KEY POINTS:
In the words of Bob Dylan... She takes just like a woman, she makes love just like a woman, she aches just like a woman, but she breaks just like a little girl...
And that's Annette Presley, pretty much. She is a composite of several Annettes. Party Annette has the explosive chainsaw laugh that the word "earthy" doesn't begin to describe. Bolshy Multi-millionaire Businesswoman Annette campaigns fearlessly against strangulation by giant Telecom.
Thoughtful Annette marvels at how far she's come and believes she has to teach people how to launch themselves out of restricted, frightened lives to do remarkable things.
And there is Vulnerable Annette, the most important Annette of all. Understanding Vulnerable Annette is the key to understanding Presley. Vulnerable Annette is the reason for the other Annettes. The other Annettes exist to subdue the vulnerable one. It's Presley's extraordinary vulnerability that produced the vaulting ambition, the drive and the grit to come this far and to achieve what she has.
To the world at large, her vulnerability isn't apparent. She can seem as hard as nails, frightened of nothing. Some regard her as coarse and loud. But in person, on her own, in the quiet reflective moments away from the crowd, the vulnerability is real, surprising and ever present. Despite the millions she's made, the grand Auckland waterfront house, the fame and the tough campaigning, she is terrified of "being hurt". On the occasions I've approached her to do a piece like this, her reply has always been a suddenly childlike "Are you going to hurt me?"
And all the way through this interview, Vulnerable Annette is lurking. She hangs in the air round Presley like a misty octopus ink. She's a guardian sylph, a praetorian spirit, emerging and retreating, ebbing and flowing, in and out of sight. You catch her suddenly watching you from inside Presley's eyes. This interview, she says, is the bravest thing she's done for eight months.
Dragons' Den scared her, too. Absolutely scared her.
"But I knew that for that very reason I needed to do it. But people see me doing that show and think, 'God, she is so confident, she's such a dragon'. I believe if you take yourself out of the comfort zone, the chances are that you can be the best at it if you really enjoy doing it and loving it. I really believe that, and I live true to it. Which is why I'm doing this with you. You don't achieve anything in life unless it terrifies you at the beginning, I believe."
We talk in the beautiful marble and concrete house she built on the very edge of Takapuna beach, walled and private, perched on the water directly across from Rangitoto. The house has gorgeous views and airy spaces. There are bright soft furnishings, colourful art work and a luxurious open kitchen. In a wall, there's a vast soothing aquarium, with rocks and fish and waving coral. It's the kind of house she made up her mind to have when she strolled this beach many years ago as a poor South Auckland girl with big dreams.
"We all dream. I dreamed of moving out of that house in Manurewa. I dreamed of moving on from there. I spend a lot of time speaking in different places round New Zealand, and I love it. I speak to schools, women's groups and small towns, because I drive through there and I see my childhood. And to begin to dream of living somewhere like this, surrounded by beauty and possibility, wasn't even in my mind when I was a little girl. So I feel really proud this has all happened."
That's why she speaks out of town. "People talk to me and tell me I've saved them, and I see where they're at. And I know where they're at because I've lived in that world. See, I'm lucky. I've worked hard. But it gives me the opportunity to show others it can happen."
And that's why she's agreed to this interview, she says. Putting her head in the sand because she's had a tough year doesn't cut it with Presley, because with riches comes responsibility. And it has been a tough year. Her marriage to her business partner and mentor Malcolm Dick, with whom she has two young children, broke up. It can throw you to the wind, a marriage break-up, I say. How did she handle it? "Oh, I think like everybody in a situation like that. It's been my annus horribilis."
But Presley ended the marriage, didn't she? "I think it was a mutual decision. Change is part of life, isn't it? I know I'm a better person now than I was a year ago because I've looked really different challenges in the eye, whether it was betrayal by trusted people around me or whether it was being attacked in the national media."
Betrayal by trusted people? Attacks in the media?
Well, the media love a super-rich domestic stoush, and there was that press release that said Presley was stepping down from CallPlus, the company she and Malcolm Dick own jointly. Its provenance was never clear, but you could read between the lines. Either way, it looked like an ouster by an estranged husband, and it came as a complete surprise to Presley. She was snorkelling off the back of her yacht Sea Toy in Fiji at the time. The calls came in fast and furious, and Presley threw the cellphone overboard. She came home to find her private life laid bare in the Sunday papers. People who are not used to that feel invaded and attacked when it happens. Been there, got the T-shirt.
Presley grew up poor in Manurewa. She says her childhood had times of happiness. "But it was a childhood that taught me resilience, and I think that's one of the things that's made me successful today, and it's one of the things that came out of this year again for me. That the resilience I learned in my childhood..." She pauses.
"Most of the very successful people I know, dare I say it, had a dysfunctional childhood. And the more resilience you have, the more successful you're going to be."
