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BEC Magazine
February 2002

Making Your Own Luck
By Charlotte Foot

Being creative, clever and computer literate has paid off for dotcom entrepreneur Paul Wilson. Now operating from cool office space in central Newtown, he has spent the past four years transforming a corporate identity/design site into a multi-disciplined IT group producing compelling web, print and multimedia solutions.

His foray into small business was catalysed when he approached the Chatswood BEC to complete the NEIS course: a six week prep for start up, where a business plan is the mainstay towards a workable business model - he had a launch pad for success. In order to create a solid business foundation he armed himself with the necessary business tools: informed opinions, solid business practices and commercial and government contacts, gleaned from the Business Enterprise Centre.

He ran his first set up operation from the back of MBE offices in Newtown, this savvy and skilled computer professional spent the first year and a half servicing small businesses in the area with corporate identity and graphic design for menus and branding, while teaching the big professional computer applications like Photoshop and Illustrator part time.

Experimenting with template designs and testing them on his students gave him the idea to seize on the opportunity to sell online his PowerPoint templates dispatched on CD-rom. Orders and interest were generated via his business site www.hotchilli.com.au and he knew he was onto something: enterprise and education had blended to create a broad and potentially vast market.

A Winning Course

In 2002 the enterprise has evolved: Hot Chilli offers web development, graphic design, multimedia, software training and copy/ scriptwriting while Template Central is an online library where subscribers can download literally thousands of templates, images, logos or indeed have custom made design produced to portray individual branding and presentations.

Template Central, now sells templates for stationery, websites, email and off the shelf logos to the world, with some 1,000 small businesses and corporations paying for access to its library and a further 10 000 signed up members. Impressively, these figures are growing by 25% per quarter.

It now makes custom designed templates and logos for a host of impressive international clients; whether it be Christian Dior, needing a national presentation on PowerPoint, or large American corporates like FedEx, Hyatt Group, BHP Billiton, US Army and US government, wishing to improve their presentation and style with stationery and templates and graphic design, as well as his thousands of SME's - who are his "bread and butter", regular subscribers.

The huge reach of search engine listings has been a most valuable marketing tool, which now brings in some 60 000 hits per month, with 90% of customers coming from US and Britain.

Wilson's ability to deftly ascertain a client's needs, in some instances only communicating within a cyber environment- never actually meeting or indeed speaking - has given him the edge. A background in journalism means he has a capacity to read the brief, ask pertinent questions and understand the goal, in order to produce the goods quickly and efficiently.

His operation is now expanding rapidly: to the tune of three staff, new office space under review, and plans for potential major strategic relationship with large ISP's, and a raft of marketing and promotional goals to increase personal and professional exposure.

Now on the board of Eastern Suburbs BEC, Paul Wilson brings an IT perspective to the table as well as enjoying the networking possibilities. Paul has been able to rely on ESBEC's vast range of business contacts from marketing specialists to solicitors while bonding with like-minded consultants, working to service clients in a similar way.

In his own words Paul describes the BEC: "…as a largely untapped resource, providing a wealth of realistic and tangible knowledge, with which the aspiring business person can work, to help them gain a foothold in business and turn them into a proficient and confident business manager - ready to make their own luck."