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Earning a descent living

It's all downhill from here - 4,300 vertical metres of mountain biking, from the barren heights of the Bolivian Andes through mountain grasslands where llamas and alpacas graze, past Inca ruins, and into the lush jungle of the Amazon. It's a trip 3,700 people have taken in the last two years, clocking up over 222,000 kilometres.

The man responsible? Alistair Matthews - the owner, manager, guide and self-styled Disco King of Gravity Assisted Mountain Biking. In his spare time he plots world domination.

Alistair was never meant to be a corporate man. Early on, a year working in a 'dull, dull' job in an accounting firm convinced him of that. So when he enrolled in a BBS he knew he wanted to become his own employer.

"When I started at Massey University there was no small business major, so I asked the university to approve a special selection of courses. Once I started doing the small business stuff I realised I had definitely made the right choice, largely because the lecturers in the area had a passion for the whole small business arena that was harder to see when people talked about big business. I guess the connection is more emotional and personal, and that appealed. Then I constructed my Honours degree so that it could also focus on small business. There was not much of an industry for small business advice in New Zealand so I elected to get my experience from an organisation focusing on larger business and governmental consulting, which was hugely beneficial in opening my eyes to the big picture."

Alistair went to work for Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu in Wellington in 1993. He began in the audit department, then moved into management consulting. Deloitte also paid for him to do the Anikiwa-based Outward Bound course. As advertised, Outward Bound changed his life. Alistair became seriously involved in outdoor sports. Mountain biking was one.In June 1996 he left Deloitte to travel though South East Asia, including a 7,000-kilometre cycle tour through Indonesia,
Malaysia and Thailand.

A nine-month stint in Singapore as a consultant for a venture finance company gave him working capital - and renewed his conviction that offices and suits were not for him.

Bolivia was a calculated decision. He and his girlfriend of the time were keen to commit to one country after two years of separate travel. She wanted to work in the aid industry; Alistair was looking for an adventure tourism opportunity.

They arrived in Spanish-speaking Bolivia with, Alistair insists, just three words of Spanish between them - all courtesy of Speedy Gonzales. A little investigation proved to Alistair that mountain biking was an untapped market. So he sat down, wrote a business plan, developed marketing material and signed up his first client on 22 July 1998.

"Originally, I did all the mechanicking, all the sales and all the guiding myself. It took until the end of the first season before I hired anyone, then another year before I hired a full-time team.

"Having studied small business, I really appreciated it was going to take time to develop the operation. There was no point, in the first moment, trying to hire too many people - it could have come crashing down around my ears, so I took it slowly. I try to make all costs variable costs, so every new customer means the guide makes more, the drivers get paid more and the business grows."

And the business is growing. Since Alistair established it in 1998 about 4,000 mainly European and Antipodean backpackers have taken up the challenge of one-or two-day trips downhilling off the Andes. The company now employs six full-time staff plus local drivers. 2000 was a successful year for the company and Alistair has big plans for the future.

"Bolivia is just the starting point for my world domination plans! We are developing a franchise prototype here and once it is fine-tuned, in a couple of years we'll look for other places we can set up."
He's looking at options in Central or South America, perhaps Colombia when it settles down or Cuba when it opens up to the US market. Meanwhile, a café and a hostel are on the cards in the next two years. After that… "look for Gravity in your neighbourhood soon," he says.
Would he come back to New Zealand?

"I still feel I could go back, if really necessary, and pick up a job in a big company, and probably earn reasonably good money. But I don't think I could live that kind of lifestyle. When I was working in New Zealand I had to battle to find time to squeeze in sport. My business is now at the stage where I can take time off if I want to. Having that lifestyle choice is more valuable to me than having more money."
Besides not having the capital to compete with the number of other adventure tourism companies already operating in New Zealand, he says, it would be too easy.

"It would be too straightforward to run a company in New Zealand, not enough of a challenge. In Bolivia you have to deal with a whole lot of elements: corruption, a different language, a huge cultural difference in doing business. It's important to have those challenges.
"I've never worked so hard and been paid so badly in my life but it's my business, my challenge."