Street Smart

Chairman and Managing Director of Trinidad Sytems Ltd, Nicholas Galt, knows how to roll with the punches. He has transformed his business of selling office equipment, which he formed in 1979, into a multi-million dollar group of companies, and that is no overnight success. Galt, 50, graduated from St Mary’s College in the mid 1960s with only two CXC O’level passes. Today, he is also the Chairman and Managing Director of the TSL Group which encompasses Trinidad Systems Ltd, DocuCentre, Advanced Business Systems (ABS), Cards and Plastics Caribbean Ltd, Princeton Technologies, TSL Leasing Co and TSL Dutch Caribbean NV in Curacao.

He recently returned from the USA, where he received four awards including the President’s Club Award for Outstanding Sales and Performance for VeriFone, as a Xerox distributor. He lives by the motto: “You could do whatever you want, if you want something badly enough.” In the late 1980s, with the growth of information technology, Galt decided to alter his business to suit the times. “I had arranged with some guys to write a software programme for me and they had me on hold, so I decided to do it myself. I took the PC, the only PC the company had at the time and I went home,” said Galt. He furnished himself with a few “How To” books on computers and programming software and he went to work on it.

“I told them that in three months I would deliver the programme.” Out of “sheer determination,” Galt did deliver the programme — in three months — which he called “Retailer.” Retailer allowed companies to sell inventory and up until a few years ago, he said, Queensway fabric store had been using it. Just as his business began to flourish, Galt was struck with the debilitating disease Guillain-Barr? Syndrome (GBS). The disease, pronounced Ghee-yan Bah-ray is an inflammatory disorder of the peripheral nerves—those outside the brain and spinal cord and is characterised by the rapid onset of weakness, and often paralysis of the legs, arms, breathing muscles and face. Galt became paralysed and was hospitalised for three months at an institution in Florida. “The most disturbing thing is to be in the hands of somebody and you can’t help yourself... I died twice, clinically,” he said.

The business had to close its doors, as his wife, Nicole, stayed at his bedside day and night. To pay for his bills, the couple moved out of their Westmoorings home, which they rented out to strangers. While in hospital, however, he kept thinking of the business. He said: “I wrote in my mind rules I would live by and one of them was to write a company appliance for offices so that people (employees) could be trained and rewarded.” He did. Although it took him over four years to fully recuperate and walk without a cane, Galt didn’t put to rest his goals concerning the business. In time, he wrote the Human Resource Managment programme HRP5, which is currently used by IBM in Barbados, The Bahamas and compaines in Trinidad—Ernst and Young, Trinmar, PriceWaterhouseCoopers, WITCO and by Central Bank of the Netherland Antilles. The UWI Institute of Business is also currently installing this application.

“It allows companies to develop their human capital. People don’t pay enough importance to their employees. If we open up our market, we will find Americans setting up shop here and they will treat our people better than our companies treat employees here,” said Galt. “I have 131 families dependent on this business. The people are important to any organisation and we need to value our people.” Galt, and the TSL Group, have become a force to reckon with in the world of “plastic.” ABS, the first in the Group which was formed in 1995, specialises in designing credit cards which are produced by Card and Plastic. “There is a chance that the credit card you have in your wallet was produced by me,” he said. “We produce the thousands of VeriFone terminals you see, used by stores and other businesses where the debit cards and credit cards are swiped and where prepaid telephone cards are serviced.”

Galt is also Vice-President of the American Chamber of Commerce, a member of Vision 2020 Entrepreneurial Committee, Youth Business Trust which was set up by the Prince of Wales and Rotary Club, Maraval. “We work with a lot of impoverished. Currently we are setting up a learning centre in Woodbrook,” Galt said. Although he has achieved a lot, financially, Galt said that he has set higher goals for himself. Selling his software off to Microsoft and achieving obscene amounts of money is one of them, and of course dedicating more time to his family.