FIZZING for success
Israel Whitley is a young entrepreneur determined to get more Kiwis into work. He’s defying expectations – except his own. Jehan Casinader reports.
The alarm goes off at 4.45am. Israel Whitley jumps out of bed and feeds Yodi, his bald, tall-eared cat. “I bought a cat to chill me out. But as soon as he wakes up, he’s fizzing – running up the walls. Everyone says, ‘Geez, this cat is just an animal version of you!’”
By 5.30am, Whitley is at the gym. He’ll run or bike before taking an ice shower. As jets of freezing water bounce off his skin, he tries to control his breathing.
While many of us are hitting the snooze button, Whitley arrives at the Eden Terrace offices of Aotearoa Labour Hire (ALH), the company he founded four years ago, at age 21.
With a team of bright young staff, Whitley is chasing a big dream: to make ALH the biggest temporary recruitment business in New Zealand.
“I want to put a thousand Kiwis into work every single day,” he says. “And I’m not gonna slow down until we get there.”
Whitley credits his father, Ian, with giving him a strong work ethic. When his schoolboy football team lost a game, Ian would make him walk home – a four-kilometre trek.
“Dad’s whole mentality was winning comes first, having fun comes second. Was that healthy? Not at all. But it made me ultra-competitive. Losing was never an option.”
As a young lad, Whitley wanted to be a builder. At 19, he was doing an apprenticeship in Auckland when he was mugged during a night on the town. His shoulder was badly injured, and he had to find another career path.
Whitley wondered whether he could create his own labour hire company, and put other young tradies into short-term work.
Back then, in 2016, very few labour firms were advertising on Facebook. Whitley put up a post, calling for people who needed employment. Experience required: none.
“I was like, ‘Hey. You want a job? Cool. You’re my guy.’ I was so desperate to make it work, I would have put a dog onto a construction site if the dog showed me enough initiative – and could hold a hammer,” he laughs.
He cold-called construction managers and tried to woo them by shouting coffees and beers.
“I was willing to pick up the little jobs that the big companies weren’t interested in. I said, ‘Here’s my number. Call me whenever, and I’ll get workers to you.’”
But most of those workers were duds. The first few times Whitley sent his recruits to building sites, they didn’t even show up.
He would turn up and pick up the tools himself. Too embarrassed to reveal he was the owner of his business, Whitley pretended to be someone else – using his brother’s nickname, Banjo.
“I thought, ‘I don’t know if I can be arsed doing this’. But I kicked myself up the backside and said, ‘Stop being a softy. You’ll be right. Just dig a little deeper.’”
At the same time, Whitley was doing a business degree and working “crazy hours” trying to keep his own venture afloat.
“As I went into a uni exam, my phone went
ballistic. I had just taken a new contract and there was a problem on the site.
‘‘I said to my lecturer, ‘I reckon I have a better chance of making this business succeed than completing this degree. So I’m going to take this phone call.’ And I walked out.’’
The idea behind temporary labour is simple: it helps a boss to quickly fill a gap in their roster, without the hassle and cost of a whole recruitment process. ‘‘With one phone call, they can get three or four people on site the next day,’’ explains Whitley. ‘‘Those people have already been interviewed, vetted and drug-tested – ready to go.’’
But at 21, Whitley knew little about recruitment, health and safety or finances. In fact, he had failed economics at university. He found an accountant and a business consultant to teach him the basics.
He had started ALH with just $500 cash, and was driving around in ‘‘a little dinger’’ – a Toyota Paseo he affectionately called ‘‘the red rocket’’.
The car was of the same vintage as its owner – 1994. Whitley parked it a block away from his meetings with construction executives, because he was so ashamed of it.
‘‘The first year in business was horrifically lonely. I was on my own path. No-one could relate to it; no-one could really show enough support. That put a lot of pressure on my relationships.’’
Whitley didn’t pay himself a cent for the first 18 months. On Sundays, he sold suits at Barkers to earn enough cash to survive.
