Not the Cleaned-Up
Version. The Real One.
This is what it looks like when there’s no system holding things together.
Gulliver’s Cars — Brisbane
At 18 I was knocking on strangers’ doors in direct sales. No qualifications. No connections. No plan B. Just a belief that if I outworked everyone around me, something would happen.
Something happened.
We started a business from my business partner’s garage and the boot of my car. By the time I was 25 I was running multiple call centres and a retail outlet. 200 staff. Over $10 million a year in revenue. All straight commission. All built from nothing.
Then I had to stand in front of every one of those 200 people and tell them their jobs were gone. The business went into liquidation. I had to look every single one of them in the eye while it happened. That’s not something you forget.
The ATO came for me in my late twenties and I went bankrupt.
I rebuilt. Because that’s what you do.
Over the next 20 years I managed businesses across direct sales, telecommunications and automotive. I’ve trained thousands of salespeople — people who walked in with no experience, no confidence, no idea what they were capable of — and watched them become the best in their field.
I took sales teams from $50,000 a month to $1.5 million a month.
In 2017 I founded Gulliver’s Cars in Brisbane. Built it from nothing into a business turning over $5 million a year. Built a social media following of 20,000 people before most dealerships knew what Instagram was.
I had always battled with addiction my whole life — drugs, alcohol. I got to over 200 kilos and was morbidly obese.
Then COVID hit. And at the same time, things in my personal life started falling apart. People I loved. Gone. Within months of each other.
I stopped coping. I closed the yard. And I fell hard.
Addiction led me to a lifestyle that would later become my rock bottom. I was still showing up for my three kids every day — I’ve been a single dad for 18 years — but I wasn’t really there. I was going through the motions of a life I’d stopped living.
At my lowest I didn’t recognise the person looking back at me.
Then in 2023, after finally hitting rock bottom, I got clean.
A decision that I was done destroying what was left.
I’ve lost over 100 kilos. I rebuilt my finances from nothing. Again. Recovery gave me the opportunity to repair relationships with my family and build a bond now stronger than ever.
Today I work with business owners trying to navigate the pressure of building something real while still being present for their family. I work with addicts. I’ve lived both worlds.
