Leading questions: Jonathan Ling

Jonathan Ling is chief executive of Fletcher Building. Photo / Sarah Ivey

Are you generally frugal with your own spending or do you consider yourself a big spender?

Generally, I'd be frugal. We still run a very normal life. I'm not one for big spending, flash cars or big houses. I've got a BMW X3. For the summer, I'm going just out of Melbourne to Sandy Point. (Ling's favourite windsurfing spot two hours' drive southeast of the city. Wind surfers there set speed records as the strong air flows up from Tasmania, allowing them to sail right to the shore's edge.) I'll do some wind surfing and some fishing. You can catch snapper, whiting and salmon.

Do you like shopping? If so what do you like to spend your money on? If not what do you dislike about it?

No, my wife will tell you I don't like shopping. I get a sore back, walking around on concrete floors for hours.

Can you recall an experience (good or bad) from your youth that taught you something important about the value of money?

A particular instance? I come from a fairly working class family so we never had much money. How can I explain this? I can remember instances where mum and dad struggled to pay electricity and phone bills and that's probably left me with a fairly conservative view of financial management so I never have the same pressures: pay your bills on time, or rather have enough to pay your bills on time.

Do you have a piece of advice or a favourite quote about money for those just starting out.

One of the things I talk about a lot is that most people make business far more complicated than it needs to be. I work on the two-bucket system: money in and money out. As long as the cash coming in is more than the cash going out, you'll be fine. Like you said in that profile of business leaders, cash is king. When you're looking at a business about to go broke, invariably more cash is going out than coming in. Revenue is sales but operating cash flow tells you how much cash you're playing with. I've had my own business and run very big businesses like Fletcher Building. I had a little business that made computer controls for road marking machines. The business was called Engineering Innovation. In the early days of venture capital in the mid-1980s, I met an inventor and we went into partnership and made them and sold them. It's still going today, so the technology was good. I sold out and decided small business was not for me.