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COROMANDEL LIFE
LATE SUMMER / EASTER 2017
Fuelled by a passion for people
and service, Lester Gray has
taken the quiet road to success.
A
t a very young age, service station owner
Lester Gray learnt about the power of people
and how influence and inspiration come from
the unexpected. From a very simple family
ritual of the weekly trip to town and the visit to
the petrol station, Lester has built his career
and business.
“As a youngster, the whole family (Mum and
Dad and my four brothers and sisters) used to
pile into Dad’s old yellow Holden Kingswood,
drive into town to the two-pump petrol station
to ‘fill up’. There was a balding middle aged
guy with short curly hair there, wearing dark
overalls with his favourite oily rag faithfully
attached. He would come out to the car and
greet us all by name.
“While filling the tank, he would make silly
faces through the back window that had us
all in fits of giggles. And just occasionally, one
of those dark brown oil-stained hands would
reach in through a window with individually
wrapped lollies for us all. You can imagine our
delight at this little treat back then.”
A LIFE FILLED WITH ADVENTURE
Lester’s life story is steeped with adventures
– travels, a background in agriculture, work
on ski fields and in hotels, fruit picking, blade
shearing, pruning and planting pine trees – just
to name a few.
There were also personal health hurdles of
surviving a brain tumour that went undiagnosed
for four years, and sporting achievements:
completing 4 Ironman events, and representing
NZ in Switzerland at the Standard Distance
Triathlon World Champs in 2006.
THE PASSION FOR PETROL ... AND A PLAN
The story of Lester’s career in service stations
began at the age of 18, the day he decided
to follow his childhood passion and went
door-knocking for a job. The owner of the sixth
station hired him, largely due to Lester’s ‘make
it happen’ attitude.
Not long after he started, young Lester was
on the forecourt and started chatting with
a customer – as he does. The customer
asked him about his goals, and Lester simply
announced, “I want to own my own service
station”.
The customer turned out to be an insurance
and investment broker who offered to help
Lester achieve his dream. He convinced him
to start a savings scheme – for roughly the
same cost of a box of beer each week. With his
purpose clear, and a plan to help him achieve
it, Lester committed himself to working one
shift on, one shift off around the clock for
long periods of time. Within 3 years he moved
companies
and became an assistant manager,
then a manager. However, six months later
,
after a company restructure, he was made
redundant.
THE DRIVE TO KEEP MOVING FORWARD
After a brief OE, Lester returned to the family
home in Waihi Beach and from there he took
on a number of different roles to find his feet
again. Never once did he give up the dream,
nor did he give up saving, increasing it at times
up to 50% of his earnings, and after testing
himself in other industries, the pull of service
stations was too much to ignore.
Once back at the helm (as manager of a Caltex
site in Hamilton) Lester’s plan and purpose
soon started to take a new shape as ‘family
values’ became his natural management and
leadership style and the work load increased.
Over the next 8 years, Lester took on more
sites, created new strategic plans, invested
time and effort into growing people and
capacity within the businesses, organised new
store openings and, at one time operated 46
sites. All the while, it was that same passion for
people and service that gave Lester the drive
to keep moving forward.
While these opportunities moved Lester around
the country, home for him continued to be the
Coromandel, where he and his now wife Sanna
would spend their weekends. It didn’t take long
for them to agree that the Coromandel was
where they wanted to start their family.
During one of their short trips back, Lester
approached the Caltex owner at Katikati for
a friendly chat and happily learned that the
owner was ready and willing to sell. And so
unfolded the next chapter, as the achievement
of the teenage dream became reality.