Hey Guys.
If you don't already you need to be reading this mag, Im a super fan, and honoured they called me for an interview.
"The Collective"
http://www.renegadecollective.com/subscriptions/
The Dirt and the DIRB
Words by Richard Miller
For perhaps the first time in his life, Brad Smith is a little
behind schedule. He laughs as he explains his car just broke down on the way home
from a speaking gig in country Victoria and he had to hire another. “It’s been
a freakin’ debacle,” he exclaims in cheerful fashion, but insists he is ready
for an interview. “You’re better to speak to me while I’m driving, so I can
concentrate.”
It seems the only time the 26-year-old entrepreneur ever sits
still is when he’s travelling at speed—by plane, train, hire car, or, most
famously, by braaap bike.
It’s been this way for as long as Brad can remember—from well
before he founded braaap and broke all kinds of moulds on the way to creating
one of Australia’s most successful startups of recent decades. He’s twice been
named the Australian Young Entrepreneur of the Year, won Tasmania’s Young Australian
of the Year in 2010 and has recently been nominated to the Reserve Bank of
Australia’s advisory board for small business; braaap, his motorcycle retail
franchise, has racked up four gongs as the Australian Retail Business of the
Year. During all of this, he’s somehow found a way to continue to ride superlite
motocross competitively.
Yep, he definitely moves fast. It’s no wonder he earned the
nickname ‘braaap’ at a young age. It’s less a name than a noise—the sound an
exuberant bike makes as it buzzes by with the throttle cranked, kicking up a
screen of mud—but that suits him fine.
Just don’t underestimate the serious business brain ticking away behind
the light-hearted exterior. That, too, has always been there; it’s the engine
that powers him. As early as his primary school years, he was selling hacky
sacks in the playground, and by the time high school rolled around, he was
importing iPods and graphics calculators.
“[School] was a great marketplace,” he says. “It was easy when
you’ve got 1000 kids all in the same place who all got excited by trends.”
When asked the origins of his entrepreneurial nous, he thinks for
a moment. “I guess it comes from my family. My dad’s considerate and can build
and create things … my mum, on the other hand, is ambitious and hungry to
learn, hungry to grow and willing to take a risk.”
While his parents encouraged and supported him to take his own
risks in pursuit of his dreams, Brad says it took all his skills of persuasion
to get them to enable his true passion—motocross. He fell in love with the
sport as a kid and finally convinced his father he was ready to graduate from
his old BMX by persuading four cousins to lie down on the road and pedalling
like a demon to jump them. “I was probably lucky I [didn’t have] five cousins!”
he quips.
Once on a dirt bike, he was an unstoppable force. “For me,
motocross was the ultimate teacher,” he says. “I had to learn discipline,
preparation, focus; I had to master my emotions; I learned courage, to deal
with pain, consequence and consistency. If you want to win a [motocross]
championship, you’ve got to race when you’re good and race when you’re not
good, and that’s pretty similar in business.”
Despite race-day success and his unwavering love for the sport, he
recognised his true calling was not as a rider, but as a businessman and
innovator. While his racing idols were riding expensive customised bikes, he
was dreaming of new ways to manufacture bikes that would open up the joy of
motocross to “every man and his dog”, not just those who could spare ten grand.
Most of all, he wanted to give young people what he calls a “clean adrenalin
hit”.
“Everyone needs adrenalin and excitement,” he says. “If you don’t
get it through activity or through sport, you’re going to get it through
partying or drugs or whatever you do, crime, violence. I love seeing people
enjoying my sport, that’s for sure. I’ve never seen someone sit on a
motorcycle, twist the throttle and not smile.”
His first foray into the market ended in disaster; he lost his
savings but, crucially, retained his vision of a bike anyone could afford. He
realised the only way to pursue his vision but avoid repeating his mistake was
to get on a plane and do the deal in person. So he did. He was 18 years old.
“I bought a ticket [to China] and went to as many manufacturing
plants as I could find in two weeks,” he says. “Over 50 factories laughed me
out of the office and said I didn’t have the money, I didn’t have the
experience, the engineering; [they said] I didn’t know the manufacturing
business, I didn’t know the motorcycle business, and they laughed me out.”
