Q&A SERIES // Loaded Reports
Richard McLeod from Loaded Reports
We were lucky enough to catch up with long-time local Richard McLeod. Richard co-founded his business, Loaded Reports, with James Arnott in 2011. Loaded Reports is a cloud-based hospitality management system. On top of that the system also provides the simplest budgeting, cash reconciliation, timeclock, rostering and inventory management systems. It’s a one-stop-shop!
How did Loaded Reports come about?
Having left University at 21 to purchase The Captain Cook Tavern, we had gone on to build a 13 site hospitality business. The existing software and systems for running a hospitality business efficiently and profitably were really difficult to use, so we built our own product from the ground up.
After demand from a lot of friends in the industry we spun Loaded out into its own company and product in 2011.
As an entrepreneur, what are the biggest lessons you’ve learnt so far?
It’s quite hard to articulate the biggest lessons learnt. Ultimately it feels like simply putting yourself into the arena as a company owner and then being resilient to all of the difficulties you meet along the way add up to 10,000 small lessons that help you as you make future decisions and actions in running your business.
Maybe that means the biggest lesson is be resilient and prepared to learn something from every knock you take along the way.
What entrepreneurial tricks have you discovered to keep you focused and productive in your day-to-day busy schedule?
I’m pretty old school in this department. I like having a good quality note book and try to have as much of my plans and actions in there so that I can simply refer to it to prioritise what the next most important thing to do is.
What part of the Queenstown Lakes do you live in
Queenstown
What do you love about this region?
Other than people building ugly commercial buildings, I pretty much love it all.
What key activities would you recommend entrepreneurs to invest their time in?
It’s not necessarily activities but you certainly have to find the right balance of learning by doing and making your own mistakes verus learning from other people who have been there and done it. (Be careful who you choose!)
What’s the first thing you do when you wake up in the morning?
Generally, yell at my kids to get out of bed and then 20 more minutes of repeating myself to get them out the door.
Can you share with us your company’s current big/or small goal?
We’re committed to building a product that helps the owners and managers in the hospitality industry live a better life and to ensure the return on investment and success of the hospitality industry improves from its current abysmal standards.
We want to see hospitality entrepreneurs better remunerated for the risk they take and the hardwork they put in.
Who has been your greatest inspiration?
I was lucky enough to grow up in Queenstown and spend a lot of years ski racing, I had plenty of inspirational ski coaches that have gone on to become good friends.
How has Covid-19 effected your business?
It’s obviously not the best time to be a provider to the hospitality industry. However we have made pretty great progress with the contact tracing application GuestHQ that we have released. This has seen us pickup 3,500 businesses in Australia and we now have the task of showing them why they also need to add Loaded to their hospitality business.
What is the single best piece of advice you would give to someone just starting out on their entrepreneurial journey?
Hurry up and get started.
Favourite meeting space in the Queenstown Lakes?
The desk in the western window at The Mountain Club
7 quickfire questions; one word answers
Q: Name the last film you watched
A: Tenant
Q: If you could travel anywhere in the world for 24 hours where would you go?
A: Alaska - Heliskiing
Q: Cats or Dogs
A: Dogs
Q: Name a food you could eat for a week straight?
A: Hot chips
Q: Typing or pen and paper?
A: Pen and paper
Q: If you could have dinner with anyone who ever walked the earth, who would it be?
A: Warren Buffet
Q: Being an entrepreneur is….?
A: Pretty damn awesome!
