Billionare Adrian Portelli Reveals Why He Moved to Dubai, His ATO Battle & Business Empire

Before the luxury cars, multimillion-dollar properties and headline-making giveaways, Adrian Portelli was broke and determined to succeed. Growing up in Melbourne's western suburbs, Adrian refused to take a conventional job, spent years building businesses and sacrificed almost everything in pursuit of success. Now one of Australia's most recognisable entrepreneurs, Adrian sits down with Mark Bouris to tell the story behind his rise. He breaks down the LMCT Plus business model, explains how he turned giveaways into a powerful marketing strategy, and opens up about his disputes with regulators, his move to Dubai and his next major business ventures. From having almost nothing to building a business empire, this is Adrian Portelli's story in his own words. Executive Producer: Samuel Morgan Head of Production: Jonah Mclachlan Join my exclusive Mentored community: https://mentored.com.au Subscribe to the Mentored newsletter here: https://the-mentored-platform-pty-ltd.myklpages.com/l/WWJGc5 See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Adrian Portelli.

• 0:01Speaker 01

  G'day.

• 0:02Speaker 00

  Well, just straight talk, mate.

• 0:03Speaker 01

  It's been a long time coming.

• 0:04Speaker 00

  You betcha. We're at LMCT Plus. I'm gonna talk to you a little bit, a little bit later about what the hell that means. Cause it doesn't mean anything. I'm trying to work out, does it stand for something, you know, like is it some sort of protein word or something like that? But you'll talk, you'll explain that to me in a moment. You're just back from Dubai and I wanna talk to you about that. But mate, I'm a businessman, you're a businessman, you've done extraordinarily well. You've made a lot of money. You continue to make a lot of money. And I know you're used to being interviewed or you've done some interviews with journalists. But I'm gonna talk to you as a businessman. And so some of these questions might look like they're ignorant in that I, I don't actually understand your business model. And how it works. And I'm gonna probably go on a few spots you might feel a bit uncomfortable with. You may not. You okay with that?

• 0:48Speaker 01

  Go for it.

• 0:48Speaker 00

  Because if you wanna leave, we'll leave now.

• 0:50Speaker 01

  Dig deep.

• 0:51Speaker 00

  Okay, mate. So, well, last time I read is that you've moved to Dubai.

• 0:55Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 0:56Speaker 00

  But you're back here.

• 0:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 0:59Speaker 00

  So what do you mean when you say you've moved to Dubai? What do you mean you moved permanently? You're never gonna come back to Australia again? How's that work?

• 1:06Speaker 01

  No, we, um, we never said that we were moving permanently. I never once said that. It's impossible for me to do that. Unfortunately, the media run off with a certain narrative that I've fled the country. Uh, but that's not the case at all. Uh, we've been planning this move for the last, you know, three, four years, me and my family. This isn't just a, something that's happened overnight. If it was, you know, the, uh, the ATO will come knocking. Um, everything's been, you know, logged and, and we've got minutes to everything and, and, um, you know, I've got businesses overseas and setups overseas and, and, um. We originally started in Singapore. We, family wasn't too comfortable there. So a big, you know, uh, culture change over there.

• 1:49Speaker 01

  So then we were looking in Italy. So we wanted to move to Italy. Um, so we went over to Italy a couple of years ago. Uh, put a few offers in, some homes over there and, and, you know, then there were, we saw, you know, a few reports of kidnappings and all these other things. And, you know, it's a, it's, it's a, Italy's a big culture change as well. You know, they don't speak English in a lot of places. Um, getting there is a lot more difficult from Australia. You know, you're commuting twenty, twenty-four hours. Schooling will be difficult. Um, so, you know, it was a last minute thing Dubai. We weren't, we, we traveled there a lot, but we would never look to ever live there. We didn't like it, uh, me and my partner and the family. And,

• 2:32Speaker 01

  and it was a last minute thing. I said, you know what? It just makes sense. You know, it's a central hub of the world. You know, we head up, we go to Europe, head down, get to Australia and, and we're, we're in that sense, one flight, anywhere we wanna go. It's safe. Um, it's an upcoming city. And we thought, you know what? Let's just give it a shot. And it was, I can safely say it was probably one of the best decisions I've ever made in my life.

