Christchurch car dealer Paul Kelly recently acquired an expensive road car that occasionally needs its tank filled. Inevitably, the gas station attendant will ask him: “Mate, what do I have to do to get that?” Kelly’s reply comes from his heart: “Just do what I’m doing, because I used to do your job.”
As fate would have it, Kelly now owns the gas station he used to work at as a teenager on Sunday nights. “I was so excited to buy it for that one reason. Because I used to think of all those cold nights and all those snobby people who wouldn't let me put petrol in their fancy cars,” he recalls.
The gas pumping job was secondary employment for the teenage Kelly. His fulltime job occupied the other six days of his week. Even before he left school at the age of 15, he had figured out the only way he would succeed in life was by working his butt off. “I always had an eye for flash stuff. And there was only one way of getting it – you had to go and work for it,” he says.
Kelly got his work ethic from his parents – his father was a market gardener, and his mother worked in the Smiths City market for decades. It was a typical Kiwi upbringing – he never wanted for anything but there was “none of the stuff that people who are affluent get,” like overseas holidays.
More than two decades on, the Paul Kelly Motor Company has sold well over 40,000 vehicles from its Christchurch showrooms. To celebrate 20 years in business last year, Kelly shouted his entire staff an all-expenses-paid trip to Las Vegas. The trip, estimated to have cost at least $150,000, made national headlines after he announced it on social media, and saw him labelled “the best boss in New Zealand.”
Kelly was initially thinking of sending his 45 staff on a local adventure. But when he found out the Vegas trip would cost only a few thousand dollars more, he plumped for the more expensive option. He was annoyed that some employers assumed he had ulterior motives.
“If you think I did that to make more money out of the staff, you're actually missing the whole point,” he says. “I did it because these people work incredibly hard – you can't get any more out of them. You do it just because you should.”
It’s no wonder the company has little staff turnover. Kelly also gives his employees 5% of the company’s profits each year. Even though business has been “terrible” for the motor industry this year, he has still paid out a staff bonus.
“Every single staff member at work knows how much the company makes and I have no problem with that, and everybody gets the same, from the general manager to whoever else. I am so anal on that. I just can’t stand hierarchy. I was no good at school for that reason. I just will not put up with people being spoken down to – it’s my pet hate in life.”
He would love to see more employers follow suit. “You just think about some of these people who make tens of millions of dollars, right? If they gave 5% of that to their staff, you could have young people whose lives would be changed. And they’re not likely to miss that 5%. So I just don't get why more people don’t do it.”
It’s not just his staff who have benefited from the business’ success. Kelly has previously sponsored many local and national events, and also backed the Paul Kelly stand at the AMI Stadium for many years.
A property portfolio worth around $70 million has also helped fund his passion for motorsport, and cars of all types. His private car collection is believed to be worth around $8 million.
Kelly has been addicted to cars ever since he can remember. “There’s no car history in my family at all. I’m just kind of one out of the box that’s just mad on cars, ever since I was a wee fella,” he says.
Photo: Stuff
2018: $50 million