Mark Callander. Photo / Michael Craig
2degrees boss Mark Callander never planned on being a chief executive – he was almost a butcher.
But in the past 25 years, he has navigated a path through countless industry restructures and mergers to head up the country’s third-biggest telco.
“I worked in a butcher shop making sausages for many years,” Callander says.
“It was great, from out the back to making sausages to serving and meeting customers in front of the office. You learn so much in life just through interaction and working with people.”
There was an opportunity to make a career out of it, but Callander wanted to keep studying.
Not that business was his first choice.
“I didn’t set out to be a CEO. That was a bit of a Sliding Doors moment,” he says.
“I originally applied to be a teacher. Through a strange twist of events, I ended up getting a business management degree.”
He did an OE in the UK, which added to his colourful CV.
“I was a golf caddie,” he says.
“I spent time carrying golf clubs around some of the courses in Scotland, which was again, a fascinating way to meet different people across all walks of life. And in the evenings, I was a waiter. I was basically doing anything to earn money to make that next part of the travel experience.”
Back in New Zealand, Callander stepped into a role in the grocery industry.
That gave him a broad introduction to business from managing stock to marketing and sales.
Then in 1999 there he moved to Telecom and its fledgling internet business Xtra.
From there, he has navigated his way through the fast-paced, ever-changing telco sector.
“While I didn’t set out to be a CEO, I always had a very competitive drive,” he says.
“I was always incredibly curious about other parts of the business, whether there were areas that I was working on or not.”
“As my career developed, that hunger to have more control and direction started to burn inside me a lot more.
Callander credits CallPlus founders Malcolm Dick and Annette Presley with giving him his big break into senior management.
He started working for their internet subsidiary Slingshot and took over as CEO of Call Plus in 2009.
“I‘ve been privileged to have the opportunity from people like Malcolm and Annette, who have seen something in me to give me the opportunity to lead and give me rope to learn, make mistakes, learn from those mistakes and grow some of these great businesses.”
The business went through a series of mergers and acquisitions, eventually morphing into the current incarnation of 2degrees.
“I’ve been in the business now 20-odd years. I started there when we had about 35 staff. We’ve got close to 1700 staff now. But people can still see the enthusiasm when they see me in the office or wanna stop for a chat,” he says.
“I say to anyone joining our organisation, you’ve gotta have some fundamental line between your personal values and the values of the business you’re working for.”
“If you don’t have those two things quite right, you’re probably not going to love where you work.”
Despite being a big player – the third largest – 2degrees makes a big deal of being a challenger brand and having disrupted the telco market.
“It is incredibly critical to our success, and we’re very proud to be a challenger brand,” Callander says.
But can you be a disruptive upstart forever?
“I think it’s really important you don’t get victory disease,” he says.
“My view on a challenger is it’s a mindset, so it’s the way we approach things, the way we do things, the way we build products, the way we operate internally.”
You want to hang on to that regardless of how big you get, he says.
“I think the success of 2degrees and any market you look at is that disruption angle.”
Callander says that was the thinking behind 2degrees entering the retail power market in 2022.
“You look at market opportunities, where is a market underserved, where are prices excessively high? Where has there been a lack of innovation,” he says.
“You’ve still gotta find an opportunity where you can differentiate.
“We’re of the firm belief that the electricity market hasn’t had the innovation that we’d had in the telecom industry.”
On the personal finance front, Callander is a keen investor, although he’s not shy of spending it.
“I buy what I want is probably the best way to describe it.”
His biggest indulgences are experiences. If he’s in the US, travelling and gets the chance to see a pro baseball or basketball game, he treats himself to great seats.
“I get a lot of value out of experiences, probably more than physical things. So I indulge and splash out a little bit.
A highlight was going to the US Masters, “to see Tiger Woods win in 2019 with a bunch of friends”, he says.
“Those are opportunities that you just have to take, they create lifetime memories.”
But he is prudent about ensuring there is always something there for a rainy day.
“You have to get that balance right and try and instil that on your children as well.”
Callander says the best financial advice he has received is just “to make sure you learn from the journey”.
“Investments can be volatile. Understanding why something has gone to plan, or why something has not gone to plan, is just as important as what happens,” he says.
“Also, being patient, for those that invest in the sharemarket, don’t look every day.”
“It’s also important [to remember] your context changes and your risk profile changes.”
Looking back, if he could do anything differently, Callander says it would probably be to take more risks when he was younger.
“You make decisions in business and investments based on your point in time. When you are young, life’s gonna get better. And at the time it’s very hard when you’re, you might be sitting there with a mortgage and kids and all those sorts of things.”
“They’re the opportunities. I think you’ve just gotta back yourself a bit more. So if I could go back and give myself a bit of advice, it would’ve been to have backed myself a little bit more and taken a little bit more risk when I was younger.”
Right now, the economy is tough, he says.
“Households are hurting out there. We see it in some areas of our business,” he says.
“We have the benefit that 2degrees are a value player in the market. So we are still seeing growth across all the segments we play in. Be that consumer, up to a large enterprise or government.”
But he says things have tightened up at the high end, where big businesses are looking at their cost base and trying to save money.
“So we are probably beneficiaries of that, given how we play in the market, but we certainly see areas of the market that are hurting out there.”
When it comes to getting New Zealand’s economy humming, Callander says he’d like to see more focus on infrastructure investment.
That meant getting market settings right to encourage businesses to invest, and a policy that spanned political cycles.
“Sometimes shorter-term thinking can stifle a lot of the potential in markets.”
“That’s been our experience in the telecommunications market but you can see the benefits of that change over an extended period of time.
“I think the fibre network in New Zealand is a great example of that long-term ambition from a government and what it’s done for, for New Zealand Inc.”
“We believe that the same sort of thinking can be achieved across other sectors as well.”
Listen to the full episode to hear more from Money Talks is a podcast run by the NZ Herald. It isn’t about personal finance and isn’t about economics – it’s just well-known New Zealanders talking about money and sharing some stories about the impact it’s had on their lives and how it has shaped them.
The series is hosted by Liam Dann, business editor-at-large for the Herald. He is a senior writer and columnist, and also presents and produces videos and podcasts. He joined the Herald in 2003.
Money Talks is available on iHeartRadio, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
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