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Tyler Broughton
While most people would agree that being an entrepreneur is a good thing, 17-year-old Red Beach resident Tyler Broughton has found out the hard way that it can also land you in hot water. While his decision to set up a local sober driver and food delivery service earlier this year was welcomed by a large section of the Hibiscus community, it also drew death threats. After four weeks, he decided enough was enough and closed the service. Tyler can laugh about it now, but it was an unpleasant experience at the time, as he explained to Jannette Thompson …I don’t believe in letting negative comments slow me down, but when I started getting followed home and threatened via text messages, I thought I had to take it seriously. Looking back, I suppose I jumped too quickly into something I didn’t know enough about, but I did it with good intentions. The service was run on a donation basis to cover costs and give teens a way to get home safely if they’d been drinking. The reaction against it did surprise me.
My Mum and I moved to the Coast when I was 12. Up until then, we’d been living in Cairns with my Dad and older sister. I loved the scenery, tropical atmosphere and weather in North Queensland, but when my parents decided to split, Mum wanted to return to NZ so we moved into my grandparent’s beach house at Red Beach. I think most families go through rough patches and a break-up of a marriage is hard on kids. I definitely missed my Dad during those years when he was absent, but we’ve all come through it and my parents, sister and grandparents are amongst my biggest supporters. Kids need to know that rough patches don’t last forever and things do eventually end up getting better.
The Youth Centre in Orewa has been a big part of my life since I moved to the Coast. I proposed setting up a Big Buddy mentoring scheme there when I was 14 and I took on a mentoring role with two boys, aged five and 11. The service provided these kids with someone they could talk to and someone they could trust. Just hanging out with them, kicking a ball around the park and skateboarding was enough. I’ve found that I like helping people.
Although I’d been a reasonably good student at school, I didn’t enjoy my last couple of years at Orewa College. The work was just getting too hard. About the same time, I decided I wanted to make some money over the summer holidays so I borrowed my Mum’s lawnmower and turned to social media to find some work. That was about 18 months ago. Since then I’ve built a website, got an accountant and learned a lot from some business mentors. In its first year, my company Hibiscus Coast Odd Jobs had a turnover of over $100,000 and I now have six employees doing everything from mowing lawns, gardening and landscaping to modelling, and I also sub-contract work to tradesmen. Last summer, we did a maintenance job at Gibbs Farm, on the Kaipara Coast, which involved 75 employees working on rotating shifts – it was pretty stressful but a great learning experience. I don’t think you can learn without being thrown challenges like that.
I’ve been lucky to have a really good mentor who gives me confidence and encouragement. I find I can’t always talk about the business to my family, so having a person I respect who is impartial has been great. If I don’t see him on a semi-regular basis I go mental! The business has grown really fast, initially through social media and then by word-of-mouth. I get jobs all over the Coast and increasingly from Auckland. The Coast community has been very, very supportive. Last year I was lucky enough to be offered a scholarship to do a marketing course and pretty much 90 per cent of everything I do now is based on what I learned.
In the long-term, I’d like to be a police officer or maybe even study law, but for the moment, I just want to see where this business takes me. I’m passionate about what I do and it gives me the opportunity to help a lot of other people as well. Whenever I think about expanding into a new service, I always think about what opportunities it will give to other people. I love helping people make changes in their lives for the better. We’ve also done fundraisers and community work, particularly for the Youth Centre. The centre has been important in my life and it is a way of giving back.
I think it’s a shame the way some older people look down on the younger generation. It’s hard for school leavers to get a job these days because a lot of adults won’t give them a start. They think that all we do is rob and tag. Since I started the business, I’ve probably had nearly 150 teenagers ask me for work because other employers won’t give them a go and I know I’ve lost work simply because of my age. Older employers might be surprised if they did give us a chance and it could change their whole perception of teenagers.
One of the hardest things that I’ve found about being in business is to get a good work-life balance. But that is happening now and I do all the usual things a teenagers does like hanging out with friends and going to parties. I’m taking my first proper holiday this year – six months in Canada and Europe. A friend is looking after the business while I am away and I am really looking forward to visiting all those historic places. It’ll give me a chance to really think about what I want to do with the rest of my life.
If any young person out there is thinking of setting up their own business, then my only advice to them is to just do it and don’t let negative comments hold you back. You have to be prepared to work hard, but I can’t see myself ever going back to working for someone else. I love the flexibility of being my own boss, even if it does mean long hours sometimes. It’s also nice to get the acknowledgement for a job well done.
