Rhys is the currently the Director of Strategy and Sales Operations at Brilliance-BEA Auto Finance Company in China, based in Shanghai where he was previously Sales Director for the Jaguar Land Rover brand within BBEA.
Rhys has over 25 years’ experience in Asset Finance across markets in China, Europe, and South Africa. His expertise extends to OEM and Dealer Relationship Management, as well as the strategic alignment and product positioning that is required to successfully enter new business markets and grow share in a sustainable way.
In our conversation, Rhys paints a very positive picture of his time at boarding school in South Africa. I would describe him as stoical about his experience in military service. He suggests that at boarding school he'd learned to make the most of opportunities whatever they might be.
He shares how an introduction from a friend started him on his career journey in finance and he explains how he learned a lot from being in a smaller town where he was exposed to different customer types and financing requirements.
He tells the tale of how he put his hand up to grow the Alphera business in South Africa once he recognised that it was never going to happen unless someone had it as their priority.
And he talks about how he recognised the need to do an international move and had the great support of his wife Michelle when it came to considering a move to Shanghai.
I thoroughly enjoyed celebrating Rhys's career to date with him and I'm pleased to be able to give you this opportunity to get to know him too.
LinkedIn: Rhys Long
Episode Directory on Instagram @careerviewmirror
Email: cvm@aquilae.co.uk
If you enjoy listening to our guests career stories, please follow CAREER-VIEW MIRROR in your podcast app.
Episode recorded on 17 February, 2023
Rhys is the currently the Director of Strategy and Sales Operations at Brilliance-BEA Auto Finance Company in China, based in Shanghai where he was previously Sales Director for the Jaguar Land Rover brand within BBEA.
Rhys has over 25 years’ experience in Asset Finance across markets in China, Europe, and South Africa. His expertise extends to OEM and Dealer Relationship Management, as well as the strategic alignment and product positioning that is required to successfully enter new business markets and grow share in a sustainable way.
In our conversation, Rhys paints a very positive picture of his time at boarding school in South Africa. I would describe him as stoical about his experience in military service. He suggests that at boarding school he'd learned to make the most of opportunities whatever they might be.
He shares how an introduction from a friend started him on his career journey in finance and he explains how he learned a lot from being in a smaller town where he was exposed to different customer types and financing requirements.
He tells the tale of how he put his hand up to grow the Alphera business in South Africa once he recognised that it was never going to happen unless someone had it as their priority.
And he talks about how he recognised the need to do an international move and had the great support of his wife Michelle when it came to considering a move to Shanghai.
I thoroughly enjoyed celebrating Rhys's career to date with him and I'm pleased to be able to give you this opportunity to get to know him too.
LinkedIn: Rhys Long
Episode Directory on Instagram @careerviewmirror
Email: cvm@aquilae.co.uk
If you enjoy listening to our guests career stories, please follow CAREER-VIEW MIRROR in your podcast app.
Episode recorded on 17 February, 2023
You need to try and make the best of each situation because the situation is never ideal. And you can either mope about it and be really unhappy. Or you can just try and make the best of it. And I think with a good group of friends, it helps you to push through those difficult phases and get you to see the sunlight at the end of the tunnel.
Aquilae:Welcome to Career-view Mirror, the automotive podcast that goes behind the scenes with key players in the industry looking back over their careers to share insights to help you with your own journey. Here's your host, Andy Follows
Andy:Hello, listeners, Andy here. As always, thank you for tuning in. I really appreciate that you do and love hearing from you when you give us feedback about what resonates with you when listening to our guests stories. In this episode, we're celebrating the career to date of Rhys Long. Rhys is currently the Director of Strategy and Sales Operations at Brilliance-BEA Auto Finance Company in China, based in Shanghai, where he was previously Sales Director for the Jaguar Land Rover brand within BBEA. Rhys has over 25 years experience in asset finance across markets in China, Europe and South Africa. His expertise extends to OEM and dealer relationship management, as well as the strategic alignment and product positioning that is required to successfully enter new business markets and grow share in a sustainable way. In our conversation, Rhys paints a very positive picture of his time at boarding school in South Africa. I would describe him as stoical about his experience in military service. He suggests that at boarding school, he'd learned to make the most of opportunities wherever they might be. He shares how an introduction from a friend started him on his career journey in finance, and he explains how he learned a lot from being in a smaller town where he was exposed to different customer types and financing requirements. He tells the tale of how he put his hand up to grow the Alphera business in South Africa, once he recognised that it was never going to happen unless someone had it as their priority. And he talks about how he recognised the need to do an international move, and had the great support of his wife Michelle when it came to considering a move to Shanghai. I thoroughly enjoyed celebrating Rhys's career to date with him. And I'm pleased to be able to give you this opportunity to get to know him too. Hello Rhys and welcome. And where are you coming to us from today?
Rhys Long:Hi, Andy, I am coming to you from Shanghai in the People's Republic of China. I'm on the eastern side of the city in an area called Pudong. And it is freezing cold. It's probably about two degrees outside.
Andy:Thank you. Thank you for joining me. I'm really looking forward to our conversation. We will talk about Shanghai and what you're doing there when we get towards the end of our conversation. First though, if I may, I'd like to take you back right to the beginning of your journey. Where were you born?
Rhys Long:I was born in a small city in South Africa called Port Elizabeth, that's in the Eastern Cape which is one of the sort of lesser known provinces of South Africa. And I grew up my whole life in Port Elizabeth and in the Eastern Cape area, which is it's like pretty small and country bumpkin type setting if I can put it that way.
Andy:Right. Let's talk about that. What was your family situation that you were born into? Do you have brothers and sisters? What's the story?
Rhys Long:No, I'm an only child. My parents got divorced when I was quite young. I was about two years old when when they separated. And so no other siblings joined us after that. Both my parents got remarried though. So I've got sort of half brothers and sisters from you know, other relationships which we keep in touch with, you know, it's quite nice to have that. But growing up as a small kid I was, you know, on my own.
Andy:Right. And did you I hope you don't mind me asking this but it can turn out to be quite interesting. Did you stay with one parent or did you find yourself with two households?
Rhys Long:In the early days, it was sort of growing up more with my mom. I stayed with my mum most of the time, which had certain challenges, you know, as a young boy growing up with a mother and all her friends. At some point we realised that either I was going to become the needle boy needlepoint champion of the Eastern Cape or I needed to do something a little bit different. Which, you know, sort of opened up the door for me to go to a boarding school and ended up being like, probably one of the best decisions that my parents ever made for me.
Andy:Okay, let's go to boarding school with you then, at what age did you go?
Rhys Long:I was age seven when I started boarding school.
Andy:Wow, that's quite young, isn't it? Do you remember much about that? Do you remember much about knowing you were going and the build up to it and arriving there?
Rhys Long:Yeah, it was, it was not really a choice. As a young kid, both my parents sort of had their they'd moved to separate cities. But they both had quite good careers, and involved quite a bit of travel. So that sort of started to make it a little bit difficult for me to be staying at home on my own. My mum was a computer programmer in the early days when computers were sort of, you know, very, very fresh. And she started writing programmes for municipalities to generate their water and electricity accounts and things like that so it often involved her having to travel to these small little towns, and develop or implement systems there. And she needed to be away for a couple of days at a time. And then it just seemed like boarding school is the only real option for me.
Andy:And what did your dad do while we're on the subject of what parents were doing, I'm always curious about that.
Rhys Long:He was funny enough in the motor trade, he worked for Ford Motor Company in the very early days. And then he went to a company called Motor Assemblies, which was more sort of a, an assembly plant in South Africa. And then after that, he spent a good 20 to 30 years with Toyota, South Africa, and actually ended up as the after sales director for Toyota, South Africa.
Andy:Ah, fascinating. So there was some automotive activity going on, you had er you were aware of that opportunity, if you like. But we'll come on to how what how your journey, your career journey developed in a little while. So going back to school, you said there wasn't really a choice in terms of going to boarding school, mum and dad had got fairly good jobs, and they were in different cities, they were doing a lot of travel. So it necessitated you going. What are your earliest memories, though, of of going there?
