 So, reading through the books, I made a number of notes on index cards and one of my colleagues who's here this evening said, I haven't seen notes on index cards in a number of years. So there's too many things I'd like to ask you this evening, but I'll start with one of the quotable quotes that I liked in your book, which said that sales is a series of seductions. So I'd like for you to talk to us a little bit about the seduction process, sales in general, retail. What you think is the process of seduction? Thank you, Kevin. Well, it's a big question, and I'm going to give you a long answer, unfortunately, because that's what we're here for, okay. When I reluctantly joined my uncle's jewelry business in Whangarei as a salesman, my father, who was an electrolyte salesman, was my coach, and the jewelry business was made up of people that usually were doing watch or jewelry repairs, and my father was sort of outside the box. So rather than being more interested in repairing the piece of jewelry or the watch, my father was more interested in making a sale. And having to sell vacuum cleaners, electrolux vacuum cleaners during the depression, he had to be pretty good at what he was doing, because he'd knock on the door, and if his opening remote wasn't sufficiently good, it'd be slammed and it would close in his face. But he quickly learned to put his foot in the door and could talk himself in. And he had 10 steps of a sale that stood me in very good. It really made me quite strong. And because I was a young boy with no expectations, I really didn't know where I wanted to go. I didn't believe I'd amount to anything. I stood there and listened to my dad for 23 years selling, but those steps are still with me. And then when we started our own jewelry business, we took them to the next stage, I guess, really. And selling is a real art. It's basically a lost art in retail, and it's funny you go to these great firms like Louis Vuitton and Cartier and Tiffany's and the salesmanship is shit. Because the product sells itself because of the minor it has is built up by the founder. And because we didn't quite come from that, we had to sell ourselves. And we have a system now that was based on the American Friedman system, which means that every sales associate has to achieve certain results in a week. You can't be a drone in one of our shops. If you're a drone, you get a red dot. So in other words, how it works is that if you achieve the target you are, is set for the week, you get a gold star. If you achieve only last year's figures, you get a black dot. And if you don't achieve either of those, you get a black dot, a red dot at least. And the red dot stands out very clearly. So every week, your figures and your dots are showing in the back office on a little tiny wall and they're showing and every sales associate has those and everybody sees them. At the end of the month, you either get the same. You get the gold, you get the black, or you get the red dot for the month. And then all those each month are then whacked onto a big board in head office. And you can see all the shops and then it takes a percentage of everything and the shop either gets the red or the black or the gold for the month. And of course, the red ones stand out like measles or the ones that need attention, you see. So they do get more attention. So the system works like this that if you're continuing to red dot, then we need to give you more training and then the training becomes more intense. The system is quite complex, but quite simple. And the art of selling is a lot of stages. Before I leave the Friedman system, which we have slightly changed, you're on the items per sale per hour, the number of add-ons you make in that sale, and the average sale you make. And usually you will find that if there's a weakness, it's going to show up in one of those of what they're not doing. The best way to train people in selling is to reenact a sale once it's happened. So the secret is that if the shop is not busy and it's quite easy to see how the shop's going. You can stand outside and if somebody's in that shop and everybody's focused on them, even though you're prepared to do something else, you know they're engaged. But if you look there and somebody's selling, say, a ring here and the others are polishing some jewelry and having a chat over here, and this one's not taking a bit of notice, you know the thing's not working at all. So in a role play, you reenact the sale, whether it's made or not, and analyze it to death. So everybody turns around. We all have the whole pack, the whole selling team's there. And then we reenact it to the degree of even how they walked in the door. Who came in if there's a couple? Who came in first? Because the first one is usually the buyer of the second, so hang on. You learn all these things. Which window did they look? The window on the left did they went on the right. It was the one on the left, it's the diamond rings on the other side. It isn't. The pencil and the custom play. It's quite complex. So when they come in, you have to be aware of everything that's happened, where they came to on the counter. What was the opening mark, who say? I think anybody in our company says, how's your day been? And those inane questions, it seemed to be like, I came down on the lift the other day at five in the morning. How's your day been so far? I've got to shock the fellow. I mean, really, there's a bloody stupid comment. We don't want those sort of shit comments. We want proper comment. So you've got to come from the heart. You've got to think of something original that's going to spark a conversation. If you can't do anything, at least give a nice smile and a wave that you recognize them, and that may be all that's needed. Because you see, when a customer or a peer come into the shop, they can easily be spooked. It's a bit like duck shooting, which is on at the moment. You can be in your my-my, and you can see the ducks come up, and you can stand up and bang, and of course the whole lot have gone straight away. And it's exactly the same in selling in the shop. So if you're in the wrong position in the shop, you're at a huge disadvantage. If you're out the back part of the shop, and you have to walk up to the customer, you're going to spook them nearly 100% of the time. And they're probably going to turn around or either do a quick exit and they've gone, and you've lost them. So what you have to do in a situation like that is you have to get, like, some books or the broom or something and walk straight past them. And get