Everyone loves a good success story. Few people talk about the sleepless nights, the near-bankruptcy, and the moments when you question everything you’re doing.
At 36, I sit here with a net worth of over $15 million. I run a business on track for $10 million revenue. We’re planning our next strategic acquisitions.
Sounds good, right?
Here’s what most success stories won’t tell you: I spent two years with negative net worth.
I nearly went bankrupt.
I had to close my first business.
My dad got sick and I inherited crushing debt.
I got fired for doing what I thought was right.
This isn’t another “10 easy steps to wealth” story. This is the unfiltered truth about what building real wealth looks like, complete with the data to prove it
Chapter 1: The Worst Possible Start (2007-2009) Starting a Financial Career During the GFC
Picture this: You’re 18 years old, starting your financial services traineeship, and the Global Financial Crisis hits. Markets are crashing, people are losing their homes, and here I am trying to learn about building wealth while the world burns around me.
My first year brought in $50,000. Not bad for an 18-year-old, but I had zero assets and zero debt. Net worth: $0. I watched experienced advisers scramble to save their clients’ portfolios.
The irony wasn’t lost on me. I was learning to give financial advice during the worst financial crisis in decades. It was a baptism by fire and taught me some invaluable lessons about giving quality advice.
In 2008, I tried to buy my first property for $180,000. Commonwealth Bank took one look at my application and refused the loan.
So what did I do? I took that $30,000 I’d saved and went to Thailand instead.
Looking back, this was just one of many stupid decisions that could have got me further ahead (also signs of my undiagnosed ADHD and inability to defer gratification.)
By 2009, I’d blown through most of my savings on “investments” like cars and motorbikes. My income was easy come, easy go. My net worth dropped to $15,000, a brutal 50% decline that gave me my first real taste of financial setbacks.
Lesson 1: External forces beyond your control will test every plan you make. The question isn’t whether setbacks will happen. It’s how you’ll respond.
Chapter 2: The Dangerous Years (2010-2014) When Success Gives You False Confidence
The next few years felt like I was getting somewhere. My income grew steadily. $80K, $85K, $90K. My net worth climbed from $40,000 to $70,000. I was young, making decent money, and starting to feel invincible.
That’s when I made my first big mistake: I confused income with wealth.
In 2012, I started Siete Clothing Co out of blind ego. I met a guy in a bar who said he was a fashion designer – he talked me through the process and I thought to myself, “If this guy can do it, so can I.”
Not only did I blow my savings on the business, I also bought my first property with my dad for $250,000 – the reality was he needed my income to get the loan approved. On paper, things looked great. I’d hit my first $100,000 income year, owned property, and had a business. I felt like I’d made it.
Here’s what the spreadsheet doesn’t show: the sleepless nights, the cash flow pressures, and the mounting stress of trying to scale a business I wasn’t truly passionate about.
By 2013, I was spending every dollar of surplus on stock for Siete. My net worth hit $50,000, but I was about to learn the hard way that cash flow is king. I was running dangerously low on it.
Lesson 2: Making $100K felt like I’d made it. I had no idea I was about to learn the difference between income and wealth the hard way.
Chapter 3: Rock Bottom (2014-2016) When Everything Falls Apart Simultaneously
2014 was the year everything went wrong at once.
Dad’s cancer came back aggressively and couldn’t work. Suddenly, I wasn’t responsible for my own financial future. I had to take over the mortgage payments and his significant credit card debts. The business was spiralling out of control, demanding more and more cash to stay afloat.
I watched my net worth plummet from $50,000 positive to $25,000 negative, then crater to -$100,000. At 26 years old, I was drowning in debt with a failing business and a sick father depending on me.
I seriously considered bankruptcy.
The breaking point came when I realised I wasn’t passionate about Siete. I was pouring everything I had into a business I didn’t love and thinking it would miraculously start printing money, while neglecting the advisory work where I thrived.
So I made the hardest decision of my life: I closed Siete, donated all the stock to charity and went all-in on building my advisory business.
Then I got fired.
My boss saw my advisory business as a conflict of interest and let me go. There I was. Negative net worth, no business income, no job, and family depending on me.
At the time I felt like a victim. The reality was that it was the best thing that could have happened to me.
Sometimes rock bottom becomes the foundation for your greatest comeback.
I stumbled across an opportunity to get an equity stake in an advisory business that needed turning around. With nothing left to lose, I went all-in and committed to smashing my debt as quickly as possible.
Lesson 3: Rock bottom taught me that your lowest point often becomes the foundation for your greatest comeback, but only if you’re willing to make the hard decisions.
Chapter 4: The Comeback Strategy (2016-2018) Clawing Back from Negative Net Worth
The turnaround started immediately. By focusing exclusively on what I was genuinely good at (advisory work), I started seeing results. We scaled the business rapidly, won numerous industry awards, and became the number 1 branch in the country.
I realised how successful I could be when I committed to one thing obsessively and gave it all of my effort. This was where I discovered what I was capable of doing.
More importantly, I systematically destroyed my debt. By 2016, I’d clawed back to $170,000 net worth. A massive 270% improvement from my lowest point.
But 2017 brought both triumph and tragedy.
Dad passed away from his battle with pancreatic cancer.
We sold the house to cover costs and debts, and I used all the money I had left to buy an investment property in Brisbane. The business continued to grow, and I felt like I was getting ahead.
Then I had a falling out with my business partners. We were part of a franchise group and the head of the business was driving the group into the ground. We were no longer values aligned and I realised I was being capped in my growth.
Our branch was succeeding, but I couldn’t reach my full potential within the existing structure. After months of difficult conversations, we facilitated a buyout of my shares.
