Women in Work - Entrepreneur Dr Julia Charity

As Dr Julia Charity blows out a single candle on her business’ birthday cake, there is a groundswell of pride. ‘One down, 49 to go,’ she jokes. There aren’t many who can boast a 50 year life plan but this Rotorua scientist-turned-entrepreneur, has taken a very futurist look at her life and speaks with clarity about the contributions she hopes to make to our community and beyond.

Nevaeh caught up with Julia just after she celebrated being in business one year, to find out how she is taking a simple on-line concept out through Rotorua to New Zealand and then potentially the world.

Julia launched a homestay network, ‘Look After Me’ in July 2011. Her Virtual Hotel, a ‘first’ for New Zealand, offers guest rooms all over the country, each as different as the hosts who look after them. The rooms are typically spare rooms, or guest wings in homes. With their own brand of toiletries and guest gifts, homeowners can offer short-term affordable accommodation by turning their spare room into a hotel room.

“I was completely naive about business,” Julia is the first to admit but she did what she could to learn by studying for a Certificate of Business Studies at Rotorua’s Wananga o Aotearoa, and completed what she describes as a fairly robust business plan.  After sitting on the idea for a few months, things really started happening when Julia met potential investors Dave Moskovitz and Stefan Korn from Wellington’s Web Development  shop, WebFund .

“I just about died when they said you’re launching in 3 weeks.”  Julia says that leaving Scion, where she had worked as a scientist and Projects Manager for 15 years was a difficult decision to make but instinctively knew that her business idea needed a full-time commitment. “The day I stood on the gangplank of the corporate ship of Scion and leaped into my tiny little waka was undoubtedly the hardest day of my life,” says Julia, still catching her breath at the memory. “Honestly, it took every ounce of courage I could muster. I was absolutely terrified and if I had any idea of how hard it would be, I’m not sure if I would make the same decision. I had no safety net.”

‘Look After Me’ launched the day Tamati Coffey and the World Cup Road show rolled into Rotorua. Fifty days out from the World Cup and with accommodation at a premium, the on-line concept got an early lift. However solidifying a new concept in the market place is gruelling work, but taking that concept into a conservative market (Baby Boomers) at the bottom of a recession heralds its own set of challenges. ‘Look After Me’ is currently a kitchen-table enterprise, kick-started from Julia’s personal savings and the settlement of her matrimonial property.  Julia, single mother to six year old Alice, and without a salary for nearly a year, Julia digs pretty deep into her pockets of resourcefulness. “It’s been eye-watering, alright. I’ve gone from having a salary with more money than I needed, to making sure I only spend $25 a week on food and turning off my hot water cylinder to save power. And as any single Mum knows, the lawns, dishes and washing don’t just do themselves.”

Julia describes her entre into business a ‘rude awakening.’ She is still in shock over how unscrupulous the original supplier of her website was. “I got kicked in the gutz and ripped off within months of launching. I tried to get them to honour their commitment to the contract but their answer was ‘take us to court.’ I spent six months in a leaky boat, so, no, not a great way to start. I had this ‘Morris Minor’ of a website, I’d paid top dollar for and essentially I was faced with starting from scratch. It nearly cost me my dream.”

Julia, determined to keep her dream alive, offered a number of people investment in her company in exchange for a generous shareholding, including her once-millionaire uncle, her old boss at Scion and even Sir Stephen Tindall. Finally, desperate, she turned her biological father in Christchurch who had just inherited a large sum of money from his mother (Julia’s  grandmother). “It’s the first and only time I’ve ever asked for financial help in my life. I wanted Nana to be proud of me, and with her love of travel, adventure and business I thought this was a concept she would have whole-heartedly supported. I only asked for $3000 and I thought it would go a long way to honouring her memory in a really tangible way.”  When rejected by her father, she felt she had no choice but to sell a significant piece of artwork, a gift from her Nana, in order to support herself and her daughter. “When you start selling stuff to survive, you start doubting yourself.”

So in March this year, without a functioning website and seemingly no hope of getting cash-flow positive, Julia made the decision to close ‘‘Look After Me’. Even her business mentors WebFund weren’t able to see a way forward. “I was so gutted. I remember sitting at the kitchen table sobbing my heart out. I’d given it everything I had, I was at rock-bottom and had nothing left but the fading shadow of a dream. I’d imagined I would throw open the electronic doors of my hotel and people would ‘magic’ their way in. That’s so not the case.”  

With her head still in her hands, suddenly Julia was thrown a life line. Just at that moment long-time friend and colleague Phillip Wilcox knocked on the door.  Julia recalls “I found myself blurting out that I was giving up on ‘Look After Me’. Phil was shocked but calm. He reckoned I’d come too far to give up and asked me what I needed to keep it going. I jokingly asked for a new website and just about fell off my chair when he said he’d lend me some of the money.” Julia’s mother, Lois Connelly and another investor then came on board to furnish Julia with enough money to re-build.

