John Linton
Someone sent me a nice picture of Internode's new Adelaide offices earlier this week together some brief text saying that Internode needed the new premises as they now employed over 300 personel. The offices looked sparklingly new and very impressive.
I was reminded of this as Annette and I drove to our, very small and far from sparkling, 'old' offices early this morning to be on hand to let the "two men and a truck" into the building where we operate the Exetel business from to deliver the second hand chairs that Annette had bought at auction a few days ago. Naturally the truck wasn't on time (it turned out not to be their fault as the auction house person hadn't turned up to unlock the premises so the buyers could collect the items they'd bought. So Annette filled in the time doing some cleaning around the ofice ("professional office cleaners" will never match up to the standards of a "professional" mother) - not something you'd find the CEO of Telstra doing I wouldn't have thought.
The 'new' chairs, like every other piece of furniture in the Exetel offices were bought second hand from auctions around Sydney so that we could save around 70%, often more, of their new purchase price. Annette has immaculate taste and a good 'eye' so the furniture, including the top of the matket workstations always look good, are of top quality, and save a huge amount of money in acquiring them.
These latest acquisitions, to replace chairs we bought when we commenced the Exetel operations in North Sydney, like their 'predecessors were bought from very impressive office fit outs done by companies who had gone broke - most of the things Annette has bought have been barely used and quite a few had never been used. In this latest purchase the company had been in existence for less than 2 years but it had lavish standards in the furniture it bought payng up to $2,000 for some of its 'manager's' office chairs - and this was a company set up to enhance the environment:
http://www.easybeinggreen.com.au/About_us.htm
When Annette went to look at the chairs before bidding for them she said a lot of computers and printers and other items were still in their boxes - unopened. and much of the brand new and ultra expensive furniture still had their protective plastic wrappings on.
For the owners of a business that has revenues of over $A3 million a month and has 30 other employees to be getting up early on a Saturday to get a cheaper rate on the delivery of second hand furniture is a pretty clear indication that Exetel is still run in the traditional way of a very small business where the owner/operator does all of the 'unpleasant' chores rather than asking an employee to disturb their weekend time off. This applies to so many other apsects of Exetel that we no longer notice it - except occasionally on mornings where we do things like this.
I'm not saying that this is either a good thing or a bad thing from any third party's view point; other than a minor indication of the likelihood that Exetel doesn't waste any money that might come its way. I just wondered when the time might come when we didn't think nothing of doing such things and what that would indicate?
Before we left home I read the recurrent billing summary report for December 2007 which was run and completed by 6.30 am this morning by another very dedicated Exetel person and was, as always, delighted to see that it recorded another record month in terms of revenue growth.
I think if we ever lose the discipline, and thoughtfulness, to do more than our share of the small and unpleasant things needed to operate the business ourselves then that report might not continue to show record results each month.