on the selling, get on the outside of them. So they, it's a little difficult for them to get out, but they don't quite understand what's happening. It's the same as getting flounder, you know? You can net your flounder. You can have them all in the bloody net. If you don't put a hook in it and stop them, they'll all go at the end. So it's exactly the same. So anyhow, you get on the other side of them, and then you're busy away, and then you might just give them a smile or something, or, and then you could start up a conversation. That's the very difficult part is doing the conversation without spooking. It's quite difficult. But once we've done that, and then we find out what they're in there for, nicely, and it's all quite relaxed, we ask them what they're in there for, and discover this, the situation or the occasion. And then we work through the whole process, and then we come to the showing of the item. It's very important, the showing of any item, no matter what you're selling, is it's a very important part. So we have a little stage, a little thing that goes on the counter, that goes under the light. And it's a nice cream display stand there, it's there. And we get the ring out, and we hold it, and we disguise the ticket. We hold the ring out very carefully, and we have a selver, and just like a magician, on the stage we put it over the tile, and give it a slight clean, take it off, and hand it to the customer. Now the customer has to pick it up, because if the customer picks it up, they never get to buy it. So they hold it, and then we put it on the finger for them, slowly put it on the finger. The weak sales person at this time is rattling off that this is an 18 carat gold, it's got one carat diamond, it's a VBS color, that's all right, and it's got a small entusiasm on the side, set an 18 carat gold, they've got these side diamonds, we've got 16 of them to get on and on and on, which is a lot of shit. You should not say anything, you wait for the reaction. Because we don't know what the reaction is going to be, it's good or bad. But if the reaction is good, we can start speaking slowly. Should never mention the price unless the customer, it's irrelevant unless the customer, if they don't mention the price to never get to buy it, it is of no interest to them anyhow. So on these goes, and they've got all these steps that carry on. And then you get the customer, you will do, we have several items out. When you've got one that's out, say after about three times, it seems to have come back to one item. We then box the product in one of our beautiful new pink boxes. So we put it in that beautiful box with the lid open, we're looking at them beautifully in the box there. This is what you call a trial close. Someone says, what are you doing that for, you see? So I mean, it can sometimes get a reaction. If not, it's standing there beautifully while we're showing the other products. If something else is better, we then swap it over and put that in there. And this questioning goes on. It's all fun, they're all having fun in it. This is no pressure on this incident. And then you get people that do the, a lot of people do the, they just cannot make their mind up, you know? I mean, a lot of people can't make the mind about an ending in bloody life, anyhow, but we have to deal with it. So I used to have an interesting close, if there's a couple of in there and there's a guy who, they always feel awkward with the men in the shop because in New Zealand and Australia, it's different than in North America. But here, the woman actually knows where the ring is. She's done the homework generally. And she takes him into the shop. So he's led in and he's feeling very awkward to be here, but he knows there's, there's a seat, now he's, it's going to get engaged. So he's got to go through this agony. And he's standing there and she's trying all these on and it's in the box and everything's looking and you get a sort of a sense after a while that it's possibly the right ring. And I find this quite nice and there's Sam, he's standing and I say, Sam, this is one hell of a day for you and a very special occasion, a remarkable day in fact. I said, I picked the ring up, I give it to him, I think, and I get her hand, I said, I think you should put it on her finger. Well, I tell you what, if it's right, the ring goes on and there's a kiss in the hug and that's it. If it's wrong, there's an instant reaction. She'll pull back her finger and then listen, because this is where it smokes out the objection, which we want to hear. Well, I saw one on the other shop, which I'm going to try and again or it might be next, why is it or there'll be something, it will tell you what's going on, that all the truth comes out. So this is when we can then, we can dig in deep and we can, we can, we can arrest that problem. And then people say, well, I'm going to have a look around and I'm going to have a cup of tea. They've been saying that for 40 years since I've been in the business. But that's, that's a sign that you can actually then start selling because then you need to do a 360 and find something totally different than looking at because you're looking at a ruby cluster and that's all they had in mind. But suddenly you show them a Solitaire or one of my new signature collection with little pink saffron on the side and they fall in love with something totally different. So the customer really doesn't know until they try something on. So there's all these things that we go over. And then when you made the sale, you give them a card, you give me a name, you take, you take it for your, on the internet. So you've got there for future occasions and on it goes. So when you do the, when the, when the, you do the role play, everyone packs around and we think of all the things, could we have done anything better in this whole presentation? You know, you could have a customer then, she could have a shopping bag full of groceries that's heavy on her arm and she's trying. I mean, how ridiculous that? So we've got to free that up from it. If we can set a customer down, we're going back to seats. It is a significant, once you've got a person in a seat, you've got them far better positioned than standing up. They become very comfortable and secure and they enjoy the experience. But without going any further in it, the great sale makes a great customer for life. A poor sale could force one sale and we'll never see them again, which is shocking. And an insignificant sale is just a whole hum thing like you get most where. So we have the opportunity to