---

Staff post about: John Ilhan Become an Author

Tweet

---

---

It was quite tough, not many opportunities. I remember in primary school, one of my teachers said, ‘As for you young man, you haven't got much of a future.' Okay, why don't I get a job at Ford and then re-apply?

Just watch me. I'm going to get that job in the office in two weeks - you'll see. I'm going to come to work in a suit.

It wasn't difficult. Because of the price of the phones in those days I thought you had to educate people about them. I remember an NEC 9B that was $5500 and yet I had sold a hundred of those to one customer. It wasn't about sales in the sense of opening a shop and waiting for people to come in. I was active in going out to the public and making sure they knew what was available.

If I'm going to work so hard, I might as well work for myself.

The first five years of my business life were a blur because I spent all day, all night in the shop worrying about every cent. I used to sleep in the store on the floor.

I couldn't pull out because the lease was in my name, and after a while I wanted to prove them wrong, that I could succeed no matter that they threw at me. That sort of gave me the passion.

I'd take all the confusion away and open their minds up to the advantages of having a mobile phone - especially in businesses because that was the main market. I concentrated on certain businesses like construction. It was easy for them to understand the benefits and see the benefits on the bottom line by having their guys on the site and the foreman all connected by mobile phone. Sure, $5500 was a lot of money for a phone, but the value and time and manpower savings of being able to keep in touch with the site foreman and crew was bigger than that. Once I built up a name, people trust that I knew what I was talking about and that I wouldn't bamboozle them.

It takes a lot more to run a good business than just trailing commissions or kickbacks otherwise everybody would succeed, wouldn't they?

If you treat staff as your equal, they'll roll their sleeves up to get the job done.

It should be democratic, it should be on the table. Talk about the facts, performance, no emotion. Freedom of speech, whether it is me or the managing director down to the youngest courier driver. And you can do that in a smaller company.

My experience working for a big company was that I was never given the freedom, I was never rewarded or appreciated. I learnt from that experience that people should be given a go. It is a simple thing, but most companies don't do it. How can you get people to really commit and care about your business like they would their own business? That's the trick.

My PA is a young girl. She is not qualified, but she has been trained. Sure she could learn a lot more, but we are sending her to a school and we are paying for it. But she is so dedicated and committed and has such a great work ethic - why wouldn't you work on someone like that and develop them?

My staff, if they dare sell a product, like for like, on a higher margin than somebody else, they will get two warnings and they will be out. Because you are robbing.

Telstra came to dealers and said, 'Who wants to grow and open some shops? We will support you with a few dollars but it will be up to you to make the stores ongoing entities. Well, most dealers wanted more guarantees, but me, who had nothing, said I'd do anything. I knew if they supported you with three or four shops they were not going to leave you in the lurch. You know, I was the only one who put his hand up. Out of 20 dealers or more, I was the only one who did take the risk, and it was the best decision I ever made.

You give me any person who has had a crippled child, had to bring themselves up, single parents - anybody who has had adversity in their life, I'll take them any day of the week. And that is my point - they are made because of experience. You are not born with it.

When I was a kid my parents couldn't drive me to soccer training, so I would walk the four kilometres every week. You know what? I didn't get picked for a game all year. I was about 13 and I used to get disappointed. But I still walked to training every week. Then next year I got a couple of games but kept getting dropped. But I kept on walking to training. The following year they made me captain. That was a good lesson for me about perseverance.

Don't let anyone say you can't do it. To be successful, you need to fail. The more failures you have, the more successes you will have. People just don't get that.

It was part of a property settlement, the first $100,000 cheque I had ever drawn that to me was like millions. I wasn't insured because I trusted them. That just killed me. I learned you can't trust everyone.

I was very naïve when I started; I learnt the hard way. I do trust people, and when you build a relationship, it becomes more of a handshake. But a really serious, big decision - it has got to be on paper. Look at Telstra and us at the moment. Even though it is on paper, it is still being disputed.

Try and build a business that is not just reliant on one supplier. Don't make yourself so niche that somebody else can just come along and cut off your legs.

[My wife] will go to the Prada shop and I will go to the mobile phone shop.

I think my people skills were always better than my selling skills. People trust me and I repaid that by doing the right thing by them. So they stayed with me.

The number one strategy of all companies should be advertising. What you market as your brand is basically what you are, who you are. The marketing says everything about a company. That's why I have always marketed heavily.

It's a very, very tough market. So unless you do a really good job, you buy the right products from the manufacturers, you service the customer, they keep coming back, they bring their friends in, it's all about numbers, numbers, numbers. We react very quickly in the market. We can make quick changes.

This may seem simple, but you need to give customers what they want, not what you think they want. And, if you do this, people will keep coming back.

I was sitting in my other office, Jack's coffee shop in Brunswick - I did most of my business there because my shop office was so small - with Sean Taylor, a mate who was state manager for Triple M (FM radio). Anyway, we were thinking how I needed a catchy name. His colleague was next door checking out the mobile phones and he came back and said, 'You blokes are crazy, you're giving away this and you're giving away that'. When he said 'crazy', Sean and I looked at each other and said: 'Yes!'

So next thing he's calling a mate, Johnny Hillier, to say we wanted a logo saying Crazy John's. Johnny did it, sent it by courier. I think it cost $20 and it hasn't changed since, other than the legs aren't there anymore and we added blue to it and we've got a more modern phone in it.

The industry was saying, 'What an idiot! What is he doing?' The carrier, Telstra, would constantly say, 'Don't do it, it's not corporate, not professional', and today, well, today it has worked bucket loads.'

I know it sounds silly, but I was always confident of where things would end up. It was almost like, though I was not in control of my destiny, I knew where I would end up.

Everyone should be allowed to try their own style. There are these key principles or values but anything outside those - do what you want. I don't care what you do as long as you can demonstrate you are growing the business and the numbers stack up.

When I look back on the decisions I've made in my life it's easy to see the junctions, those pivotal moments that changed the future. For me, the first one was managing the Brunswick store. I had no management experience, but I knew how to sell and taking that chance was the first step. Once I had proven I could manage a store and make it profitable I knew that there was no limit to what I could do.

Related Articles

  John Ilhan: The Early Years of One Crazy Mobile Phone Entrepreneur
  From Crazy to Crazy Successful: How Ilhan Created Millions From Mobile
  Lesson #4: “Don’t make yourself so niche that somebody can just come along and cut off your legs.”
  Lesson #3: “To be successful, you need to fail”
  Lesson #2: “I learnt from that experience that people should be given a go.”
  Moving Up With Mobiles: Ilhan Makes Good
  Lesson #5: “The number one strategy of all companies should be advertising.”
  Lesson #1: “It takes a lot more to run a good business than just trailing commissions or kickbacks.”
  Words of Inspiration
  Putting together a press release
  Why Is The First Auto Insurance Quote Not Always The Best Quote?
  Perspective
  Marketing Software
  On the Subject of Marketing Integrity
  What’s a friend worth to you?
  FYI...
  Car Insurance Discounts
  How to Get the Best Rates on SR22 Car Insurance
  Wikipedia for Patents
  Why You Shouldn't Ask For The Job

Related Forum Posts

Facebook application
Re: Greetings Hi from John Alexander at SearchEngineWorkshops
Facebook applications
Re: 40 cents per dollar is spent in a franchised business
Re: Best Internet Marketing Strategy

Share this article. Fund someone's dream.

Share this post and you'll help support entrepreneurs in Africa through our partnership with Kiva. Over $50,000 raised and counting - Please keep sharing! Learn more.

Tweet