The X factor

 

I couldn’t resist it. As part of researching this story I was given a supercar driving experience at the Hampton Downs racetrack, south of Auckland. So I joined a large excited group at the FreemanX briefing one day in May to learn the science behind cornering fast and staying safe on the racetrack.

 

I could have chosen the Lamborghini Gallardo, Ferrari 360 Modena or Porsche 911 Turbo, but went with the white Aston Martin Vantage – licensed to thrill. Better to be stirred, not shaken, to misquote a certain British secret agent!

 

With those ‘all-over-too-fast’ laps (eight kilometres) in the Aston still fresh in my mind, and heart rate back to normal, I rocked up to Eddie Freeman’s brightly-painted headquarters in Albany a few days later to get the story behind the entrepreneur behind the FreemanX experience.

Freeman grew up in Christchurch and Hamilton and credits much of his sales and marketing nous to an early job selling Kirby vacuum cleaners door-to-door. He worked at Coca Cola, making his way up the sales ladder, before heading off on the ‘big OE’ at age 22.

 

It was while delivering for Arnotts biscuits in Brisbane in 2002 that he began “tossing business ideas up” and launched his original business, FreemanX Experience.

“I had no money, so the business had to be simple,” he recalls. “I thought it would be pretty cool to provide a service that puts together life-changing experiences for people. I’d be the ultimate concierge with pre-set packages.” (Think limousine/dinner, helicopter rides and romantic packages.) He ended up modelling FreemanX Experience on a UK online business that ran simplified experiences such as skydiving, romantic dinners and quad-bike adventures. Eddie went to the local i-Site, grabbed as many brochures as he could and started phoning up Brisbane and Gold Coast operators to get them on board.

Growth was slow to start with until he began taking out cheap ads in a local Buy, Sell & Exchange publication promoting drives in V8 racing cars – which appealed to petrolheads.

 

Business growth has been consistent ever since.

So how did he get FreemanX Experience off the ground in New Zealand?

Eddie’s wife at the time, Linda, had been travelling on a Dutch passport, and her Australian visa was about to expire. That’s how he ended up running the business from this side of the Tasman.

 

FreemanX changed up a gear in 2009 when Eddie launched FreemanX Parties (think memorable stag and hen parties, birthday parties and kids parties); followed by FreemanX Supercars, for which the company is known the most for, and includes the Queenstown-based ‘track drive’ and ‘scenic tour’ supercar experience, launched last year. 

 

“FreemanX Supercars is a great business; we run it smart and try to deliver good value,” he says. “Feedback has been off the chart.”

It seems the experiences sell themselves by word of mouth; apart from some recent radio advertising, Eddie says they’ve spent nothing on advertising over the four years. 

 

“When I launched FreemanX Supercars in New Zealand it was more a sideline business,” says Eddie. “But people love what we’re doing so much that it’s grown into a substantial, profitable business.”

I think to myself it must be doing OK to have a fleet of supercars on its asset list. It’s also doing well, says Eddie, due to his policy of pricing the experiences low enough to “to make a large number of people happy”.

A wide demographic enjoys the supercar experience. Many people have it on their ‘bucket list’.

He has a programme that makes dreams come true for 12 to 16 year olds, allowing them to get behind the wheel. 

 

Eddie admits to getting his “biggest buzz” from the looks of enjoyment on peoples’ faces on a drive day. “It’s a cool feeling with up to 200 people coming through in a day, the sounds of the cars racing past in the track, and the whole atmosphere. No-one’s ever done this before in the southern hemisphere, and we’re doing it.”

He recalls putting a smile on the face of a wheelchair-bound gentleman in his nineties by taking him for a spin. “It’s very fulfilling, and the positive feedback is often more about our team out there; not just the cars. The cars are just one aspect of the total experience.”

That total experience can include various add-ons, such as a video of the whole experience, in the style of Gran Turismo, which people can post on You Tube.

 

He had the poster on his bedroom wall, the photo on his office pinboard, even before starting up FreemanX Supercars he owned a Lamborghini. Now Eddie gets to have fun in a fleet of exotic cars and make an income off them. He gets a thrill seeing them being used for what they’re designed for, and reminds me that nothing makes a supercar deteriorate faster than it sitting around in a garage. 

 

It’s been well documented how Eddie broke the land speed record at the Ohakea airbase in 2012 in his black modified 1550hp Lamborghini Superlegger. Eddie says the record attempt wasn’t done to publicise the business – but there have definitely been spin-off benefits for marketing FreemanX Supercars since. 

“A lot of people now know who we are; awareness of FreemanX is now quite high,” he says. It’s also nice to see the same car with its distinctive silver fern in the supercars fleet, albeit now significantly detuned.

 

When Eddie started up FreemanX Supercars, many thought he was a “raving lunatic” for letting people get behind the wheel of a supercar and drive around a racetrack with concrete walls – the insurance companies were no exception. 

“For the first year I couldn’t sleep. The day before a drive day I’d be dry retching before going out, because of the nature of what we do,” he says. Eddie knew that just one accident could potentially destroy his business.

 

“So we started the business with no insurance. Fortunately a niche insurer agreed to come and experience a drive day. They were so impressed by our professionalism that they decided to provide us with cover, and have done ever since.”

Although Eddie doesn’t like to dwell on the negatives, that first year had its other challenges too. His Lamborghini Murcielago’s engine self-destructed when a timing chain broke, but luckily a potential six-figure repair bill was significantly reduced when the factory agreed to come to the party.

He doesn’t like to look back at ‘what ifs’ either. He believes you can only make the best possible decisions at the time, based on what you know. Mistakes provide the lessons and he prefers to see the value in life’s journey.

 

Eddie takes his lessons from great business minds and books and has learnt that business imitates life. “In business you must have a set of core values that you live and breathe by; a driving belief that transcends the business itself and gives you a purpose that is more than just making money or selling products. Money’s only one measuring stick in a business – there are many others,” he says. “My business has also given me a framework on how to live personally.”

Eddie says his mantra in life and business is “to continually become more”.

“We’re all capable of extraordinary things but most of us only experience this if we’re put in extreme circumstances; sadly, many people just roll through life.

“Our company culture as well as my personal belief is to continually close the gap between where we are now and what we’re capable of.”

 

Eddie Freeman has achieved a lot in a short space of time, and had plenty of fun in the process. Most of it you can read about in his book The Millionaire Mission: A Road from Ruin to Riches.

 

He admits that when he started out in business his values were probably more aligned to a financial reward. “But as I achieved a degree of financial success I started to switch focus from the achievement side of business to fulfilment. That’s really where my values have moved to now.

“I’ve found that we’re not happy when living a life that isn’t in line with the things that we value. At FreemanX, I encourage a team culture that’s in line with our values; it makes it a really happy place to work, and encourages each team member to have more fulfilling lives as well.”

 

For Eddie, business ownership should be about having a clear set of values that you abide by in every decision that you make, and a compelling vision of the future.

His vision, for the next two years at least, is to build New Zealand’s fastest-growing company. You can guarantee he’s got his right foot hard on the pedal to achieve that goal.

And does he have any other new ideas for his FreemanX brand? 

All he can say is “watch this space!”