John Crooks

The role was to contact the Facebook, Instagram, and website generated leads and make a suitable appointment time to meet the potential clients at their homes.

The marketing strategy was extremely successful and the influx of new inquiries was so great that it became a continual 7 days a week work pattern of up to 12 hours per day.

The selling was the easy part, the implementation was where the challenges lay.

I am currently still working through the backlog of the projects that I sold and this process will continue up until the Christmas break.

I terminated all selling activities with My Robes on Tuesday 22nd November.

On my return from living in Hobart I joined No Fuss Kitchens on the request of the owner Jack Kenyon.

I had known Jack for over 25 years and we both knew our strengths & weaknesses.

I sold several mid to high end projects which I was responsible for the Project Management from start to finish and the hand over to the clients.

With no concentrated marketing strategy the selling opportunities simply dried up and I moved on to My Robes.

After the fiasco of the Evoke Designer kitchen's foray into the Hobart market, i took on the role of selling Solar for Ben Pomare of NGSS.

Ben and his brother are extremely smart marketers and innovative in some respects to selling solar.

We used the CRM platform - Slack, very effectively and had our weekly huddle every Monday morning.

In summary, I find selling Solar as boring as bat shit.

I thrive in a creative, designing, selling role and with Solar it's the same story every time, repeated 3-4 times per day 5-6 days a week.

I simply wasn't enjoying the role and left to concentrate on my triathlon Ironman events.

I was visiting Hobart with my wife, Suzzanne and an opportunity arose to lease a retail space next door to an up market Kitchen Appliances company - Elite Appliances at 133 Bathurst Street.

I designed the Showroom with 4 Kitchen Displays and proceed to work with several contract manufacturers.

I entered a formal joint venture partnership with a manufacturer and and proceeded to open the store and began trading.

Covid came along and the relationship with the manufacturer became untenable.

The decision was made by myself to liquidate the two operating companies - Evoke Design Group trading as Evoke Designer Kitchens and Evoke Kitchen Installations.

I had started the business - The Kitchen Design Centre back in 2007. In my opinion I created the leading Kitchen Display Showroom with the the emphasis on the Selling Process and how that was to be conducted with the clients.

The first Showroom was Eltham and I brought in two partners, Michael Simpson & Peter Schelfhout (Perennial Kitchens) who provide the additional capital required, along with the manufacturing expertise to get the Showroom completed.

We opened with unprecedented success and were inundated with new clients storming into the Showroom from Day One without any marketing outlay.

I had hit a Goldmine based on extensive research into the local market, the competitors and the general demeanour of our target market.

The recruitment and training process began immediately as the lead flow outstripped the capacity of myself.

The business became a runaway success and I eventually sold out to my partners and became purely a Designer along with my wife Suzzanne, who I had trained along the way.

By November 2016 I was dissatisfied with my career prospects, I had Sold the Farm, by Baby and while I was handsomely rewarded by my business partners I still held out for greater challenges.

The consequences of those decisions eventuated into the Tasmanian Train Wreck.

From 1992 to the beginning of The Kitchen Design Centre to worked as a Sales Contractor for several kitchens companies.

The include the following : Alltype Kitchens, Morcraft Kitchens, Select Kitchens, The Kitchen Place, Harvey Norman Renovations, Grandview Kitchens.

I was living in Greensborough at the time and saw the real estate become available in Eltham 2006 which was the catalyst for starting up The Kitchen Design Centre.

Small Kitchen Renovation start up with Tom Mullan. I took out a lease of 250 square meters in Highbury Road Burwood.

I then successfully recruited a Kitchen Manufacturer (Adrian Jepson) and he moved his entire workshop into the space that I occupied with Tom.

This reduced my rental of the Showroom Area - 60 square metres down to $30 per week based on my overall outlay being subsidised by the manufacturers contribution towards the rental.

We were all happy campers, Tom decided he wanted to concentrate on Appliances and started Prestige Appliances with eventually evolved in to Schweigen Ranghoods.

I sold out to the Manufacturer and we all went our separate ways.

I was recruited by Hans de Weerd and the experience became the pivotal moment in my career within the Kitchen Design Industry.

Hans has a phenomenal intellect and he became my mentor and friend as I soaked up the training in Design & Selling high end kitchen projects.

Hans decided to retire and sold out the business to his franchisee who operated from Essendon.

We didn't see eye to eye and I left.

I still see Hans from time to time and he graciously gave me his intellectual property rights to his entire catalogue of Training Manuals which cover every aspect of running a Kitchen Renovation business.

I joined Cloverleaf Roofing to sell Tiled Roof Restorations in metro Melbourne. Became one of there top performers by recruiting a team of Jehovah's Witnesses to canvas the neighbourhoods that we were targeting.

In this way I wasn't relying on the company to produce all of my leads and hence my conversions were greater than others in the team.

The company copped some unwanted publicity and the owners folded up the business.

My first foray into my career in Selling. I did the two weeks of training and enthusiastically sucked up the commissions by selling the Kirby day and night at least 6 days per week.

It was a full on American Cult which began by a rousing rendition of the Kirby Songs, sung with great gusto, much to the distain of our neighbours in the adjoining office on St Kilda Road.

Left the Cult when I woke up to the realisation I was brain washed into a selling methodology which was dubious to say the least.

I had retired at 30 years of age and moved to Miami Florida after 7 years of living in Scotland and the North Sea.

Became a Student at Miami Dade Community College and specialized in Business Studies as a mature student.

I ended up marrying a JAP ( jewish american princess) who was a perpetual student.

Worked Part Time at the local Pizza Hut as I was considering buying a Macdonald's Franchise at the time.

Decided to return and live in Melbourne and start a family.

After my initial training in a government sponsored program in train Commercial Divers at Fort William, I graduated to working the various oil patch's around the world.

I became an expert in Non Destructive Testing on the Oil Rig structures producing the oil.

An exciting career with incredible adrenaline overloads when you are locked out of the diving bell at 150 metres on Heilox.

Survived 6 years with all my faculties in place and retired to live in Miami.

I had completed my Apprenticeship and became a Journeyman Carpenter where I sub contracted my labour to multiply companies including Merchant Builders, the number one Project Builder at time.

I developed a team and worked 6-7 days a week doing Framing, Lock Up's and Fixing, including the installation of the kitchen joinery.

Completed my Apprenticeship in Carpentry & Joinery with H M Keast & Sons along with a Building Technical Degree from Swinburne College of Technology.