Bartercard maestro looks forward to trading places

IAN JONES

Position: Managing director, Bartercard NZ, Albany

Company description: A business-to-business goods and services trading system.

Number of employees: 86

Age of company: 6 years in September


What makes your day at work?

Seeing individual staff members achieve their targets and the results they aimed for. I get a buzz out of seeing them coming to the top because it means I've helped create someone and make him/her into something.

How did you get where you are today?

I used to be with the ANZ Bank in Tasmania, but when they moved me from sales to administration, I resigned - gaining a career. I worked at AMP for a while and then the opportunity to join Bartercard came up. After starting at the ground floor and working my way up, my wife and I set up Bartercard Tasmania whose success led us here.

What's the most important lesson you learnt on your way up?

To set goals and be committed to those goals. Make them public and add an element of pain if you don't achieve them. For example, I wanted to get back into an exercise regime, so I set myself some targets and said if I didn't achieve them I'd bring in my wine cellar to work, dress up as a waiter and pour it all down their throats.

Fortunately I did achieve it. The point is, you have to be committed to your goals. You can't have all good with no bad, there's a balance. It there's going to be a reward when you achieve something, there's also going to be a consequence if you don't.

What pitfalls have you come across in your career? How have you dealt with them?

Management messing me around. I think management is the biggest problem in most companies, they are too stubborn, defensive and don't like being shown up. A manager's job is to get the best out of people, both for the staff's and the company's benefit.

What advice would you give to a young person starting out on a business career?

Read books. Not necessarily from front to back. For example, I'll get one on sales, read a chapter and then try to apply what I have read.

They also need to sit down with their superiors, set goals and commit to them.

What is the biggest challenge for your company? For the economy today?

At the moment it's keeping up with our growth. We need experienced staff but we can't poach them as they are all home-grown. We have to train and educate them, so recruitment is a real problem.

The economy isn't a challenge because the tougher it gets in the cash economy the more inclined businesses are to look for alternative ways of trading.

But one thing I do think is ridiculous is Government's inability to address the growing retirement problem. Incentives encouraging people to save for retirement are negligible.

If there was one thing you could have done differently, what would it have been?

Learnt a lot more about negotiations when I was younger. You need the ability to negotiate all your life and it doesn't come naturally. I would have put a lot more time into understanding negotiation styles and how to deal with people.

What ambitions do you have?

To double the size of the company in the next 12 months and open more franchises - with the ultimate goal of achieving full coverage across the country.

Personally, I want to move off some day and head Bartercard Europe. That won't be possible for another several years though. I'd like to be somewhere where it's not too hot or cold and Europe just fascinates me - just the age of the place, I guess.

How do you relax?

I'm just learning to fly gliders. It's a great place to get away from mobile phones. Also I have a four-year-old son and I love doing father/son things on Saturdays like kite-flying or bike-riding.

* Ian Jones spoke to Lesley Springall.