What I learned starting a company at 19 on the Gold Coast

Sell the maths, not the panels

Rooftop solar in 2008 was a new product to most households. People did not want to be sold a panel. They wanted someone to work out, honestly, what a system would cost and what it would save them, and to explain it on the kitchen table. I did a lot of those conversations myself. Every property deal I have done since, including the development work in Lombok, starts the same way: the numbers first, in plain language.

Hire people better than you at the thing you are worst at

By the time International Solar Solutions had 40 staff, I was the worst installer and the worst bookkeeper in the building, and that was fine. A founder's job is to sell, to find the money and to make sure the right people are doing the rest.

Growth hides problems

A business adding customers every week can carry a lot of sloppiness. Supplier accounts stretch, paperwork slides, and nobody notices because the revenue keeps coming. It is only when growth stops that you find out what was underneath. Build the systems while the money is still flowing, not after.

Never hand it to people you cannot watch

This is the one that cost me. In 2011 I went to Bali to rebuild a resort and left the solar business with outside managers. They ran it into the ground: customers signed up and payments taken for systems that were never ordered, suppliers unpaid, staff gone. I closed the company and refunded the customers, 36 people lost their jobs, and in 2015 the regulator prosecuted the directors over payments taken in 2013 and 2014. I was fined and paid restitution. The full account is on the record.

The rule I took from it is absolute. Every company I run now has two signatories on its accounts, and no single manager controls customer money. If I cannot supervise a business, I do not own it.

Own the story

The worst version of your mistakes will be told by someone else if you do not tell it first. That is why this site has a record page, and why I would rather an investor read about 2015 from me than find it somewhere else.

Would I do it again at 19?

Yes. The trade, the sales floor, the hiring and the failure all taught me more than any course. But I would have read the contracts, and I would never have left.