Anthony Tripolino FIPA: Lessons from teenage side hustles

Every great business solves a problem. Anthony Tripolino, back when he was 15 years old, had one problem. 

“In high school I loved gaming, but it frustrated me paying $100 or more to buy a video game,” he says. “I just thought, this has got to be done better.”

With all of the bravado and risk appetite that comes with being 15, Tripolino decided he’d import games in bulk to sell to his friends.

“I got them from Singapore,” Tripolino says. “I brought them in and started selling them to my mates, then on eBay, for half the cost of what they sold for in the stores.”

His efforts didn’t go unnoticed. 

“A guy in Melbourne reached out to me by email and said if I keep doing what I’m doing,  his business would dump product to the point where I went out of business,” he says.

“I went to Dad.”

Dad – Frank Tripolino, founder of Tripolino Accountants – told his son to contact the ACCC.

The ACCC assigned a case officer, who suggested the organisation was demonstrating cartel behaviour. Soon, the same gentleman who sent the threatening email rang Tripolino to make an official apology.

“I said to him that I was probably going to stop selling games anyway, because it was interfering with my schoolwork,” he says. “You could hear a pin drop. He had just realised he was speaking to a kid.”

That venture made enough money to enable Tripolino to buy his first car and, although he stopped selling games, he’s still dedicated to solving problems – now as Director of Tripolino Accountants.

Q Your family has owned the Palais Geelong, a local icon, for several decades. Did you spend much time in the theatre?

A I spent many days and nights there, working or doing my homework upstairs as my parents worked.

My family had the vision of turning it into a performance venue, but it also had a bingo permit. Originally we had no idea about bingo. We ended up, from 1997 to 2016, running one of Victoria’s biggest bingo centres – we saw about 2,500 people per week. 

Q Accountants running a bingo centre – that actually makes good sense! What did that business teach you? 

A It taught me that hard work brings rewards. I watched mum and dad put in a lot of hours, often seven days a week. It wasn’t just about knowing accounting and knowing business, but it was also about the value of really hard work.

I worked there for my spending money, and those work ethic lessons rubbed off on me from a young age.

Q Why did the bingo business stop?

A The primary driver behind that was twofold. One, we weren’t getting the numbers. Geelong had the Ford and Alcoa manufacturing plants. They were our people. When Ford announced its closure, it affected us in terms of people’s disposable income. 

Also, bingo was a very social game. It brought people together to spend a little bit of money, because you literally couldn’t play more than a certain number of games. It wasn’t like you were at a poker machine.

But as the industry shifted towards electronic gaming, it took away the element of skill and it took away the social aspect. It felt more like gambling. We didn’t want to get into that. 

Actually, one of the lessons for us was that it can be hard in business to know when to hold and when to fold. We let that business go on for probably two years too long, because we were emotionally attached.

Q You studied a Bachelor of Commerce majoring in Accounting, Finance and Financial Planning at Deakin University. Did you work outside the family business after that? 

A I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t strongly considering going elsewhere, because I didn’t want to feel like I was just going straight into the family business. But I did go straight into the business, and I don’t regret that choice. 

I know a lot of people who started when I did and who are no longer in public practice, because their experience was different. 

One time, I met up with some people I had graduated with, friends who were working at a mid-tier firm. They asked why I was wearing a tie. I said, “That’s what we wear when we go to see clients”. 

They were amazed that I was dealing with clients – they weren’t yet allowed to. 

But I didn’t want it to look like I was given an easy ride, and it was actually quite the opposite. It’s your name on the wall, so the expectations are higher, particularly from clients. It was a very steep learning curve.

Q Do you remember your first day on the job? 

A I do. I sat at the very desk I’m sitting at right now and my colleague Jackie put a group certificate in front of me. She said, “I need you to do a tax return.”

I remember looking at the group certificate and saying, “What’s this?”

She said, “Are you serious?”

I said, “I have no idea what this is!”

She said, “What have you been learning at university over the past few years?”

I said, “I’m beginning to wonder that, myself!”

Q You’re now a director of the business and have dealt with countless clients over the years. Has all of this experience made you a better business person? 

A The biggest takeaway for me is that good business is all about being good at dealing with people. At the Palais Geelong, we were dealing with all sorts of people from all walks of life. That knowledge and experience transferred well for me into this business.

In business, we manage people and deal with people as clients. You have situations where you’re dealing with people in various ways, whether that be to try to encourage or pacify or explain. Those skills are extremely valuable in business and in life.