• 2:56Speaker 00

  What we could get seduced into thinking is that you've gone there because of a, it's a low tax rate environment. And, uh, and a lot of tax non-residents around the world live there, particularly Europeans and English people. How much does tax weigh in the decision-making? Or is it more about lifestyle?

• 3:14Speaker 01

  Look, I think that's the biggest misconception that, that, you know, we're fled there to avoid paying taxes. My businesses are based here. So.

• 3:22Speaker 00

  So you can't, you can't avoid.

• 3:22Speaker 01

  Can't avoid tax, right? Can minimize it in certain aspects, but I can minimize it here as well.

• 3:29Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 3:29Speaker 01

  I buy a jet, I fly around in the jet and I minimize my taxes. It's no different to, you know, I've got, I've just feel like I've got more control over my business. Being overseas than here. And to be honest, um, having that control, obviously, moving forward, you know, it's every man for themselves. Unfortunately, the government, they'll take, take, take, but when you're in need, there's no one there to be, uh, to help. So I wanted the best for my family. Um, I still love Australia, I still call Australia home. But, you know, I've got a second home as well, and that's Dubai. And I feel like I can give my family a lifestyle they deserve.

• 4:09Speaker 01

  Um, outside of Australia. And we can have the best of both worlds. We can come here for our family, friends and, and my businesses that are here. And, and then we can go to Dubai and it's a completely different life. You know, nobody knows who I am there. We can.

• 4:21Speaker 00

  Is that a good thing?

• 4:22Speaker 01

  I, I absolutely love it. I'm, I'm a, I'm a, like an introvert. I was never wanting to be in the public eye. Um, but, uh, most importantly, I'm a businessman. And I understood that putting my face to my brands built trust, built an audience, and it's got me to where I am today. So it's a small sacrifice to pay. But at the same time, if I've got the opportunity to relocate my family in Dubai and we can live a life where we're in peace. We're not scared of, of something happening, you know, to, to our children or, or the family or, you know, over here in Melbourne, we've got, the security is insane. Like I've got bulletproof doors that we lock to go to sleep. My bedroom doors are a bulletproof door.

• 5:02Speaker 00

  No.

• 5:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 5:04Speaker 00

  Is it that bad, Victoria? Or you're just taking extra, extra precautions?

• 5:09Speaker 01

  Well, I, I think it's, everyone can see what's happening. The last thing you want is, you know, to wake up with people inside your house. And, and your family's at threat, at risk. So, um, you know, to be, be able to go to Dubai and, and just be able to sleep peacefully is for me, that's a win.

• 5:27Speaker 00

  Have you been concerned about the, uh, Middle East conflict?

• 5:29Speaker 01

  So we got there in, we actually got there in January.

• 5:32Speaker 00

  Wow.

• 5:32Speaker 01

  We got there in January and my, uh, crew, um, from back home with the, with the jet. They reached out and they said, we've gotten word that it's gonna, you know, heat up in the Middle East. We can come over there and grab your family and, and get yous out of there. And I sat down with the family and my partner and I said, look, we can leave or we can stay here. This country's given us a, a home to, to live. They've accepted us. Um, and, you know, what, when it gets hard, we just pack up and leave. I said, I think we, we buckle down and support the country and, and we stay put. And my family were all happy. Like, all right, let's do it.

• 6:12Speaker 00

  There hasn't been any danger or any moments you thought, wow, what's going on?

• 6:16Speaker 01

  No, they, look, they, they had it under control. There was, you know, the interceptions and, and, you know, it would be on, on meetings and, uh, you'd feel the, you know, the house shake. Uh, but there were interceptions. They, they had it under control. Um, we felt safe. There was never a point in time where we're like, okay, we made the wrong decision.

• 6:34Speaker 00

  So you mentioned earlier on, Adrian, that, um, your business, well, one of your businesses at least is here in Australia. I mean, it makes money here in Australia. I've never really understood what your business model is from a businessman to businessman. So what is your business model and explain what LM, where we are right now, LMCT Plus. Well, I mean, what does that mean? And what is LMCT? That's your head brand?

