TEAM BUILDING night and you ’ ve got the wrong attitude , its actually pretty terrible for you and everyone around you . So , when we were working together , we tended to make it fun in some shape or form . In fact , anything we were doing we would generally try to make it fun .”
Oliver sums up their relationship and attitude to work . “ I suppose we probably didn ’ t see it as clearly then as we do now , but we gravitated to each other because both myself and Kingo ( Kingsley ) liked to bring people together to have fun . We ’ d turn everything into a game .” j
Above Six-months after a discussion at a barbeque , Oliver and Kingsley went into business together . They were 26 years old .
Do you remember Monty Python ’ s Life of Brian ? The film is a parody of the story of Jesus Christ with Brian , played by Graham Chapman , as the main character .
There ’ s a part in the film where early one morning Brian ’ s mother Mandy Cohen , played by Terry Jones , looks out of the window to see that her son has unwittingly amassed a following of hundreds of people . She points at the crowd of followers and snarls , “ Now look here , he ’ s not the Messiah , he ’ s a very naughty boy .
The naughty boy part of that statement resonates when speaking with Kingsley and Oliver , who are friends and owners of teambuilding business Be Challenged . Thousands of books have been written and countless YouTube videos made about employee engagement & teambuilding . The subject has become a science to be studied , but at its heart the essential ingredient is “ fun ”. Oliver and Kingsley have managed to develop a successful teambuilding business , without losing that twinkle of fun that you see in the eyes of naughty children doing something that they shouldn ’ t .
“ I was the year above Ogs ( Oliver ) and we were both in the same sporting house . We probably weren ’ t best mates at school , but we played a lot of sport together ,” says Kingsley .
“ After we left school , we found ourselves working in the same pub , which is where our relationship flourished . We socialised and shared a lot of time there and we also found ourselves doing the same things . We both worked at the local bottle shop and played in the same rugby team , where one of us was the club captain and the other was the vice-captain . It wasn ’ t about the best player , it was about the culture of the club and we found out early on we were both on the same wavelength as far as that went , and many other issues . For example , if you ’ re working in a pub on a busy Friday
Valuable lessons The early days at work and having fun together highlighted some of the skills and principles they later employed to build their business . Oliver provides a neat example . “ We wanted to put on a boat cruise for the boys in the rugby team and of course , invite as many girls as possible . Back then everyone was a student and not flush with cash , so we found the cheapest boat that could go on Sydney harbour .
Kingsley interjects , “ The boat needed to float ,” he laughs . “ We needed a lot of booze , a little bit of food and if the girls didn ’ t have to pay to come , we ’ d get more girls .”
“ We put together some good brochures , got the boys to hand them out and made the most of what we had ,” explains Oliver . Kingsley concludes , “ We knew what was important . Having a schmick boat ? No one cares , not at that age .”
Going into business “ I think going to university was the easy way out for me ,” says Oliver . “ I ’ ll just go a get a degree . Older wiser heads said just get the piece of paper , so that ’ s what I did .
Kingsley was working with a gentleman who ran a company called Be Live , which was our introduction into teambuilding . They needed more facilitators and Kingo came to rugby and said , ‘ come along ’. And it opened my eyes to this world . I couldn ’ t believe we were getting paid to bring people together , engage them and have some fun .”
Kingsley tells his story : “ I went to university for a year and a half and failed the same subject three times . It was at that point I realised that I was 100 % never going to be that person who put on a suit every day , that just wasn ’ t me . I did try it at one stage . In my third week in an office job , I found myself sitting in a toilet playing on my phone for half an hour because I hated it so much .
When we first started working in the industry with Be Live , we were having a heap of fun and getting paid . But after a while we both went off and did our own thing . Ogs worked for events companies selling and by pure fluke I got a rugby contract to play in Italy for 9 months .
When I came back after my contract finished , I was a bit lost and my first kid was about to be born . Ogs wasn ’ t entirely enjoying what he was doing , and one day we found ourselves together having a barbeque on his deck . We were reminiscing about working at Be Live and we thought , ‘ Well why don ’ t we buy it ?’ And six months after that barbeque that ’ s when we bought it from the previous owner . We were 26 .
We put budgets together and both had some savings , got a loan form the bank and then we knew what we could spend . We wanted to make sure that we had someone who had experience , so we got a bit of assistance from Ogs ’ s Dad who helped us set up the deal . And away we went .” j
28 Chief of Staff | Issue 2 2020