KEY POINTS:
Rick Martin founded Albany as the new centre of Auckland's North Shore, literally doing some of the concrete work himself. No stranger to controversy, he looks back on how he started his property development business out of his truck and managed it through the explosive years, which included building the high-profile Nautilus apartment tower in the heart of Orewa. A firm advocate of getting a personal WOF every year, he is preparing to set off on a crusade he calls Brotherhood, a bike ride the length of New Zealand to raise awareness of the value of a simple annual check-up, including prostate cancer screening.
When I was 19 I went to Westhaven Marina to answer an ad for a crewmember to go to Bermuda. Their yacht was full, but the one next door was heading to Australia the next day. That yacht was only 50 feet and it was skanky. The old Australian guy was a real bastard. He said I'd be sick as a dog, that I was weak and my whole country was weak. He told me to be there the next day at nine, and added, 'Bet you don't show up.'
Reverse psychology. I showed up, and I didn't get sick. We went straight across to Melbourne. It took me out of my environment here, just cruising around in cars with my mates.
When I got to Australia I had $50 in my pocket, so I got a job that day. I spent four years over there. I went to towns with no money in my pocket, just in the bank, and I wouldn't let myself use that money. I would just get a job and start work. I came back with $4000.
Back in New Zealand I did labouring work, and until 1989 it was fantastic. Everything tightened after the stockmarket came down. I think it is as bad now - different, but as bad.
I told my son the other day, there are two ways of getting things: stealing or working. Working is a lot better for you.
Even as a kid I had high expectations for my life. Dad worked for the council and mum was a housewife with a part-time job in a dairy. I wanted a $30 slot car set and they weren't going to buy it, so I went around the neighbourhood and offered to mow lawns for $2 each. Then a guy was looking for someone to do the Auckland Star run, so I did that too. There's opportunity on your doorstep.
I left school at 15 and worked in a grocery shop, which was terrible money. My mum charged half of my wages for board - I'll talk to her about that some day. My dad gave me a talking-to because he was appalled that I'd had 18 jobs by the age of 18. He'd only had three jobs in his life, and he thought I was a failure. My view was that I was really good at getting jobs and I was never unemployed.
I am a petrolhead, and I have an Audi racecar, a Targa car. I've done a lot of racing - a couple of endurance races and five Targa Rallies. It is mentally difficult. The big Targa from Auckland to Wellington takes five days. Thousands of kilometres, and you have to navigate your way from one stage to the next. I think what Scott Dixon has done is fantastic. What a disciplined, focused young man.
Belief in yourself has to be the starting point. My life hasn't been against all odds, but it's had its moments of doubt, and you just have to get on with it. You have to be obsessive about what you do. I have plenty of fear. There are things I should have done but I didn't, and vice versa - like everybody. But I've been able to identify with that gut feeling each time.
When I have major disappointments I focus on how bad it could have been. Once, we tried to get a high-rise going in Hillary Square in Orewa. I spent $450,000 of my own money, issued a prospectus, but it wasn't right. I saw it wasn't working and I canned it.
Everyone in the project got paid - the PR, the radio and TV advertising. I stressed myself out and wasted $450,000, but it was my money and it spread around a lot of people and went into the New Zealand system, so where's the downside?
In 1997 I split up with my business partner and my wife at the same time. Clean slate. I totally redid all my goals. By the time I paid them both out there wasn't much equity left, which is why most of my projects date from 2000 onwards. I was left with an office and one piece of land and I just worked like a madman.
I went a decade or more working like that. Sure, some of it was stressful, frightening and frustrating - but a lot of it was like the night before you're flying away on an overseas holiday and you're so excited. I would be lying in bed at night, unable to sleep because of the thrill at what was happening with my life and what I had created.
The property market now is so quiet now, and anyway, I don't want to keep working that way. I have a regime. I have my breakfast and coffee and read the paper in the morning. I get up at 5 and go to the gym at 6. I really like that part of the day and if I don't cycle to the gym and work out, I don't feel good all day.
I have had a decade of slog and I'm going to be 50 next year. I want to reinvent myself again, and to do something positive. I thought the Brotherhood ride would be good. It will be uncomfortable, painful, and strenuous and when I've finished it I'll look back and think, hey, that was something different. It will lead to something else.
What is the Brotherhood ride? In November this year I will go for the ride of my life. I am going to cycle the length of New Zealand from Bluff to Cape Reinga. My aim is to encourage men throughout the country to have annual check-ups, including screening for prostate cancer starting now and every year on their birthday from thereon.
People might think I must be a hell of a cyclist to do this. I'm not. I'm just a normal guy, and anybody could do it, they just need the desire. By the time I start, I will have trained up to 300 or 400 kilometres a week. The last 100 kilometres I did was in 3:17. I'd take about four hours to do that distance on my own.
It will be very civilized. I will have breakfast in the morning and stop for lunch. It's about guys joining me on the ride. That is all I want. When I talk to people about it they ask if I'm going to hit them up for some money. I know what that's like - people come to me all the time looking for money for things but you never know what they do with it. So it's not about that. It's about education.
The Prostate Cancer Foundation says if everybody gets checked, the death rate from prostate cancer could drop by 40 to 50 percent. That might be 250 to 300 guys that may be alive if it's caught earlier. I don't need to invent a new cure. I don't need to raise any money to spend on research. I want to say at the end of it that we got 10,000 guys to go and get checked. It's not about the bike ride. It's about you saying to your friends, 'I am going to get checked, and you need to go too because I don't want to go to the funeral of any of my friends.'