Rhys Long:I think the getting used to the routine, and the very strict rules, I think that is something that stands out for me, it was quite a big change for me, you know, all of a sudden, we had very rigid 6pm is dinner time. 8pm is lights out, you got to keep your your goods together, you cannot let things lie around. I think it almost forces quite a strict responsibility on you at a very young age.
Andy:Yeah, I hadn't thought about that aspect of boarding school, where presumably you do have very strict mealtimes and all those other aspects. And how has that affected you do you think, having from early age of seven years old, being dropped into quite a regimented environment with lots of rules and a lot of punctuality and taking responsibility? Taking care of your own stuff? Has that stayed with you? Do you think that's influenced you in later years?
Rhys Long:I think initially, once I was given the freedom, I absolutely went, went against every single thing that was enforced on me at boarding school. But I also think that you do take the positives out of it. And when you realise that certain things work, and they work for a reason, you know, you keep them in your life and they it resonates if there's, if there's something that is working well, you quickly learn that, you know, that something is needed, and it's needed for a reason. You know, discipline is a funny thing. I think when rules and regulations are, are implemented, the natural sort of reaction is to go up against them. But after a period of time, and when you see the evidence, sometimes you realise that, you know, those rules and regulations are in place for a reason. And I think if that reason is clarified and identified, you can accept it and you can move on.
Andy:Okay, if you know why it's there. So after initial period of rebellion, if you like, with hindsight, you recognised hang on a minute, some of this structure was quite valuable, and maybe I'll accept it back into my life if you like. So what about subjects? What about academically and as a student what were you what were you busy doing? What were you enjoying at school?
Rhys Long:Andy, I've got to stop you for a second and just tell you one story, because this story is very clear in my mind, and it's about I think I was probably eight or nine years old. And it was lunchtime sitting in the canteen, or at the school at our dining hall. And it just quite strict arrangements where there's 8 kid sitting at a table, you've got a senior at the top of the table, and then it goes down to the most junior sitting at the bottom. And the most junior person is the one that has to take all the dishes and the knives and forks and, you know, get them ready for the washing up afterwards. And the rule is, the senior will dish up the food, it will come down to you and you'll eat what's on your plate. It's not a negotiation, that's just the way it works. And I, as much as I love tomato sauce and tomato soup, I do not have the ability to eat a tomato, the fruit, you know, where it's got the pips and the skin, I just, I've never been able to eat it. And they dished one up on my plate. And it came down to me. And eventually everybody else had finished their food. And I'd finished everything else around that tomato, but the tomato sat in the centre of my plate. And they would not let me leave until I'd finished eating that tomato. And it's amazing how long sort of five or 10 minutes feels when you're having a one on one with a tomato. Eventually, I ate it. And I was horribly ill afterwards. But I think it was sort of self induced illness. But to this day, which is now what, nearly 50 years later, I still do not eat tomatoes. To my wife's absolute disgust.
Andy:That's yeah, maybe discipline taken a little bit a little bit far. I like the idea that the most junior person at the table gets the task of clearing clearing up afterwards. Why that resonates with me is it fits so well with developing people. And you know that everyone at that table was in that position at some point when they were the most junior. So they've all done it. And it is teaching new skills and responsibility to the most junior person in the team. They're getting the opportunity to learn something new rather than someone else who already knows how to do it doing it. So I like the link there. So when you were not avoiding eating tomatoes, or forcing tomatoes down, what else were you up to at school?
Rhys Long:Well, you know, it was it was actually an amazing school. It was located about 40 kilometres outside of Port Elizabeth. So in a very much a rural area in the mountains. And the school specialised in doing outward bound activities. In fact, it was actually modelled on Gordonstoun in Scotland. But there's a lot of rock climbing and kayaking and, and it was the only school in the world as far as I know that has got its own Surf Lifesaving Club, where they patrol a beach and are responsible for saving lives on that on the beach. So it was an amazing experience to grow up in that environment, you know, despite the discipline and the need for for for very strict rules and regulations. The school itself and the ethos was absolutely amazing. And I think saved me on multiple occasions, and the friendships and the relationships that are built up from those years 30 40 years ago. I have friends that are still very dear to me, sort of developing that friendship through those sort of relatively tough environments.
Andy:Yeah, people have mixed feelings about boarding school, don't they, often people who haven't been. It sounds like yours was a very positive experience. Incredible you had that surf life saving school, or responsibility for the school? Did you get involved in that yourself?
Rhys Long:Yeah, it was it was something that almost everybody did. Because there was one very clear reason why. Because as I said, the school was isolated, about 40 kilometres outside Port Elizabeth, and it was really much pretty much on its own. There was nothing, no interaction with anybody else. You just lived in this environment. But when you took part in Surf Lifesaving, which was on a Saturday and a Sunday, when the beaches were open, you got away from the school. So it was absolutely amazing just to get out. And worst thing is, it's beautiful sunshine outside and you on the beach. We did it not for the value of saving lives. We did it for our own selfish reasons to get out to escape.
Andy:That's very honest of you Rhys. Nevertheless, I'm sure having that responsibility rubbed off. And it had some benefits.
Rhys Long:Yeah, it was I cannot talk enough about how How a good experience it was, you know, another thing that we also did there we went on survival camp, which you're away for, I think it's two or three nights, they drop you so it's an isolated survival, where they take 20 kids out and they drop them in the mountain, sort of two or three or four kilometres apart. All you take is the clothes that you're wearing, you're not allowed to take sleeping bags or anything else, tents, and you then have to survive for the three days. No food, you got to find what you eat. I mean, it was awesome. It was awesome. Luckily, you only have to do it once
Andy:Were they oversubscribed, was this their way of, what an experience
Rhys Long:At the age of 15 16, you're doing this you know, you obviously get taught what you should be eating what you shouldn't be eating. And some of us made mistakes.
Andy:I can just see you out there with nothing and saying Well, I'm still not eating a tomato. I don't care how hungry I am. And I'm also thinking okay, so if yours is possibly the only school in the world that has its own beach, lifeguarding responsibilities, we had James Harper, our guest whose school had its own runway, and a golf course. So I might collect a sort of best of school stories. And the other story, the other list we might have to do is oldest guest whose mum was a computer programmer. That could be could be another competition we could we could run because I've got some guests whose parents, they're quite rare, the guests who had parents who
Rhys Long:But most guests have parents.
Andy:Yeah, no, they have parents, but they don't have parents who are computer programmers. And if they do, it's because they're, you know, my youngest guests, if you like, and I know you and I are similar
Rhys Long:Who was your youngest guest?
Andy:Now, it'll be somebody from Tesla I imagine. Anyway, you and I are similar vintage. So there, sport. Were you getting involved in sport at school too?
Rhys Long:Absolutely. So in a typical boarding school environment, everybody is encouraged slash forced to participate in sport. But I loved sport and I played many different sports. It's like a jack of all trades, but a master of none. Cricket, rugby, tennis, waterpolo, surf lifesaving squash, we did athletics, it was a wonderful environment.
Andy:It does sound very wholesome indeed. And very enjoyable, lots of life skills, lots of responsibility, lots of Team stuff. And leadership experience. Did you get some leadership experience while you we're at school?
Rhys Long:I did. You know, in the junior school, I pretty much was just one of the guys. And then when it came to high school, we had a system called a training scheme, which is it's almost like different stages that you go through, you have to get promoted to qualify for the next stage. It's not done based on age, it's based on certain achievements, and with each level that you move up on, so you get different benefits and privileges that are linked to that. And eventually, you start off as a junior and you go through about seven or eight stages until you eventually end up as a prefect. And then once you're a prefect, you've got responsibility, but a lot of privileges that go with that as well. And out of a school of about 300 I think we had about 12 prefects, so it's limited numbers, not everybody can be a prefect. And I think the other responsibility I had in that environment was I was the head of house of one of the hostels, we had about 90 Kids 100 Kids in the hostel. And we almost pretty much ran it as our own little environment. You know, you have juniors, you have seniors, everybody's looking after each other, the seniors have to ensure that all the juniors shower, you know, on time, get to meals on time, their rooms are tidy. And when you're younger, sort of 13 14 you're in a dormitory with 20 of you together. You can imagine there's some interesting developments that happen with 20 young boys you know, all in this dormitory. There's a lot of fun aspects, there's a lot of guys sort of giving each other a hard time as they sort of going through the the life role themselves. So it was yeah, it was really a good opportunity for me, a good experience. And I think it taught me that I like people. Some people just don't like people, I like people. I enjoy being with people. I enjoy my own time. But I also enjoy spending time with people it's good value there.