“They gave me such hope. I’d gone from having nothing left, to elated disbelief that others had enough faith in me to put their own money on the line. The huge learning for me was to seek solace in your inner circle.”  But even with funding secured, Julia faced another challenge – how to come up with the 200+ hours needed to manually transfer all of Look After Me’s property data on to the new platform. Her solution was creative if not a bit unconventional. In what she describes as one of her boldest moves in bootstrapping her business,  Julia created a Work Placement programme to pull together enough resources to complete the new website.

The newly formed team, together with web company PureWeb, worked hard and launched the new site just in time to celebrate Look After Me’s first birthday. The Work Placement recruits worked a minimum of 20 hours in exchange for a reference with the calibre of the reference, directly proportional to the calibre of the work. “Over the years I’ve employed at least 12 people – just never in less than six weeks from the time of advertising, to final delivery of our new website. It was whirlwind to say the least. I wanted to create a win-work-win-for the recruits. They lent me their time in return for an opportunity to train and work in a real-life situation. It was bootstrapping unscripted.”

Amongst the new recruits were stay at home Mums wanting to return to work, highly skilled and degree-qualified women, recent migrants, students studying IT at Waiariki and a high school school student who has dreams of becoming a journalist or TV reporter.

Despite the challenges, Julia is adamant jumping from a corporate ship was a good move. “Being out of the lab has been good for me. I love being an Entrepreneur. The best bit about my job is meeting my new hosts – I’m so grateful to each and every one of them. They’re the jewels in New Zealand’s gently aging crown and it’s their own personal brand of kiwi hospitality that makes ‘Look After Me’ really special.” Other highlights for Julia this first year has been the privilege of meeting some really great New Zealandrs – like Sir Stephen Tindall, Mai Chen, Te Radar, Dame Margaret Basley, Tamati Coffey, Bic Runga, Sir Paul O’Callaghan, Xero CEO Rod Drury and “even the Prime Minister!”

In going forward, Julia’s vision is simple – she wants New Zealand to be the homestay capital of the world. Although announced with conviction, to the un-initiated, this seems an audacious goal. But Julia is resolute. “You only need to look at what is happening in the rest of the world to see that homestays are revolutionising the hospitality industry with websites like AirBnB in the US and Roomarama in Europe. I want ‘Look After Me’ to lead the charge in New Zealand and what better place to start in my home town, Rotorua – the original heartland of tourism itself.” With large events coming to Rotorua like Raggamuffin, Te Matatini, the BikeFest and the Rafting Championships next year - commercial accommodation will be unable to meet demands.

Julia says that New Zealanders are travellers with ‘special needs’ and homestays cater for that beautifully. “It’s pretty typical for us to come on holiday with a bike, kids or  grandkids, a dog or any number of other ‘toys’. That’s the beauty of homestays – most hosts won’t mind you using their garage overnight, and many have grandkids or pets of their own, so are child- and dog-friendly.” Extras like not having direct access to local knowledge, or having to pay for parking or wireless internet are definite bonuses.  Julia is absolutely passionate about being a New Zealander and is proud to offer our own special brand of genuine hospitality offered by kiwis, for kiwis and the rest of the world.

So what’s next? With a rock-solid foundation, a beautiful website, the concept working well, staff who work for free and guests raving about their homestay experience Julia is ready to take ‘Look After Me’ to scale in a substantial way throughout NZ.  She now has the credibility and traction to present a decent proposal to Angel Investors in the next few months. “I need to solidify the investment case so it’s an absolute ‘no-brainer’. They’ll want a 30:1 rate of return and so do I. I just need to ensure I have a sound plan on how to deliver that within the next three years.” Julia says has drawn courage and inspiration from Rod Drury, CEO of the online accounting software company Xero, who raised $15 million for his company. On hearing of her plans to pitch to investors, to Julia he said “You’ve got your thinking straight – it’s time to get in the big game.” She also aims to launch another website ‘Manaaki Mai’ – a homestay network aimed for Maori, Pacifica and indigenous peoples, in association with Te Matatini.

All this is part of what Julia describes as her 50 year life plan, she is well on her way to becoming a successful entrepreneur. Julia’s plan includes eventual acquisition of ‘Look After Me’ in order to financially fuel her dream of becoming a writer. “My ultimate goal is to spend the rest of my life making a significant contribution to New Zealand’s literature, in the way that Janet Frame, Katherine Mansfield and Margaret Mahy have. I see financial security as a prerequisite - but I sure seem to be taking the hard way about it!”

To the residents of New Zealand she says  “as an extension of my inner circle, I challenge you to consider opening  your homes for these upcoming events, or if you’re not keen on that, then consider homestay as an option, whenever you travel.”

Julia is a lively embodiment of her favourite Albert Einstein saying ‘we haven’t got the money, so we have to think’. We think Julia proves that if you really want something bad enough, you can find a way. Julia’s hopeful one day she’ll coin a phrase of her own “We’ve got money, but it’s still ok to think!” Roll on Year 2.