Kiwi Business Story: Hamish White at NOW

 
Hamish White is the owner of NOW and an Owner Manager Programme alumni.

This Kiwi Business Story is based on a podcast from 21 September 2022 and all figures and facts quoted are from that time. You can enjoy the complete podcast here.

Who is Hamish and what are your passions?

I see myself as a typical guy from the provinces – very proud of where I come from. For me it’s all about Hawke’s Bay and I’m probably a guy that just enjoys the simple things in life. I love my water sports, and I love spending time with family and friends.

What has your career journey looked like? And how did that lead to NOW?

I got involved in the early days of transactional banking – ATMs, EFTPOS, credit cards and things like that, but on this quest to live in Hawke's Bay I pretty much chucked up my corporate career, and set up a marketing and design agency in Hawke's Bay which ended up being quite successful.

I had customers that were in the telecommunications industry with challenges, and I found that I was enjoying working more on their businesses than my own.

I've always held this deep belief that as an industry, Kiwis had been deprived of good service. I sold my agency and on the back of that there was a massive opportunity to not be the biggest but just be the best and build a telecommunications company that lived and breathed service . 

So that was kind of the ‘aha moment’. There was a very small wireless Internet Service Provider in Hawke’s Bay, and that, I guess, constituted a takeover. [We] pretty much dismantled that and reassembled it in April 2012 and launched NOW.

What's been a challenge on your journey? And what have you learned from those challenges?

It’s been 10 years of highs and lows. If I talk about some of the key learnings, you've got to hold true to what you believe is your vision. That’s the key thing.

The other thing is, you've got to look after yourself on this journey. Quite often it's too easy to not look after yourself. Any business asks a lot of the principal owner and the chief executive. It’s probably one of the biggest things I took from the Owner Manager Programme (OMP) – look after yourself. That was where I got introduced to the concept of meditation and things like that. 

The other thing is being really careful to not lose your sense of self and just remaining authentic. Business is about being comfortable with being uncomfortable. It's also about being comfortable with having really uncomfortable conversations, because the consequences of not having those conversations can be really dire for people.

Tell us about your Icehouse experience. When and where did you hear about is?

A really good friend of mine did OMP –  two or three years prior to me going – and he really encouraged me to consider doing it. I fell into that trap where just periodically over probably 12-15 months, he’d say ‘So have you given any thought to The Icehouse?’

I had every excuse under the sun in my own mind as to why I wouldn't do it and he said ‘Hamish, you can’t afford not to do this’. So it was an almighty push and I just got so much out of it. 

What were some of those reasons for not doing it?

Money was one, but probably the biggest one was my perception that I just didn't have the time. 

Was there anything you implemented into your business and lifestyle since doing the programme?

Where do I start? I'd come back (after each block) and interact with the business differently. And although it [OMP] was “work” it was so invigorating. 

One of the big things that I've already touched on was looking after myself. Have I always done justice to that? No. But an awareness of my significance, without sounding or coming across as self-important, and the dependency of the staff and investors and things like that, made me take looking after myself a lot more seriously.

I did suffer a little bit from this whole impostor syndrome. It seems to be spoken about a lot more now. I'd never known what the hell it was until I went to The Icehouse!

It is something that you do struggle with as a business owner in New Zealand. You end up holding a pretty privileged position… but I think I've come to accept that I've earned the right. 

The other thing would be around the people aspect. We know we're only as good as our people, but I think I came away with a greater appreciation of that. We are a people centric business. 

I'm surrounding myself with really, really good people and making sure that I'm not getting in the way of constraining our potential and growth. Learning to let go and having the people around you that give you that confidence to let go, is a key to unconstrained growth.