from Ben. So

1:30:42

Ben traveled the world running. I

1:30:45

never thought he'd come back, but he's come back,

1:30:47

but he had a family. So now he was

1:30:49

working in our place. And he'd only been there

1:30:51

about maybe six months working in

1:30:53

the office. Like, he's always on the road.

1:30:56

And one day he took me aside and he said,

1:30:58

it was after a meeting I'd had, which

1:31:00

I thought went really well. And

1:31:02

he took me aside and he said, Dad, you

1:31:05

know that sometimes you come across

1:31:07

as a bully. And

1:31:11

I was absolutely shocked. I mean, it

1:31:14

would be the last thing I thought

1:31:16

I did or intended to do.

1:31:19

But then he said, so, you know,

1:31:21

you move with such

1:31:23

confidence in everything that

1:31:26

everything can be done. You talk with

1:31:28

all of this. Sitting in

1:31:30

that room are people

1:31:32

who feel like if

1:31:35

we can't do this, we're failing. Or we've got

1:31:37

to, you know, you are

1:31:39

scaring a whole lot of people because

1:31:41

you are so certain this

1:31:44

can be done. That they're going to

1:31:46

be failures if they can't do it. And

1:31:48

that was really powerful. You

1:31:50

know, I'd never thought of myself as a

1:31:53

bully. But actually when I thought of

1:31:55

it in that context, I was. And

1:31:58

I still find... myself having to

1:32:00

step back going, shit, you

1:32:03

just bullied that through. And

1:32:06

I don't mean to. What I

1:32:08

think when we're having conversations is everything

1:32:10

goes. So that wasn't like the conversation

1:32:12

with Grant today. Everything goes

1:32:14

because when we walk out the store,

1:32:16

we walk out as mates. And

1:32:18

everything we did in here stays in here till it

1:32:21

kind of just disappears. And that's what

1:32:23

I think I thought happened.

1:32:25

But that's my thinking. That

1:32:27

thinking might be impossible. For

1:32:30

somebody who's

1:32:32

only been there for a couple of maybe a

1:32:34

month or a year, three years, five years, what

1:32:37

am I doing thinking that's how they

1:32:39

will feel a conversation?

1:32:42

They could be terrified. Yeah, you've

1:32:45

got such good self-awareness. I mean, that's

1:32:47

outside awareness that's good to have. But

1:32:49

just in general, you can tell it

1:32:51

like it's so contagious. We're

1:32:54

getting to the end. We won't catch you

1:32:56

that much longer. But I just wondered, reflecting

1:32:58

like it's been such an incredible life. You've

1:33:00

obviously got so much more to give. But

1:33:03

when you reflect back on it

1:33:06

in this sort of setting, are you just filled

1:33:08

with pride of what you're able to

1:33:10

achieve? What is the feeling that comes out?

1:33:14

Well, not

1:33:16

what I've been able to achieve. It's

1:33:18

what we've been able to achieve. I

1:33:21

mean, I don't think I've done anything. I wake

1:33:23

up every morning and go to work. Like

1:33:26

when I was in the band, I woke up and went to

1:33:28

work. We did these things. I just did my

1:33:30

thing. And, you know, there's a great analogy with the

1:33:33

band. I often talk about the fact

1:33:35

that that

1:33:37

was my first job. My first

1:33:39

job was a band. And in

1:33:41

the early days, you sort of dismiss it.

1:33:43

But actually, again, as I look out with

1:33:45

those footsteps in front of me, that

1:33:47

was my first business as well. There

1:33:50

were five of us in a business. And

1:33:53

we had to deliver to

1:33:55

our customers what they

1:33:57

wanted or no one would turn up. next

1:34:00

hall we went to and we wouldn't have

1:34:02

enough petrol to drive to the next one. So

1:34:05

it was a business and we learned how to work

1:34:07

with each other. You were in each other's laps all

1:34:10

of the time. So the

1:34:12

interesting thing about that and the context

1:34:14

I guess I think will answer your

1:34:16

question is a few years, three

1:34:19

years ago I think, I was given a

1:34:23

doctorate of business by

1:34:25

Ataga University and everybody at work

1:34:27

pissed themselves. Really?

1:34:31

They don't know you but anyway so I'm

1:34:34

doctor of business and I was told I had

1:34:36

to ask, I said you know when you receive

1:34:39

it you've got eight minutes to talk

1:34:41

to the audience, I talked to the students and

1:34:44

I never really thought about

1:34:46

it because I wasn't quite sure what I was going to say but

1:34:48

I just thought I'll get something going.

1:34:50

I had a rough idea. So I'm sitting

1:34:52

on there, it happens and then those

1:34:54

footsteps I laid down and my past came

1:34:56

out and I remembered as I looked out

1:34:59

there that 50 years

1:35:01

ago I stood on

1:35:03

this very same stage as

1:35:05

a singer in a band, a calculated rasp

1:35:08

and played to the audience out there

1:35:11

and I said as I was standing here

1:35:13

what I realized was I was just the singer

1:35:15

in the band. I'd never learnt an

1:35:17

instrument, I didn't know how to play anything, all

1:35:19

I did was stand in the front. The

1:35:22

real magicians were

1:35:24

the ones who played the music.

1:35:27

They stood alongside me, they

1:35:30

were the magicians and now as I

1:35:32

accept this business degree from

1:35:34

Ataga University I'm still just

1:35:37

the singer in the band and

1:35:39

the magicians are all

1:35:41

of those people across the road there

1:35:43

at Animation Research who work the

1:35:45

magic and that's what I'm proud of.

