War Stories...
This tab is about my failings. There’s so many, they aren’t all here. But to talk of property and project success I have to talk about the stuff up's; some small and some so epic they almost took me with them financially, mentally and even physically.
Most websites act like marketing brochures with polished, pretty images and copy full of adjectives and verbs to stimulate, excite and delight. Most try to paint the best rosy picture of endeavor and success.
While I’m not sure this website has the full polish, it must be interesting and visually attractive, even if only to appeal to my own children who, in reality, this site is for (sorry to disappoint if you thought it was about you).
The way I see it - It's been created to teach my children about what I/we did to create and live our lives. Hopefully, it shows them a path I’ve been blessed to find: property success and the very comfortable living it can provide in this country.
However, like life, property is not all beers and skittles or - barrels and babes, as a surfer might say. There’s hard times, challenges and for me some unmitigated failures. If I don’t tell my children about the hard times and epic failures then how can they learn that to try is almost certainly to fail and even when you think you have it down perfect, well shit can happen!
This list continues to grow, both as I feel inspired to write of the lessons or maybe face them and record the failures or I just add to the list.
We don’t have long enough here for me to write all that can be said about the GFC. The lessons, my mistakes, the banks behavior, the way people act under pressure, my thoughts on business partnerships in the toughest of times and the outcomes are topics that may be as therapeutic for me as hopefully interesting or thought provoking for you...
Some of my biggest failings were not monetary ones but people and relationships. It is said the way people act in time of crisis is their true selves (or is that when they are drunk?) People can be hard to predict. Often it’s in hindsight where you really see the mistakes you’ve made, or rather, your errors in judgement. Years later I had many people question “what were you doing in partnership with them in the first place?...
Easily by the proverbial country mile this is the single worst project I have been involved in from a financial perspective, and yes, ironically as I prepare the material for this website perhaps also the most awarded! If that doesn’t say all you need to hear about Industry Project awards, then there’s more I’ll cover elsewhere… but I digress...
After ‘retirement’ in 2006 at the ripe old age of 33, after doing 15-hour days 6 days a week the ease of pace was blissful. I’d mainly surf the morning to avoid the wind then work from my home office looking after the few personal projects I had running while staying in touch with partners of managers in the business interests we were involved with...
