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DIRECT LINE TO BUSINESS.

Link to original article  Connections magazine 1987

"Market Rings Bell for Glen and Wayne"

Stories about People with Disabilities (PWD's) making their own way in the mainstream of community activity, are always greatly encouraging, but best of all are stories of PWD's who have spotted an opportunity that no-one else has seen and using their expertise, are going for it.

This is a story of two young men who are turning a hobby into a business and if there is any justice, young men who will turn themselves into wealthy young men before too long. They repair telephones. It's a hobby right now but having identified the fact that they are probably the only ones in their market and with all and sundry beating a path to their door, they're driving ahead to turn the hobby into a business.

It is also the story of a refusal to give up - typical of many stories of struggle, guts and determination by successful people who, when they were starting out, didn't know the meaning of the word defeat. The story centres around Glen McMillan, 32 year old who survived a horrific crash from his push-bike as a youngster. He staggered home with internal injuries and hemorrhaging and fell into a coma.  This was the start of 4 years in hospital, 18 months of it in critical care.

He eventually returned home with permanent motor-damage, with great difficulty walking- but determined to be his own man .People with lesser determination may have given up, but the man who wears out boots in a month or so, refuses the convenience of a wheelchair; who suffers excruciating back pain refuses the relative comfort zone of being  a beneficiary.  Instead he pushed himself into the workforce mainstream and earned a number of qualifications in electronics, working for Plesseys, Tisco and other companies.

In the time Glen McMillan and Wayne Chapman - a man who crashed his motor bike and became a paraplegic - opened their own shop to service telephones but were burgled so often they had to admit defeat.  So it was back to the benefit and the telephone servicing as a hobby.  But this retreat was a strategic move : they had lost a battle but had no intention of losing the war.

The deregulation of telephone services has opened up a servicing market previously undreamed of. Many companies were selling phones but after the warranty period were not servicing them.

Very quickly there grew a market of desperate phone owners looking for someone to fix their phones.

While Connection`s reporters were talking  to the two men one recent afternoon, three people came to the door and typical comment was: "I'm told you fix phones?"  This was graphic illustration of Glen's point that there are about 1 million telepermitted phones out there and a market for repairs so vast that he doesn't have to advertise; he doesn't even have to be in business. 

Total strangers find their way to his home anyway.

The two men work side by side in Glen's home surrounded by shelves and jostling each other for workbench space, using outmoded equipment doing endless favours when they could be in business.

Glen is pretty scathing about the hoops he he is having to go through to get the capital to set up a well founded company. 

Here is a PWD who is training a second PWD, and willing to train more, plugged into the market that  nobody else has spotted.

He wants to be in business in that market  and he wants to kiss the benefit goodbye once and for all. 
But  nowhere in the system is there an enterprise factor; and incentive scheme which will promote people  like himself into a business so reasonable and with such good prospects that it is coming gift- wrapped to his door.

But the man who walks when he could ride, and works when he could drift, and who put himself through a gym to improve his stamina and strength for the job and independent living, is not prepared to lie down and die.

The system can't or won't help and so he`s going the hard way.With the help of his sister and others, he has put  together a business plan and is going for the commercial money.