• 6:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 6:59Speaker 00

  But so maybe you explain the brand. What's this under the brand? But what is the business model?

• 7:04Speaker 01

  So.

• 7:05Speaker 00

  I don't know. I mean, I, I know you make money and you give stuff away. That's all I know.

• 7:08Speaker 01

  That's where people get confused. Um, because our promotions are so loud, people assume that that's the core of the business.

• 7:15Speaker 00

  No, I don't. I think there's something more to it.

• 7:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. There definitely is. And I think people are missing, well, people that aren't business minded and you would understand this. Um, but a lot of people just see it from what's, what they see online. But, uh, there's a big, you know, machine in the background that's, um, that's putting this all together and, and generating income for a lot of small businesses. So it's funny, I had two apps, I had two mobile apps. So one was a, uh, hospitality app where people could get, people could sign up to the platform businesses, uh, in the hospitality industry.

• 7:45Speaker 00

  And they pay for that?

• 7:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 7:47Speaker 00

  It's a subscription type thing?

• 7:48Speaker 01

  Yep. And they would give my members a discount to shop there. And it was like a time sort of. So the, you know, restaurants and that, they've got their busy periods, they've got their quieter periods. So what I wanted to do was

• 8:03Speaker 01

  give them an option to, almost like a social media for the hospitality industry where they could push a notification out to thousands of people. And say for the next two hours, we're gonna give you twenty percent off your, your meal.

• 8:14Speaker 00

  So, so just on that, so you would aggregate a whole lot of these small business owners in the hospitality industry.

• 8:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 8:22Speaker 00

  You would also aggregate an audience underneath it, your own audience?

• 8:25Speaker 01

  Correct.

• 8:25Speaker 00

  You would say to these small business owners, look, let's say Tuesday night is a slow night for you. But you've still gotta put stuff in there to pay. You've got costs, you're paying rent, you're buying food, blah, blah, blah. If you wanna advertise a twenty percent discount for meals on Tuesday night, come through to my aggregation site, aggregated to me. So I presume what you do is you click their ticket, you, you get a small fee from the small business owners?

• 8:48Speaker 01

  It was, it was very new. So we weren't, we weren't really capitalizing off it in that sense, but, um, that was the model behind it. So we had, you know, we had a good hundred restaurants, cafes, bars just in Melbourne. And that's the thing. And then they'd push out, you know, in their slow periods when they wanted a bit of a boost, uh, they'd push out. And it actually showed signs. It was actually was, uh, pretty cool to see it, to see it in, in effect. Uh, but, you know, you, you, you're bootstrapping these businesses, you know? Tech businesses are, they're very expensive.

• 9:18Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 9:19Speaker 01

  Uh, to get up and going and, and a small percentage of them actually succeed.

• 9:23Speaker 00

  So you're basically a marketplace using technology. That's what that, was that called LMCT Plus?

• 9:30Speaker 01

  No, that was called Ticker.

• 9:31Speaker 00

  Ticker.

• 9:32Speaker 01

  So it was called Ticker, the whole timer sort of thing. Um, and yeah, no, it was good. It was good. It, it showed, definitely showed signs. But at the same time, I was running out of money.

• 9:42Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 9:43Speaker 01

  Um, I was funding it and, um, yeah, funded a few projects like that and running out of money. So on the side, I was creating LMCT Plus, which was, this software would go to a whole bunch of sites. Like you got your car sales, you got your marketplace, you got email, you got your auction places. Um, it would collect all that data.

• 10:04Speaker 00

  So strip it all out.

• 10:04Speaker 01

  So I would find two, three hundred thousand cars.

• 10:07Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 10:07Speaker 01

  Uh, that were for sale. And then based on the price, I would compare it to market value. It would, it would take in consideration the, the kilometers on the car, the condition.

• 10:15Speaker 00

  So Redbook stuff.

• 10:16Speaker 01

  Pretty much.

• 10:16Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 10:17Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah. I'd compare it with Redbook valuations. And then, you know, in this, in the space of ten seconds, we could sort through like two, three hundred thousand cars and show you which car you could buy and make the most money on. I actually bought it for myself because I used to do that in my spare time, buy and sell cars. That's how a lot of.

