Jeremy with his Otago MBA Class outside the Clocktower in 2017
A determination to study at the University of Otago led alumnus Jeremy Hall to keep trying and never give up on his dream.
As someone who had, and (in his own words) continues to, "despise book learning", he left home at 15 to begin an engineering apprenticeship. After completing his studies and a decade working in engineering, he sought a new challenge.
One day his father-in-law Beven O'Callaghan suggested he go to university, however after applying to do a BCom at Otago, Jeremy was not accepted.
Undeterred, he went to Otago Polytechnic and began the Diploma in Business course on the provision his performance would allow acceptance into the Bachelor of Applied Management there.
Beven offered to support Jeremy’s education via a fulltime assistant job at his Dunedin business (BJ & RA O'Callaghan Ltd).
“Turns out, that translated into doing everything no one else wanted to do, including working weekends, holidays, evenings, fixing anything broken and solving problems,” Jeremy says.
During his polytech studies, he was allowed to apply his assignments to “real business issues”.
“You can’t learn to drive a car by reading the manual, so for three years I found organisations who were seeking assistance.”
After graduating with distinction and with a renewed desire to further his studies, he applied for the Master of Business Administration (MBA) programme at the University of Otago and says he was “thrilled to be accepted”.
Reflecting on his MBA experience at Otago, he describes it as “awesome”. He particularly valued the opportunity to tackle real-world problems.
“The programme didn’t hand out easy solutions but instead presented complex, open-ended challenges. It wasn’t just about having access to the University’s wealth of knowledge and expert professors, though that certainly laid a strong foundation. The real challenge was identifying the core issue, which often felt like trying to solve a puzzle with an unknown number of pieces that you first had to find before you could figure out how to solve it.”
He notes that Otago Professor Paul Hansen was exceptional in guiding him through this intricate process and helping him get the most out of the course.
Jeremy was part of the winning MBA Case Study Team (Ronald J Moore Memorial Award) for their international marketing strategy for a New Zealand organisation.
Jeremy’s final Otago MBA project was developing a framework for strategic decision-making for a NZ organisation that was making little product development headway, was slow at responding to changing market demands, and unable to discontinue obsolete services. Jeremy’s system was fully operational within 12 weeks.
He kept helping local businesses with their problems after completing his MBA, which led to his own business “GummyBear” being born in the basement of his house, which has grown to a team of eight fulltime staff.
Jeremy and the GummyBear Digital Marketing team working from his basement.
“GummyBear would not be born without my Otago University or Otago Polytechnic education,” he says.
Jeremy’s constant drive is shown in his spare time. He is a passionate weightlifter and trains with the goal of achieving a world record.
He and Pearl are married and have three boys Liam (11), Connor (7) and Ryan (4).
“I really love being a dad.”
And how did he come up with the name GummyBear? His son Liam was struggling to learn his spelling homework. Jeremy decided to make a challenge, every time Liam spelt a word correctly, he got a Gummy Bear treat, but every time he was wrong his dad got a Gummy Bear. This helped motivate Liam to learn his spelling.
Jeremy says that he found local businesses needed help with social media, websites and software automation.
“We love working closely with Dunedin companies.”
He has had to hire a sales manager, not to “drum up business”, but to deal with all the business enquiries that they were having. In addition, he says many of his clients are so busy that GummyBear is booked out many months ahead.
Though GummyBear has not been running very long it has already won several awards and has successfully launched three custom software solutions that Jeremy says, “give these companies a competitive advantage".
“We just had a photograph the other day after winning the Master Painters NZ Best Member Website for the second year in a row for our local company Mr. Decorating.
“GummyBear has only just begun," Jeremy says.