STAN Perron still goes to his East Perth office three days a week and supports numerous charities, while Harold Clough says he is working as hard as he has ever done, including in a mining venture in Indonesia.
STAN Perron still goes to his East Perth office three days a week and supports numerous charities, while Harold Clough says he is working as hard as he has ever done, including in a mining venture in Indonesia.
Dennis Cullity goes to the office five days a week and visits his lumber factory at Neerabup on weekends, while Fred Rae has just returned from a trip of Gull Petroleum’s New Zealand operations.
Jack Bendat remains an active philanthropist and closely follows his Wildcats basketball team, while Patricia Kailis is involved with multiple charities including the Royal Flying Doctor Service.
The common link with these individuals is that they have all been named Master Entrepreneurs in Ernst & Young’s Entrepreneur of the Year program. At a gathering last week to select WA’s next Master Entrepreneur, they shared their thoughts with WA Business News.
As a group, they remain positive.
“I think there are going to be more opportunities for entrepreneurs than there have ever been,” said Mr Clough, who spent most of his life working in the engineering company that still bears his family name.
“The volume of business is so much more. The bigger the market the easier it is, the more opportunities there are.”
That view was shared by Mr Bendat, who built a fortune in construction and media after migrating from the US, but is now focused on giving his money away to good causes.
“From my eyes there are great opportunities. We are in such a good position financially compared to the rest of the world, it’s unbelievable,” he said.
Many of these entrepreneurs started with nothing yet have built some of the state’s iconic businesses.
Patricia Kailis remembers she and her late husband sold their cars so they could start their own business.
“I’d sold my car and we used the cash and he used that to pay for his first supply of crayfish at Dongara,” Mrs Kailis said.
They subsequently built their first factory at Dongara, marking the beginnings of MG Kailis.
Mr Rae started his working life as a building apprentice and won his first tender while still a teenager, doing the work on weekends.
He later established Gull Petroleum as a large independent fuel retailer.
Mr Perron, ranked as one of Australia’s wealthiest people, started his business when he bought a half share in a Bedford truck in Darwin for £150.
He went on to work in mining, earthmoving and land clearing, and among other projects cleared the land for the Gnangara pine plantation and Perry Lakes, built Serpentine Dam and partnered with Mr Clough on construction of the standard gauge railway.
That was all before he moved into the automotive trade, where he famously operated on a handshake until recently.
“I had the Toyota franchise for WA for 38 years before I signed a piece of paper. We used to get shipments of 30 or 40 million monthly and there was no paperwork at all,” Mr Perron said.
“It was only when I got to 75 that my staff asked what was going to happen when I fall off the perch, but I’m still here.”
Mr Bendat has also operated in many fields, after getting his start in WA with construction of the Bunbury Forum shopping centre.
“I got a loan from the ANZ for $250,000, that was the largest loan they had ever done locally, they were over the moon,” he said.
“I did that shopping centre and I’ve never looked back.”
Mr Bendat subsequently bought television, radio and wine interests.
“Did I know anything about those things? No. I hired people who were smarter than me, and once you get the right staff and look after them, you can diversify into any field,” he said.
Each of these entrepreneurs has needed to give up day-to-day running of their business at some point.
Mrs Kailis admits the process was very difficult.
“You’d cringe when you hear the kids talking about something, and you think, I hope they are not going to reinvent the wheel,” she said.
Mr Cullity was very matter of fact about succession and governance.
“You have to give your CEO an opportunity to run the business, and keep the board informed,” he said.
Mr Cullity also illustrated the capacity of entrepreneurs to spot business opportunities, in his case pioneering the manufacture of plywood using pine.
“I’m fascinated by the technological changes, and nobody was paying any attention to the softwood forests that were growing.”
He proceeded to build nine factories, with the most recent being a technically advanced manufactured lumber plant at Neerabup.
As proud private sector entrepreneurs, the group doesn’t look to government for help, but is concerned that government will damage business in Australia.
“There are some things I wouldn’t like to see happen,” said Mr Clough.
“I wouldn’t like to see a resource tax, and I wouldn’t like to see a carbon tax. They would be very damaging.”
He was also concerned about the impact of mandated increases in renewable energy production.
“My biggest fear is the damage that can be done to the whole economy and every industry in it,” Mr Clough said.
Mr Cullity is worried about the federal government’s carbon tax, which he believes is based on a misuse of statistics about carbon emissions.
“For Australia to be leading the world, and my power prices going up, and my competitors in the US don’t have higher prices, is just lunacy,” he said.
“It’s stupid for us, why are we leading the world, who is going to follow us?
“But if the world goes that way, we should go with it, no doubt about that.”