• 10:33Speaker 00

  Sort of like an arbitrage?

• 10:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 10:34Speaker 00

  You go and say, well, that car's undervalued.

• 10:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:36Speaker 00

  Um, somebody who's obviously desperate or some old fella that can't drive anymore and he's probably only got three thousand kilometers on it. I'll go knock it off. It's an old Cortina, but it's got this, that and the other going for it. It's a Taurana or something. Doesn't understand the value of it. But I reckon I can res, I can resell it.

• 10:51Speaker 01

  Even that, or like, you know, even just the way people present the cars.

• 10:55Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 10:56Speaker 01

  They don't, like, some of them, some of them just need a good polish.

• 10:58Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 10:59Speaker 01

  The right setting, good photos.

• 11:00Speaker 00

  It's a good hustle.

• 11:01Speaker 01

  It's a good hustle. You could, you could make good money on it.

• 11:03Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 11:03Speaker 01

  Um, so anyway, so we built that software.

• 11:05Speaker 00

  And that was LMCT?

• 11:07Speaker 01

  That was LMCT Plus, yeah.

• 11:08Speaker 00

  And what does LMCT mean?

• 11:10Speaker 01

  It's a licensed motor car trader. So it's the official license for dealers in, in Australia.

• 11:15Speaker 00

  Why'd you call it that?

• 11:16Speaker 01

  Oh, it's, it's, you know, like. Every time you go to a dealer, if you look on the front window, they've got their LMCT licence. Every time you listen to a car ad, they've got their LMCT, they have to say their LMCT licence at the end as well. So I just wanted to plough it. For me, it was cheap marketing.

• 11:32Speaker 00

  Everybody else is marketing for you.

• 11:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. And eventually I wanted to, you know, essentially um change the meaning of LMCT. Yeah, cause LMCT in the dealer industry, it's huge. It's a licence um that all motor traders use. Uh and now if everyone hears LMCT.

• 11:50Speaker 00

  They think of you.

• 11:50Speaker 01

  It's not the sexiest name, I'll tell you, but it just shows.

• 11:54Speaker 00

  Mate, I thought, honestly, I thought it stood for something. And I thought this is something that, uh, you know, someone in in your age cohort would all know. And that me being an old fella, I don't understand it. And I'm expecting you to tell me it means something really spectacular.

• 12:10Speaker 01

  It means absolutely jack. And you know what? It just shows. It just, you can.

• 12:15Speaker 00

  How you build a brand.

• 12:16Speaker 01

  How to build a brand.

• 12:17Speaker 00

  So you built the software to buy and sell cars?

• 12:20Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 12:20Speaker 00

  So where did it go from there?

• 12:21Speaker 01

  I was having a hard time selling the software because dealers are just stuck in their ways. Um, you know, I approached a lot of dealers and and was finding it very difficult to pitch it to them. They're just like, look, we've been in this industry for how many years? We don't need your software. We're fine. So then I started pitching it to just people in the car community, like everyday people like me, myself. And and we started to get some traction and I had some cars that I was collecting uh that were just sitting there. And I said, you know what? I'm gonna, you know, give one away um to try and, you know, get some hype behind this brand and try.

• 13:01Speaker 00

  Give one away to your audience?

• 13:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. So I want to fast track it, see, you know, how much publicity we can get out of it.

• 13:08Speaker 00

  Like a tester?

• 13:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:10Speaker 00

  What was it? What sort of car was it?

• 13:11Speaker 01

  It was just an old, like Nissan G D R.

• 13:13Speaker 00

  Was that an expensive car?

• 13:16Speaker 01

  Oh, back then, not much, maybe twenty, twenty five grand.

• 13:18Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 13:18Speaker 01

  So it was all right. Like, and so I didn't expect anything from it. Um, you know, I just wanted to, you know, I'm a marketing guy and I'm just like, I need to, I need hype, I need to make noise to get this up and running as quickly as possible. So it was a big gamble for me, cause you know, I didn't have much money back then. So, you know, I put this car up and and, you know, it was a bit of flop.