There are four months to go until Brotherhood starts. I am not an elite cyclist, I'm just an ordinary guy. The first week will be the hardest and after that it will be just like a job. I am used to working physically hard. I was a foundation contractor and a concreter, and when I'd go to a new job my hands would be sore for a week. Then my body would get used to it and I'd keep going.
There will be a GPS device on the support vehicle, and people can log on and see where I am. It's about people joining us, not just donating money. I want to do something for guys because we're not that good at doing things for ourselves.
Every year on my birthday I get a health check - not just for prostate cancer but the whole thing. When I got to 45, my doctor said we should start doing prostate checks. It's just like when your car needs a service or a warrant, that big check list to be ticked off.
We have developed a check list, doing a full male Warrant of Fitness. You can print it from the website and take that to your doctor to check. Do it every year.
I understand how people don't want to know - who wants bad news? But the real question is: do you want bad news or really, really bad news.
I know things have changed a lot, but in my book, the guy has to go to work. It's his responsibility to provide the house, and to provide the income to keep that house. The woman has huge responsibilities as well, and if there is a double income they are both working to the same goal. The most dramatic effect on the household is when one dies, and the husband is quite likely to die before the wife.
Sometimes the door will open and it is your choice whether you want to go in. My next milestone is coming, I just don't know what it is yet.
My formula for market research has always been talking to friends and acquaintances about my plans and asking what they think. You can tell by the degree of enthusiasm whether an idea is a goer.
When we were a fledging company, I had a policy to try to sell something to anyone I met, and the people I used to encounter were fantastic. I hardly ever met anyone that I didn't like. There are a lot of great Kiwi businesses out there.
In 1993 I met a guy at a barbeque who said Albany would be the city of the future. He suggested William Pickering Drive. There was nothing there - you could have fired a shot and not hit anybody.
The whole area was still recovering from the stockmarket crash, and there was demand for small office warehouse units. We did 12 units. I worked on the site, did all the concrete work myself and pre-leased or pre-sold the whole lot. Because I was on-site all day people were asking me about it. You become so immersed in your product you become a specialist. Just like you could take me around your house and say where the sun comes in. You know your product.
We priced the units at under $100,000, which no one was doing. It was a 12% return. No agents wanted a bar of it, so I put an ad in the paper. We also stumbled on radio advertising, which was unheard of for property. I would do a live call with Chris Carter on Newstalk ZB and my cellphone would be full - they only held 20 calls at the time.
When we sold the whole 30 we went to a new site, and another 22 units. By that time I just couldn't cope with the enquiries. I went on the radio and said we were using Milford Real Estate. All the phones in the office started ringing all at once and one of the residential guys came up to me afterwards and said he had never seen anything like it.
The best thing about what we did is either it worked brilliantly or not at all, and we had about a 70 percent success rate. I'd get a conditional contract on a piece of land for six months, and we would put $20,000 to $50,000 into the basic marketing. We would have a concept drawn up, test the market to make sure it would sell, and carry on and apply for consent. By the date that we had to go unconditional, often we had the project completely sold and consented. You can't do that now.
In those days we didn't have an office. I had no email. I had a cell phone and a truck, and a Staffordshire bull terrier called Ralph, and we cruised around and I worked out of the truck.
I learned not to buy the cheapest site on the street. You are better to pay more for the corner site. I rate sites from one to 10, and won't go lower than an eight. The product will always obtain a premium if it is in a better street. It costs exactly the same to build on a cheaper section as on the best site.
We did 372 Rosedale Road, which is now our office. It was new concept at the time - retail on the ground floor with apartments above. I must have driven past that site a hundred times and never noticed it. It caught me by surprise. It was my patch and I didn't even see that opportunity. The owner didn't want to sell it. I kept offering more money until he sold it, and we set a record for land sales in North Harbour. I knew I just had to have that site.
I am good at visualizing the finished project. Only two dates were ever important to me in a project - the day we started and the day we finished.
A lot of people thought I was mad but I knew that if we built an apartment building in Orewa - Nautilus - people would buy it. I said to my small team before we started the project - I got everyone in there - 'You're about to start something that will change your lives, and you'll look back and say to your children and grandchildren that it was something you helped create.'
Rick Martin at A Glance
* More than 17 years in property development. Built and sold over 1000 units.
* Left Orewa College at 15 years old with no qualifications.
* Has an ingrained belief that anything is possible.
* Immensely proud of Cornerstone and the team.
* Loves the feeling after exercise - although how he feels before it can sometimes mean there is no exercise done.
* Married to Tania and father of Elliott, Corban and Munroe - four people that make him proud to be a father and husband.
Goalgetting Tips For Today
* Eat breakfast regularly
* Take yourself through an annual W.O.F to maintain perfect health.
* Learn to take the good with the bad, pick yourself up and start-over as many times as it takes. "It could have been worse" is a good start.
* Remember that you are educating yourself everyday - you don't have to be in a classroom. What have you learned today?
* Have hobbies and interests that take your mind off the hard yards. Downtime refreshes the brain.
* Be ready and willing to reinvent yourself at any age.
* Remember that if you are showing leadership in your field, you will not always be the most popular person on the block. When you stick your head out - be prepared for the great view, and also the knives.
Dwayne Alexander, our goal guru is founder of LiveMyGoals, the social network for goalgetters.
