One of the gifts I was given as a young businessman, working for Levi’s was when I was the managing director and founder of Levi’s in New Zealand. I had a phone call from my boss, who was the Asia country manager, a position I later achieved in my career. He told me to be in Hong Kong on Saturday night, as he and I were going to go to Tokyo on the Sunday to meet the international president, who wanted me to accompany him to visit some countries. Of course, I was quite naïve and had no idea at that stage how multi-nationals worked, a little nervously I set off and with my boss met the president of Levi’s International in Tokyo. He had formerly been executive vice-president of Playtex, a women’s lingerie firm, which was an industry that I went to after Levi’s.
From Tokyo, Japan we went back to Hong Kong and after dinner and a drink, we retired to our rooms. My room was first and I stood outside the door from 10pm to 2am, listening to the international president Mr Robert Roman, who I later considered to be a Czar in business, talked to me about if I wanted to be an international businessman that I needed to be flexible. He also asked me if I would flexible to him, then he would take care of me. I really didn’t understand the depth of all this meaning, being as I said earlier, quite naïve. Some years later, when I understood things much better, as I gathered international business experience was that he wanted me to be flexible so that he could send me to Japan, which was the only country Levi’s had ever lost money in. To cut a long story short, I was assigned to go to Japan and set out on a journey, which was to change my entire life. As a young know-it-all country manager, as we had had considerable success with Levi’s in New Zealand, I constantly had to remind myself ‘Be flexible Brian’ and out of that, I remembered something I taught myself when I was 18, going to a new life in New Zealand and that was ‘when in Rome, do as the Romans do’.
Being ‘flexible’ and ‘when in Rome do as the Romans do’ has stood me in great stead over the years, because it has kept me to be reasonably flexible, although my wife might disagree!!
Coming back to the title of this book, ‘Fear Doesn’t Matter Anymore’, I remember as a young man of 18 years old, who arrived in New Zealand with an aspiration and a dream about a better quality of life than I would be able to have in London, England and arriving with US$20 in my pocket, set out on my path for a better quality of life.
My first job was digging the foundations on a government building and I doubled my financial stake in life. At age 20, I bought my first business, at 21 years old my first apartment house and rented beds and by the time I was 24, I had three houses and two businesses. When I bought my first business, by the time I paid my two staff from my day job in a large fashion house, there was nothing left for the luxuries of sugar or butter, so I took a job washing dishes on the weekend, in one of the city’s finest restaurants.
New Zealand was pretty undeveloped and certainly not sophisticated, in those days. However, with a cheerful disposition and my attitude of having fun and loving what I do, I set out to be the best dishwasher that I could be. In those days, there were no washing machines, you did it by hand with heavy rubber gloves in 180 degree water. It was a great job, I had a lovely dinner, I was able to put all of the scraps in a bag for my German Sheppard ‘Barbara’ and the ladies who worked in the restaurant where beautiful part-time models, so I had a date with a pretty girl most weekends, so I thought it was a wonderful job.
I could have course had a ‘have to’ kind on attitude, instead I chose to have a ‘want to’ type of attitude. I knew that doing this job, would support me in my purpose and aspiration to achieve my dream and it did.
As I have looked back over my life and reflect those early years were in many ways my greatest achievement, the set me up for my journey and path through life. I tried to search for what is the key that passionately drove me on to start work at 4am every morning and then go to my regular day job at 8.45am. Finish at 4.45pm and go to my workshop and work from 5 to 10.30pm and the thing that runs through my thinking, above all else was I was fearless, I never held it once in my mind that I would fail. Of course, there were plenty of challenges and then some, but I always had a cheerful disposition with an ability to look on the bright side and of course my passionate belief that I would be able to achieve a better quality of life, than I could have back in London Town, whether that is true or not, I will never know but I do know this, because I believed it, I could achieve it.