• 13:41Speaker 00

  Uh, who weren't that interested in it?

• 13:44Speaker 01

  No, I thought I'd like do a post that I'm gonna give away this G D R and then I'm gonna wake up the next morning and it's gonna be crazy. It didn't work like that. It um it was a big eye opener that I was like, okay.

• 13:55Speaker 00

  What did you think you did wrong? Was it the quality of the car? Or was it the amount of marketing you did around it?

• 13:59Speaker 01

  So it was funny because the the the software itself was a membership based platform. So you had to become a member to enter, to to win this this car. And it's funny, you know, with with a few days left, you know, I was, I was, I was um sleeping and I was dreaming about entering it as well. And and I'm like. Yeah, I was at this dream. It was really weird. And it was like, oh, yeah, I I wanna win this car. It's like, oh, you gotta become a member. And I'm like, oh, well, I'm not, I'm not gonna do that.

• 14:31Speaker 00

  So that's friction.

• 14:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 14:33Speaker 00

  And you identified friction straight in your own dream.

• 14:35Speaker 01

  Yeah. So I woke up, it's like three A M, woke up, changed the whole model. Um, you know, cause all right, let's let people try the software for a limited time and not lock them into a membership. Cause you know, this was ten years ago. So membership models in Australia weren't really a thing at that point. In America, they were, they were popping. Like, uh, everyone was used to whole membership platform. Now everything's membership. But back then it wasn't. So, you know, I changed the model and went back to bed.

• 15:03Speaker 00

  Does that mean you made it free?

• 15:05Speaker 01

  No, no. So it wasn't a membership anymore. It was a one time fee.

• 15:08Speaker 00

  Right.

• 15:08Speaker 01

  And you can come in and try the software. And then if you want to be a member, you could.

• 15:13Speaker 00

  Right.

• 15:14Speaker 01

  Changed the model, went to sleep, woke up, bang. We uh we had our best day at nine A M. So I'm like, okay, here's the problem.

• 15:22Speaker 00

  So ju- just understand that though, Adrian. So when you say you changed the model before, the financial model before was, um, you had to be a a member. And that's a monthly subscription or something like that. What you did is you changed it as a result of this um this this thought during the night. Which by the way, some of my best thoughts come at three o'clock in the morning. That's weird how that works. But uh you changed it. So you only had to pay once to be eligible. It it to to for this car draw.

• 15:46Speaker 01

  Yep. So you'd you'd get access to the software.

• 15:48Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 15:49Speaker 01

  But it's for a time period. So it's like, all right, you can have a trial for a week or a month or six months. And that went much better than locking people into a membership.

• 16:01Speaker 00

  Yeah, people don't like that.

• 16:02Speaker 01

  No, especially when you're a new company. People have no idea who you are. You've got no brand, no, no data, no, you know, social proof or or anything.

• 16:12Speaker 00

  Can I just talk on that? Because that's an important thing. Um, social proof to your audience, you now have social proof.

• 16:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 16:18Speaker 00

  Cause they've seen you perform, they've seen your longevity, they've seen, uh, you know, what you give away, et cetera. That social proof, when you first started, you didn't have it. In other words, people didn't trust you.

• 16:27Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 16:28Speaker 00

  I don't mean they distrust you or mistrusted you, but they weren't prepared to give you trust. Cause they didn't know who you were. They know what the deal is. So I'm not gonna give you money every month for, you know, twelve months, whatever the case may be. Um, so but what I will do, I'll give you a chance.

• 16:42Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 16:43Speaker 00

  And if you just charge me once.

• 16:45Speaker 01

  Once.

• 16:45Speaker 00

  And and give me a a period of time that I can make a choice about. So you give them back the power.

• 16:51Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 16:51Speaker 00

  And you use that to build trust. And then over time, once your brand was built, do you now, do you still run that sort of program? Or is it now subscription twelve months, whatever the case may be?

• 17:03Speaker 01

  It's funny you say that. Then I think it was maybe eighteen months after we originally launched. We um then introduced the subscription model again.

• 17:15Speaker 00

  Right.