Andy:So I can see how you got an enormous amount from being there. Academically, what subjects were you leaning towards?
Rhys Long:I think, you know, maths and science were sort of my key subjects that I focused on. I honestly believe that from a career path, there was two jobs that I wanted to do when I was at school. The one was become a pharmacist. And the second was to become an HR manager. I don't know why these two, there's no link whatsoever.
Andy:No, and they're not your typical, I don't think they're your typical, what do you want to be when you grow up answers. So you don't know where they came from? Do you know where pharmacist came from?
Rhys Long:No, not at all. In my mind, I saw a pharmacist as being self employed, having your own shop, and servicing people, supplying a service. I think that's what was in my mind at the time. I liked the idea that it was maybe a little bit exclusive. Everybody wanted to become a doctor. I thought this is maybe a little bit different.
Andy:Okay. And how far do you take that idea?
Rhys Long:Not far at all. I'll tell you, there's quite a good reason for that because in my final year of schooling, every year, they used to select one of the final year students and offer them the opportunity to go overseas on an exchange programme. And I was fortunate to be selected for this. And I went to the UK for a year to a school called Box Hill School, which is in Surrey. 1987. I spent the year there. It was awesome. You know. So here I arrived in the UK, I've never been out of South Africa in my life before. My parents helped me buy the cheapest ticket that we could get from South Africa via Luxembourg, because that was one of the one of the most cost effective routes that they could find. I eventually had to take a bus from Luxembourg to France and then cross on the ferry to Dover and then a train up to Paddington Station and John Jones was a Welshman that worked at Box Hill School, he was like a sports master. He must have been about 60 or 70 years old then, he came to collect me at the station and took me through to the school.
Andy:Well, I'm thinking because you've been dropped in the middle of nowhere, age 15 with no food and no, you know, no, nothing, that this would have been less of a challenge for you, or less intimidating than it might have been for someone who hadn't had that sort of resiliency.
Rhys Long:I think it was still quite a challenge. You know, trying to find my way through Europe is it was definitely a challenge. But the experience that it afforded me that year in Box Hill was just amazing.
Andy:You mentioned getting a bit rebellious at some point. Rebelling a little bit against all of the rules. Were you still behaving yourself at this point.
Rhys Long:I was more rebellious as a I think a younger kid. I remember when I was about in, sort of in South Africa, you have primary school and then you have high school and the start of high school you're probably 13 14 years old. And the school separates the junior school and the high school, it's quite a big separation. But what we used to have from a discipline perspective is they used to have a prefects detention, which was on a Thursday morning at about five o'clock AM and used to run from 5am to about 6.30 . You used to have to run around sports fields carrying sandbags. It was really to stop kids from deviating from the accepted path. And I think I broke the record at the age of 13. I was on every single detention for the first two terms of the school of the school year and we only had three terms so I think it was a slow learner.
Andy:Right so Box Hill school, you got a lot of value out of that year. How old were you then Rhys?
Rhys Long:I just turned 18 just turned 18. Yeah, went across, spent the year there. The summer holiday was awesome. They paid me still a salary and I could spend a month in Greece, which was an absolutely amazing experience as well. And then at the end of the year, I hitchhiked around Europe for three months before I went back to South Africa. I bumped into a friend of mine and the two of us had rucksacks on our backs. And we just hitch hiked from UK through Germany. I mean, I remember one evening, we were hitchhiking on our way to Amsterdam, and this family stopped in one of these VW camper vans, three kids, two adults. Where are you going to? We said we're going to Amsterdam. They said oh, well, we're going to, I can't remember Hanover. We said, okay, that's fine. We went with them to Germany, we went to Hanover. We spent two days with them. They they showed us around the town. We slept in their house, it was awesome. No plans, no direction. We just had fun.
Andy:It's a bit like I don't know, Tom Sawyer or something. This this this story's so wholesome. Yeah, it's, it's so colourful and warm and rich, the experience you had. When did your thoughts then turn to what you were going to do after this sort of period?
Rhys Long:Well, you know, the interesting thing is, it's amazing how life changes. So after spending 13 months in the UK and Europe, my next challenge was I had to return back to South Africa, because I had to do my national service, which is conscription, you know, doing your military service. So I went from having all the freedom in the world to going, I arrived back in South Africa on about the 28th of January. And on the third of February, I had to report for duty for my basic training.
Andy:Was that an inconvenience? Was that something that you just accepted because you knew you didn't have a choice? Were you nervous about it? What can you remember about that?
Rhys Long:Yeah. Look, at that point in time, South Africa was fighting a war with Angola. South Africa was being supported by most of the western countries and Angola was being supported with military equipment from Russia, largely Russia. And it was because Angola was trying to descend down through Southwest Africa, which we now call Namibia and South Africa was trying to protect their borders. And it was quite a heavy conflict. I mean, it went on for about 17 or 20 years. And I got there. Effectively, I did my basic training in Namibia at a little town called Volkers Bay. The English word I think, is Wallfish Bay, I would assume. And the military base is about 30, or 40 kilometres into the desert into the Narmab desert. They've got a very famous sand dune there called dune seven, which is often used for military training and for fitness exercises and things like that. But I remember getting home, saying hello to my parents spending five days at home, and then them taking me to the train station to get onto the military train to head out to Namibia through the desert, it was a three or four day trip on the train.
Andy:Wow. So with some trepidation?
Rhys Long:Massive trepidation, no idea what to expect. All the horror stories in the world that you've heard from people that have done their military training before you. It was quite quite an emotional feeling as well, because South Africa was going through quite a transition politically, we didn't all agree with what the government was standing for that point in time. But you also didn't have much room to disagree so everybody pretty much was doing what they had to do. It was a very strange time, I think it was, many of the people in South Africa were very narrow minded, if I can put it that way. Now, I just spent a year in the UK being exposed to a totally different environment. Whereas the people in South Africa were all. my friends and my family, were all very much on this narrow path of the old South Africa. It was interesting.
Andy:Yeah, I missed the opportunity to ask you about the impact that side of the impact of coming to the UK that you you had you it sounds like you had your eyes opened from that experience.
Rhys Long:Absolutely. Totally different, just exposed to different people, different countries, different cultures. Whereas South Africa, as much as there's so many different cultures in one country, in those days it was predominantly one culture that was ruling the country. And it was pretty much the Afrikaner culture that was directing which way everybody was doing things. Even the English speaking people, let alone the people of colour, had very little opportunity to voice their full opinions.
Andy:And that I mean, obviously, significantly in the case of South Africa, because it's different from how it is now and but any anyone coming from a country into another culture is going to it's a great way to experience a broadening of the mind isn't it, exposure to different ways of thinking and different paradigms. So understandably, not without some trepidation, you were heading into Namibia for your training for your national service. How long was this going to be for? Was it a two year thing or what?
Rhys Long:Yeah, two year two year programme. The first three or four months that we did the basic training in Namibia, it was pretty tough, because they know that you're not going to be seeing anybody from the public, and you're not going to be seeing your parents or anything like that. So they give you quite an intensive training session. The whole idea behind it is they're trying to break you down as an individual, and then build you up with their mindset. You know, that is pretty much what we all saw through what they were trying to do to us. The sad thing is, the people that are doing the breaking down, are probably not the most intelligent people around. And quite often, we were in a position where we were, we realised we were smarter than them. And there were certain things we could get away with, because of that. But unfortunately, whenever you were found out, physically you were challenged, and quite comprehensively, and, you know, to try and discourage anybody from getting too clever with them in the future. So the basic training was pretty tough. But they came around to do some selections for various different divisions, para bats, which is the parachute division. And then there's one called junior leaders where they take you away to another city or another town, and you do quite strict training to become a commissioned officer. For those of us that were in Namibia in the desert, you know what, it cannot be any worse than where we are now. Everybody applied for the junior leaders course just to get out of the crap hole that we were in. And I was fortunate I got selected for this programme. They took maybe 10% of the people, but I think I was one of the only English speaking people that was selected. And I went to Otsur and it's an a nine month course. And at the end of the day, I ended up with the rank of Lieutenant. But what was a coincidence is that when I got to otro, there were two other people in my platoon that had both been at my school and had both been to Box Hill. David Russell was the year before me and Simon Blackburn was the year before him. What a coincidence.