In November 2017, I used those proceeds to start Aureus Financial with my good friend Sam Panetta.
Lesson 4: Being right about the business didn’t matter if I was trapped in the wrong partnership. Sometimes you have to walk away from good to find great.
Chapter 5: The Startup Hustle (2018-2020) Starting Over at Nearly 30
Starting Aureus meant starting over. Again.
We took significant pay cuts (I dropped from $250K to $100K) while doubling down on growth. We raised capital to scale faster, but the early startup days were brutal.
I made another big decision: I sold my investment property to go all-in on Aureus. My net worth jumped to $500,000, but now everything was tied up in the business.
The hustle was real. We worked 80-hour weeks, lived on minimal salaries, and poured everything back into growth. By 2019, we’d scaled to $1.3 million in revenue, primarily through pure hustle and acquisition of mortgage businesses for recurring revenue.
That’s when I had a crazy idea: What if we systematised the business so well that I could take a year off to travel around Australia in a troopcarrier with my partner and our two dogs, while the business continued to grow?
Everyone thought I was nuts. But we did it.
Lesson 5: The difference between a job and a business is whether it runs without you. Building systems was the key to everything that followed.
Chapter 6: Exponential Growth (2020-2025) When Strategy Meets Execution
We left for our Australia trip in 2020 as the world shut down due to COVID.
While everyone else was panicking, we were driving around Australia in “The Lifestyle Business Tourer,” and the business kept growing.
Business owners everywhere lived vicariously through us while they were locked down. We got countless messages that our trip had helped them keep their business afloat, stay positive and work towards doing something similar.
I am proud we could inspire business owners to escape the trap of their business.
The numbers started getting serious:
- 2020: $1.8M revenue, $1.07M net worth
- 2021: $2.4M revenue, $1.56M net worth
- 2022: $2.8M revenue, $1.86M net worth
But the real acceleration happened in the last three years.
2023 was a turning point. The business hit $3.6M, but we realised our current strategy had limitations.
Growth was expensive, and we’d outgrown our systems. My net worth jumped to $4.29M, a 130% increase in one year.
2024 was restructure year. We facilitated a group restructure, sold the mortgage business, and I bought out all but two remaining shareholders. This was me backing myself to take the business to the next level. Net worth: $7.19M.
Now, at 36, we’re on track for $10M in revenue while maintaining 30% profit margins. We’ve got 44 team members, dialled-in systems, and a significant business war chest for strategic acquisitions.
My current net worth sits at $15.12M, a 110% increase from last year alone.
The Real Lessons: What the Spreadsheet Doesn’t Show
- Negative Net Worth Doesn’t Define You – I spent two years with negative net worth. Those were also the years I learned the most about business, resilience, and what I was truly capable of. Your current chapter is not your whole story.
- Family and Money Are Complicated – Mixing family obligations with financial goals nearly destroyed both. Learning to separate emotion from money decisions was crucial for long-term success.
- Business Failures Aren’t Personal Failures – Closing Siete wasn’t admitting defeat. It was redirecting energy toward my strengths. Sometimes the best decision is knowing when to quit.
- Partnerships Make or Break You – I’ve been in partnerships that held me back and ones that accelerated my growth. Learning to recognise the difference changed everything.
- Systems Beat Hustle Long-Term – Working 80-hour weeks got me to $1M. Building systems got me to $15M. You can’t hustle your way to true wealth. You have to build something that works without you.
The Numbers Game: What Moved the Needle
Looking at my journey, the biggest wealth jumps weren’t from salary increases or investment returns. They were from strategic business decisions:
- 2014-2016: From -$100K to $170K (business pivot + debt elimination)
- 2023-2024: From $4.29M to $7.19M (business restructure)
- 2024-2025: From $7.19M to $15.12M (strategic execution + systems)
The compound annual growth rate over 18 years? 43.43%.
Here’s the thing. That growth wasn’t linear. It was years of setbacks followed by explosive growth once the right strategies and systems were in place.
Current Strategy: Building the Next Chapter
Today, our wealth strategy focuses on:
- Buying 2 quality investment properties per year – we might even increase this to 4 this year. We focus on quality assets in good locations that we can hold long term.
- Put a fixed amount monthly into diversified index funds and increase quarterly – I am a big believer in forced savings and I have a direct debit into a portfolio that I set and forget with a reminder to increase each quarter. It sits there passively and works for me in the background.
- Acquiring cash-flow positive professional services businesses – our business acquisitions typically generate 30-50% cash on cash returns annually.
- Maintaining 30% profit margins in the core business – cash flow is king and compounds the business valuation. Our business is valued at 7-10x EBITDA. Although I have no intentions to sell, this creates a significant cash and asset pool we can use to further accelerate our wealth, both inside and outside the business
- Building a significant war chest for larger strategic moves – we typically hold $1.2m in cash at any time which gives us significant capital to pursue opportunities
We’re not building wealth anymore. We’re building a legacy.
For Other Business Owners Reading This
If you’re reading this and struggling, or you’ve hit a major setback, know this: your current situation is temporary, but the lessons you learn are permanent.
I spent years convinced I was failing, when I was learning. The skills I developed during the hardest years (resilience, strategic thinking, systems building, and the ability to make tough decisions) became the foundation for everything that followed.
Wealth building isn’t about avoiding mistakes. It’s about making sure your mistakes teach you something valuable.
Your biggest setbacks often set up your greatest comebacks. But only if you’re willing to learn, adapt, and keep moving forward.
The journey isn’t all sunshine and lollipops. But it’s worth it.
What questions do you have about building wealth? What part of your journey are you struggling with right now? I’d love to hear your story and help where I help.