• 17:15Speaker 01

  It was maybe twelve months after I launched, then I started putting my face.

• 17:19Speaker 00

  Oh, really?

• 17:20Speaker 01

  To the brand. I wasn't, I I did not have my face to the brand. Social media was private. Everything was private. I'm not a, I'm not a public person.

• 17:27Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 17:27Speaker 01

  I know people might laugh now uh about that, but I'm a very private person. And I don't know why we did it, but I said, you know what? Let's run an ad, an advertisement with my face on it. And it went really well. And I'm like, you know what? As much as I don't like it, it's putting a face to a brand just fast tracks things so much quicker. And you just build that trust and connection.

• 17:51Speaker 00

  Exactly. Because I mean, like the brand LMCT, well, it doesn't mean anything to me. Um, but if I put your face in front of it.

• 17:57Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 17:58Speaker 00

  I can sort of have a relationship with it. And I get to think I know you.

• 18:03Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 18:03Speaker 00

  And the more I know you, the more familiar with you, the more I trust you. That's the deal. Did you know about that that concept before? Or did you learn about the concept as you, just off the back of a random deci- decision to put your face in front of it?

• 18:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was a random decision. Um, and then we saw the results and and then obviously it just makes sense.

• 18:24Speaker 00

  Maybe you probably didn't make this decision or think about this at the time, but you know, something I reflect on all the time. And similarly, I I did that with my wizard business like thirty years ago, whatever it was. Do you ever think about the personal cost of putting your face on a brand? And did you know that personal cost at the time?

• 18:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, look, I always wanted, when I was younger, I always wanted to be successful. Um, the personal cost, you know, we we.

• 18:54Speaker 00

  Loss of privacy, for example.

• 18:56Speaker 01

  Loss of privacy. It's like, we we've got, I don't know, I feel like I'm an open book, you know, I say it how it is and a lot of people respect that. So, you know, although there might be like a lot of hate um online in person, it's just like, we we just, I don't walk around with security. I don't fear for my life or anything. We uh we do get nothing but support. So, and this is another reason why we moved to Dubai as well, cause we can have the best of both worlds, you know? I can go out and we can, you know, I feel like now I'm at service to the public where I can go out and and, you know, I'm I'm just a normal person. You know, I don't see myself any different to anyone. I get out there, I help people. I'm just, you know, I still go to the same places I did, you know, ten years ago.

• 19:39Speaker 01

  Uh, I don't think I'm any better. And, you know, I feel like I'm in a position where, you know, I can, you know, branch off in other um industries and be able to leverage of what I was able to build by putting my face to this brand. Um, I wouldn't be in the position I am today if I didn't do that. So it is, it's a small price to pay. Um, you know, everything I wanted to achieve of ten Xed. Um, and.

• 20:08Speaker 00

  Or maybe even more.

• 20:09Speaker 01

  If that, yeah, yeah. Um, but um if I, you know, if that means me going to a supermarket and or a shopping centre and someone wanting to come take a photo with me and say hi, then so be it. I'm all for it.

• 20:23Speaker 00

  I wouldn't mind understanding a little bit more about that. Um,

• 20:28Speaker 00

  who was Adrian Portelli when he was a kid? I mean, it's obviously an Italian surname.

• 20:33Speaker 01

  Maltese.

• 20:34Speaker 00

  Maltese surname, okay. Well, Malta, very close to Italy. They like to serve pasta.

• 20:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 20:39Speaker 00

  And uh and it's a, and it's a wonderful place.

• 20:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 20:43Speaker 00

  Who was Adrian Portelli growing up? You from Victoria originally?

• 20:47Speaker 01

  From Victoria.

• 20:48Speaker 00

  Where'd you grow up? Which part of Victoria?

• 20:49Speaker 01

  Western suburbs.

• 20:51Speaker 00

  Put that, explain it to my audience, cause we don't know.

• 20:54Speaker 01

  So it's, it's like this socio economic area of.

• 20:57Speaker 00

  Low socio economic, yeah.

• 20:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 20:59Speaker 00

  And same as the west suburbs of Sydney to some extent where I grew up. Did you go to a private school or did you go to a Catholic school?

