What does second hand furniture, bars and trees have in common? 🎷🌳
This blog was distributed to our first 200+ backers via email.
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Kia ora 👋
This update shares some insights about the legendary Jonny McKenzie, one of the lead visionaries behind Regenerate New Zealand.
We thought you might like to know more about the man, the myth the legend and why he believes in the work he does.
Born and raised in Wellington he was fortunate enough to balance city and farm life with his dad living on the family farm one hour north of Wellington in Ohau.
By age 16 Jonny had started his first business running under age dance parties at Wellington night clubs.
His first taste of failure came when he tried to expand the parties to Christchurch. He ended up in a small claims tribunal case where the the mediator kindly pointed out that they were dealing with a minor. From then on he learnt to get agreements & documents signed vs take peoples word for it.
Did you hear about that time we started a bar and sold all of the furniture in it?
While opening up the Roxy Cinema in Miramar a unique opportunity came around to grab a spot on the Wellington waterfront. Budget was tight with only $30k to build, fit out and stock the bar - there wasn't much budget for furniture.
So to make it work he did weekend trips with the family horse float to rural second hand shops. Everything went on the floor at Cuckoo Cocktail Emporium with a price tag.
The goal was to slowly buy better quality furniture as the sales came through while providing a good story for those who bought a couch from the bar.
The catch came one Friday night when a group of customers purchased all of the chairs and walked away with the lot that night. A function booked in the bar the next day, Jonny proceeded to unfortunately only offer his patrons a standing only venue.
His biggest learnings in hospitality was the 'fun' quickly disappears when the numbers aren't working which lead him to start posBoss.
The core insight here was that owner operators in the hospitality game rarely find the time to review their numbers. This is for multiple reasons but the most common reason is lack of time.
By adopting cloud technology he wanted to empower operators to have a better understanding of their numbers while having the flexibility to review them whenever, wherever.
During his journey into the tech industry he learnt that combining technology and being a bartender highlighted the importance of listening.
As a bartender your number one focus is to create a welcoming environment where you entice customers to visit weekly for banter, educate them to new flavour experiences whilst improving your cocktail skills.
In technology you are continuously focusing on listening to your customers to know what to build next. As a result this has lead Jonny to be very focused on being at the front line of communication with his customers so that he can learn daily from them and improve the technology he builds while building a rapport.
The impact on the Hospitality sector has been significant since the arrival of Covid. The concerns of the hospitality industry were loud and clear and as a result he co-founded Rippl with the team at Paperkite building an alternative contract tracing application for hospitality.
The posBoss team also ramped up their click and collect solution Regulr. Supporting businesses in need, they offered it for free during lockdowns. This supported over 800 NZ hospitality businesses and 120,000+ downloads of the app - making it hit No.1 food ordering app on the NZ app store at the time.
By this stage Jonny had well and truely honed his business acumen and 6 years ago his father and business partners asked him to join the board of Range View Limited, a 150 hectare silviculture Pine Tree block in Manakau.
He was brought in to help move the forest towards to a liquidity event. 6 years later he is still working with the shareholders to form a plan for the forest.
It was through this experience that he has learnt about the challenges small block pine forest owners face.
The model was simple 25 years ago - plant trees, harvest. Factors contributing to decision making in forestry are now more complex due to; The introduction of the Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS), changes to how harvesting operations run and an increase in sustainability awareness.
It is fair to say he now has a deep understanding of the challenges these owners face.
Scratching his head Jonny realised New Zealand must be full of small block pine forest owners who faced the same issues as Range View.
As a result he started to research the industry, talk to forest managers, small operators and big operators.
It became clear there was a serious problem with 'what to do next'.
Should you harvest & replant? Become a carbon sink? or sell out entirely?
Considering you need a couple of million to buy a forestry block, the offers don't come flooding in.
Having been involved in the tech industry and learning how to build scalable solutions he started to think there could be a solution to this problem.
This is where the Regenerate NZ journey started - by listening to the people and hearing the ground swell towards a profitable, sustainable Aotearoa.
As a recent Dad and these past 2 years of living in a Covid impacted world he is now seeing the next 20 years of his life as building a better world for his daughter and family.
He has been inspired with the introduction of retail investment and how companies like Hatch and Sharesies have given everyday kiwi's a chance to make their money work for them.
Jonny is committed to seeing Regenerate NZ happen so that not only will his daughter be able to invest her money in keeping NZ beautiful but also live in a country with a thriving ecosystem.
Best,
Alex & Jonny
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This blog was distributed to our first 200+ backers via email.
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