make a customer and a friend for life. I have made so many friends when I was selling. It was such an amazing experience to have people come in with pikelets and cream cakes and pikelets for morning tea and afternoon tea and come and see us at lunchtime and it was just so much fun in that one gray shot when we started off there and we took the turnover from 225 to 1.3 million which was the national average was 200 then. So it was amazing times. So selling is the lost skill and at Michael Hill, we still teach selling as our main principle of... And anyone who starts in the business needs to be able to sell. So if any of you ever wanted to join us, you have to start by learning the basics of the business and how to sell before you can climb up the ladder. And may I say the ladder is pretty big now because we've got so much expectation. I'm talking too much, I'm going back to Kevin. I don't think you're talking too much. As a matter of fact, I want to compliment you. It's the first time in my experience that out of the gate we've called the audience ducks and flounders. And I have this visual of the male ducks and flounders in agony. So thanks for that visual. But on that topic of agony in our earlier conversations, you talked about your life as sort of a volume one, volume two. And the volume one included some agony and out of that sort of was the catharsis of volume two. Talk to us a little bit about that. It's a funny thing isn't it really in life that, I mean my life is so extraordinary. It's ridiculous to think that for 40 years I couldn't see out, I couldn't see anything. And it was a bloody disaster. And then I have a house where I lose everything except my children and my wife. And it changed me overnight. And it's a funny thing really though that you haven't experienced some awful times or reasonably awful, not that bad really. If you haven't experienced some toughness or hardness I think it's very hard to move upwards or onwards. And one of the fears I have and one of the things I'm here tonight for is to perhaps tell you that you live in the most wonderful place, I think, in the world here in New Zealand. We're privileged to be here. But the one thing you have to watch is it is slightly easier than anywhere else as well. You may not think so, but it is actually. And because of that we sometimes don't need to challenge ourselves or push ourselves to achieve your true full potential and you settle for something like else. So I've forgotten what the damn question was now. It was about the first volume too. Adversity to catharsis. All right, okay. So I tried the gold setting. I mean, I'd read Dale Carnegie or Night and Girl and I'd read all the books and listened to all the tapes and I tried the gold set and I couldn't. I really just couldn't do it. But as soon as we had the house fire and I stood there that night watching everything I had go and I already had nothing else but the house which was insured, but not properly insured. And that night I said I was going to write on a piece of paper and I was going to say, I'm going to call this business or start an opposition because I never had the guts to do anything like doing for because I didn't think I could do it. So it was just a fear factor. But that pushed me to do it. And you see, when I was at school, Jack Glanville told me that I would never be anything in life. He was the deputy head of Wongri Boys High School, the math teacher. No grudges. I was the worst math student in that year and I was pretty bad in 4-3. But it's trouble is I was bullied at school, you see, and I couldn't concentrate on any damn thing really and I couldn't wait to get out of school quick enough and I wanted to be a concert violinist and 18 months of that. But then my uncle put me into the family business because they thought I shouldn't be playing the violin. It was probably the right thing actually looking back. But I really couldn't see out and then after the house fire, I just couldn't see anything but a future and I started gold setting. I had that we would have, first of all, I wanted one shop in Wongri and then I thought we'll have seven shops and by the time we had seven I went public in 1979 and we had a crack at Australia and then I had 70 shops and then I had 150 shops and then I wanted a thousand shops. It all became back to gold setting and gold setting is something that not many people do. I always have 30-year goals and it's a funny thing but if you can visualize what you'd really like to stand for in 30 years' time and write it down on a piece of paper and put an envelope and think about it and then in a year's time look at it again and review it. You're allowed to look at it once a year but no more. It starts you on a track that very few go on and if you have a very audacious goal or a very ambitious goal it's better to aim really high because we don't quite hit it. We're going to hit really high anyhow but probably that's the best thing I ever did was when the house fire went down I could goal set instantly so starting to do it is the most difficult thing. How you do it without a house fire burn your house down maybe that's the answer but seriously that makes all the difference. From then on as I say the second chapter started and it's just gone on from strength to strength and it seems to get better. I mean I have so much fun. I mean imagine being here tonight me talking to you it's ridiculous. I mean what an experience for me and I hope the younger ones of you here we can perhaps give something that helps you a bit as I say in the two volumes which are ying and yang it's quite extraordinary. And in that goal setting process I know that you say be very specific it's not lose weight it's lose this much weight by x-date but you also are a big fan of visualization and meditation could you talk a little bit about visualization? There's a few key steps I think if you in fact I should probably I've got these written down here and I probably should just make sure that I've got them actually right because they're quite important but with the goal setting comes a few other challenges because the moment you start doing it if you can write something down and you become quite excited about it and it does set you on your way and it frees your mind up because you see the neck top computer is always trying to find out what the devil you're up to and it'll obey any of your instructions and if there's no long term one it's going to take the short term one so whatever it is and it could be negatives like me I dwelled on the bloody negatives so it's talking of the