THE YEAR THAT
Martin Leach
My partner Jay and I had moved back to New Zealand from London and had to reinvent ourselves here, because the only person I knew in Auckland was Jane Ussher, the photographer. I took over Ponsonby News in 2004 and worked very hard to make it successful.
People often said to me it would be a great idea to get people from all the local businesses together. In London, I had done a Top 100 Entrepreneurs event for several years, so I thought I could do a Top 10 for Ponsonby. We did so in 2008. It was a huge amount of work but we sold out all the tickets and I had people ringing saying they were “a mate” and could I squeeze them in? So on top of the 230 people for the dinner, we sold an extra 100 tickets for people to just sit and watch.
We asked people to nominate local business people and then put those 60 names in the magazine and asked readers who they supported. Locals vote, with Stephen Marr the hairdresser winning the most. We went a bit crazy counting all the votes. I thought I’d better get someone to audit them so people wouldn’t say Marr won because he was a mate, so we did that.
It was quite different from the UK awards. For a start, it was a lot smaller. The last dinner we did in the UK was a black-tie event with 1000 people in a hotel on Park Lane. The dinner in Auckland, with a few hundred people, was more intimate and friendly. Jaquie Brown was a great MC and Buffy and Bimbo put on an amazing show.
But they were bigger businesses in the UK. Mark Dixon, who ran Regus, took top place one year. Another year it was James Dyson. It amazed me that all these very busy and successful people wanted to come to my dinner. When I asked them why, they all said the same thing: networking. A year after his award, Dixon told he had made three good friends form the dinner.
In Auckland, because Ponsonby is such a compact area, most people already knew each other — and that’s what made it so special. Everyone was very relaxed. Even when two tables collapsed. People had had plenty to drink and at two of the tables the guests kept kicking the legs of the other table until they gave way. I didn’t know what had happened until the next day. On the night, because I had been so nervous, we gave each table a bottle of champagne. I only found out later they didn’t deserve them.
I had been very nervous but it was a lot of fun and the response was incredible. I thought I should do it regularly but haven’t, just because it’s so much work. Ten years on it might be time to look at reinventing the awards. It would be interesting to see how different they would be.
Out of that top 10, the only one who’s moved out of Auckland is Jillian Bashford. All the others are still around, even if they’re not working in the same business. As told to Paul Little.