A Business
Life

01 · Learning the value of work

Starting early

My working life began with a paper round in Mount Waverley when I was about 12. It was one of the largest rounds operated by the local newsagency. The streets were long and steep, and Saturday mornings were particularly demanding when The Age could run to more than 130 pages. I earned $9.30 a week.

In my teens, I established a small engineering workshop in the back of my parents’ garage. My father was an electrical engineer, and I learnt to use a lathe to machine the shafts of electric motors so that electric brakes could be fitted. I was paid $40 a motor and could sometimes complete five in a few hours.

Those jobs gave me an early appreciation for productive work. There was something to understand, a standard to meet and an outcome that depended on what I did.

02 · Choosing a direction

Finding my own path

School did not begin smoothly for me. After failing Form One, I moved from my private school to Syndal South Technical College. The two schools backed onto one another, separated by a cyclone fence. It was difficult at first, but I went from failing to achieving results in the high 90s in mathematics and physics. I discovered a love of learning that has remained with me.

After a tertiary orientation program at RMIT, I enrolled in engineering at Swinburne. It seemed like the expected path, particularly as my father was an engineer. After approximately eight months, I realised I could not build my life around somebody else’s idea of what I should do.

In late 1982, I joined Bowden Fraser Constructions as a builder’s labourer. I later moved into onsite administration on a 120-unit retirement development in Wantirna South, assessing trade claims and helping identify construction defects across approximately half the project. It was an early education in construction, cost control and the importance of inspecting what you expect.

03 · Entering real estate

Persistence opens the door

When I was about 17, I saw a young man driving through a new subdivision near VFL Park in a bright red Mercedes-Benz 280SE with cream leather. I discovered that he was Paul Castran, one of the owners of Gull & Gilbert Real Estate.

He represented independence and possibility to me. I approached him about a job when I was 18. He told me I was too young, that I should undertake the real estate course and come back.

I commenced the four-year real estate course at Prahran College of TAFE in 1983 and returned in January 1985. There was still no immediate offer, so I kept telephoning. Eventually, persistence achieved what my first approach had not. I began in real estate on 1 July 1985.

I expected to work in Mount Waverley but was sent to the Ringwood office. My first transaction fell over during the cooling-off period. After I transferred to Mount Waverley, my next two transactions also fell over. My first three deals disappeared before I completed a successful sale.

By November, I was going to work each morning thinking I might resign. I finally decided to stop entertaining that question. I would commit completely until 31 December and decide then. Once I removed the daily possibility of leaving, my performance changed and my career accelerated.

Divided attention weakens effort. Sometimes the most important decision is simply to commit.

04 · Building recurring income

From 120 properties to 600

When the owners of Gull & Gilbert decided to sell, I wanted to acquire the business but did not have the capital for a conventional purchase. We negotiated an arrangement under which I paid for it through a percentage of turnover over three years.

After receiving a time dispensation for my estate agent’s licence, I took control of the business on 1 December 1988, aged 24.

I initially acquired a rent roll of approximately 120 properties. Through further acquisitions and organic growth, I expanded it to around 600 properties under management while I was still in my 20s. By the early-to-mid 1990s, the rent roll was generating approximately $400,000 a year in management-fee revenue—a substantial recurring income stream at the time.

Property management taught me that a recurring-income business is built through thousands of promises being kept consistently. Systems matter. People matter. Local knowledge matters. So do service standards, occupancy, cost control and the ability to respond when something does not go to plan.

Those lessons now sit beneath NewGen Homes.

05 · When the market changed

Learning what the numbers mean

The late 1980s were a period of confidence, easy credit and conspicuous success. Cars, offices and personal assistants became part of the theatre of business. Wealth was often judged by how much credit someone could obtain, rather than by how much they truly owned.

I entered real estate during a historic property boom. Almost everything I bought increased in value, and I had not yet experienced a serious falling market. When the recession arrived in the early 1990s, the weaknesses were exposed.

I had an office of approximately 18 people with annual operating costs approaching $1 million. I held several properties, carried considerable debt and was paying interest rates of around 17.5 per cent. Some years the business produced little or no profit.

Two blocks of land in Dougherty Court, Mulgrave, became a particularly expensive lesson. I bought them for approximately $128,000 each and ultimately sold them for about $78,000 each. After interest and holding costs, the total loss was approximately $250,000.

