When my father said something, I listened.
The small, balding man with a slight limp caused by a bicycle crash when he was 16 – whom I have known as my father since I was adopted at a young age (my biological father was an alcoholic, womanizing creep by all accounts) – was a good man. He raised me to believe that I could achieve anything I wanted, and never to settle for second best.
While my father always encouraged me, he also made sure that I understood that such success would not be easy to achieve.
I can recall him strolling into the kitchen in his brown cardigan and work boots, the splashes of Old Spice liberally applied earlier in the day nothing but a memory now, obscured by the almost overpowering stench of raw meat.
“Business was slow again today.” This was his usual refrain, before heading off to clean up for dinner.
My father taught me the value of owning my own success. He stressed that I should always keep moving forward even when things were tough.
I trusted his words, and when he would tell me something, I listened.
You could imagine my discomfort when he said to me, “The business life is not for you, Son.”
It was a Sunday afternoon, and the TV in the background was playing live coverage of his favorite Australian Football team, the Essendon Bombers. I don’t recall who they were playing that day, but they were losing badly.
Just as the winning team scored yet again, my father’s body seemed to almost disappear into the overstuffed cushions of the sofa, as he turned to me and continued, “You should be wearing a suit and tie and working for a corporation … not running around town hustling for a living!”
When my father used the word “hustling,” he meant … running around town begging strangers for money.
I laughed when he said this to me … and explained, “I was not hustling in that sense; I was providing value to business partners. And because the value was real, they were willing to give me money in return. It was a fair business deal.”
The actual etymology of the word “hustle” is interesting. The word comes from the Dutch word “husseln,” which is a variation from around 1680 of the word “hotsen” (to shake). The word “husseln” was used for people who shook their cap (with money in it) on the streets (hustlers). Throughout the following centuries, the term took on meanings attached to illegal activity or aggressive sales tactics, and in the 1920s, the word “hustler” began to be used with regard to male sex workers. Thankfully, the word “hustle” has now returned to its earlier meaning, where it’s about hard work and marketing.
I guess I was a hustler. The business kind.
Several months before my Sunday afternoon exchange with my father, I had started a small company in Melbourne, called Chef’s Express. I had a small office in my home, and had hired a small staff - 1 office admin to help answer phones and take orders, and a number of drivers to make deliveries (the number of drivers varied night to night depending on how many orders were taken but averaged somewhere between 6 and 10), with a limited budget of under $25,000 to fund my dream of building a multi-million dollar empire of franchisees in the coming years – but first I had to prove the concept, develop the processes and procedures, and build a repeatable and sustainable business. In the days where the only delivery option was pizza, my drivers delivered meals from some of the city’s finest restaurants to customers in their homes, or wherever they would like. This was Uber Eats, decades before Uber was conceived.
Chef’s Express was largely a marketing exercise for me, educating restaurants about the value-add of additional customers, without needing additional tables or staff, while at the same time, showing customers that quality meals could be delivered quickly and efficiently, at a price point they could afford.
We delivered bright red lobsters, bisques, fresh bread, and so on, from the finest restaurants, from French cuisine to exquisite sushi, to Italian favorites and everything in between . All it took was a phone call, placing an order from our select menu, and our drivers would deliver your fine dining experience to your door in 40 minutes or less!
We delivered to people in their homes, in their offices … we even arranged a Valentine’s Day lobster dinner for two (complete with chilled Moet) in the Botanical Gardens in Melbourne (as a special request). We delivered approximately 15,000 meals in the first 12 months using between six and ten drivers, operating from 6pm to 10pm, 7 nights a week.
There is no doubt that this was an entirely new concept at the time, and the attendant risks were manifold. Logistics without the aid of GPS, driver management without the aid of cell phones and apps and financial management without the aid of expensive ERP systems.
Nevertheless, I drove this new business to revenues of $600k in its first year, achieving gross margins in excess of 30% and net margins around 20%.
So why did my father call me a hustler?
He was a small businessman himself, having owned and operated a small butcher shop for several years, and he understood what it took to make a business work.
His words were not meant to stop me going my way, but they were a warning to expect the long hours, the financial disruption, the insecurity … all the things that come with owning your own business.
And he was right.
The hours were long, the stresses high … and the rewards ... satisfactory, I guess.
While researching ways to improve the business, ways to streamline the ordering system, and ways to better manage logistics, I found a new form of competition that was threatening to take my market away.
Competitors were installing computers into restaurants, that the restaurateur could use to better manage their accounting and finances … and at the same time, connect to the internet, (the what?) and somehow get orders direct from their computer.
Really?
A million questions went through my head. How does this work? What is this interwebby thing? How can information flow from my home computer to my client restaurants without me having to pick up the phone?
I knew nothing about this technology, but I knew that it was about to change the way the world works. What would happen if communication between computers became commonplace?
What could this emergent technology platform be used for? What benefits could be had? What efficiencies?
And the most burning question of all: will computers become a tool of communication for everybody? Will there be a mass adoption? Is this like a microwave oven, that starts with a few early adopters but then becomes ubiquitous?
My guess was a resounding “yes”!
Opportunity is what happens when things seem to not be going right.
Opportunity was staring me in the face. When I found a start-up in this new industry that was in need of someone with my skills, I took the chance and chased the opportunity.
As I consider that moment in time … a moment that changed the course of my life, I feel that I somehow inherited my father’s intuition. Though we were not of the same blood, his keen sense of opportunity was somehow embedded deep within my own psyche. He wanted only the best for me, but not at the cost of life balance. He wanted me to chase my dreams, to succeed beyond measure … to shake the world as only a new disruptive industry could do. And I was ready.
Thanks Dad…. I wish I had the opportunity to show you how much you taught me, but alas, you left this world too soon.
Are you willing to chase YOUR opportunity? Are you ready to shake the world?