negatives all the while rather than the positives but if a long term one the direction will be firmly set there it'll be like a laser beam putting you towards it you've got to want what you need to want it though you can't just put down a dream and sort of say that maybe else you can't be bothered you've really got to want what you do you really do so the first thing I found out was that if I was going to achieve something I needed my neck top computer to be properly focused and by chance I found that the best way to do that was I did transcendental meditation and it's a bit like if you've got a computer with a virus you reboot it and you can get it back to scratch again and meditation does just that and by practice effortless practice non-judgmental practice I might add one can occasionally come into a state of pure consciousness where we transcend into the true inner self which is the state of infinite wisdom and when we're in that state of stillness and quietness after that out wells a well, a font of information for you that before was disguised that you have become uncovered and if you have a goal your goal becomes seringly clear to you the other thing about meditation I don't know about you but certainly with me was that if I get under pressure and there's a lot going on and a lot of you today are doing more things like some of you are probably on WeChat and Facebook and I can see a few texting away right now and the thing is we actually can't multitask we fool ourselves we can but we're only giving 50% to me and 50% to the WeChat or wherever they are we're on totally focused on anything and I think that if one wants to keep things simple which I think is important that we should actually have a time of our peak learning experience to have the ability to switch off everything electronic for that period so that you can think so meditation will clear it can be a quick fix if you're under enormous pressure your mind starts swirling you become frustrated there's so many things you've got to do at the present time that you can't decide which to do you're completely uptight and all you have to do is go into the bathroom and sit on the toilet for 5 minutes and do your transcendental meditation and come out and the answer is quite obvious what you need to do so that leads to the next rule of mine was the 80-20 rule which I'm a great believer in you see I've come to believe that the people who achieve greatness on this earth seem to work the least of all of us and what they do of course is focus on the 20% of the things that's going to take them to their target and eliminate the other 80% easy said than done I know but with practice we can at least cut a lot of things off that we do and if you look at a week of what you do what do you really need to do and what could you eliminate because what I've found I needed to do was to eliminate it to give myself space time and if I could give myself time I would have time to think and if I could think we could achieve greatness and if you're in harmony because you've got time you'll have a chance to look out like us coming in from the airport I could not believe the abundance of flags and native trees that have been planted on the side of the road and how beautiful they look this morning coming in the light and we can see the things and we can easily be texting the whole way and we don't see anything and we live in a cocoon of a controlled society the other thing I think we need to do if you want to achieve something great you have to walk in a different direction than anybody's ever walked in if you copy you can achieve reasonable greatness but it's going to be very difficult but if you tread the path that Netedbose has done and in fact this means trusting in yourself and having the confidence in yourself that you can achieve something quite remarkable because each one of you here and me and we're all different and in that little uniqueness if we can snitch what it is and take that and lead that forward that's how you can achieve greatness and in doing that the next thing is make mistakes you've got to make mistakes if you don't make one mistake a year that hurts you're not moving hard enough you're playing life too safe so I want you to push the boundaries of what you do and start making mistakes but from those mistakes I want you to learn your greatest lesson because until you make a mistake they'll hurt and you'll learn severely from them and it'll bounce you to a higher level that challenges you even further but gives you an invigoration to go further forward so relish the mistakes never make them twice but bounce back from that to a higher level there's a couple of other things but those are the main things I think that was not the one while you're digging for that I might ask you another question since you're on the subject of challenges and mistakes let's get you to talk about some of your whoppers and I don't know what those are but I know going into Canada was rough going I know going into the US has been a challenge even the entry into Australia I think there were some lessons to be learned so talk about some of the mistakes you made how you bounce back from them that confidence, that resilience played into all that the main thing was going into North America because if we were going to have a thousand stores and we wanted to become a global chain we couldn't do it in Australia we couldn't put that many stores and there wasn't the potential, sufficient potential to do that so it means we had to go somewhere else so we chose Canada very simply and naively because there's quite a few New Zealanders it was similar to New Zealanders it had to be a nice place to be our stupidest idea so we did it so we shot up there and we got some spaces in Vancouver and we opened some shop and Emma Hill, my daughter she actually opened them that's another story about Emma because she was no favoritism, she actually got the position by hard work and she went up there and started and we did the same as we'd done the house so we nice fit out prime space it was a different looking shop than anyone else put our stock in there and normally we'd open with a sale which was a mistake possibly, we opened the sale and normally in a sale in New Zealand we'd probably take 80,000 or something like that and I ring Emma in the afternoons and I said how's it going Emma? she says Dad, I can't close I can't close, no one's buying no one's buying, I said what are you taking $100 that's just shocking, I can't believe it so it was like going to a different planet no one knew us Canadians