A rising market can conceal weaknesses. A falling market exposes and magnifies them.

At my lowest point, my net worth was negative by several hundred thousand dollars. My parents had reluctantly allowed their home to be used as security for part of my business borrowings. Losing it was a possibility I refused to contemplate.

My accountant advised that winding up the company and declaring bankruptcy would probably be the easiest path. I could not accept that as my answer. Through an introduction from my accountant, I obtained a refinancing package, continued trading, sold properties and worked my way back over several years.

Following the refinancing, I opened a separate operating account with the Commonwealth Bank in Mount Waverley. It was a cash account with no overdraft facility. Since the mid-1990s, I have operated the business on a cash basis without an overdraft.

I accepted responsibility for the decisions that placed me in that position. I also carried the lessons forward: revenue is not profit, credit is not wealth, visible success can conceal fragile economics, and determination must remain connected to judgement.

06 · Rebuilding

Starting again

By the end of the 1990s, I had recovered financially, but I was mentally exhausted after years spent fighting for survival. Around 2000, I sold the rent roll and progressively wound down the sales business. For close to a decade, I lived what was effectively a semi-retired lifestyle while continuing with selected property transactions.

In late 2010, with my first son due to be born, I began rebuilding the agency from home. I had no dependable income and insufficient funds for conventional marketing. I temporarily moved back in with my parents and rented out my own home so I could retain it while getting the business moving again.

I collected approved advertising expenses in advance so each campaign could fund itself. When I needed stationery but could not immediately pay for it, a printer I had dealt with previously extended credit.

“Your name’s good enough. I’ll back you.”

My reputation became part of my starting capital.

Over the following years, I rebuilt the agency and established operations in Toorak, Brighton, Melbourne and Singapore, before moving to South Melbourne in 2018. I had returned to scale—but with a different understanding of what sustainable success required.

07 · A different housing model

Learning the operation from the inside

In 2017, I began studying purpose-built co-living and Class 1B accommodation. The first management project took shape at 23 Stanley Street, Frankston, with the formal authority commencing on 18 March 2019.

These were not conventional rental properties. The homes were approximately 300 square metres and contained nine individually rented private suites, supported by shared facilities and purpose-built operating systems.

Further homes followed in Berwick, Bundoora, Epping, St Albans and Hoppers Crossing.

When COVID arrived in March 2020, we had three homes operating or being established. Conventional inspections and property management became increasingly difficult. I understood what the restrictions prevented us from doing, but I kept returning to another question:

What can I do?

When inspections were permitted, we arranged as many as possible. During lockdowns, we followed up enquiries, prepared future appointments and improved our remote processes. Residents could receive digital links through which they completed condition reports and assisted with routine inspections by supplying the required information and photographs. Key safes were progressively replaced by digital locks, supported by appropriate monitoring of common areas.

What began as a response to constraint became part of a more capable operating model.

08 · Scale versus density

Appearance is not economics

Over six years, the original portfolio grew to six homes spread across Melbourne. Driving from our Toorak office to all six properties and returning involved approximately 253 kilometres and almost four hours on the road—before any work was undertaken at the properties themselves.

The geographic reach created an impression of scale. Operationally, the travel time and management costs made the model difficult to sustain.

Today, we manage seven homes within one suburb, generally no more than five minutes apart. That concentration makes leasing, inspections, maintenance and everyday management considerably more efficient.

Geographic reach can create the appearance of scale. Geographic concentration creates the economics of scale.

It reinforced a lesson I first encountered during the excesses of the 1980s: public perception does not determine the bottom line. Entrepreneurs have to be careful not to let ego design the business.

The real question is not, “How impressive does this look?” It is, “Does the model work?”

10 · What comes next

Experience has to point forward

The journey has included rapid growth, expensive mistakes, exhaustion, rebuilding and reinvention. Each chapter has changed the way I think and the way I operate.

I continue to see possibilities everywhere. Experience has taught me that opportunity is not the same as priority, activity is not the same as progress and visible success is not necessarily genuine success.

Through every difficult chapter, one question has repeatedly moved me forward:

What can I do next?

Not what should somebody else do. Not what would I do if circumstances were different. Not what can no longer be done.

What can I do—with what I know, what I have and where I am today?

The answer is never found only in words. It is found in what I do next.