Andy:Love coincidences. I also love to think that you handled the even the Namibia desert bit better because you'd done so many detentions you're like bring it on.
Rhys Long:I had a genetic predisposition for that
Andy:Punish me, just hold back with the tomatoes whatever you do. Let me take a moment to tell you about our sponsor. Could you use some additional experienced resources who can work alongside you and your team on a flexible basis to help you achieve your priorities? I started Aquilae in 2016 and since then, we've worked internationally with established automotive OEMs, EV startups, fintechs, and insurance companies to achieve their unique mobility goals. Aquilae team members are highly experienced senior leaders with complementary areas of expertise who've run businesses and divisions internationally in our industry. Because we've all had many years experience of operating in the industry ourselves, we don't just advise our clients on what to do, instead, we tend to work alongside them delivering their specific projects, we're happy to develop strategy, and we're equally happy to then get involved delivering the plan. Mobility businesses are all about people, processes and technology. We leverage our Aquilae Academy for people development, and Aquilae Consulting for those wider business topics. To give you some examples of the sort of work we do through the Aquilae Academy, we work with CEOs and their first line to develop cohesive leadership teams. We create continuous learning environments for leadership development, we develop bespoke programmes to improve the performance of specific teams and we provide one to one coaching for high performing individuals. To give you some examples of the sort of work we do through Aquilae Consulting, we help create paperless digital end to end customer journeys for direct to consumer finance and subscription models. We conduct strategic reviews. For example, one client asked us what's the best financial services structure for each market we operate in? We produce feasibility studies for new market entry, we advise on and support regulatory applications. We help design, implement and monitor regulatory compliance procedures. We run tenders and vendor selection projects, we conduct end to end operational reviews to improve effectiveness and efficiency. If you're looking for some help with people or business topics, and you like the idea of having some additional very experienced resources, who can work flexibly alongside you, please get in touch with me for a conversation, you can email me directly at andy@aquilae.co.uk. Okay, let's get back to our Okay, so you got that lefttenant or Lieutenant position, and episode. wonderful to find yourself there with two people from your school who'd also had the Box Hill experience. And you talked about how you made some really great friendships from school that you've kept and you love people as well. So that made that period, I presume that added a lot to that period.
Rhys Long:Yeah. It made it more bearable, if I can put it that way because it is quite a tough period. The second year of my national service, that is when you as a in a leadership position, you get seconded to a different area, where you then have to be the people training the new juniors that are coming through. And then I had a very brief moment of conflict where I actually went up to the border, where the battle was happening. And I spent about three months in that environment, which was, again, a totally different environment. You don't realise what it sounds like when bullets and bombs are flying around your your ears, and it gives you a whole new respect for having discipline, approaches how to handle things, it enlightens you like you have no idea.
Andy:I love the twinkle in your eye. Now, yeah, okay, I get it, you now think, right, this is why we have these rules and guidelines. So when you were saying at the beginning of the conversation, that sometimes these guidelines are important, I had no idea where that was coming from, I didn't realise it was coming from such a fundamental place as life and death. So, wow. Three months in a conflict situation. So it taught you that rules and regulations and guidelines can keep you alive and keep your colleagues alive. Did it, can I say this? Did it do you any harm?
Rhys Long:I think psychologically, maybe. No, I think anybody that is exposed at at that young age, 18, 19 years old, exposed to that level of violence, you definitely carry that with you for a period of time. I think I was fortunate in that my personality type allowed me to deal with it maybe better than some other people. And I know certain people that have really struggled with it. But you know, at the end of the day, it was part of life, it was a dark place, but we've moved on and you know, we life gets better, life doesn't necessarily get worse, and opportunities present themselves. And I think also having come from that boarding school environment, I quickly learned that you need to try and make the best of each situation, because the situation is never ideal. And you can either mope about it and be really unhappy. Or you can just try and make the best of it. And I think with a good group of friends, it helps you to push through those difficult phases, and get you to see the sunlight at the end of the tunnel.
Andy:That's making me think Rhys because we see that sort of statement on social media about making the most and this too shall pass and all those sort of things. But doing that when there are bullets flying around, and people are trying to kill each other that's sort of next level dealing with it. And you say that was your you think that your your makeup if you like your approach to life helped you deal with that? And is that what you mean that you were you were able to make the most of what was happening? You able to see whatever positive was in the day and not let it get out of hand mentally for you?
Rhys Long:Yeah, I think so. You know Andy, it was, as I said, it was a tough time. But you know, you cannot dwell on that forever. If everybody had to really absorb it too deeply there would be no progress because everybody would just be fixated on the negative. You've got to at some point, just say, Okay, it's bad. I can't do anything about it. I can just do my best, move on. I've got to tell you one story. I've got to tell you just one story from from that episode. And it's quite a funny story. So, one day, we're on patrol, and you walk this each sections got 10 people and you go on regular patrols, maybe two or three and you might go for two or three days at a time, and then come back to base and restock and things like that. And often what we used to do, we used to do all the naughty things. So for instance, where you have three sections going off in different directions, we would go around the base, because you're in the jungle, you're in the bush in the desert, you know, nobody knows really where you're and we'd all get together and instead of going as three separate individual sections, we'd put the three sections together, and we'd go as a platoon. And now all of a sudden, there's 30 of you, there's more camaraderie you having more fun. And the one day we came across quite a big snake, one of these big cobras, you know, the ones that stand up where their head where their head stands up. And one of the guys in our group fancied himself as a bit of a snake charmer. He said, I've caught snakes on the farm before, I know exactly how to handle this. So like typical young guys, we form this big circle with the snake in the middle, and this guy approaches the snake and grabs it by the tail. And his strategy was, I will swing the snake around, because the centrifugal force will not allow it to bring its head towards the tail and bite him. But what he didn't know was that this snake was stronger than the centrifugal force that he was generating by spinning, and this thing that came back towards his hand. So what he did was he let go. What we all did then was turn around and run after it, but in slow motion, I saw the snake coming and it landed on my back and my neck. Now picture the scene, you're in the desert, the sand is like sea sand, you got boots on. You're putting in maximum effort, but you're getting minimal traction
Andy:It's cartoon style.
Rhys Long:I will never forget that feeling of that snake on my back. And I must have run for about 150 metres in this desert sand just trying to get away from this thing.
Andy:Oh my and it fell off then or
Rhys Long:Yeah, fell off. It was long, it was about a two metre snake. I live to tell the tale.
Andy:Yeah, thank goodness you do. I love this. Before we started recording listeners before we started recording, Rhys said I've never done anything like this before. And then you rock up like a pro raconteur, someone who's had a career telling stories, you just take us from one thing to another effortlessly. So thank you very much for that. So
Rhys Long:you're sparking the memories with this walk down memory lane.
Andy:Very good. Pleased to hear it. So that was second year of your two year conscripted service. What happened after that? What was your plan, then?
Rhys Long:Well, then it was back home. And well, I actually was in a situation where at that stage I was 20 years old. Money was a very important part of my life. And the need to get some money. You know, when you're a youngster, you want to go out and have fun, you need to have cash. So I very seriously considered signing on for a third year for the national service. So the way it works is when you start off doing your basic training in the first year, they pay you a tiny salary. But you know, you're living in the in the military premises, you've got food, so you don't need that much money. Then when you go into second year, I was fortunate enough to do the officers course and become a lieutenant, your salary almost triples. So that's the main reason why people actually want to become an officer is not because they want to lead people, it's because they want to increase their income base. Then the third year, if you do a third year, you can earn significantly more money because now it's almost like a job, you're no longer conscripted,you now are doing it as a career. So I thought this was a great way to earn good money. You know, here I am 20 years old, I can be earning X amount of money per month. And my father said to me, son, sorry for you. You are going to university. I didn't go to university. Your mom didn't go to university, you're going to be the first child in our family to go to university.