There was the outburst from Presley's mother last year that Presley ignores her and hasn't given her a penny. "My mother's had her problems, Paul, and Sunday newspaper competition has given her the opportunity to find her voice. But she's sick, and I think it's sad to exploit people, to put them in that position."
So is there more than people know about the childhood in Manurewa? "More than will ever come out in the Sunday paper."
And there she is again, Vulnerable Annette, watching every move you make from inside those eyes. The face, the sudden caution in the voice, tell you there is stuff in there you'll never be told, deep, mysterious wounds covered with the hard lacquer of resilience. Go near them, even imply them, and the velvet wall comes up. I've become alert over the years to being deflected during interviews, but Presley flicks me away effortlessly. I don't realise it until later.
But the resilience and the toughness too! What a story it is, of how Presley and Malcolm Dick made their fortunes in Australia.
"We arrived in Australia. We had no furniture. We started up in a garage of an apartment. All the experts who came to see us said, 'You're going to fail. It's just a matter of when'. Our third business partner-to-be backed out because we were going to fail. And I broke my leg in a car accident. I mean, we had everything against us and three legs."
As Presley tells it, one day Malcolm said, "It's not going to work, we have to go home."
Presley says she could not face coming back to New Zealand with her tail between her legs.
"Too many people said we were going to fail, and I knew we were going to do it.
"I went to see an engineer called Alan Sangster. He had no business. He had no idea what he was doing, business-wise, and I did a deal with him where we could re-sell his service. And that day we stayed.
"And that was the turning point between coming home and creating a $100 million turnover company." They opened for business in Australia on April Fool's Day, 1992, sold up six years later in 1998 and found themselves fabulously rich.
Presley, now 43, is a keen student of the lessons of her journey. She has an acute understanding of the opposing forces of life. It's all there in the speeches she gives round the country.
If you're not failing, she says, you're not learning. If you're not making mistakes, you're not risking. If you're not risking, you can't succeed.
So you'll succeed, but you'll fail too, she says. You'll get it right, and you'll get it wrong. If you aren't feeling the fear, you aren't trying something big enough. If you stay in your comfort zone, you'll go nowhere. Profit, fame, fortune and success are all a function of risk and danger, she says with the ease of someone who's said the words aloud, like a mantra, many times. And Vulnerable Annette's made danger a friend. "I don't know anyone who is successful, including you, who doesn't have a fear, even though they've done it a million times, that this time it might not be as good as the last time. And I believe that's one of the keys to success. If I'm not scared, I'm not going to do my best, and if I'm not going to do my best, I'd rather not do it."
What does she think people think of her? And does she care? "Depends on the day. Being honest. Depends on the day. And people always have an opinion. I'm sure some people, because I call a spade a spade, find that challenging. I can't stop being who I am. I take the good and leave the bad."
And she gives back. If it's true that you can learn a lot about people by examining the causes they embrace, Presley's are worthy of study. "I don't believe in shirking away from the charities that people would prefer not to support because they might be controversial. I think that's the reason I support them. That's the battling side of me that makes me help underdogs."
So she supports Sensible Sentencing. She believes we do not support victims of crime, and something has to be done. She is involved in helping children who've suffered violence in the home. She's involved with Kidz First Hospital in South Auckland. She supports Women in Technology because that's her passion.
"We don't have many women in technology because they don't believe they can succeed in it."
And there's Dress for Success, a charity which helps women dress well for their first job interviews. When she failed her AUT course and couldn't get a job, her dad told her to ring round all the computer companies and go out there and get a job, and that's what she did. Her grandmother gave Presley her suit to wear for the interview and paid for a hairdresser.
"That's why I support Dress for Success. The clothes you wear change how you feel about yourself."
The committed, driven Teacher Annette Presley schleps her masters-in-life round the country. Anyone can grow beyond a tiny life. You can dare to dream big. And believe in yourself.
"You must believe in yourself, and when you don't, act like you believe in yourself and belief will come.
"Just like when I first did your show and I was scared out of my wits. I did it okay. I ran home, watched the tape. I must have watched it five times because I was scared so much. I was petrified."
So you have your dream, and you take action, and you keep going, no matter what. The lessons pour out of Presley from a life lived large, hard and fully. Be passionate. You'll only succeed if you believe passionately in what you're doing. But you must take action, you must take a step in a direction. Even if it's in the wrong direction, you can always change. The worst thing is indecision. The worst thing you can do is sit and do nothing. Say it with conviction, and say it with courage.
"If I say it with conviction and with courage, then you're going to believe what I'm saying, and I'm going to believe it, too."
It's great advice. It's got me all fired up. I want it! I'm buying it!
As a salesperson, by the way, how does she rate herself?
"The best."
And that might well be so.
