How I avoided disaster when a law change pushed me out of Queensland

That’s such a huge roadblock.

It was very tough. The whole business was under a significant amount of pressure, and our external lawyers were telling us that we were in trouble. We had to put our heads together and come up with a solution.

So how did you overcome it?

A continuing credit card model. So each loan is a discrete loan, and very similar to a credit card in that sense. But the difference is that the credit limit is always very small, and they pay it back within a few weeks. There was no minimum payment, and we made sure there was enough financial discipline in the people applying.

Greg and me were developing this product over a long time, and we eventually launched in July 2009 to bounce back.

Sean: Our loans are only for a few weeks, so imposing an annual interest rate for a short-term loan just doesn’t make sense for our business model.

How did you react when this happened? Many businesses would end up just quitting.

It was hard to grasp, I suppose, and we were fairly under-resourced at the time. That was probably the toughest thing.

Greg: It’s hard enough just growing the company when things are normal. When you have external pressures like this, it just makes everything much harder.

What else made it so tough?

Greg: The problem was that we didn’t have any assets. We had a business in Ireland, and we sold that, and invested everything from that into this. We didn’t even have a car, so we were just putting everything we had into the business.

Did you get the lawyers to help come up with a solution?

Sean: The problem with that is lawyers aren’t necessarily creative in their nature, so we’re coming up with different potential business models and then bouncing them off a lawyer.

We must have tried six or seven different times, and got our hopes up every time, and for whatever reason we’d get the thumbs down.

But we were working with a consumer credit specialist lawyer, and we were lucky enough we had this one idea that flew. In the end, it makes for a great business model because it allows us to be more flexible, and it makes life easier for repeat customers.

And so for other businesses in the same situation, what would you recommend?

Greg: For us it would be sheer persistence, patience. A bit of luck helps too.

Sean: You need to keep cool during these things. There’s no point panicking in the face of difficulty. You’ve got to stay creative, and you’ll always find a way up.