In pursuit of a girl, a teenage Dammon Paul went ice skating.

In his first attempt, he knocked himself out. In his second attempt, he skated straight into a wall and busted his shoulder. In his third attempt, he skated backwards and knocked himself out again.

“The fourth time I went back, this guy said to me ‘you’re either really stupid, or you really want to know how to skate’.”

Turns out the guy was a former professional ice hockey player who gave the young Dammon a few lessons that set him on the path to a string of jobs in ice skating rinks in Australia, 15 years of playing ice hockey and a passion for the ice that he is working towards turning into a business opportunity. Fast forward 20 years to Rotorua in 2011 where Dammon (Ngāpuhi) is now living. A temporary ice rink was in town for the school holidays and he was helping out.

“I was giving a few kids that were hanging around some lessons and then I noticed them a few days later teaching other kids.”

This was the germ of an idea – to use skating as a way of supporting rangatahi and encouraging them to pursue opportunities both on and off the rink.

Late last year, Dammon was one of eight Māori business owners Te Puni Kōkiri supported to take part in an Entrepreneur Bootcamp run by Tauranga-based Enterprise Angels.

“We wanted to be able to give fledgling business people practical advice on how they could progress their aspirations,” Te Puni Kōkiri Te Arawa Regional Director Wally Tangohau says.

The Bootcamp involved five sessions spread over ten weeks and aimed to provide participants with tools and knowledge they would need to test their business ideas before investing additional time and money.

“Enterprise Angels is a well-established group that has invested in several Bay of Plenty companies so the Bootcamp has a good dose of reality,” Wally says. By partnering with business organisations, including Grow Rotorua, Te Puni Kōkiri was able to help Māori business owners tap into specific areas of business expertise. For Dammon, the advice and knowledge he gained were invaluable. “It was fantastic. Great ideas, and clarity on the kind of information that investors need to know before they will even look at you.”

His concept is to have portable ice rinks that can be taken to schools, first around the Bay of Plenty and then nationwide, with the aim to cater for 200 students a week. He’s putting together programmes that will include skating and ice-hockey lessons.

Eventually he wants to be able to establish a permanent ice rink in the city – complementary to tourist attractions already on offer - but one that would also appeal to the city’s rangatahi.

It’s a plan that will take several years to come to fruition, but he’s started off by securing seed funding to complete a feasibility study.

And while the girl who he originally started skating to impress drifted away, skating had a happy ending for Dammon – he met his wife and mother of his three children on the ice.