Welcome to My Net Worth, our regular column on the lives and motivations of our country’s top business, legal and political people in their own words.
Motor-racing enthusiast and avid vehicle collector Grant Baker has been the non-executive chairman of Turners Automotive Group since 2009. He is also a substantial minority shareholder. His passion for cars and motorsport extends to his backing up-and-coming young drivers, including Formula 2’s Liam Lawson; he chairs the 20-year-old’s supporters’ partnership. He is also chairman of NZX-listed health and skincare company Me Today, and a former chair of 42 Below, Trilogy International and Moa Group. He was a co-founder of venture capital firm the Business Bakery and – after surviving serious cancer – the Gut Cancer Foundation.
If you’d asked me what I wanted to do as a kid, I would have said racing-car driver. My parents weren’t going to have it.
It wasn’t a fancy childhood, for sure. My parents worked hard and they didn’t give their kids anything for nothing.
I was never really suited to regimented learning. I like to think my own way and I used to read a lot and have a lot of general information about stuff, so I used to scrape through my exams.
I went to teachers’ college planning to get a bachelor of education degree, but they threatened to kick me out so I said, “Don’t worry, I’ll just leave.”
My first job was selling newspaper ads for former National Business Review owner Barry Colman. I then progressed onto office equipment.
A one year-old Grant Baker behind the wheel.
We were struggling to make money in New Zealand so we went for four years to Papua New Guinea. It was pretty crazy. It was 1984, Rob Muldoon was prime minister and the tax rate was 66 cents in the dollar, so no matter how much money you made, you gave most of it to the government. But you could work in PNG and they gave you a free house and car and travel. This gave us enough money to buy our first house and get started.
I don’t think I’d ever want to be a director in a company that I didn't have a significant shareholding in. I like to have skin in the game.
We’re not really interested in professional directors. How can they make the company better by crunching all the numbers or making sure firms are obeying all the rules?
My biggest failure? Well, in business there are a lot of little things that go wrong every day, but I’d say Moa. We didn’t think there was a problem because we’d been in the liquor business before with vodka. And we made an assumption that being in beer would be the same thing.
One thing I think of as more of a holistic failure is I got cancer, 15 years ago now. At the time, I was thinking about work and was stressed and all that sort of stuff. I had symptoms earlier, but not paying them any attention was probably my biggest failure ever. I underwent my first session of chemotherapy on the day of the first call with Bacardi [which bought 42 Below for $138 million].
My best advice would be never run out of money. I know that sounds trite, but running out of money would always be your biggest problem.
I’ve got nine Ferraris at the moment. Over the years, I’ve had 35. I’ve got a lock-up, but my two biggest constraints are space and money.
We recently bought an apartment in the International in Auckland Central, which was the last wee splurge. We bought it without selling the house. We have a big house but it's just my wife and me. We couldn’t quite part with it yet so we thought, well, we’ll get the apartment, stay there for just a few days a week and see if we like it.
We’ve really pleased with the International because, during lockdown, we were able to go downstairs and have a really nice meal at Onslow restaurant. The apartment also has much nicer finishings than some of the other ones we looked at.
As told to Victoria Young.
This interview has been edited for clarity.
