Leap Then Look — Bank the Cheque Friday Night

"As we leave his office and are travelling back down the lift, Paul Smithies and I are talking about what a shame it is that we hadn’t got the cheque banked before the weekend, as it could have earnt us a couple of days of interest. Paul Anthony might have wanted to keep the funds in his account for the same reason. As we exit the lift, there is a branch of Westpac bank next to us. Paul Smithies turns to look at me. ‘Shall we see if we can get it in there?’ he suggests. We’ve got nothing to lose, but a fair amount to gain, so we start knocking on the front windows of the branch. The tellers inside who are packing up look up at us and shake their heads. They point to their watches: We’re too late. Sorry! they seem to mouth. So, Paul takes the cheque from my hand and holds it up to the glass. The tellers see the figures and mutter something to each other. A few seconds later, the automatic glass door slides open to admit us. The $26 million was in our account that night and accruing interest. This story still stands out in my memory, above most of the rest of our business exploits, because banking that cheque was just such a Paul Smithies thing to do. I never would have attempted to do that sort of thing had I been there by myself. Paul always believed in giving something a go – that impossible things could, and would, happen if you just did them. He always put himself in the best position for that to be so. I’ve said before that successful people are the ones who look for opportunity and that they say no a lot. But they also leap before they look, and they’re luckier for it. I know it sounds dumb. It’s certainly not what they teach in school. But you do need a bit of luck in this game. You need to come up with something implausible and give it a go. Self-doubt is a bastard. Anyone else might have shrugged at the fact it was after 5 p.m. on a Friday. Of course the banks won’t take the cheque, so let’s not bother. What if it doesn’t work out? Yes, but what if it does?"

"I have enough stories about Paul to fill another book. Even from the Telecom days alone. Once, we were due to catch a flight and had been held up, so we were running late to the airport. We weren’t going to make it in time. Paul gets the wild idea of phoning up Air New Zealand and seeing if he can get them to hold the plane for us. I tell him he must be joking; there is no way they’d do that. But sure enough, he gets on the phone to Air New Zealand and says, ‘It’s Paul Smithies here, I’m a director of Telecom and I’m supposed to be on this plane. I need it to wait for us.’ Whatever magical charm he managed to lay on them, it worked because they did it. The plane was still there when we arrived at the airport, and we were the last ones on it. Paul was the right kind of bold."

"All the while we were still trying to figure out how to actually pay for this deal we’d just done. We had thought the bank would lend us the money for the Telecom purchase, but they refused. So, we went around to some private equity firms to secure the $15 million we needed. We had our work cut out for us. No one really understood the business or its mechanics. Despite the potential we could see, the model was an unfashionable thing to be doing. We were still left unable to write the cheque we needed to. It was a tense time – stretching almost four weeks – and Telecom was, understandably, none too pleased. Neither were most of the people in my life. I definitely could have been described as grumpy, but really I was fearful that my life was about to end. If it went wrong, we’d have zip. Nothing. We were walking such a fine line between success and failure. Eventually, we found Direct Capital, a very early-days private equity firm; we were the first deal Direct did. But it very nearly didn’t happen. We’re down to the wire, needing to secure the funding – and soon. We’re in the office with Ross George, the CEO of Direct Capital, and he’s got the chairman, John Fernyhough, on the phone in the background. We’re talking through the terms, and Eric doesn’t like them. He’s refusing to do it – despite how badly we need the money. Eric’s cool and calm exterior suggests that he doesn’t care, but he, too, has a lot riding on this. Still, he’s holding firm to the terms he wants – how much money we can get and what we’re going to have to pay for it. We can hear John’s voice coming down the line, telling Ross, ‘They’re just bluffing, they have to do it.’ To which Eric breaks in and retorts, ‘I don’t care. I’ll just go broke then and I won’t do it.’ All the while, I’m sitting there sweating. Not getting this money is guaranteed to ruin us. The deal has to be locked in that day, and the evening is wearing on. Our game of chicken continues. At 11.59 p.m., Direct Capital relents, agreeing to $10 million. Thankfully, with this in hand, the bank then lends us the other $5 million. The Telecom deal can go through."