Andy:How did you feel about that at the time then?
Rhys Long:Not happy. Not happy at all. Because I had this plan that I was going to make X amount of money over the next year. And my father just put the fire out on that plan of mine
Andy:How do you feel about that now?
Rhys Long:He knew what he was talking about. He was quite a character. He had some wonderful sayings, which I can't really let you know about on the radio but there were two sayings that sort of spring to mind. The one was it's hard to soar like an eagle when you surrounded by turkeys, just meaning get the right people around you, and you can move forwards. If you've got idiots with you, you're never get to make a success of it. And his second saying was you cannot be half pregnant, you're either in or you're out you cannot be somewhere in the middle. And it's amazing how those two things resonated with me throughout my whole life. But anyway, he was also quite strict with when he had a plan he sort of pushed it down on you. And he was quite clever with the way he did it as well. And it was all financial. It was if you go to university, I'll pay for it as long as you pass your your course. If you fail, then you're on your own. That was a good motivator for me, because I was not interested in studying at all. But I knew I had to do something after he convinced me I realised I had to do something. And as much as I wanted to earn the cash doing the national service for an additional year, I realised that long term that was not going to be a good career move.
Andy:So what did you choose to do at university?
Rhys Long:Well, I was very unsure. The one course that everybody all my friends were very interested in being was study accountancy and become a CA. And everybody's everybody that's running businesses these days has got a CA degree and they're all qualified accountants and bla bla bla. Accountancy did not interest me at all. It interested me in being able to tell read a balance sheet and an income statement. That's always quite an interesting factor for me, but the actual booking of the accounts, debits and credits and ledgers, I had no interest in that whatsoever. So anyway, I signed up for the BCom with accountancy as my major. And after six months, I just said to my dad, I said, really, you know, this is not for me. I said I'll do my first year accounts, because I've got to have that for BCom anyway. But I'm not going to pursue a career in accountancy, I just cannot see this working for me. And I changed my majors. And I majored in industrial psychology, and business economics or economics. And I just loved economics. It just everything made sense to me. And I enjoyed industrial psychology, because it's dealing with people and trying to understand how the mind works, cognitive processes, things like that. I really enjoyed that. And especially in the workplace. So I found it very interesting.
Andy:So you were able to pivot if you like to use that popular phrase at the moment after the first year, and find yourself in a really good place at university, enjoying the subjects that you were doing?
Rhys Long:Well, I think, I think what what happened then, because we had this agreement with my father that he would pay for the university if I passed every year, and in that first year, because I changed my majors, I almost had to do a repeat of the first year. So I got my accountancy qualification, my first year accounts, but then I changed my majors to industrial psychology and business economics. So I almost had to do I did a three year degree over four years. And that's where I learned that I could also sell things because I sold it to him. I sold the concept that he needed to pay for an additional year at university.
Andy:How did you do that?
Rhys Long:I cannot remember, but it was obviously very successful. I think it might have involved taking him out for a beer and convincing him that it was in his best interest. If I've got this qualification, I'd be off the payroll earlier. And then, you know, he wouldn't have to look after me. I think it was something along those lines.
Andy:It sounds like he must have recognised that it was the right thing to do and that you were going to be presumably this conversation was this happening at the end of the first year?
Rhys Long:Yeah, it was probably halfway through the first year. In that second semester, we probably had that discussion. In the background of that I had about three different jobs that I was doing at the same time as a university student, which is probably one of the other reasons why I didn't do that well at accounting because I wasn't really applying myself fully. So I had a job as a barman maybe three or four nights a week, I was working as a waiter at a pizza restaurant. University life for me was awesome. I loved it.
Andy:Life in general seems to have been pretty good up to this point Rhys.
Rhys Long:But Andy to be fair, my results weren't sparkling. But it's because I wasn't really applying myself. I was doing enough to qualify. But I wasn't really focused on it. I had more focus on seeing how many pizzas I could sell at the pizza restaurant. You know that I was more interested in that than actually getting my degree. I was doing the degree to tick the box that I've got the degree. I think that's what it boils down to.
Andy:Yeah, but you're more interested in the practical application outside of university. And so, after university and your first job, what did you do?
Rhys Long:First job was there is a company called West Bank in South Africa, which is sort of known as the wheels bank, the asset finance bank. And I had a friend that studied with me at University of Port Elizabeth. And he got a job with them as a business development officer. He was one year ahead of me in the studies because I'd gone to the UK for a year, so I sort of slipped a year behind everybody else. And one day, I bumped into him, and he just said his name was Trevor Simons. He just said, Rhys, I'm working for West Bank. I'm a corporate business development officer. And this is what I do each day. And this sounded awesome to me. So I applied to West Bank, and I got accepted and they put me on their trainee programme as this business development officer, not in the corporate side, I worked on the consumer side. I was with them for one month as a trainee. And they said, right, we've got an opening for you in this little town called King Williamstown, which is maybe 200 kilometres from Port Elizabeth from where I was living. Would you like the job? I said, Yeah, sounds awesome. And I moved to this little town, they gave me a wonderful house that I could stay in that the bank paid for. And the wonderful thing about this business was that if I'd stayed in a big city, and I did consumer vehicle finance, I would deal only with your sort of average man in the street type of customer. But here in the small environment, I was dealing with agricultural finance for farmers that were buying combine harvesters and things like that. I was dealing with corporate customers that had trucking businesses. What I learned in two years in that role, would have taken me 20 years to learn in a regular nine to five vehicle finance job, it was amazing.
Andy:That's a classic example of when you're in a small, a smaller environment, but with a ideally a big, well funded organisation behind you, but you're in a small bit of it somewhere where you get just way more exposure. Excellent.
Rhys Long:That actually led me to my second job because one of the Mercedes Benz dealers used to hold an annual fishing trip. And they used to invite their clients and some of their their key business partners. And they invited me on this business trip. And it ended up being here I am I mean I'm thinking this is a fishing trip, I was so naive and green. But it was just an excuse for these guys to get away from their wives and go drinking for the weekend. They had an absolute party. And whilst I was on this trip, I got to know, our biggest competitor was Staneck, which is part of the Standard Bank Group. And the area manager was on this fishing trip. And two days after we got back home, I got a phone call from him to say, I think you could fit into my organisation. And I was in this little town called King Williamstown. And he was in East London, which is a city, not a town. He said, I've got a gap for you if you come and join Staneck. So I sort of ummed and ahed. And I mean, I was really happy with West Bank and the experience I was getting. But he dangled I was driving a 1400 Nissen as my company car at West Bank, and he says, If you come to Staneck, we'll give you a 1600 Opal with air conditioning and power steering. And I was sold just like that. But also, to be fair, the Standard Bank Group is one of the big well known banking groups in South Africa. And I knew it was a good opportunity. So good opportunity to drive a nice car.
Andy:Yep. And the bright lights of the big city were beckoning you
Rhys Long:Running water, electricity, it was amazing.
Andy:I just want to point out the fact that it was your connection with your friend did you say Trevor Simons who, that started the ball rolling in your whole career, if you like you can trace back to that one conversation about you know, maybe a few conversations but the fact that he said why don't you come and do this? I love that. And then it's it's just carried on from there. And then the next opportunity was someone again approaching you because they liked I like the way you fish young man. You could come in and be part of my team. And yeah, a little bit of extrinsic motivation in the form of a better car and the city to come to and a brand that wasn't a risk in terms of joining a respected brand in South Africa. How long did you stay there?