• 21:06Speaker 01

  Primary school, I went to a Catholic school and then um high school, just a public school.

• 21:11Speaker 00

  Right. And brothers and sisters?

• 21:13Speaker 01

  Two older sisters.

• 21:14Speaker 00

  Two older sisters, yeah. Mum and dad, what'd dad do?

• 21:16Speaker 01

  Dad was a mechanic.

• 21:18Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 21:18Speaker 01

  Um, he later started his own workshop.

• 21:21Speaker 00

  Is that where your love of cars comes from?

• 21:24Speaker 01

  Ah, he, he does love cars, but I, I just, I don't know. I think my whole friend circle growing up loved cars. So when I hear someone's not as passionate about cars, I, I find that weird because everyone I know is into cars. Um, but.

• 21:37Speaker 00

  But is that, cause I'm, I'm trying to work at, was the kid, were you a good student? Or did you like school? Or did you like sport?

• 21:43Speaker 01

  No, I wasn't, I wasn't really um.

• 21:45Speaker 00

  Were you Mr. Popular like you are today?

• 21:47Speaker 01

  Not really, no, no, I was just, just, just stick to myself. I was just a kid, yeah, just.

• 21:53Speaker 00

  I, would you say you were very social?

• 21:55Speaker 01

  No.

• 21:56Speaker 00

  No.

• 21:56Speaker 01

  No, I wasn't.

• 21:57Speaker 00

  Stick to your family type of thing?

• 21:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 21:59Speaker 00

  And a couple of close friends? Is that how it works?

• 22:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, we got a, I got a really small circle. So, you know, my friends that are with me today have been with me since high school. So, you know, we've got a tight pack and I'm not, I'm not that one to go out and socialize and wanna make friends. And I think that's what's, you know, kept me out of a lot of trouble. Um, I think when you start doing that, mixing in crowds and.

• 22:18Speaker 00

  Drinker?

• 22:19Speaker 01

  Um, not really.

• 22:22Speaker 00

  You'll have a drink, but like, not a teetotaler, but.

• 22:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, and you know what? I don't have, I don't have an addictive personality and thank goodness. Um, but um, yeah, no, we, not a big drinker, just, you know, if we go out with some mates. You know, we, I don't drink socially.

• 22:36Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. You're not there for a night down the.

• 22:38Speaker 01

  We're drinking to have a good time.

• 22:39Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 22:40Speaker 01

  But no, I won't go down to a pub or have a wine or be with mommy. No, it's not, it's not my type.

• 22:44Speaker 00

  Are you still close to your family? Close to him?

• 22:46Speaker 01

  Of course.

• 22:46Speaker 00

  Mum and dad and sisters?

• 22:47Speaker 01

  Mum and dad's still married.

• 22:48Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 22:49Speaker 01

  We're all, they're all in Melbourne, so.

• 22:50Speaker 00

  And how do they feel about the publicity you get? Do you ever worry about that a little bit?

• 22:54Speaker 01

  Fine. You know, I'm, I'm, ah, I don't know. I feel like I was built for this in the sense where everything deflects off me.

• 23:02Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 23:02Speaker 01

  Like, I'm just, I've got so much going on that like I can keep a train of thought for maybe like 10 seconds and I'm on to the next. So um, in, in, in regards to, you know, the heat or the publicity or hate comments or the government or this and that. It's just, I, I just, I just absorb it. It doesn't affect me at all. I actually thrive off it. So it's, it's, you know what? I, if I ever feel overwhelmed, no, that's a lie. I, I don't really feel overwhelmed. Uh, but if I ever feel a sense of like, you know, discomfort of, in any way, uh, I always just remember, you know, what it took for me to get here. It was a hard slog to get to where I am today. You know, I didn't, it wasn't an overnight success.

• 23:41Speaker 00

  You have many failures?

• 23:42Speaker 01

  I've had a lot of failures and I still have a lot of failures. And I love failures because they're the most important part of, of your upcoming and your upbringing. Because, you know, those are the failures that, one, you learn from, but two, the things you remember when you have made it. So I do think back of the times where, you know, I was, I'd lock myself in my parents', in the study at my parents' house. Day in, day out, night and day.

