Pic Picot’s less-than smooth road to peanut butter king
Over the past decade, Nelson entrepreneur Pic Picot has seen his peanut butter business grow from a one-man garage operation to employing 50 people and being one of the country’s most respected brands.
Now he hopes his new book Pic: Adventures in sailing, business, and love will entertain readers with tales of his adventures, dreams, and schemes, as well as encourage other entrepreneurs.
While almost always colourful, Picot’s journey through business and life hasn’t always been smooth.
After setting up a string of businesses – with an interlude to build a boat and sail around the Pacific – the success of Pic’s Peanut Butter came somewhat out of the blue. ‘‘I thought I would slide into quiet retirement. I was 55 and had enough money to get by if I was careful, but then the peanut butter sort of came along really.
‘‘I was quite happy. I never intended it to get as huge as it has, but it’s been really fun.’’
Picot’s first enterprise started before he left school, after watching a man making home-made sandals while on holiday in Australia.
On his return he got together some leather and tools, taught himself sandal-making and started to sell his wares to his fellow students.
After dropping out of university, Picot set up various business enterprises, including his own leather goods company, an artisan’s workshop, a restaurant and a sailing school. While not all of them were successful, Picot said he wouldn’t want to paint any of them as a failure or a mistake.
‘‘The fear of making a mistake is such a tragic loss of opportunity. The only reason you can call something a mistake is if you think your life is a bit s... and you’re going to blame it on this mistake you made.
‘‘I don’t think it works like that – you have no idea what would have happened if you had not done something, or had done something different in the past.’’
Picot said a key message in the book was the importance of having the confidence to give things a go without the fear of failure.
‘‘I know my parents were terribly worried about me right through my life until a few years ago. But there’s so much you can do, people have so much potential and ability to contribute if they just get stuck in.
‘‘Today a lot of kids who want to start a business think they have to raise a whole lot of money and do this and that – and they miss out on the opportunity to start out small and learn from the ground up.’’
Picot said sailing had taught him a lot of lessons about selfreliance and leadership. However, it wasn’t until his 50s when his eyesight began to fail him – that he understood the value of being able to trust and rely on other people.
‘‘In previous businesses I had always thought I was the cleverest person at just about anything I turned my hand to – and I couldn’t trust anyone else to do as good a job as me on anything.
‘‘If not for [my eyesight] I would still be trying to do everything myself, setting up software, looking after accounts, design and marketing, fixing machines.
‘‘But with my eyesight deteriorating and not being able to do everything, I had to involve other people, and I think that’s why the peanut butter business got so huge.’’