Brad readily acknowledges they were probably right in some
respects, but he was utterly convinced of his eventual success. “I think that
most importantly, you’ve got to start with a vision. If you’ve got an idea and
you’re possessed by it, you do
believe you can do it. You do believe
something’s going to happen. And I did.”
By the time he flew back to Australia, he’d signed a contract to
manufacture his bikes in China using Japanese engines, French frames and
Canadian suspension. His commitment—apart from design and development,
prototyping and testing—was to sell enough bikes to turn a profit.
When asked how many bikes he had to sell, he laughs. “I can’t say
that, but it was a lot. It was significantly more than I felt comfortable
selling, that’s for sure. Mate, that made me grow up so quick. I had to get
smart. I had to … learn branding, sales, conversion, marketing, follow-up, all
that stuff.”
Fortunately for Brad, he learned as quickly as he tore around a
dirt track. From displaying bikes in the middle of busy town roundabouts and
hiring farmers’ fields beside regional trading fairs when their official stall
application was denied, to cold-calls, online marketing, setting up
partnerships with other local small business and even good-old-fashioned
door-knocking, Brad and his braaap team were constantly looking for new ways to
reach potential customers.
Their biggest breakthrough came out of a desire to contribute to
the community. They set up a learn-to-ride event program and began promoting it
across the country, encouraging people of all ages and ability, particularly
kids and others who wouldn’t be able to afford to buy a bike from another
retailer, to give their bike a go. It was all part of their clean adrenalin
idea—and then they realised it sold bikes.
“We used to put TV and radio [ads] on and stand behind a counter,
and that doesn’t work any more,” Brad says. “Butts on seats equals motorcycle
sales, so we teach a lot of people to ride and [do] a lot of events …
[Potential customers] have plenty of fun, they high-five, they have an
experience, they get a photo—and we know that nine per cent of those people buy
a motorcycle. [Those are] people who [weren’t even] in the market for
motorcycles.”
In eight short years, braaap has punched well above its weight in
a market dominated by a few heavy hitters. It now employs 30 Australians and up
to 50 staff in its Chinese manufacturing base, and Brad is working on
strategies to launch braaap into 44 more countries, including the USA and parts
of Europe, Central and South-East Asia and the Middle East.
Rewards and plaudits litter his company’s history, but Brad is not
resting on his laurels; it’s doubtful he would know how to rest if he tried. He
insists braaap’s success is built on hard work, innovation—they recently used
3D printers to create a new range of prototype bikes for an international trade
fair in China—persistence, and creating a community of riders. Most of all, he
says, whether he’s building a new bike or business strategy, he’s always aiming
to DIRB. As in, Do It Real Big. The dirt track and the DIRB track. It’s a
winning combination.
Build it the
braaap way: Brad Smith on entrepreneurship
Aim high: Our mission
is to create experiences that make people feel alive. That’s really what it’s
all about, to positively impact the lives of others, one person at a time
Create new
customers: There’s $40billion spent in Australia each year on non-essential,
recreational products. Motorcycling is three per cent. We don’t compete against
Honda or Yamaha, we compete against all the things people spend money on other
than riding motorcycles: football, cricket, drinking … we’ve got to create
desire in people and create new motorcyclists.
Know your numbers: So many
small business owners don’t actually know what drives their business. If we
know what drives us, we know we’ve got to make x amount of calls, teach x
amount of people to ride and sell x
amount of bikes. Every month we have a meeting to make sure we’ve got
activities in our pipeline to create those numbers. I don’t want my growth
strategy to be based on hope.
Be
courageous: People forget … you’ve got to have courage, especially as an
entrepreneur. Courage isn’t the absence of fear, courage is looking fear in the
eyes and being scared as hell and saying “F*** it, let’s do it anyway.” That’s
been our story so many times.
Learn from
the best: I find someone who’s done what I want to do [and] I call them up
until they meet me. Find someone who’s the best and learn from them. I’ve been
persistent and deliberate about creating those relationships.
Just do it: If you’re
inspired by a vision, you don’t count the hours, you don’t count the stuff you
miss out on—you don’t see it as sacrifice. You’re chasing something bigger;
you’re building something … Leave all those limiting beliefs at home, leave
your emotions aside and just do it.
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