It\u2019s taken him from pizzas to delivery driver to an appliance store retail manager, all while investing in property.<\/p>\n
Then, at 23, he took his biggest gamble yet \u2013 selling three rentals to raise the cash for a 50-50 share in Mitre 10 Pahiatua.<\/p>\n
Two years on under his co-leadership, the store has doubled its turnover, grown from 14 staff to 30, and won Mitre 10\u2019s Trade Business of the Year.<\/p>\n
Cooke-Tait, now 25, likes to \u201cmove fast\u201d, but admits it\u2019s been a whirlwind through uncharted territory.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a bit like reading the how-to-fly manual as you\u2019re taking off.\u201d<\/p>\n
Jacob Cooke-Tait, now 25, was the youngest Mitre 10 owner in NZ at age 23 after buying a 50-50 share in the Pahiatua store.<\/p>\n
He\u2019s quick to say his story is not just one of raw personal drive \u2013 it\u2019s equally about the people you meet along the way and the help waiting behind doors, if you just knock.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s also a testament to New Zealand\u2019s regional towns and cities and the chances on offer to those who stay.<\/p>\n
\u2018Knock on doors and they\u2019ll open\u2019<\/p>\n
At 16, Cooke-Tait set himself a deadline: own a house by age 18.<\/p>\n
No one in his family had experience investing in property, so he knocked on his first door.<\/p>\n
He cold emailed a property-finding company.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m watching heaps of YouTube, reading heaps of books. I want to try and buy my first house at 18,\u201d he announced.<\/p>\n
Against that clock, he also decided school was a bad trade.<\/p>\n
He estimated his teachers earned about $55,000 \u2013 and that 70 hours a week at the pizza restaurant where he worked after school would bring in more.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese are the guys teaching me how to live my life. I think I can go figure it out and earn just as much as them,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Dropping out of school with $30,000 saved from his pizza work, he had a 10-month \u201csprint\u201d to find the rest of the deposit.<\/p>\n
A young Jacob Cooke-Tait chasing body goals.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, his email worked.<\/p>\n
The online company connected him with two Masterton investors who were doing up houses.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey got me working on their property deals [and renovation projects] as a labourer,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat got me in the door, learning from people doing stuff.\u201d<\/p>\n
The pizza-shop hours did the rest.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was happy to scrub floors or do whatever to save money,\u201d he told the Herald back in 2019. \u201cWorking hard has always been important to me.\u201d<\/p>\n
When he was ready to buy, the investors found a deal \u2013 a five-bedroom Masterton do-up at $400,000.<\/p>\n
They offered to split it. His share came to $50,000 \u2013 $40,000 of deposit and $10,000 toward renovations.<\/p>\n
They had plans to convert the house to seven bedrooms and share about $600 a week in rent.<\/p>\n
For Cooke-Tait, it was goal achieved: a property owner at 18.<\/p>\n
\u2018I like moving fast\u2019<\/p>\n
It hasn’t all been smooth sailing: Jacob Cooke-Tait after he caused a fire using a heat gun \u2013 an event that drew the fire brigade and earned a front-page spot in the local newspaper.<\/p>\n
Within a year, he was looking for his next move and sold his share in the property to the couple he invested with.<\/p>\n
\u201cI just wanted to go faster,\u201d he said, explaining he had really enjoyed the experience and what he learned from them, but they weren\u2019t in a position to borrow more as quickly as he wanted.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor me to grow, I had to leave them.\u201d<\/p>\n
It was the same process, or itch, he said he\u2019d always had.<\/p>\n
\u201cOnce you start on a path and you look over the hill a little bit, you\u2019re like, \u2018Oh, there\u2019s actually a better thing to be chasing over here\u2019. But you don\u2019t know that until you start trying to climb the hill.\u201d<\/p>\n
The same year, Covid ended the pizza chapter. He quit and took a job at a local home appliance store, delivering and installing fridges, washing machines, TVs and beds.<\/p>\n
The money from his first house went straight into his first solo one \u2013 and this time there was no one else on the title.<\/p>\n
From here he spent four years trying to climb the ladder, not always successfully.<\/p>\n
That first solo rental \u2013 a $295,000 home in Whanganui \u2013 he kept and rented out.<\/p>\n
It gave him the equity to buy his second \u2013 a Masterton house he lived in with his partner and flatmates who helped cover the mortgage.<\/p>\n
The Masterton home on Coradine St that Jacob Cooke-Tait lived in and which was among three he sold in 2024 to buy a share in a Mitre 10.<\/p>\n
His next purchase was what really taught him about limits.<\/p>\n
He bought a fire-damaged do-up in H\u0101wera just down the road from a gang pad.<\/p>\n
Sleeping in the charred remains of the house one night and realising he didn\u2019t know how to fix it up, he reflected and resolved to sell it, ultimately banking just an $11,000 profit.<\/p>\n