He lived alone in a sleepout behind his mate’s house, ate noodles for breakfast, lunch and dinner, and ‘‘drank Coke like a madman’’ to stay awake.
‘‘It was horrible, stressful and challenging. But I was focused on getting enough clients to build market share and get the ALH name out there.’’
At a social function in 2017, he met Rob Fyfe, the former CEO of Air New Zealand.
‘‘I had no idea who Rob was. He was just this silver fox dude standing in the corner of the room. I went up to him, full of energy, and said, ‘Hey, how are you going, man?’’’
Fyfe is regularly schmoozed by wannabe entrepreneurs. But in Whitley, he saw four essential traits: integrity, ambition, talent and a willingness to learn.
‘‘Izzy would be driving into town with his girlfriend in the car,’’ recalls Fyfe. ‘‘If he passed a building site with a crane on it, he’d stop the car and find the site foreman to see if they needed any labour. Nine times out of ten, he got knocked back. But that made him even hungrier.’’
Fyfe agreed to mentor Whitley, and help him to hire his own staff and professionalise the business. Later on, Fyfe and two other investors put $300,000 into ALH.
He and Whitley became close. They’re in contact every day.
‘‘Izzy will pop round home one night and he’ll have a problem. We’ll nut it out and say, ‘OK, how could we solve that?’ He’ll ring me the next morning as I’m getting out of bed and say, ‘That’s all done. What are we going to do next?’’’
Whitley wanted ALH to be an attractive company that young people wanted to be part of.
‘‘He was out there delivering pizza and soft drink to his workers on building sites,’’ says Fyfe. ‘‘It’s a small industry, and word gets around.’’
But while Whitley was learning the ropes of running a firm, he made some blunders. A major accounting error landed him in a financial hole.
When he told Fyfe the bad news, Whitley pointed out that some of his staff could have prevented the error.
‘‘Rob put me in my place. He said, ‘Hey, the buck stops with you. When the business is underperforming, it’s your job to step up.’ He explained that I needed to take responsibility.
‘‘That was the best thing that ever happened to me. It made me grow up. It made me focus on our strategy. If it wasn’t for that mistake, we wouldn’t be where we are today.’’
‘‘Dad’s dead.’’ The phone call came in 2014 – well before ALH – when Whitley was doing his building apprenticeship in Auckland.
He was ‘‘absolutely steamed’’ after a big party, when his sister rang to say that their father had passed away.
‘‘I said, ‘Nah, he’s not dead. I talked to him just yesterday.’ My sister said, ‘No. He’s been found dead.’
‘‘I initially thought, ‘Dad must have been cheeky to the wrong fella. He has sparked up a brawl and got absolutely dusted up.’’’
It wasn’t until Whitley got home to Gisborne that he learned the truth: his father had taken his own life.
Whitley had a complex relationship with his dad, who put a lot of pressure on him to succeed in every area of his life. But he says Ian was also a caring person who was well-regarded in the Gisborne community, where he was the caretaker at a high school.
Whitley had no idea that his dad was facing mental health challenges.
‘‘I said to my family, ‘We all need to make sure we come back from this’. They looked at me like I was crazy. But I was determined to prevent this from getting the better of me.’’
Did he allow himself to grieve? ‘‘Not initially.’’ But six months later, he began to struggle.
‘‘Starting my business really hurt, because I wished I could have told my dad about it. That opened a can of worms. I thought, ‘I need to deal with this, because if I don’t, it’s going to catch up with me’.’’ He saw a psychologist who was ‘‘super helpful’’. He also used his dad’s death to motivate him to do work that he ‘‘bloody enjoyed’’.
‘‘Izzy would be driving into town with his girlfriend in the car. If he passed a building site with a crane on it, he’d stop the car and find the site foreman to see if they needed any labour. Nine times out of ten, he got knocked back. But that made him even hungrier.’’ Rob Fyfe, left
ALH has gone from strength to strength since its inception. In 2016, it turned over $215,000. In the following years, that increased to $1.2 million, then $2.7 million and, in 2019, $4.8 million.
