He Lost Everyone... Now He Runs A Company Of 40 Staff

You grow up as a kid who has an alcoholic mother. You—

Well, there was more there. We had suicide. Grandma killed herself. Auntie killed herself. Yeah, our dad was working a lot trying to support the family, and he wasn't around that much as well, necessarily. And then my sensei that my mum connected me into karate. Ended up hanging himself in the horse stables.

So you were around multiple suicides before the age of what, 10, 12?

Oh no, well, the last suicide was about 16 when my sensei killed himself. What it did, it shut me down inside. I actually felt as a child that anyone that I loved was like a curse on them, that they could die. And then my mum had suicide attempts too. It was very kind of confronting, a lot of things, you know. Um, yeah, I have stopped her from swallowing a whole bunch of pills once, um, as a child, you know. So I had to constantly look out for my mum as well for drinking herself to death.

You've confronted multiple suicides of other people, not you, but you've confronted alcoholism. This is all before the age of you really being a young man or Oh yeah. Then you have your own drug addiction, multiple rehabs. Yeah. Then multiple psychosis. Multiple psychosis. Trouble with the law. Sorry.

You're right.

Delivery man makes me— Sorry. So these problems, multiple psychosis, problems with the law, drugs, alcohol.

It's also so kind of conflicting because to an outsider and to me, depending on the perception that I place on the reality or whatever, it can be horrible. But my childhood is also beautiful because I was with my dogs running through the national parks in Warrandyte and losing myself in another world. And we had so many amazing moments through that trauma. And drama.

Well, isn't that the messiness of life though, right? Everyone thinks it's supposed to be this white picket fence with this 2.5 children and happy wife, happy husband. But how many people have that?

I don't know.

Like, I don't really know anyone who really— well, probably a handful of people who I know have this perfect picture, perfect desk. And even then, they're not happy people. They're given all those things. It's not to say that everyone who has that isn't happy, but I think the reality of life is that humans are complex. We all do our best to dance with our demons in whatever shape, form they come in. You never get rid of them. I think you've got to learn to dance with them.

Yeah.

What do you think?

Well, I think—

Do you get rid of your demons or do you make them smaller?

Maybe smaller. You're constantly working on things. Like, to give you an example as well, like, I'm constantly trying to remind myself and trying to shift my perception on many things. For example, to give you a really simple thing that happens on a daily, you know, I might not be traveling well, some guy cuts me off. And I'll be like, fuck this guy, look at him, who does he think he is, get up his ass. Or I can take a step back, go, hang on, relax, he could have just lost his job, he could have just lost his brother, I don't know his story. I'm not going to take that on board as well. I'm going to have compassion for him and understand that, you know, and not have that egotistical, what has he done to me reaction, and instead kind of, yeah, shift my perception. But that I think is a constant thing that we all do ongoing, trying to— well, I do, always trying to be the best version of myself that I can be.

Do the body— body kill. So pull it into your body. So, so on the pull, pull it close to your body. Pull it close to you. Now let it go. One. Pull it close to your body. Let it go. Pull it close to your body. Good, that's 3. Close into your body.

4.

Close into your body and flex your wrist back. There you go. Really close to your body. It's good, good. Pull it right into your body, like let's skim your tummy. Good, good.

4 more, 4 more, 4 more.

So much harder now. 1, 2. Feel that tension in the tricep. 3. One more, you got it. Good, good, excellent. Feel it more?

Yeah, that was good.

Changing the lever arm of the tricep, making you putting on much more stress and strain.

That was good, felt good. 3, 4, drive, push, 5, push, 6. Push up. Rolling tricep extension. Cool, I'll be doing that again for sure.

Feel good, huh?

Amazing, feels really good.

So as I was saying before the milkman, wherever the hell he is, came in to deliver my package, I was saying you had this childhood confronted by suicide, confronted by drug addiction, confronted by alcoholism at a young age. We flash forward that to today, you've built this business that you named after your mom.

Yeah.

And you're doing amazing work in the space of— you work with rehabilitation, or is this—

No, well, not directly, but indirectly we do. We work with people with disabilities, and that includes people with psychosocial mental health disabilities as well. And a lot of the time it's like what came first, the chicken or the egg? Mental health or drug and alcohol addiction? So a lot of these people that have mental health issues are self-medicating in one way or another with—

Yeah, I kind of look at that though, like, isn't that fascinating that you went through all these things in your life, you experienced it for yourself. Not to say you always have to experience these things to be able to build something around it, but you actually lived this. This was your lived experience. Oh yeah, yeah. And then on the other side of that, your mother was brutally murdered by someone, by someone who had mental health, who was in a psychosis at the same time. Your mom was starting her last years of life.

Yeah.

And then she almost gave you this gift in a way of, hey, go do something with all this.

Going back on what I was saying before, yeah, yeah. Well, that's the thing, it's like we were talking about, like, it was a horrid circumstance that happened, but at the same time, like, yeah, just in a weird way just leveled me. And I feel like mom's with me constantly, and I live in her honor and in her kind of, yeah, presence. But what was I going to say? Yeah, the whole process that happened that was so full-on then is kind of somewhat had such amazing positive kind of outcomes as well, not just for myself, but for other people, you know.

Well, you're doing work that is meaningful, impactful, that will be remembered by those who you work with. Like, you're not—

Oh, we're changing lives every day. It's incredible. And from a different level as well. I mean, we started MAUD Care just over 2 years ago. We have over 50 employees now.

It's, yeah, it's M-A-U-D-C-A-R-E. Yeah, yeah, yeah. If anyone looks it up, they know how to spell it. Yeah, yeah.

But I suppose it's just everything that my brother and I have learned through our experience. And, you know, in the world we're in today, adding more of a compassionate and empathetic kind of base core values and support around participants, they really feel it. Their families really feel it, you know, and it's grown so much because of that. And so the outcomes we're having with participants and the changes that we're seeing The positive outcomes are incredible.

From an outlook, a third person perspective, when I look at your business, it's almost like you've gotten the service, the product so right that your business has gone.

Yeah.

You haven't done or needed to do, say, the backend of which, like the marketing, the social media.

We have done zero marketing.

It's really been like, wow, these guys do a good job. Their hearts are in the right space. There's an energy to this.

Yeah. So we have a social media presence, but that's essentially like a photo album. For us to look at and for families to look at. It's not even as such to market, and we've done zero, zero, uh, investment into marketing whatsoever. It's just by word of mouth from families, from participants.