Chris's Blog

The Goal for Hello Hello

posted: 24/4/11 Author: Chris Lucas

People often wonder how I can work so hard, often starting at 4am and working till late. Working every day, for weeks or months without a day off and being quite happy most of the time. It's because I have a goal for my group, the people who believe in and shop with Hello Hello, the people who provide products and services, the staff of Hello Hello and their families.

Many people have contributed to Hello Hello by giving special deals and working harder and longer than they really had to, often without anybody noticing or knowing. The people providing this extra help or attention, I am sure have felt, if not known that our organization was propelled by a worthwhile goal even if it was not well stated. I have created Hello Hello as a group, to accomplish my goal, but on a far greater scale and for a much longer time than I could ever deliver myself. So it is a group goal that will reward many individuals and a large growing group for a long time to come.The goal is something that formed when I was quite young.

When I first could read, I read all of the Biggles Adventures in the school library and the stories took me flying to every part of the globe in many different times. My favourite game was to take the Wheelbarrow to a beautiful part of the garden, turn it upside down, sit there and spin the spoked wheel and go flying. When I ran out of Biggles adventures, I started to read about archeology and exploration and I became concerned that there wasn't much left in the world to explore, as people had gone up the Amazon, climbed Everest, crossed the great deserts and found the great ruins. I thirsted for a world that contained real adventure and real treasure that I could explore.

My History

posted: 24/4/11 Author: Chris Lucas

Every so often my mother would grow a large patch of one type of flower. I remember one year she grew a large patch of brilliant orange tiger lilies with black spots on the petals. I was amazed at the beauty of these flowers en masse. I asked Mum how you grew them and I saw that they produced seed and little black bulbs up and down the stems and the clusters of bulbs in the ground could be subdivided. Wow the beauty of tiger lilies could be expanded exponentially and you could quickly have as many as you wanted. I was now interested in propagating plants.

At 7, I decided to get a job and I went door knocking. I think I knocked on 70-80 doors before I landed my first real job. This was for an elderly lady, Kay Runndel, a successful photographer who had retired, to build a cottage garden in the hills. At the time, the world seemed a bit sad. Other boys at school were talking about Atom Bombs and how we could be destroyed by them and our teachers were talking about over population and starvation with the world being unable to support its populations. But Kay lived in her own world where the important things were the arrival of the petticoat daffodil boarder with hundreds of dwarf yellow petticoats emerging in Spring, directing me to crawl around the lawn to plant more and more English daisies into the lawn. Spending a whole day directing me up a ladder to carefully clip her enormous Sasanqua camellia obelisk, a large topiary on a mound of lawn that dominated the garden. When we stopped for tea, we would discuss our dreams. At home or at school I was always in trouble for being a day dreamer but in Kay Runndel's garden, the only thing that was important was gardens, flowers, dreams and stories.
Here I learned one of the most important things that propels our business today, this is, "The story is as important, if not more important than the plant itself."

I would be working away in one corner of the garden and I would hear Kay say 'I bought this Sasanqua camellia because it's called 'Cornish Snow' but ahh… I should have known better, the snow is never any good in Cornwall, what a sad little camellia 'Cornish Snow'.

Every plant in the garden had a story and Kay's friends would be enthralled and beg her for a piece of each plant, so they could have them in their own garden. I realized they were really taking home a piece of her story.

At the time, my father had been one of the top insurance sales people in Australia and I was very proud of him.
I used to take "sickies" from school and go and help him while he was out making a sale. I would read his sales books and discuss opening sales, closing sales and cold calling as he drove from client to client. I quickly became the number one seller of Anzac Day badges, poppies and raffle tickets at the school and able to sell 5 times as much as the other kids.

I realized that selling was a very worthwhile and valuable profession as it made things happen, but I rather disliked the dryness of selling life insurance. I started a roadside stall where I picked and sold black berries. I loved it so much that I found products to sell all year round, cut flowers, autumn leaves and berries. I loved it when my roadside stall became crowded and busy and I loved selling a living product that people could admire and derive joy from. When I went to high school, I went to St Josephs in Ferntree Gully, right at the time Nigeria was at war with Biafra. I read about the Biafran agricultural system where Biafrans had fairly small farms with a complex multi layered agricultural system with their animals in pens eating waste product from their perennial and annual crops. The Biafrans were able to feed themselves and sell their surplus production and thus giving them money to invest. The adjacent Nigerians grazed the land and grew annual crops.

Their land was suffering from degradation and they would barely be able to feed themselves. I realized that agriculture and horticulture essentially gardening could reverse environmental problems, create an abundance of food, shelter and clothes and create a beautiful environment and above all create a world where a person could have daydreams and maybe turn them into a reality. These are the products I would sell.

The goal for Hello Hello is to become a national and maybe one day international nursery chain, a brand like Harvey Norman, that sells garden plants, pots, garden art and outdoor living products as well as, through franchising, gardening and outdoor services. Hello Hello will promote great horticulture to solve environmental problems, create abundance and beauty.

Hello Hello will create and support adventure for its customers, staff and suppliers.

Above all, Hello Hello will encourage people to have dreams, and help them to come true for the home gardener, assisting with information, great deals, service and great products. For a gardener to have a far better or more productive garden than they ever dreamed possible.