Rhys Long:I was with that team initially for about, I think five years in total with the Standard Bank Group, but in different roles, so, so I did the consumer finance for them for about two years, then they moved me into what they call a Commercial Suite, which is where you look after the larger corporate customers. And I had really good exposure there as well, because you know, you're coming from consumer finance is relatively simple, you know, it's man in the street salary buying a car. When you get to the corporate commercial side, as you know, it's a little bit more complex. There's tax impacts that you need to consider, how does it affect the cash flow, all those types of things. And that was really it sort of enlightened me into the real world, outside of just simple finance, and it got a little bit more complicated. And based on that, I made the decision to move across from Staneck into Standard Bank itself, which is the commercial bank. And I spent a year in what they call their small to medium enterprise division, where they look after small businesses. And I was the SME manager. And what I suppose it boiled down to was I had about 150 to 200 clients that I used to look after their regular banking, as well as their asset finance, as well as any long term lending that they needed. And it was really good overall exposure into the banking environment. We think we're bankers, but in asset finance, you're not really a banker, until you work in a commercial bank, and then you, you realise it's just a different pace. It's more rules and regulations. I found, in my experience that the asset finance tends to be a lot more flexible, marketing orientated, customer focused, whereas commercial banking, especially in South Africa, was very rigid. And after a year there, I felt like I just back to the rules and regulations and red tape. And it was incredibly frustrating, but a good learning curve
Andy:Yeah. And again, a great example of how, until we've done something, we don't know what it's like. So it seemed like a really good progression at the time. But then in the midst of it, you thought, actually, this isn't me. But it's only by going and experiencing that you discover, okay, this doesn't feel as this isn't as good a fit as what I was doing before. So you've you decided to move out?
Rhys Long:Yeah, and that that probably led to me making the strangest decision I've ever made in my life. Besides getting married to my wife. Second strangest decision I've ever made in my life was I resigned from Standard Bank. And at that point, f&i, finance and insurance managers was a new thing. business managers was a very, very new concept in South Africa. And I'd always had a very good relationship with the BMW dealership in East London, a dealership called BMW City. I resigned as a manager of Stannah bank, and I went to become an F&I at this BMW dealership. Now consider this dealership maybe sells 15 to 20 new cars a month. It's a really a small, small, small dealership. When I think back now, Andy, I cannot for the life of me think how I justified making that decision. But it was the best decision I ever made
Andy:Yeah, as you say, it's obviously a strange one to go from what you did into that dealership, but you don't know what it was. It wasn't a love of cars, or
Rhys Long:I don't think so. I think I just got so tired of the regulation and rules that the commercial banking environment was providing that I just had to find an alternative and this alternative presented itself to me. And the timing was perfect because f&i was new. Also, I need to be fair, besides the fact that it was a BMW dealership, it was also owned by the Barlow World group, which, in South Africa, they own maybe 120 different dealerships. So it's quite a well established group. It's not just a mom and pop show, you know, it's not just a small and within I'd been there, I was there for about a year. And then Barlow's Barlow World transferred me from East London to Johannesburg to become the f&i at their sort of flagship store, which was one of the biggest BMW stores in Johannesburg. And that again, was within a year to do that quite quick transition from the small little country bumpkin city that's maybe 300,000 people I don't know to Johannesburg that's 6 million people. It was quite a daunting move, but again proved to be one of the best moves that I made.
Andy:It's a fascinating story Rhys. What was it that you think enabled you to progress so quickly when given these opportunities that you were
Rhys Long:Andy I'm not sure I haven't really analysed and dissected why, I just sort of, you know, if the opportunity came along, and it was felt like the right one, I just grabbed it. And I think what it stems from, if I try and cast my mind back, and I think about it now, at the BMW dealership in East London, the small dealership, it was fun. You know, everybody was happy to be there. It was a really fun environment, we were producing great results. And that's when I think the dealer group Barlow World thought that there were great results from a new guy that's come in here, customers like him, the dealer staff like him, we all got on very well together. And they wanted to then just take that and put it into a larger scale, you know, here's a dealership selling 20 cars a month. Let's put let's try it in a dealership th 80 calls a month or 100 cars a month. Let's see how it works there. They took a chance on me because there was no real reason why they should have done it. But they went ahead and they did.
Andy:Yeah, you'd quickly established a reputation because of the results that you were getting in where they put you. So what happened after that, take us from there.
Rhys Long:Okay, so So I moved to the dealership in Johannesburg, and which was great for me because my parents lived in Johannesburg at that stage, you know, they'd my parents had moved up when dad was at Toyota. I actually moved in with him and him and I stayed together because my wife at that stage was still in East London and tying up loose ends there, you know, selling our house, things like that. And it was like I had a bachelorhood with my father for about six months before Michelle moved up to Johannesburg as well. And it was an awesome time that we spent together, did a lot of naughty things that we should never have done. But it was great. And within within about eight or nine months of being there, Keith Dye, I don't know if you remember Keith, I remember Keith, BMW Financial Services. He approached me one day and he just said Rhys, we've got a gap in the BMW finance organisation. I think you'd fit in quite nicely. Would you be interested? I said, at that stage, you know, BMW finance was my dream. You know, of all the banking partners that we dealt with from the f&i perspective, they were streets ahead of everybody else. Not from a systems perspective, but just purely from the quality of the people that they were, they had really good people, salespeople in their teams. And they were great to work with. So when that opportunity came, I just grabbed it. It caused a bit of friction with Barlows because they said, you know, we've just moved you up from East London to Johannesburg, we paid for the costs of your move. There was nothing in the contract that said I had to stay with them for a certain period of time. But it did create friction between BMW Financial Services and the Barlow World group. And they actually did a terrible thing to me. On my last paycheck, they deducted the cost of the relocation so as an example if 20,000 or whatever currency it was, and they just took that off my payslip one month, no warning, anything like that, it was just gone. And I remember walking into Keith's office and he was saying to me Why are you looking so disappointed, why are you looking so down? I said, Ah, don't worry, Keith. Nothing to worry about. He said, No, I can see you've got this upset look on your face. I said, I showed him my payslip. My last payslip from Barlows. Because you get paid a month a month in arrears. I said I can't believe these guys have deducted the cost of the move without even telling me off my payslip. He said Rhys don't worry about that, leave that with me, I will sort it out. And true to his word he refunded everything that they deducted to ensure that I was, I was in a cash neutral position.
Andy:Excellent. Yeah I do know Keith, he played a role in my career journey, as well. I mention him in one of the side mirror episodes. So it's great to hear that that gesture that he that leadership gesture, and the fact also that he probed to understand you know, you look unhappy what tell me what's going on, even though you tried to brush it off, so little bit of celebration for Keith's leadership there, marvellous. And that was by now then you are within BMW.
Rhys Long:Yes. 17 years, they had me 17 years.
Andy:Give us a summary of that journey. Because I do want to get to Shanghai and I do want to I do
Rhys Long:We're on a slow boat to China. The BMW finance journey, the 17 years, I can split that into three very distinct parts. So the first part was working as a regional manager, looking after 10 or 15 BMW dealers, and ensuring that the FNR that those dealerships were doing what they needed to do to give the business to us. We quickly realised at some point that the BMW business, I mean, I think BMW,South Africa was selling 15 to 20,000 cars a year, they had reached a point where they were not going to be expanding much beyond that. So if we wanted to grow the business, we had to consider other options. And the one option that was really real to us was the Land Rover option. Because Land Rover had, I think, just separated from BMW at that stage. But we still had all those relationships. So we then maximised the business that we could get out of the Land Rover relationships. And then I remember walking into I think it was Keith's office or Clive's office, I can't remember exactly who's but I think it might have been Keith as well. And saying, You know what, there is so much opportunity here, if we can expand our business beyond BMW and Land Rover. And that's when this whole Alphera thing was sort of on the boil in Munich. And in some of the other markets like the UK, and the US, and Keith said that's a great idea. Let's, let's implement this. And I think Clive actually implemented the whole Alphera strategy with with Jennifer Grove. And each of the five regional managers that we had, were given the task to try and find non BMW Land Rover dealers that they could bring on board to try and grow our business. And everybody, we all started doing this. And we did it for about a year. And there was hardly any success, because everybody was getting 90% of their business from BMW. They were getting 8% or 10%, from Land Rover. And nobody had time to focus on these non BMW dealer. So this whole exercise was an absolute waste of time. And I thought about and I thought about and I went to Keith aand to Clive and I said, You know what, guys, the only way you're going to get this to work properly is to get somebody to be dedicated for this non BMW business. They said, That's a great idea. Who should we get? And everybody looked away. Because everybody knew it was going to be difficult. I sort of thought, well, you know, this is sort of partly my idea, I'm going to have to put my money where my mouth is at some point. So I raised my hand, I said, Okay, I'll do I'll give it a go. And they shared up my BMW dealers. And then I started basically trying to generate cold calling with with these non BMW dealers. And within about two years, I think we got up to about 150 different dealers that we were dealing with. But it was an interesting learning curve. Because out of those 150 dealers, you had 50 dealers that were committed, and were giving you good quality business, you had 50 dealers that were sort of there and there abouts. And you had 50 dealers that were giving you all the rubbish that they couldn't get approved through any other banks. And what came along with that was really high risk costs that we hadn't anticipated. Because some of these deals were just really rubbish. And I think that's when I realised that if you don't have a relationship, a proper relationship with the dealer, they feel nothing about giving you the bad deal. Even if they know it's a bad deal. The moment you've got that relationship, and you're with them in their face regularly, they're a lot more circumspect about the quality of business that they give to you. Because they know that they're going to see you the next day, and you're going to challenge them about it. So that was quite an interesting learning.
