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Ch. 8 – The Final Chapter

Ch. 8 – The Final Chapter

On a warm afternoon on the 14th of May 2014, I stood in a long queue in Santiago with other pilgrims, waiting to receive my Compostela, a certificate to attest that I had walked 790 km from St Jean Pied de Port in France to Santiago near the western coast of Spain....
Ch. 7 – Sales Journeys Pt 2

Ch. 7 – Sales Journeys Pt 2

The rollout of EQUIP® to the John Deere equipment dealers in the US was proceeding at an exhilarating pace. In 2004, we attended the annual John Deere User Group conference in Saint Louis, Missouri, (below) and were impressed by the sophistication of the displays and...
Ch. 6 – Sales Journeys

Ch. 6 – Sales Journeys

Financially, the heat was off. Our home territory was divided into three business units. The largest was the Melbourne head office, responsible for companywide administration and the development, sales, and support of the new-generation UNITS® and EQUIP® suite of...
Ch. 5 – Birth of Auto-IT Australia

Ch. 5 – Birth of Auto-IT Australia

“Nothing is more certain than change”, I wrote in our client newsletter as I announced the launch of Auto-IT in early 2000. Our merged enterprise was the second largest Dealer Management System supplier by market share in Australasia. We now had offices in Sydney,...
Ch. 4 – KGM The Final Curtain 1998 – 2000

Ch. 4 – KGM The Final Curtain 1998 – 2000

By the close of the 1990s, our nervously executed decision to launch a new DMS (Dealer Management System) had been vindicated. Our client base had grown in eight years from 20 to 200-plus dealerships and we were no longer the smallest DSP (Dealer System Provider) in...
Ch. 3 – KGM Management 1988 – 1998

Ch. 3 – KGM Management 1988 – 1998

I’d worked for three companies since my arrival in Australia in 1983, and they’d all become insolvent. Was I a manifestation of the albatross in Coleridge’s Rhyme of The Ancient Mariner? I’d noticed a few raised eyebrows among contacts in my business network and...