From Crisis to Success: How a Fiji Trucking Company Paid Off Their COVID Loan in One Year [Podcast]

Below is the transcript of the Audio Podcast - you can listen to the full audio or watch the video interview above

Thank you, Gabriela, for joining me today.

Today I have here with me Gabriela Wong, who is co-founder and co-owner of Innovative Gears, a Fiji-based family business with her and her husband Ivan. So today I'm going to interview Gabriela on how she was able to secure a business loan, manage it and pay it off quickly.

Before we begin, Gabriela, can you tell us a bit about yourself and your business, just for those that have no clue what you do and what you're all about?

Hi, so my name is Gabriela, I'm 34 years old, I'm married with three children and I currently run Innovative Gears, a logistics company based in Suva, Fiji. And we haul domestic, commercial, dangerous goods, anything that fits our two-ton truck as well as trailers so we can haul up to four tons. We have one truck, we started off with one truck in 2017 and through COVID and all the challenges we've slowly established contracts and now we have drivers for two trucks.So we have a two-ton and an eight-ton truck which we are currently operating from Suva.

Okay, great. So we'll just get straight into your business loan side of things.So what was the loan for and can you just tell me a bit about the term and you don't need to tell me who you got it from, but just a bit about the loan itself.

Okay, so the business loan we received during COVID was for the operational and running costs, for wages, because fuel also, so our truck is an LPG gas so the gas, price of gas was going up and up and up during COVID. So we had to deal with that and alongside the truck I just had a newborn baby so for us managing a small family and the truck was a challenge.We went from 2017, we were running full throttle and in over 100k but when COVID happened it, our incomes dropped all the way down to say $500 a week. So when that we reached out to the various commercial entities and they provided an 8k loan to help us sort of stay on path with expenses.

Okay, so for just the viewers, can you share, especially for those that are starting out in business and those that are currently running their small business, can you just share with them the steps you took to pay off that loan? So the steps I had to take to pay off that loan, so the opportunity, we were given a grace period of two years, so we had to look at it backwards rather than going for the 8k.We had to break down the 8k amount over the next 24 months for two years so that when we hit, when we finished the grace period, we would have already been ready with the payments or even double it. So by the time, so we applied for the loan in 2021 and we started paying it off in 2023 and instead of our projection was to pay it off for five years and that was allowed by the commercial entity, we paid it off within a year. So we worked very, very hard.

We looked for various ways to change how we were servicing the clients. So instead of showing up one time, we would show up 15-20 minutes early instead of just making an appointment online and showing up. We sort of sent out reminders a week in advance, a day in advance, just to give the clients the benefit that we are serious about what we do.We're not like any other truck. You just go to the market in Suva and pick up. And I remember in the second year, we were challenged with getting insurance. So we looked for contracts where it was dependent on insurance because once you get insurance, you get the contract and the contract is, it shows cashflow and it's very consistent. So that also helped us branch out into other avenues rather than phone call provider service. We looked for contracts, we applied for tenders and received our tender in 2022.

Okay. So you found that by being more innovative, by diversifying, that helped you increase sales and contributed to paying off your loan quicker.

Yeah. So I attended a lot of online courses, a lot of online networking training sessions with various businesses who knew about these opportunities. It didn't come to me from the newspaper or from online feedback. I had to go out and sort of, because the trucking industry is very different.They don't just post everything on the newspaper. It's by word of mouth and it's a cutthroat market. So I reached out to even our competitors and asked what sessions are they attending? What trainings are they undergoing? And they said, Hey, look, we just go for coffee and then we just meet up and yeah. And we also follow through like when we say we're going to meet up and then we say we're going to meet up again the next time we actually follow through and remind each other whether we want to or not. So for me, that was very uncomfortable and I found peace in being uncomfortable with the other business owners and yeah, just sort of taking the next step with whether I saw it develop in my business or not. Not all changes helped us along the way. There were a few struggles, but we've managed to deal with it.

Okay. Would you be able to give me just one or two of the challenges that you faced along the way and how did you manage to overcome it?

So a lot of the contracts they see when we go for the interview, even though I'm the owner, I can see their body language is facing my partner director and I take him in case that happens.

Oh, because you're, is it because you're female?

Yes. And he directs them to me by saying she's the boss and she's the one who actually drives the trucks and she's the one that's contacting you and has been emailing me. So that's one of the challenges I used to face. And now people are realizing women drivers are more safer and more courteous. Yeah. Yeah. And you follow through.

And is that when you do that? Yeah. No, I developed my hashtag when I saw this Chinese lady in New Zealand driving a semi-trailer and I'm Chinese. So I decided to, yeah, it just came to me all of a sudden one day and I said, you know what, I'm going to make a hashtag because it's the trend at that time. Hashtags were a big thing coming out. So that also helped me stand out.It's great. And I have a bit of, yeah. So with that hashtag, I faced a lot of, a second challenge was the criticism online.There was a, so marketing online, there is a good side to it and there is a bad side. So someone, I think who might've been a competitor was questioning why I use Chinese and why can't, why use lady and why can't I just use truck driver? And I said, and in my mind, I was trying to think of a good way to respond without being offensive, but I didn't have to do anything. The public did everything and they destroyed this lady all the way from across the country, who she doesn't know who we were and how we hustled.

So that's the second challenge I faced when reaching out into different avenues of marketing and social media. But bad advertising or bad posts is free advertising for my company because following that I got a lot of requests for appointments, questions, and people get motivated too. And they come your way to use your service.

Yeah. That's great. That's a good lesson for everyone to learn. Don't necessarily get yourself down when there's bad posts because you have clients that who read those bad posts and had great experience with you will come in and basically have your back, you know, and then in your case, you'll, you've got more clients just from that one bad post, which is which is excellent.

Did you seek any professional advice or support during, you know, your, your journey in trying to, you know, pay off your debt and all that? And did you have to sacrifice anything personally to help you pay off that debt?

We sacrificed our Monday, Thursday and Sunday evenings for six months. Okay. It's good for viewing.

We don't get to see our children from 5am to the next day of 5pm because we're on the truck, we get off and then there's like a two hour, we have to clean the truck, we have to stop take, we have to take the rubbish out. So by the time we've been doing all that, you can actually see them across the street and they're getting ready for school.And that's what we had to sacrifice was because we are a family oriented business.

It's yeah, that's one of the challenges we faced previously, but that's no longer an issue for us now.

Yeah, because that that you just needed that short time to get to where you need to be.And you did that. Yeah. Great.Yeah. That you got, you know, with such a huge family base, you got many babysitters that help. Yeah.One, one advice you'd like to give the viewers out there. What advice would you like to share with them? I so one advice, if you can have a man and a woman team on leading the team, that's very, it's very well balanced.

Men are strategic thinkers and women are more operational.So when you have that hand in hand, it's sort of, it flows after some, after you hit the speed humps. Yeah. Yeah.Yeah. I can agree for me and my husband. Yeah.

I don't know how to put this in a line, but keep on going. Yeah. Yeah.

Well, thank you very much for taking that your time out today from driving your truck and, and having this short interview with me. Thank you.

You're welcome.

Wish you all the best and we'll keep in touch every second week. Yes.

All right. Thank you.

Thank you, Gabriella.