Andy:Yeah, very interesting. And interesting to hear that origin story of Alphera, really, and really focusing on it, and you said, you can't be half pregnant, your father used to use that expression. And if you've got a load of BMW dealers to look after, and a load of Land Rover dealers, and then you're tasked with add some others, that's going to be the last thing on your list of priorities and only by making, you know, it's not just this any situation only by making it somebody's priority, will it really get the attention that it needed, and not surprising that the person whose idea it is ends up being the best person to run with it.
Rhys Long:The business grew for us. And we got to a stage where we eventually had five Alphera regional managers looking after 250 dealers. And I think South Africa at one stage was the fourth or the fifth highest volume of Alphera market in the world, and out of 25 countries that were doing Alphera. We were fighting way above our fighting weight if I can put it that way. And we had some super relationships with Porsche as a brand. The local Porsche importer in South Africa, we really developed a very good relationship with them. And we became their prime finance partner for many years and did many years of very good business with them. And then we had the financial crunch in 2008. And these 250 dealers, we had to send them all a letter to say that we were terminating our relationship with them. Because in South Africa, we didn't have much funding. And from what I can recall, we were doing 60 month loans, with 24 month borrowed money. And the rollovers weren't guaranteed, and the rates, the pricing was going up. So it put us in a very tough position, and overnight, I remember with Mike Wetherall, him and I sitting together and deciding out of these 250, dealers, we can keep 50. But we've got to get rid of 200. Which 200 do you get rid of? That is a difficult, difficult stage to go through.
Andy:I'm sure. And you said then you got three stages for your BMW career. Was that the first that was the first stage was it? Yeah, profit contribution margin. Yeah.
Rhys Long:Well, the first one was looking after the BMW dealers, the second one was becoming the Alphera regional manager. And then the third phase was when they made me head of Alphera. And then I had six regional managers under me. And that was just after the financial crisis. And then we started the rebuild process. If I remember correctly, in 2009, we had a negative PC2, do you remember the PC2s and the PC3? So we had a PC2 of minus 1%, in 2009. And in 2015, we ended up with a PC2 of 3.2%. So we did a total turnaround of the business strategy.
Andy:How did you get those dealers back? Because you'd kind of cancelled them all in the crisis. So what sort of job was that trying to switch them back on again?
Rhys Long:Well, I think the cancelling was it was pretty tough. It was brutal, it was literally sending them a fax to say, unfortunately, from tomorrow, please don't send us any more finance application, it was really that brutal. Time is a healer. So over probably the next maybe six months of slowly getting our financial position, our treasury position back on track. And it was maybe only a year later, from 2009 2010, that we started actively growing the portfolio again. I think the other thing is having the good sales team, geographically distributed, really helped. So for instance, we had a guy in Cape Town that was really well known. And what he would do is he would make sure that, although he wasn't cooperating with them from a business perspective, he maintained the relationship with these dealers. So when it came to being in a position to reactivate he was very quick to get them back up and running again,
Andy:He'd kept it the relationships warm, very good.
Rhys Long:And the communication, the clear communication, they understood that we're not doing this because because you guys are bad guys. We're doing it because we've got an issue. And I think that open communication, the dealers could understand that they quickly bought back into it.
Andy:Very good. So that third stage then was being head of the Alphera business in South Africa having a team of six, regionally located so they were able to, as you said, how what a difference it makes when you're seeing your dealers regularly when you're face to face with them. And you were able to get things back on track in in a sterling fashion.
Rhys Long:Yeah, we did. We did very well. And it got I got to a point where I was sort of starting to feel a little bit complacent in my role. And that's when I was convinced that the next step I needed to make was to go to Munich. The only way I'm going to develop further is if I go and spend time in Munich. For some reason this was in my head. I don't know why. And it was also a time when Munich was not really actively pursuing expats. They were downsizing their expat quota if I can put it that way. It just seemed 2015 2016 things were starting to slow down. And I had a couple of conversations with Frank Meyer about doing an expat assignment in Munich, but somebody needed to go for me to pull the role. And it just wasn't happening. And then I walked into Clive's office, Clive Provos office, he was our CEO at the time, having just got back from Australia, he'd been in South Africa for a while again. I said Clive, I've got to do something different. I don't know what to do, Munich's not working out for me. And Axel Krieger had been our CFO in South Africa before and he'd gone to China to go work at the Brilliance Group. And Clive said well you know what? I remembered quite clearly, it was probably the sixth or the seventh of December in 2016. He says, Why don't you give Axel a call and just see if there's any opportunity there? Sort of went home and I spoke to Michelle. I said, Do you think I should phone Axel? He's in China. I said I was very keen to go to Munich, but I don't know if I'm ready for China. And Michelle said you know what, if you don't try, you don't know, nothing ventured nothing gained. We contacted Axel. And this is amazing. By the weekend it's probably the 15th of December if if my memory serves me correctly, and we had this conversation, Axel said, You know what, we have just been awarded the white label for Jaguar Land Rover financial services in China. You can run with this project. Wow, this is sounds like a real opportunity. This really sounds awesome. So 15th December, we have the call, 15th of January, myself, Michelle, and our twins are in Shanghai having a look see trip. As quick as we could get them passports, we were gone.
Andy:How old were the twins?
Rhys Long:Twins were 11 years old.
Andy:Right. And okay, so this is the first time Michelle has entered the story by name, she's been referred to before and what an entrance what a powerful entrance she's made. Hello, Michelle, and welcome to the story. So, you know, nothing ventured, nothing gained? What have you got to lose sort of spirit. And a month later, you are doing a look and see trip to Shanghai? And what were your thoughts when you got there? Did you feel as excited about it then? Or were there some reservations once you realised the enormity of what you were doing?
Rhys Long:So I spent that week of that looksee trip in our office. And Michelle spent that week looking at houses with the kids. I must be honest, this is where Axel was really good. Because the twins, age 11, they were doing really well at this school, they were popular, they had lots of friends. They were not keen to move anywhere, they were in such a good place. And I said to Axel when he said do you want to come on the looksee trip I said the only way I'm going to sell this to the family is if we all come together. Because you know China didn't have the best reputation at that point. So he said, Okay, not a problem. Bring the family. So Michelle and myself are twins, we flew over it was their first trip. I think the only way that I sold China to them was taking them to Disneyland for the day. Because we don't have Disneyland in South Africa. And once the kids saw Disneyland, deal was done.
Andy:So mercenary
Rhys Long:In hindsight, it does seem a little bit unfair.