Then, Covid threw a spanner in the works, but Whitley reacted with his typical zeal.
‘‘I was buzzing. I saw big companies with big overheads that were going to hurt. Our company was lean and nimble, so we could come out on top.’’
During the lockdown, he created so many spreadsheets that they appeared in his dreams at night. Whitley couldn’t call Fyfe for advice, because he was in Wellington helping the Government with its response.
Whitley decided to slash ALH’s operating expenses by 70 per cent, and asked his six staff to take a 50 per cent wage cut for six weeks. He did the same.
‘‘The focus was, ‘Do this now, and no-one loses their job’. Or try to be the nice guy and weather the storm, and then start pushing people overboard.
‘‘I said to everyone, ‘I have never done anything to make you question my integrity. I really need you to trust this process.’’’
Once the country returned to level 2, ALH had enough cash to keep running. The team was ready to chase new business, as more Kiwis began looking for short-term work.
‘‘The energy in the office was electric. I knew our demand was going to pick up. I wanted to succeed more than I wanted to breathe.’’
Whitley is now 26. While he has learnt a lot about business, he is still refining his leadership style.
‘‘Young entrepreneurs can be so driven that they struggle to understand that not everyone is as ambitious as they are,’’ says Fyfe.
‘‘Izzy is learning that he will get a much better outcome by motivating and inspiring people rather than wringing his hands because they don’t run at 100 kilometres an hour like he does.’’
The construction sector now makes up only 30 per cent of ALH’s client base. The company places workers into a range of skilled and non-skilled roles, including admin, horticulture and engineering. Many of those people are earning well above the minimum wage.
Whitley wants his company to be defined by a safe, supportive culture.
‘‘I know how unpredictable mental health can be. Someone may think their mum or dad is going to come home from work one day, and they don’t. It’s really important that we look after our people.’’
In Auckland, 27-year-old Charity Ierome is one of ALH’s success stories. ‘‘I was born and raised in Samoa,’’ she says. ‘‘I know what poor looks like. And I also know what it means to be given an opportunity to succeed.
‘‘I said to ALH, ‘I’m single. I provide an income for my wider family. I need full-time work. I’m a loyal, honest person. If you find me a good client, I guarantee I’ll work my butt off.’’’
She leads a team of 10 at a company that assembles healthcare equipment for Fisher & Paykel. Ierome feels respected by Whitley and his staff.
‘‘Being a brown face in a white world can be hard,’’ she says.
‘‘But Izzy creates a bond with people. He is very relatable. He has good banter with everyone, and really takes time to listen.’’
Although Whitley is interested in others’ wellbeing, he admits he often overlooks his own.
‘‘I remember holding my nephew for the first time. Within 10 seconds, I got a phone call, and I took it – while holding a newborn baby. The business was the only thing on my mind. I could never switch off.’’
Whitley works till 10pm at least three evenings a week. But he is learning how to balance his energy and find time to see his mates and play golf on weekends.
In a year of upheaval, Whitley’s hard graft has paid off.
His staff have recently received full repayment of the wages they sacrificed during the lockdown.
He has hired four extra employees, and is preparing to open new ALH branches in Wellington and Tauranga.
In this financial year, the company will bring in more than $6 million in revenue. Next year, Whitley wants $12m.
He occasionally rewards himself with a toy or a trip, but doesn’t flaunt it and is careful about the image he projects on social media.
‘‘ALH is paying Izzy a very, very modest salary,’’ says Fyfe.
‘‘He’s far more interested in having cash in the business to allow it to grow, rather than pulling money out so he can live a flashy lifestyle.
‘‘Plenty of his mates are earning more, working less, and having much more fun. Izzy’s work ethic, and the sacrifices he has made, are just phenomenal.’’
Whitley’s father helped him to develop the stamina that got him this far.
‘‘Whenever I felt broken, he would say, ‘You can keep going. And you’ll thank me for this one day.’ I said, ‘No, I won’t’.
‘‘I wish I could call my dad and say, ‘You know what? You were right.’’’