are very loyal and their families loyal if they've been with a jeweler 40 years ago they're still going to the same jeweler and they don't want to take on someone new and the whole thing was a different experience a lot of our stock was not skewed to their liking so we learned some big lessons there but it's taken it's taken us nearly 15 years to get it right but we have got it right now and we have an Australian man running that, he used to be in the navy he's running that, he's doing particularly well we've got 66 shops at the moment and within two years we'll probably have 80 shops and we could be the number one player in Canada so we've got it right, it's really good and then we thought we'll try the United States of America because everyone says this is a great place to do business so we bought some of the shops from the Whitehall jewelry chain that was gone into receivership two months before the global financial crisis which is bloody brilliant timing I might add so we bought them at 70 cents of the dollar and we thought we were doing really well so anyhow, so we started there and that was a totally different planet than anything I'd ever experienced and the whole company there were days there where the staff were quite satisfied we would take no money at all, it didn't matter and we were horrified we'd never had a day where you took nothing in Australasia ever and these people are willing to accept there's no turnover in a day like it was quite a normal practice so this wasn't going to work so we had to restructure and change a lot of our stock and that's when we learned that we had to become a brand it was very apparent and it came to us very quickly that we had to be known for something, we could not sell the same as everybody else so that's when I had to start designing my own jewelry collection so there's the Michael Hill Bridal and signature collection I have all these collections of diamond rings based on my love of music so if you go to the Queen Street shop you can see them or Albany and things like that so we've now had to do that which we didn't have before Christine's done a collection on the Toterey Shell called the Spirit Spade Collection it's based on that Shell that Girl Guides will and their brown scarf and people wear them around their neck as a shell and sometimes have it on the ring so she's done a jewelry collection of those those are going particularly well so we're having to do a point of difference the big difference is that 55% of sales made to jewelers in the United States of America are done on credit and you are the credit provider so in other words we have to become credit providers and they have no deposit normally, it's unbelievable really and so they'll buy a ring usually around about you know between $50,000 and $5,000 on credit and take it away and pay that over 18 months we hope and that's the way we've had to start doing the business because it's 55% of the sales but the interesting thing which we had no idea about is this credit is so powerful that in 18 months time you ring them back again the client and say your engagement ring that you bought and congratulations the anniversary is coming up here and you speak to them and say and we've just got the matching pendant and earrings that go with that and the good news is you can come and collect that and it'll cost you no more you just keep the payment going and apparently you keep that payment going for life that once you've got them in on that gauge of thing they're there for the rest of their life on anniversaries presents for on it goes on it it's unbelievable so it's such a totally foreign way of doing business we've got a head around that we've opened two shops in New York they're doing quite well but we're still not making anywhere the money that we would make in Australasia the rents are very expensive there's so much competition and whether it's the right way going forward I'm not quite sure but there's another brand we've started called Emma and Ro and we've got 10 of those going in Queensland and they're going particularly well they're based on that charm type like a Pandora type thing we've got a point of difference with those and we feel that we're close to be able to to say that we can turn those out in quite big quantities and could easily have 300 of those in Australasia and then we could license those out and even have a crack at places like China and Japan and Singapore and so this could be a much easier model so I might get to my thousand stores in a totally different model than what we were thinking of because it's an easier model to run you mentioned Emma your daughter who's now effectively in charge of the organization and I know there are some times that she thought maybe she was ready and the organization told her she wasn't ready and she stepped out of the organization and came back how do you manage that personal tension between father, business, owner mentor was never any tension between Emma and myself basically because we've always been good friends and the whole families and you know we're always very open as a team but because Emma wanted to go into the jewelry business and I had a CEO I couldn't really overstep him so it was up to him to say that she could go in so she applied and got refused that was very hard for me I must say it was very difficult but it made Emma stronger so she went and did an MBA and then she did an MBA and she got the valedictory address and was on that MOOC course and she did pretty well and then she went to work for our advertising agency which was a cunning thing and she came back and she pitched for our account because we were ready to pitch and so she's there with all the board and everything else and Lou Degan and Sydney did this thing there and he wanted Emma to front the adverts like a Deborah Hutton which was not a silly idea really but he'd heard that it wasn't going to get through so last minute he changed his tactic to not such a good one so Emma presented this and the board declined that so that evening Emma was told she lost the firm's account as well so I can remember put Emma on the phone you bastard what are you doing to me that was one of the hardest days of my life but anyhow she eventually got in and then she was chosen by her peers and of course now she's the chairperson so it's really cool Emma's a wonderful young lady I'm very proud of my daughter my son's very different he's very artistic, he's like Christy my wife he's a sculptor, makes big works in court and steel but between the two of them they have the business for the