Small Business: Passion first step to success

Cecilia Robinson is a founder of au pair agency Au Pair Link and, food-delivery firms My Food Bag NZ and Australia. Photo / Jason Oxenham

Know what you want, say business owners who started early.

Serial entrepreneur Richard Gill was bitten by the business bug early in life.

He was a serious electronics enthusiast as a child - he built his first computer at 10 - and was always on the lookout for ways to fund his expensive hobby.

At 12, as colour TV was taking over the country, he hit on his first venture - selling monitors for home computers, just coming on the market.

"People would pay me to take away their crappy old black-and-white TVs.

"I'd rip out all the TV circuitry and sell them to people for a couple of hundred bucks as monitors for their home computers.

"I did hundreds. It was easy and a lot of fun and I got the bug for it [entrepreneurship] then," says Gill.

Gill has gone on to build multiple technology companies and is driven, he says, by a desire to bring disruptive change to industries.

"If you're going to be innovative as an entrepreneur you have to have an all-consuming mission that you're passionate about. If you don't have it, you have to find it."

Phil Richards has started eight businesses, including a chain of optometry stores, the cloud-based payroll company SmartPayroll, an international butter chicken business and a chain of accounting practices.

He bought his first business - an optometry shop - with his wife, Michelle, an optometrist, at 26, which the pair built into a small chain and eventually sold to OPSM.

"I used to get such a buzz out of helping people see better.

"I saw that by going into business I would be able to help more people. I could have fun and make an impact," says Richards.

"Business is creative and I love doing all the innovation, strategy and marketing side of things and getting other people to do what they're great at so I only have to do the bits I enjoy.

"It's not all about the money."

Cecilia Robinson is a founder of au pair agency Au Pair Link and, with celebrity chef Nadia Lim, food-delivery firms My Food Bag New Zealand and My Food Bag Australia.

She felt driven to set up multiple businesses.

Her passion, Robinson says, is supporting and finding solutions for working mums.

"I also think part of being an entrepreneur is about taking risks and backing yourself and when you make mistakes, learning quickly to remedy them," she says.

"We made many mistakes inside Au Pair Link, but because we learned from them, we came out in a good position, and we haven't made any of the same mistakes in My Food Bag."

Coming up in Small Business: The amount of video being published online is growing. How are small businesses using video, and how are they creating value with their content. If you have a story to share, drop me a note: nzhsmallbusiness@gmail.com.