\u201cA real good lesson in doing good due diligence … figuring out your costs before you take the punt,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The next was a keeper \u2013 a $390,000 pair of Carterton flats returning 12.6% yield from the rental income.<\/p>\n
By 22 he had three rentals.<\/p>\n
From property to Mitre 10<\/p>\n
Cooke-Tait had originally aimed to get to 10 rentals and earn enough to quit working.<\/p>\n
But the rentals, it turned out, were just the runway.<\/p>\n
His delivery driver job had put him on the inside with Wairarapa local appliance store royalty \u2013 the Heginbotham family.<\/p>\n
The family had sold furniture and appliances in the region for decades \u2013 Mark Heginbotham, a second-generation retailer, ran the Masterton appliance store where Cooke-Tait worked.<\/p>\n
After nine months driving, he talked his way on to the sales floor.<\/p>\n
Jacob Cooke-Tait accepting the Trade Business of the Year at Mitre 10’s 2026 awards.<\/p>\n
\u201cI just tried to prove my worth,\u201d he said \u2013 cooking up VIP sales nights and marketing campaigns that packed a month\u2019s trade into an evening.<\/p>\n
Four years later, he was running the floor \u2013 and he and his boss were looking for opportunities.<\/p>\n
When the Mitre 10 in nearby Pahiatua \u2013 a small town of 2000 people \u2013 was listed for sale in 2024 by the owners whose family had run it for 40 years, Cooke-Tait and Heginbotham thought they\u2019d \u201chave a crack\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u2018Naivety is a good thing sometimes\u2019<\/p>\n
Heginbotham took one half of the new business.<\/p>\n
To fund his half, Cooke-Tait sold his three rentals \u2013 pulling in $365,000 for the Whanganui house, $500,000 for the Carterton flats, and $470,000 for his Masterton property \u2013 some of which was split with his partner.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt got me what I needed to get into Mitre 10.\u201d<\/p>\n
The hardware chain welcomed him with his own section in an internal newsletter.<\/p>\n
\u201cYoungest member principal at Mitre 10,\u201d the newsletter headline said about the then 23-year-old.<\/p>\n
\u201cJacob has what it takes to do really well,\u201d Heginbotham is quoted as saying in the same article.<\/p>\n
Then reality set in. Cooke-Tait had never run a business this size.<\/p>\n
The new Mitre 10 carried 16,000 products whereas the appliance shop had stocked about 500.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think naivety is a good thing sometimes.\u201d<\/p>\n
Despite that, he and Heginbotham began putting money back into the business, some of which had aged a bit along with its previous owners.<\/p>\n
Jacob Cooke-Tait and Mark Heginbotham.<\/p>\n
The sellers were lovely people, but after four decades in one family, \u201cyou get a little bit stuck in the way of how to do things\u201d, he said about the changes they brought in.<\/p>\n
That, and a focus on the local tradies and farmers, led to business growth that earned the store its recent Trade Business of the Year award.<\/p>\n
\u2018Back yourself\u2019<\/p>\n
He and Heginbotham have since opened another appliance store in Pahiatua, while Cooke-Tait\u2019s 23-year-old brother has also joined him at Mitre 10.<\/p>\n
Having his brother alongside is especially rewarding: growing up, he had no one to show him these kinds of opportunities existed.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou watch movies, and you look on Instagram, and everyone\u2019s overseas in America doing crazy things, and it\u2019s easy to think that\u2019s where the opportunity is,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut if you really drill down to it, in every community, even provincial New Zealand … if you look hard enough, there\u2019s opportunity everywhere.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It\u2019s taken him from pizzas to delivery driver to an appliance store retail manager, all while investing in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":570124,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[281007,138,2199,281008,39053,128383,18984,29888,106,2959,54173,3112,1899,194,19720,63766,3025,111,139,69,3236,2738,236884,4514,4062,3502,223,29849,157997,1299,56521],"class_list":["post-570123","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-10s","tag-business","tag-city","tag-cooketait","tag-doubled","tag-dropout","tag-finish","tag-handed","tag-head","tag-high","tag-jacob","tag-job","tag-kids","tag-kiwi","tag-land","tag-mitre","tag-most","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-overseas","tag-owner","tag-roadmap","tag-same","tag-school","tag-success","tag-the","tag-turnover","tag-uni","tag-who","tag-youngest"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/570123","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=570123"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/570123\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/570124"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=570123"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=570123"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=570123"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}