future Emma's not artistic and Mark is very artistic and in all great brands if we become a brand eventually we've got the artistic side with Mark and his wife, Monica and Emma with her business brain which makes a great package going forward and without that I don't know whether I would carry on I think I would probably sell out and do something else with it but it gives you the encouragement to carry on and make this become something really significant the other thing we do which is quite interesting which you might find interesting that four times a year we have a family meeting we've now been doing this for nine years so we have our lawyer and we have our accountant and there's a proper agenda and so Mark goes and Monica's wife goes and Emma goes and there's obviously us and we talk about anything we like but we all talk about the main thing of course is the jewellery business which is our main interest but then there's the Gov course and all the other things and then there's their interests as well and making sure that we all understand and are working together to achieve the same goals because it's amazing the different values of even Mark and Emma they're quite differently driven and getting everything in coordination and I think one of the big mistakes a lot of people make particularly they've accumulated a bit of money is that they don't do that and then when they've gone everything sort of just falls apart really and there becomes disenchantment and even enemies and we are a very close family our best friends are our family and I think by the open communication we've all become much closer and we all work together I mean we've all got problems getting far too smart and you think maybe I am so I better be careful of that so you know everyone's you know we can all say what we like to everybody and they will take it as an offence that's the way it should be really and so we're all driving for a better group of people really and having a lot of fun yeah thanks for that I've got two questions but only time for one before I turn it over to the audience so you talked about Emma getting the MBA and from my MBAs in the audience I can hear that but you also have a particular point of view about the use of education and the need to be close to the cold face and combining that so that's one possible question or in a completely different direction I think subject to shareholder approval you're looking at listing it on the Australian Stock Exchange whereas you're already on the New Zealand Stock Exchange so you can either talk about the education process or talk about what it's like to list on a different exchange and at the face of it might seem like once you've done one exchange they're all easy but maybe not so we'll ask the exchange one first it seemed our business somewhat regretfully but our head office is now in Brisbane in Australia we have a very big manufacturing plant there we don't do all the manufacturing because a lot of intricate works now done in India which is unbelievable all under microscopes putting claws the size of pinheads and making a beautiful job and China's not far behind there as well those two countries but we do quite a lot of setting so we have quite a big manufacturing division in fact the biggest in Australasia so everything is set up there we report on Australian dollars and the other thing is our P is far too low and I don't know we're listed on bigger exchange I'm sure we'll have a much better P than we are because we're highly underrated as a stock at the moment and I mean we shouldn't be where we are and it's too difficult for an Australian to invest in us because they've got so much paperwork and bureaucracy to deal with they've got about a 40 page thing to share whether they even want to buy a new stock so it'll simplify the process so we're trying to get share held as approval and if we do we definitely will be floating there and it could be as soon as this next financial year I think it will be a good thing for us I really do and the other question was the education piece the coal face combining informal education with oh yes, oh yes, yes yeah well you can do a degree theory of something and I applaud you for doing that I've never done it it must be amazing to do that but you need to also have the practical experience so it takes 10,000 hours to learn how to sell properly and to run a jewelry business but if you do that with what you've got then I think in this room there could be some bright young leaders that would perhaps could join me in my challenges and we could train you up but you still got to do the 10,000 hours to become one of the hot shots in our business you see our top people learn more than you would be as a lawyer in a partnership more than in the architect you can earn great money you can earn huge money but it's not the money it's the challenger you would be running the world running a place somewhere else running a country doing amazing things I just put that out there because I'd really love one of you to join me because it's a young people's world and you're the ones we should be I shouldn't have to find someone that's too ordinary and make them famous I'd like to make you people super famous and I see some great faces in here it's interesting that in New Zealand our best sales people are now we have different platinum platinum club gold club and silver club platinum club is a million plus and we've got one lady that's done two and a half million this year in sales and she's Chinese we have a Russian lady Indian lady mainly all Chinese Chinese are our best sales people now and a lot of managers are Asians our good managers coming through Asians I don't know why I think it's because they've had it so hard they have to prove something and that's the thing I said about New Zealand you just need to be careful because you're just as good but you let them have it but anyhow I love Asians as well and our best I'd say most of our jewelry sales now too so we're selling it's Red Hawk Asians love jewelry and they love us and my god we're doing a lot of business with them it's quite incredible really I've lost the plot of the question but there you go you're on it and that's the perfect time to turn the plot over to the audience I want to turn it over to the audience for any questions I've got a young lady here in the future right there asking you a question Sir Michael I didn't hear that last bit oh yes biggest mistake I've ever made that's a very good point other than tonight you see I was so naive when I got a board I didn't know what a board was I