Find. Build. Sell.

CHAPTER 1Find your passion

The future depends on what you do today.

Gandhi

I've got seven pubs worth over $100 million. Saying it like that makes it sound like it was easy to achieve. It wasn't. It's taken me 30 years to learn the formula for how to find, build and scale a bricks and mortar business. In the early days, I made many mistakes. In fact, I made so many I nearly went bankrupt before I had even begun.

I started out making $100 at my backyard bar and gradually worked my way up, managing bars all over Sydney, London and Europe, working for some of the biggest and best names in the business. I was a sponge, absorbing everything around me, just waiting for that day when I could do it for myself and be my own boss.

My opportunity came, funnily enough, when I was sitting in a bar. What I'm about to tell you sounds like a plot from a Hollywood movie, but I can assure you that everything that happened was very real. I'm revealing the story here so that (hopefully) you can avoid repeating the rookie errors I made.

How not to buy a pub

It was 2015. I was 42. I was living in the Hunter Valley, New South Wales with my wife and children. By sheer good luck (and some good timing), I found myself with $400 000 from the lucrative sale of a Sydney residence. I had already had a few good wins under my belt from residential property (I once owned a property for six weeks and made 18 per cent on the sale), so I was feeling on top of the world and, to put it quite bluntly, thought ...