Otara girl knew she would be successful

By ADAM JONES

The film and television industry has another name for entrepreneurs. They call them producers.

Producers make things happen. Sometimes a project is their idea, often it is the dream of a director or writer. They put together the people and funds to get a project off the ground.

Traditionally, producers are European, male and 30-something. Producer Rhonda Kite is helping turn this stereotype around.

A successful entrepreneur with four businesses, she is not only female but a Maori, who started her entrepreneurial activity relatively late - at 38.

On the Gem statistic that Maori are the most entrepreneurial ethnicity in New Zealand she says, "That really tickles me. That's something we're really good at - ideas"

Ms Kite says she, "always had this vision that I was destined for something bigger and better than what I was ever doing at the time". This belief eventually led her into the film and television business.

Her definition of an entrepreneur is someone who is always looking for opportunities. She explains opportunity as "those little gems that will jump up and you are the only one in the room who has seen them".

Opportunities weren't always apparent in Ms Kite's journey to become an entrepreneur. She was brought up in Otara, South Auckland, during the 1960s, where, she says, "you didn't have ideas above your station".

She left school at 15 and was pregnant by 16. With help from her parents, she travelled and worked in Australia and England.

When she returned, she decided she had to build a career. She worked on one of New Zealand's first computers, at General Foods in 1973. It was then she "fell in love with technology".

After "bluffing" her way into an accounts job at the Dairy Board, Ms Kite worked her way up in business.

When she was made redundant from a finance position in 1993, she decided: "I had to take control of my own life".

She met the owner of a sound production facility and got excited about the business.

This led to a five-year partnership in the facility. "In hindsight," she says, "I was so naive it wasn't funny. It was damned hard."

True to Gem report findings, Ms Kite's first venture struggled with funding.

"I guess the reality of not knowing where the next buck was coming from really hit me. I came from an environment of stability, where you always had to have the money coming in."

But business wasn't just about money, "it was about being on a mission - doing it for myself."

Ms Kite eventually bought out her partner, and Eden Terrace Audio Group now specialises in post-production sound for television and film.

Her foray into sound production sparked other business ideas - opportunities which came from looking for "ways to work within Maori using technology, the business techniques and the business nous that I had".

Enter Waiata Productions, a company that re-voices cartoons in Maori. In turn, dialogue work and work with sound led to developing a sound production software product.

All this opened the door to a career as a producer and her own production company, Kiwa films.

Ms Kite believes there is a wealth of talent and entrepreneurial spirit in the Maori community. Among the reasons for this, she suggests, is the Maori sense of community which extends beyond the nuclear family.

"Our culture is about community. The old tribal ways have gone out the window ... in other ways we have retained a lot ... The next nucleus outside of [the family] are the people who work with me and for me."

The Poutama Trust-sponsored trip to Toronto later this year highlights the sense of community in Maori film and television.

On this trip to the imaginative Canadian Aboriginal Media Arts Board's second media arts festival, 10 key Maori film industry figures will pitch ideas for possible co-productions.

Entrepreneurs have an eye for an opportunity - seeing where there is room for expansion or innovation.

In this respect, Ms Kite thinks, Maori are more open to the bigger picture.

"Our peripheral vision is always going, scanning, whether we know it or not, for opportunity in business, for our families, for ourselves personally or just because you want another fun thing to do."

The Gem report found that New Zealand has a prevalence of older entrepreneurs. Ms Kite agrees, and feels the "tall poppy syndrome" may have some thing to do with this.

She believes we often hold back our risk-taking and entrepreneurship when we are young because we are "like crayfish, dragging down whoever wants to get out of the tank". When we get older, this peer pressure recedes and we are more likely to follow our ideas.

She sees the New Zealand overseas experience as an important factor in our overall entrepreneurship.

"You come back with an appreciation of what you've got."

Life experience is also an important factor in becoming entrepreneurial, she says: "To think outside the square, you generally have to have had experiences outside of the square."

The Otara girl who loved visualising stories in her head now brings those images to life on screen. Rhonda Kite is currently producing eight new episodes of Makutu, a series that weaves Maori legend into contemporary settings.

GEM Special Report