For our staff members, by nurturing, educating and training will help you fulfill your dreams in life by achieving your goals through being successful at work and as a person. A person looking at our business from the outside one day and seeing that we are strong and successful and achieving our goals as a group might decide that it's OK to follow their own dreams and therefore contribute to a better society that exists above the level of doing what you have to do to get by.

Creating a future with our goal, we are a small and rugged band and the fact that we have survived drought, water restrictions and economic downturn and have emerged bigger and stronger (when many of our wealthy and powerful competitors have fallen and closed down) shows the power of courage, hard work and a dream.

We have kept communicating throughout the difficult times and now have the strongest nursery brand in Victoria. We must take our rusty trucks and tired potting machines and produce. Service every customer, take every opportunity and build a beautiful strong empire that can provide successful employment for thousands, beautiful gardens for millions.

In terms of fulfilling our goal we have done but 1percent. This means all the great adventures are ahead. Perhaps we can tissue culture the Bodi tree, the fig that Buddah, sat under, while he achieved enlightenment, and disseminate all over the world with a message of peace. That we can alleviate environmental degradation in Melbourne by encouraging the planting of trees. Perhaps we can find a way of making gardening fun for kids, and get millions of kids to learn a bit about horticulture.

We have survived the toughest times ever in the nursery business; we are ragged, but strong. We can build a beautiful nursery network that spans Australia.

We can foster dreams….. and the great adventures…. the ones that go beyond just getting by are all ahead of us.

Drug Rehabilitation : Narconon

posted: 24/4/11 Author: Chris Lucas

Narconon™ Melbourne is a non profit organisation that helps people get off and stay off drugs naturally. The Narconon™ program provides educational and counselling support for people who want to get off drugs and alcohol. Chris & Marie Lucas of Hello Hello are sponsoring a person who is currently undertaking the Narconon™ program.

Narconon™ Melbourne is situated in East Warburton, it is a residential Drug and Rehabilitation Centre where people reside whilst they are undertaking the program. Students live onsite in O'Shanassy Lodge which is surrounded by 12 peaceful acres of contemporary gardens, where they receive support, education and counselling to achieve a drug free life. Up to 50 people can undertake the program at one time and there are currently 22 staff members plus volunteers on hand to assist with the withdrawal, detox, education & counselling that is delivered to the students.

Narconon™ was founded in 1966 by a heroin addict, William Benitez who was serving time in an Arizona State Prison for drugrelated crimes. In there he read a book written by L.Ron Hubbard called 'The Fundamentals of Thought' and wrote to Mr Hubbard for further help. William Benitez using the information he learnt then developed what is known today as the Narconon™ program, which achieves an extremely high success rate, there are currently over 100 centres throughout the world.

Marie and I employ over 80 staff in our nursery business and many of our employees are young people aged between 15-23. Over the years we have seen how drug problems can devastate good people's lives and it not just the person that's affected but it's their family, friends and workmates. I always believed that once a person got onto drugs that even if they wanted to get off drugs there was no real way that people could be reliably recovered from drug addiction.

Marie & I were invited by a friend to attend a Narconon™ graduation day which is a day where the students who have undergone the program celebrate their completion of the program. Marie and I were both moved by the before and after stories of the recovered drug addicts and the stories of their friends and the loved ones, these stories were very touching especially when you listened to how their loved ones talked about having them back in the family.

We did a tour of the Narconon™ facility and I understood why the program worked, that is because drug addiction is a really tough problem and what the Narconon™ program does is it takes the drug addict out of his dangerous environment and puts him into a very safe and very organised program which is really really tough.

It starts off with them doing a withdrawal program without the use of any other drugs and then they go into an intensive detox program which involves sauna, exercise and good diet and then its onto a very intensive educational and counselling program that helps them to handle or face the reason why they got onto drugs in the first place. This can take anywhere between 4 - 8 months.

One of the great features of this program is that many of the people who have gone through the program themselves have decided to give back to society what they took from society themselves and have trained up to help deliver the program to others. This not only shows how effective the program is, in that, ex drug affected people can be relied upon to deliver the program but these people really understand the needs and problems of people going through the program and are able to deliver the program in a way that nobody else could.

Marie and I decided to sponsor a person through the program as we felt that Narconon™ through its drug education and drug rehabilitaton programs has the technical ability to solve the drug problems in the community. Drugs are a massive problem in Australia and for Narconon™ to make a real difference they need broad community support and Marie and I decided to support Narconon™ firstly by paying for a person to do the program. Narconon™ selected a person whom they felt really wanted and needed to handle their problem but couldn't afford to pay for the program themselves.

Marie and I are also supporting Narconon™ by publicising their cause with radio advertisements and having a Narconon™ section on our web site.

I bet that there's been times when you've seen the terrible effect of drugs in our community and wished that something could be done about it.

Narconon™ can really do something about it and you can support Narconon™ with a donation or a sponsorship that can be tailor made for your needs or just by going to the Narconon™ web site and finding out about the program and telling your friends about it. Remember that Narconon™ has a fully charitable status and that all donations are 100% tax deductable.

For more information call 300 88 7676