In the volatile world of property investment, she teaches everyday people how to manage their budget. Margaret Lomas speaks toAdeline Teoh about starting with nothing but a good idea and ending up with a flourishing business.
It seems ironic when Destiny Financial Solutions director Margaret Lomas says she and her husband Reuben started the company “by accident” rather than via fate. What she really means is, when opportunity knocked, they answered.“Both my husband and I have always been open to new opportunities at all times,” she says. “Sometimes those opportunities become nothing, but we were never cynical when most people were looking for the catch.”Like many couples, the Lomases were on a mission to own their own home and improve their standard of living. With five children and a net worth of zero, they discovered ‘line of credit’ financing and started a niche business teaching others how to manage a budget.“Not many people had the self-discipline to prevent themselves from overspending and we knew that if we could create a business with a supporting network then people could actually achieve financial goals,” she explains. “They’d tell their friends, then word-of-mouth would make it a successful business.”It did become a successful business—in Perth, which Lomas thought too isolated to grow the company nationally. They moved east, selling everything they owned. The family of seven found themselves living off $80,000 “the sum total of our entire life” on NSW’s Central Coast.“Looking back, I have no idea what possessed us to do it,” Lomas admits. “We did letterbox drops and pounded the pavement but after four or five months we were down to $20,000 and we didn’t have enough business to sustain a living.”Reuben then responded to an announcement that spruiked radio advertising as an effective mode of promotion. Radio advertisers came back with a proposal for a radio and newspaper campaign—at a cost of $18,000.
“We thought about it and then decided: let’s do it, let’s spend our last $20,000 on the radio campaign. The radio people said it takes a week for people to start calling because they have to hear the ad a couple of times, so we decided to go to Movieworld, because that’s what we’d promised the kids when we moved. I thought if it didn’t work out, we wouldn’t have the money to do that later. We diverted our number to the mobile and at about 10 past nine, after the first ad ran, the phone started to ring. By the time we reached the Gold Coast, we were booked out for three months.”
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