didn't know what people did on a board it was hopeless and I didn't have the right mix of people on the board and they turned against me but they went through your eyes and anyhow you should go into shoes and they put me in the bloody shoes and it didn't work and so we had seven shoe sops and very quickly and I was doing adverts on television and I go hello Michael Hill jeweler gold silver silver chain chain sell sell gold silver silver chain sell Michael Hill jeweler and then hello Michael Hill shoes I've got these Solero shoes here and welcome to Palmerston Norton and I don't know where the hell I was coming and going anyhow after seven shops we closed all the shoe shops and concentrated on the core thing so we became too complicated and too complex complexity is your enemy be aware of it any fool can complicate anything keeping things simple is the answer thanks for that on the back row here you'll have to speak up my hearing is not that good well we have bonus systems for everybody so on the sales floor once you've earned five times you're earning a good percentage of what you take so when they're gold starring they're doing very well once the time they made platinum club they're earning very big money so platinum seller will probably be making about $120,000 per annum the top girl who got the big there was a prize for anyone who could do over two million so she got actually a quarter of a million just for doing it so we pay very well managers get a percentage of the whole profit of the shop of their shop and managers can earn more than a good shop manager can earn more than a district or area manager which they sometimes do we have a very good girl in Albany who's doing extremely well and there's one in St. Luke's and another one in in Manukau those are very good shops for us they earn seriously big money and then once you get up to a manager of a country then you get bonus to course on the whole executive teams but your area also gets a special bonus and then of course the head guy gets the biggest bonus of all of course like he's working for Air New Zealand whatever it is it's the same sort of thing really but there's the challenges they have to perform and if they don't perform we know they really looked at and we're always trying to push ourselves and make sure that we have the best people it's very easy to get people to become comfortable and it's easy to accept people that are holding you back but really they're doing an enormous disadvantage it's like the red dotters if you didn't have the system like this you could be repeating red dot red dot red dot they're like drones and they sort of hide in the system but they actually pull the whole thing down so unless we can train them up they really need them the wrong career they need moving on and get someone that can because if you have all gold stars in the shop the shop's just going to go crazy absolutely crazy it's amazing yeah right well I guess the motivation was that I had nothing I had to have something and I just had to succeed there was no ifs or buts I was going to I just had to do it and I found the backer he put the money up and he wanted 20% which was amazing so it was an amazing deal and in five years time I paid him back and then we went so the main overriding goal was I just wanted to be I just wanted to do something that was left a mark on something I just I had to do it and yeah so it was a big goal but once we did it it's a funny thing you know I never had any fear from that moment on I mean people said you wait till you don't have a day where you take any money or you got the worries of this never had a fear from it at all yeah we're actually we are controlled of fear anyhow fear is only what we make all our own decisions really whether we're fearful or we're confident or it's it's purely a neck top computer that doesn't really yeah it's just a matter of flicking a switch I mean I find it amazing I'm pretty strict with what I eat but people say well I can't give up a teaspoon of sugar in the coffee or I can't give up dessert so I can't do that but it's just flick the switch and so I'm going to do it as simple as that or can't give up so you can give up these things in a flash if you really want to and I think really one does need to be if one's going to be really successful you've got to start putting a stake in the ground and doing some things that are uncomfortable and just do it because if you don't you know you're going to wimp along really thank you very much yeah I think studying at your father's hand you had all the skills right your dad was an expert salesman it was just the catalyst right and I'm not suggesting everyone go home and burn their house down but whatever your own personal catalyst might be right but the silly part about it if it hadn't been the house fire would I been I mean I had a nice lifestyle that lovely wife had two lovely children we had a little boat we could row out and you know catch a flounder and catch a snapper for dinner and I made my home brew and I had Saki as a brewing in the bath I mean it was lovely we had a great lifestyle and parties I think would I have carried on doing that would I have eventually bought out my uncle and perhaps a couple of shops in Whangarei and a little boat and would that have been it could have been could have been but what a difference I mean the difference between that and what I'm doing is just indescribable really and I mean I wouldn't be here for start I mean how good is this I had a hand over here yes here on the end thank you yes but generally New Zealand retailers and businesses generally have really struggled to take their operations overseas and make a good go of it so what are some of the things that those businesses aren't doing that they should be doing yeah well it's a quite a complicated question but in our in our position the only thing that's going to make us successful from now on if we want to become something you know greater than what we are and in fact our next goal is to take the company from half a billion to one billion in about five years so the only thing that's going to make a difference is we can we've got to walk a different path so we've got to go more collections more original product so in other words I'd like two-thirds of our product needs to be our own we've got our own watches we sell about 65,000 watches a year and we've got our own starting with our own jewelry, Christine's collection but we need to grow on those so what we need to put ourselves apart from the Pascos or whatever it is who are selling exactly the same