1:35:50

Man that's so strong, that's such a powerful

1:35:52

way to close. Jay is there anything else

1:35:54

before we... No no

1:35:56

no it's a storied life with

1:35:58

so much more to come. I've got to

1:36:00

tell you about the front row. What are the

1:36:03

front rows? Don't forget the front row. People

1:36:05

often ask, what's your management structure? Well, that's

1:36:07

actually it. That's the question. What

1:36:09

do you do? What is your role? What do you actually do? You're

1:36:11

a singer in the band, right? But it's not an actual band, do

1:36:13

you? Yeah, I am actually a singer in the band. It is a

1:36:16

band. They're the musicians behind me. But

1:36:18

actually, when we look at it, and they've formed

1:36:20

it themselves, so Ben, my son,

1:36:22

Cheryl, who's the CEO, and John Rendell,

1:36:24

who went to school with Ben as

1:36:26

our head of innovation. And

1:36:29

he's got no degrees. He just came straight to

1:36:31

us from school. He's an absolute genius. So

1:36:34

anyway, together, they've all come together

1:36:36

and they've formed a concept of three CEOs.

1:36:40

You know, where you have three CEOs all

1:36:42

working. So they haven't done that. They've just

1:36:44

called, there's the front row. And

1:36:47

much to Cheryl Chagrin, she's the hooker.

1:36:51

So Cheryl's the hooker in the middle. And

1:36:54

they've got the two props on the outside. And

1:36:56

they meet every week as the

1:36:58

CEO, as the front row to

1:37:00

discuss strategies and stuff. And

1:37:03

I'm the water boy. And when

1:37:05

you think of it in the context, it's

1:37:07

exactly what I am. I

1:37:10

come down off the sideline. I've

1:37:12

got 30 years of footsteps. I

1:37:14

bring those footsteps onto the field

1:37:17

and put, sorry, bring those footsteps

1:37:19

onto the field and put the ideas

1:37:21

in to the front row. And

1:37:24

that's how we discuss. And Ben pointed out to

1:37:26

me the other day, he said there was this great

1:37:28

speech on TV of one of the

1:37:30

English, big English locks was talking about the

1:37:32

water boys. They were in a test with

1:37:34

the All Blacks. They were one man down

1:37:37

and on their goal line. And

1:37:40

there was a break and the border boy

1:37:42

ran on and to give

1:37:44

advice and the advice was defend. And

1:37:47

he said, that's a bit like you, dad. Yeah.

1:37:54

Oh, man, that's so good. I

1:37:58

think just for me, I feel really lucky to. I've

1:38:00

shared this time with you. I've learned

1:38:02

a lot. I love your idea about

1:38:04

the coalition and the willing. I love

1:38:06

your, we haven't lost El

1:38:09

Mojo because I feel it too. The people

1:38:11

we have in the studio every week is

1:38:13

so inspiring and so energetic and there's so

1:38:15

many amazing stories to learn from. So thank

1:38:17

you so much for coming in and giving

1:38:19

us your time and sharing that with our

1:38:21

audience. I've really loved it. Yeah,

1:38:23

for me, people spoke about your

1:38:25

enthusiasm and your energy and it's infectious. And

1:38:28

the fact that in your 70s, you

1:38:30

got a new lease of life. By

1:38:33

looking at our past, to look ahead at our

1:38:35

future, for me personally, I think that's really, really

1:38:37

inspiring. And I take that away that

1:38:40

the footsteps, they are out in the future. You

1:38:43

don't know what there is to come, but you

1:38:45

can learn so much from where you've been. Well,

1:38:47

I think that's that kind of concept. The footsteps

1:38:49

are actually behind you. They're at your back. Otherwise,

1:38:52

you'd know what it was like. And I think,

1:38:54

even just when you're driving back to

1:38:56

Hamilton, whatever you're doing, just pause, actually lie on

1:38:59

the walker. Oh, yeah. Yeah. But just pause for

1:39:01

a moment and just start looking

1:39:04

at those footsteps that shifted something

1:39:06

for you. Did this, did that, did that. Just

1:39:09

go back as far as you want and then just make sure

1:39:11

they never go away. Never go

1:39:13

away. And that today, I just

1:39:16

added another footstep. Yeah,

1:39:19

that's been awesome. Told

1:39:24

you it was a hell of a life.

1:39:26

Just before you go, I wanted to tell

1:39:28

you about B2B speakers. It's a new business

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that brings the guests you hear on Between

1:39:32

Two Beers to your event as emcees or

1:39:34

speakers. You can choose from well-known champions like

1:39:36

Sir Ashley Bloomfield, Karen Reed, Josh Cronfeld, Raylene

1:39:38

Castle, or Lee Hart, to local legends like

1:39:41

Dave Wood, Miyamoto, Chelsea Lane, or Izzy Whitley,

1:39:43

and a whole lot more. If you've been

1:39:45

blown away by any of the stories you've

1:39:47

heard here, you can now share that inspiration

1:39:49

with those you work with. Or you might

1:39:51

just want a funny bugger for your quiz

1:39:53

or awards night. No matter what

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you need, B2B can help you out, and

1:39:58

we're adding new guests each week. We're really...

1:40:00

excited about this so come

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check us out at b2bspeakers.co.nz.

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