Take the emotion out of being regionally based

Just like you turn to Uber if you need a ride, or Xero to do your accounts, Luke Fox (Ngati Porou) wants his company to be the one you turn to get stuff done on your house.

Through his ventures Inspect House and Repair House, the Gisborne-based founder offers building reports, insurance assessments, loss adjusting, and project management for construction. They offer services in areas around New Zealand through a network of franchisees and contractors.

A third arm, called JobIQ, is a tech company, initially started three years ago to develop software to help his building inspection and construction businesses run more efficiently. The software helped Inspect House kick some internal goals (like being able to turn around a building report within two hours), but Fox’s ambition is to use it as a platform to help build an international business that provides fast, reliable services to fix your house – from a builder to a plumber to an electrician.

Accessing support through Callaghan Innovation’s Regional Business Partner Network, Fox has been developing a growth strategy with help from consultancy D/srupt and regional development agency Trust Tairāwhiti, which includes expanding into Australia and Fiji next year.

“There are a lot of guys – one- or two-men or women bands – who are great at building, but they're not great at business. And that's what we do really well. Unbeknown and probably unappreciated by a lot of people, is that a lot of the grunt work goes on behind the scenes to keep the customer happy, to make things efficient,” says Fox.

The businesses have 15 full-time staff and a contractor network of around 35. The team includes a marketing manager in Canada; administrative staff in the UK; and an accountant, a client services manager and three additional staff providing telephony, tender writing and admin support in the Philippines.

Here he shares how he’s accessed support for his growth aspirations and how sourcing talent is the biggest challenge.

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How did you come to set up your business in Gisborne?

My father's Māori and we whakapapa to a small town on the east coast called Waipiro Bay. My mother's Filipino, and she's from a village called Balamban in Cebu. I was born in New Zealand, went to Waipiro Bay Primary School, and then I went to Ngata Memorial College in Ruatoria.

Then myself, my brother and my father moved to Australia where I spent 20 years. I had a banking and finance background in Australia, and then opened a couple of small businesses. At the back end of my time in Australia we had a 24/7 gym and we opened a consultancy business. And then we decided to sell up – we had a failure of a business, which didn't go too well, and I’d had enough in terms of stress levels.

Home is more up the coast, but we had four young kids and because of schools and sporting activities, Gisborne seemed the most logical place to be. I wanted to get a normal job and once I had my normal job, I just found it wasn't for me. It was too boring. So we went back into business in 2019 and hence why we’re here today.

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Have you been self-funded to this point, or have you received external investment?

We’ve been self-funded from our own pockets and gained bank funding through traditional means. And then we've been fortunate to get some public funding through Poutama and Te Puni Kōkiri. Trust Tairāwhiti as well has helped us [access] various types of Regional Business Partner programmes.

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In terms of local support agencies and networks, what have you tapped into?

Trust Tairāwhititrust has been a good sounding board and keeps us connected to what else is happening. So, for example, they'll bring in AI gurus from Callaghan and invite business owners to come in and be part of a presentation or a workshop. So when that stuff comes into the region, it's like, ‘boom, now I’ve got this idea. We can explore this in our business’.

Or it might be there's a funding pool that could be available – a student grant for R&D, or a Māori trust that's making funds available that could be beneficial for us – and because we're not proactively out there looking for opportunities of that nature or we're not connected into the circles for that information, it makes a huge difference for us to explore that.

And just general networking. So they might have a get-together with a presentation and drinks and nibbles so as a founder, you'll meet the senior members of local businesses or from companies outside of Gisborne. That gives you a different perspective on what else is happening in different industries, and then you can build relationships on the back of it.

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How have you found connecting with talent?

It's very hard. It's probably our biggest challenge. You don't get too far with job advertisements; you don't have a huge number of high-quality applicants. In a small city like Gisborne, the bulk of the time it’s, ‘do you know someone?’ And then if they don't have the core skills that you're after, you've got to kind of massage them into the role you need them to play in your business.

When I was in Sydney, it's such a huge talent pool; you're extremely spoilt for choice. But we just don't have that here.

We also look offshore. There's a big world out there and digitally you can connect staff through systems like Aircall and Zoom. But that’s really challenging when you're trying to train and coach people. It takes a long time, particularly in our line of work, which is quite finicky.

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What advice do you have for others thinking of starting up in a smaller city like Gisborne?

Take the time to think it through and pick apart the pros and the cons, because there are so many different factors to  consider.

I think a lot of people come here driven by the nostalgia of moving back home and have this whole ‘I'm going to give back to the community – I'm going to do it, and I'm going to prove everyone wrong’. But you’ve got to put the emotion aside and be real around, okay, is this the best decision for myself? Is this the best decision for my family? What are my business goals and can I actually make this work?

A lot of people come in and they unfortunately either fail or, because we don't have access to a lot of quality resourcing to help them understand ‘well, you need to do this in order for your business to go to the next level’, we're filled with a lot of one-man-bands, where their initial expectations and goals didn’t meet their reality. And some people just leave, so we lose a lot of talent because people haven't really thought it all through.

‍As told to Caitlin Sykes