Andy:I guess they went to Disneyland pretty much every day once they lived in China, did they that's
Rhys Long:it was awesome. But also picture the scene. So we land in January in Shanghai, it's minus whatever, snowflakes, it's grimy, it's grey, it's polluted. I needed Disneyland otherwise I would never have sold it. So so we came middle of January, we did the look see trip, I realised immediately that this job was not going to be an easy one. Because within the office environment, the communication, not everybody can speak English. I certainly cannot speak Mandarin. I knew it was going to be a challenge. But you know, Axel's quite an aggressive, active participant in the relationship, quite convincing. And the management team were very supportive. So that sort of made it all easier for me. And then once we sold it to the family, it was a case of I think we got home round about the 20th of January, 1st of April, we were back in Shanghai for three years. And I had that comfort you know I that letter from BMW that Clive organised for me that said, if you come back in three years time, we will have a job for you don't worry. And that sort of made the decision to give it a try so much easier. When you've got a family Yeah, when you've got a family, young kids, it's difficult to put everything on the line, not knowing if it's gonna work or not, you know, obviously, you're going to try your best to get the best result. But there's no guarantees. And I think without that guarantee letter, I might have not had the courage to make
Andy:And that's very understandable. And I find it the move. fascinating how we need things sometimes to help us make the decision even if we don't end up, you didn't go back after three years, but you still needed, that letter still was fundamental to you going in the first place
Rhys Long:Absolutely. And now, we've been here six years. And Andy, hot off the press, I have just signed for another three years. So we're gonna be nine years in Shanghai.
Andy:Wow, congratulations. We don't normally do breaking news on this channel. That's so cool. And I love how the Jaguar Land Rover white label opportunity was, in some ways, so appropriate for your experience that you had of having worked with Land Rover dealers in South Africa, and then rolling out Alphera. And what you were doing was taking a chunk of what you were very comfortable and familiar with and adding a whole chunk of new stuff that was going to be very challenging, the new country, the communication in the office, the scale of the thing, all this new stuff, but at least an element of it that you were very strong in and familiar with.
Rhys Long:Yeah, I think the early days, I mean, when I got here, I think in the first six months, I lost about 12 or 13 kilogrammes, just from the I don't want to say stress, because it wasn't stress. But I think it's, it was frustration, of not being able to put my point across that everybody could understand me, you know, I'm so used to being in an environment where I could talk with my team in South Africa. And I knew what they wanted, they very clearly understood what I wanted. And here, all of a sudden, I'm in an environment where I've got, I think we had about 40 sales people in the field. And maybe, maybe 10% of them could understand me, and the rest is going through a translator. And I don't even know if the translator is understanding me. You know, when you're talking about simple concepts of would you like a glass of water? Very clear, English, Chinese, no problem, everybody can understand you. But when you're saying, for instance, what is the chemical makeup of that water, the hydrogen, the oxygen, that gets lost in translation. And the response back is lost in translation. So you start to have to try and lead people in teams with half information. And you then to start to make assumptions. And that can be very, very, very dangerous.
Andy:I think that's where you were, because I came to visit you in Shanghai. And I think that was perhaps where you were at in terms of how challenging it was that that sort of time.
Rhys Long:And I think Axel and John, and in the leadership team realised that on paper it's great to have a foreigner in here. And I think I added a lot of value within the interaction with the UK team, the OEM team, where I was able to talk with them, and also the local expats with JLR. But when it comes down to the actual sales team members on our side, very difficult to communicate. So what we did is we did a bit of a team restructure. And then we brought in a local person to head up the sales team and I took more of a strategic role. And then started working with getting new partners on board. And, you know, we started to grow our business with Tesla, that's become the foundation of our company now. And now we are starting to position ourselves more as the green finance experts, the NEV partners and we are getting more and more of the New Energy partners on board. We've now got I think, six or seven partners that we're dealing with, of these new NEV brands, Li Auto, Xpeng, Li Motors, you know, all those new brands that are with so much potential, a small brand like leap moto as an example, or Li Auto, here in China, they sell 200,000 cars a year. You know, in South Africa, that's sort of almost the national sales for the whole year. This is just one brand. You know, Tesla, I think in December sold something like 80 85,000 cars in one month. The numbers are amazing.
Andy:It is an incredible market to be operating in and to be operating with all those new energy vehicles. So you find yourself in a very exciting you're not getting bored. You just signed on for another three years. Yeah
Rhys Long:There is no boredom in China. It's amazing. You know Andy you talked about the NEV and how it's developing. Last year in China, they sold nearly 7 million new energy vehicles, 6.8 million NEVs. Total car sales was roughly 26 million. So we're looking at 30 to 40% of the market is now NEV and it's growing. The previous year to 3 million so doubled, grew by 100 percent year on year. And this year, I think it's going to grow by between 50 and 100%. Depending how many of these new brands get going. BYD Build Your Dreams, sold 1.8 million cars last year,
Andy:just in China.
Rhys Long:Amazing. This market is just, you cannot comprehend, you know, coming from a small country like South Africa, it's got 50 million people, maybe 60 million people now, to China that's got 1.4 1.5 billion people. And it feels like when I go to work in the morning on the on the metro, I think they all on the same coach as me, that's what it feels like. I made a joke to Michelle the other day and said, I was riding on the metro, everybody was packed so tightly. I think one person took 10 yuan out of my one pocket and put two 5 notes in the other pocket.
Andy:Just one quick question about what's the definition of an NEV. Is it pure battery electric? Or is is that a broader?
Rhys Long:Yeah, they call it a new energy vehicle. So I think there's hybrids, but we specialising more on the pure battery vehicles at the moment. But you know what I speak in the correction because Li Auto, they've got this SUV that they the LI9 and the LI1 and they're now launching the LI7. This car is a hybrid. So it's got a range of about 1200 kilometres with a small petrol engine as well. But it's predominantly battery.
Andy:There's a whole separate conversation about that, and about the direction China's going with those vehicles and whether they're legislating in the same way that other markets are. But that's not what we're here for. We are here to celebrate our guests' careers, listen to their stories and learn from their experiences. And it has been an absolute joy to listen to your story. Thank you Rhys. Is there anything I haven't asked you that
Rhys Long:You haven't asked me about COVID?
Andy:Okay, tell me then about COVID.
Rhys Long:We've got quite an interesting story. So the news about COVID was just sort of surfacing at the end of 2019 I think it was. We'd just been to Australia on a family holiday, we'd come back from the Gold Coast. And we heard that this COVID thing was happening in Wuhan. So we thought we'd better get out of here because we don't know, we don't know how big this is and and news that comes through to you is also quite selective. So you never really know what's the true story. So we packed our bags, and we went to Thailand. And I worked from Thailand for about three weeks. It was absolutely awesome. But that was the good part about COVID. Then we came back. And then we faced all sorts of restrictions and things like it. I remember the local community saying to us go and do your grocery shopping, because we're gonna have a four day lockdown, just to make sure that this disease does not spread any further. So we went shopping and we got our stuff and we thought we're good for four days. They locked us down for 76 days, we could not leave our compound for 76 days. Now you know the story about the bread and the fish and the loaves? That's what it felt like. I was saying to the kids, what do you mean, you're gonna have a whole slice of bread?
Andy:Oh, wow, you won't forget that in a hurry. And I remember because we had a conversation a while ago. And you mentioned that and you said so they were bringing food to your place but it was very local food.
Rhys Long:Yeah, and most of the stuff we didn't have a clue what it was. Really didn't know.
Andy:Yeah. Rhys incredible. Thank you so much, been an absolute pleasure. I really, really appreciate you sharing your stories with me. Thank you.
Rhys Long:Thank you Andy, you you've awakened so many memories. I haven't thought about some of these things for such a long time. So I've thoroughly enjoyed it as well. Thank you very much.
Andy:You're welcome. And thank you, you join me on a your Friday evening it's coming up to 8pm your time, you mentioned that there could be a cold beer at the end of this. You've earned it, go and enjoy it and and reflect some more on the stories that we've unearthed in the last couple of hours and I'll speak to you again soon. You've been listening to Career-view Mirror with me Andy Follows. I hope you found some helpful points to reflect on in Rhys's story. If you enjoy listening to my guest stories, please could you do me a favour and share an episode with someone you lead, parent or mentor or a friend who you think might also benefit? Thanks for listening