Remembering People Who Lifted Me Up in Mental Health Awareness Week

Do you have 'go to' people, or are you an empath that looks out for others?

It’s nice to be recognised on the Thinkers360 Leaderboard for Health and Safety. Especially on New Zealand Mental Health Awareness Week. Mental Health is as important as any other area of Health and Safety.

I have been thinking for some time about people who lifted me up over the years, and there have been many. I hope in turn, that I have done the same for others, and continue to do so.

When I first started my sales career, I had people who I used to catch up with fairly regularly. We had very different personalities, but we were all passionate people with high energy and a desire to do well in business and for our clients. We lifted each other up. If I was having a tough day, I would stop my cold calling and listen to some uplifting music, or visit one of these 2 gentlemen.

I am grateful for their friendship. As a young dad, starting my family, I needed to stay on top of my game, because most of my income came from the commission, not from a salary. We had bought a house, we were paying 21% mortgage interest per annum. It was pretty scary to think about.

Taking time from work to meet my second daughter

This was in the 1980s. I had been given a chance by The Colonel at Tait Electronics.

One of these people was a guy called Ray Mills. You might have heard of him, he owned a company called Goldmine. His company cars were retro Rambler Rebels. They attracted a lot of attention back then.

Ray was a wheeler dealer, literally. He owned a number of shops that sold distressed merchandise. Some people call these stores emporiums. When people had food getting close to its ‘use by’ date, or end of runs, he would make a rock bottom cash offer to take it off their hands.

He told me that he carried around rolls of cash in his jacket pocket, and drove around town looking for an opportunity. He was always ready to show people and I felt uncomfortable when he flashed it around. He wasn’t showing off that he had money, he was proud of his business strategy. I was always worried that showing off his wads would lead to him getting mugged. And it did in the worst possible way when he was robbed and badly beaten up, losing 5 teeth and an eye! But he always had a cheerful, optimistic philosophy.

I remember him telling me about driving up Khyber Pass in Auckland when a truck carrying Weet-Bix crashed. He checked that the driver was OK, and asked him to contact the Sales Manager on the RT (no cellphones back then). The Sales Manager came on and Ray told him that the truck had crashed, some of the food packages had been damaged and made a cash offer for the lot.

The Sales Manager agreed and Ray got one of his vans to pick up the product and take it back to his store. I believe the cash he paid for the load went to the firm’s social club.

Every time I visited Ray, he would coach me on keeping my eyes open for opportunities. He would also refer people to me when he came across companies that had no way to communicate with their staff when they were out of the building. It was a win: win because it was harder for him to forge a deal on the spot if he couldn’t communicate with them. He would have to call his office on his RT and get them to call for him, and they didn’t have the same swagger as he did,

There was a wonderful obituary for him in the New Zealand Herald, including a mention that he paid thousands of dollars for one of New Zealand’s first mobile phones.

There was always a cup of tea and a story for me, whenever I visited.

An American Retired Baseball Player in the Rag Trade

This sounds terrible, but I don’t remember his name. He was African American and married to Megan Douglas, daughter of Roger Douglas, the founder of Rogernomics and past Finance Minister of New Zealand. He and Megan owned a number of fashion stores and I met him as I was cold calling in Eden Terrace, where they had one of their stores. If I remember rightly, it was called 7th Avenue.

I wasn’t even going to go in, after all, it was a clothing store, but I did. He made me a coffee and we ended up chatting for a couple of hours. During that visit, several women came in for a look. He was an absolute charmer and the women loved him and his patois. Even if they were just coming in to browse, they would walk out with several garments, and they weren’t cheap.

Without exception, he made every woman who entered the store feel a million bucks. He had a style we didn’t see in New Zealand. From the moment anyone came in (including my random cold call), they got his undivided attention. He flirted a little with the women, without being in any way inappropriate. He was genuine in wanting them to leave feeling and looking great. He was rewarded with loyal customers.

He told me that his manner was strategic and his patter was definitely for show. When he saw someone about to come in the door, he would whisper to me “Watch this, Luigi”, with a cheeky grin, and off he would go.

His style wasn’t something I could pull off, but I was learning that the most important person in each company that I cold called, was the officer of first impressions, aka the receptionist, or the gatekeeper.

Their job was to stop people like me from getting to the manager. So my job was to develop a relationship with the gatekeeper and make them feel good about why I was there, such as solving some of her problems. Then the gate would magically open and they would tell their managers that they should talk with me. They became my advocates.

Every time I try to get Jesus on the line
Never get by the receptionist
I shouldn't even try

He came to New Zealand after having retired from playing semi-pro baseball in the States. He met Megan, and the rest was history. I suspect the relationship might also be history, but that’s by the by.

We lifted each other up when we caught up. All high-performance people need a boost from time to time. He introduced me to Siberian Ginseng, which he was big on. I started taking it daily and it helped me stay in peak mental condition, although there were times when I was so amped that I couldn’t sleep, and I would have to give it a rest for a week or so.

Pretending to have a phone in his Rolls Royce before mobile phones were available

Here’s where it got funny. He decided an RT was the way to go, as they had a number of stores, and if a manager needed him when he was on the road, he didn’t want to miss an opportunity. He wanted one installed in his Rolls Royce, yes he drove a Roller. He was a showy man and he wanted people to see that he was successful.

Back in the 80’s Radio Telephones had crystals. The process was that we applied for a suitable frequency, or recommended one. Then the crystals had to be cut. We installed the kit (cradle, speaker, aerial) straight away. Once that was done he had to wait for the radio to be set up.

“Will it come with a handset?”, he wanted to know. “I want people to think I’m the first person in New Zealand with a car phone”. (They didn’t exist here yet). So we added a Nato handset to the order.

NATO Handset

“OK, can I have the radio with the handset, without the crystals? I want to drive up and down Queen Street, pretending I’m on the phone.”

Sure. We saw the humour in that. So next thing you know, he was driving his Rolls Royce up and down our main street, pretending to be on the phone.

Eventually, he got his crystals installed and was on the air. He helped me get several more clients and raved about our service, and me.

The first mobile in New Zealand

Around 5 years later, the first mobile phones arrived in New Zealand and Australia. They were known as bricks. My friend David Charlesworth was a Telecom reseller and got the very first one, which he still keeps in the suitcase that came with it, with a battery pack. His phone number was 025 000 001.

In the late 80s, I was in Sydney’s Darling Harbour for a conference and nearby was a popular watering hole called the Pumphouse. I remember seeing a bunch of guys dressed in their suits, all with their bricks on the table in the garden bar. They were calling each other because they had nobody else to talk to. My friends and I reckoned they rang and then hung up before the other person answered, so anyone passing could hear their mobile ring because the calls cost something like $3 a minute. In today’s currency, that is probably the equivalent of $10 a minute.

My first phone was a car phone. It cost about $6,000 and was mounted between the front seats. I forgot to turn it off one night, and totally flattened the battery of my car. They were at different times.

I have digressed again, haven’t I? The point of the story is that there are people in our lives, who lift us up. They give us strength on our down days and lift us even higher on our up days. We do the same for them.

If there is someone who has lifted you up? Check in on them, and see how they are doing. Maybe you can give them a lift.