product as everybody else that's on a slippery slope downwards because there's no end to people again to find a cheaper price to this or that because it's exactly the same product so if we have different and creative product that's different then we have the opportunity of standing apart so until we become a brand and when we do become a brand then we secure ourselves as a permanent platform and that's the secret to our success the other thing is that a lot of people are shopping on the internet now there's lots of, you know, it's changed dramatically and people now will look at the site before they come in the shop we don't sell that much on about four shops on the internet but a lot of people look at it all the while and they make their mind up whether they want to come and see you or not so it's a completely changing platform but when they do come in the experience has got to be an amazing experience that's the other thing so if we have a lovely product at the right price, very competitive but nobody else has got it can't get anywhere else and then they have an experience which is overwhelmingly marvellous, not how's your day mean and take that and leave it you know then it all becomes easier said than done but that's the principles for success for us Thanks, on the back row there project a bit more That'd be good Thank you Yes, well we obviously are pursuing growing that in the jewelry business is different from most other product though that it's a product fortunately we're very lucky that it's something we sell the most emotional and probably sacred product that you can buy really which is the keystone to life is your wedding band and your engagement ring which is such emotional purchase and if the guy who goes and buys it on blue Nile or buys it from the bloody warehouse it's not a good start is it really so fortunately they want to come into the store and if they have a lovely experience so we're very fortunate the lower price products like the chains and the earrings and that's what's selling mainly so we're not selling too many of them but they get the idea of what they see for the bigger product and then we'll come in they'll have their choice of shops to come in but it is certainly becoming more and more there's no doubt about it and we're very conscious of it and we're trying to get outside it could be a lot better than what it is Sir Bob, when you mentioned earlier on you were a lover of the arts and golf you really covered that in depth we know you were a lover of arts but what about the love of golf where did that originate from well that's very funny isn't it really because I don't like golf it's going too much but it's a funny thing but you see my parents used to play golf and when I was at their state house in Main Street there I formed an 18 hole golf course and put bake bent cans and upside down and formed the red star golf course and charged one in six months for the long grey boys, high school boys to be a member of this course and it's funny that that idea sort of stuck with me so when we built our house in Queenstown I put a green out the front and I got John Derby to design it the golf course designer to design that for me and I built that with a green keeper from Millbrook and we had a lot of fun and then I thought well I'll put another couple of greens in and I can make a chip and pop and so we did that and it was quite nice and we had tournaments with Millbrook where they'd play at Millbrook and they'd come and have a shootout on Millbrook you see and we did that for Rally New Zealand to send children overseas on adventure trips and so we did that for a few years and then Mike Hoskin rang me one day from the radio and he said I believe you've got a chip and putt and I'm looking forward to coming playing next year and I thought that sounds a bit wanky so I rang up Derby and I said could you put a proper which is our Dragonfly Lake Hole number 6 so we did that and we were down there and I thought well I said to Derby if we're down there it's a bit ridiculous having a deer farmer just down there you might as well at least go back to the house so we did that and it was a lot of fun it was also a lot of heartache but we did it and he said why don't you build a full course and I didn't really thought about that I thought oh I could do it he said look I'll build you one for 4 million no bunkers very simple irrigation I reckon I can do it so I shook hands didn't tell Christine 18 million dollars later we built it but it was the best thing I ever did it's amazing the land is unbelievable and it's such a special piece of land and then of course I was up north and I saw Alan Gibbs a sculptural park and I thought goodness me this is amazing why can't I put sculptures on my golf course and no one does sculptures and golf together so we started putting some amazing art and I've got these 110 Wolves by Louis Rewang of Beijing from 798 of the Art District and I've got a few other big people I've got a big seated man when I'm looking at and getting from Winchester and the UK going to look up next month a huge seated figure that looks realistic it's quite amazing but there's all these things we can do I'm going to build a part 3 course and the only part about it is that Emma was running is running the clubhouse too as well and three years ago she said dad do you realise you're losing 22,000 dollars a week on this golf course I said shit that's a lot so anyhow she's now got we're actually now making a profit and yeah it's a closed membership we've got 200 family memberships and that's it we've got seven on the waiting list and we're going to virtually make it like an Augusta where we completely close down a list you'll remember that will be it and it's a very special piece of land and we have people that are members that don't even play golf it's funny I was in the clubhouse this morning to get that book there and there was somewhere there at 8 o'clock it doesn't play golf they go there every day just for breakfast and for lunch and it's quite funny really but we're very lucky to have that piece of land and we've had the open for seven years in history the hundred years of the open so it's good and it's nice to support New Zealand golf which has had a hard time but I've underwritten it for that time and it's cost me a lot of money so thank goodness next year Mr Eshi from Millbooks I'm underwriting it so I'll be quite happy about that good I'm getting cued with several more questions but I do want to be respectful of your time and again thank you all for being here and thank you Sir Mike