• 24:07Speaker 00

  Wouldn't come out.

• 24:07Speaker 01

  Wouldn't come out, just, just trying, trying, trying to get there, trying to get there. Cry, the tears and, and just the frustration. Uh, I just wanted to be successful. I just wanted to make it. And I, my whole life was consumed in that.

• 24:23Speaker 00

  Well, maybe someone like Adrian Portelli wanna be successful. What, what is the driver behind you? I mean, is, is it that? You know, and I can say this, um, is it that WOG mentality? You come from a WOG family, you know, everybody's just doing their best. Low socio economic. You wanna get out of something or into something. What is it that drives someone like you?

• 24:42Speaker 01

  I think it was just the, the doubt, the self doubt and the doubt others had in me. Um, I just wanted to be.

• 24:49Speaker 00

  Prove them wrong.

• 24:50Speaker 01

  That. And, you know, I just wanted to, you know, you know, I just wanted to have the, the finer things in life. I wanted to be able to, you know, have my cars and, and, and not be, cause I lived. I refused to get a job.

• 25:04Speaker 00

  Work for someone, you mean? Like as an employee?

• 25:07Speaker 01

  I refused, yeah. I refused, um, because I didn't want to, you know, sell myself short and, and get comfortable in that position. So, but I never, I never went on. Um, selling link or anything is, is just, I just would stay broke. Wouldn't have a cent. So I almost starved myself and I just made myself obsessive to, to have to become successful. And just punished myself in any way I could.

• 25:30Speaker 00

  That's true entrepreneurialism though.

• 25:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, I, I did sacrifice, you know, a lot of my younger years, you know, I didn't have money to go out and go out with my friends. Or if we did go out, I'd, you know, I wouldn't drink or eat or, but just, you know, I was too embarrassed to say I had no money. But I'd say, you know, I'm not hungry. I ate before or, you know, not a drink and. Yeah, make something up just so I could, um, you know, cause I was broke and I wouldn't, I wouldn't leech off anyone. That's the last thing I'd ever do. Um, but that's the levels of, you know, the, the extent I went to, to, you know, keep myself on the right path. And, and that's why I, I find, that's one of the most difficult questions I find answering is when someone asks me,

• 26:13Speaker 01

  how do I become successful like you? And I'm just, I, I don't know how to answer that because the way I did it was just, you know, I wouldn't expect anyone to do that. You've got to be built a certain way.

• 26:25Speaker 00

  Plenty of sacrifices.

• 26:26Speaker 01

  Plenty of sacrifices. And I was, like I said, I was an introvert, so I wouldn't, for me, networking was completely out of the picture. I could not come up, if I saw you on the street, I wouldn't even come say, even now, it'd be too, even if I wanted to, I wouldn't, I'd be too embarrassed to come.

• 26:39Speaker 00

  Really?

• 26:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 26:41Speaker 00

  He would walk up and say, hi, Mark, how you going?

• 26:43Speaker 01

  No way. That's, to me, that's, that's, I'm petrified to do that.

• 26:48Speaker 00

  Cause I, I, I, I mean, the camera's probably not picking up, but um, I, I can see you moving around a lot. You, you are uncomfortable talking about yourself.

• 26:58Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 26:59Speaker 00

  That's what I'm getting.

• 27:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, I, I, I don't do many podcasts because I don't want, I don't wanna feed off this, that story.

• 27:06Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah.

• 27:07Speaker 01

  Because it was, it was something for me. It was something I did for myself. I don't need the whole world to hear about it.

• 27:15Speaker 00

  Yeah, sad song, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 27:16Speaker 01

  You know what I mean? I don't need that. That, that was for me and that's, I cherish that because, you know, I think back of those times, I'm like, fuck, you know, we made it.

• 27:24Speaker 00

  How cool. Yeah.

• 27:25Speaker 01

  We did it.

• 27:25Speaker 00

  Well, maybe if those circumstances didn't exist, you may not be sitting here right now.

• 27:29Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 27:29Speaker 00

  You mean that in fact, to, to some extent, they're an advantage in a sort of, a sort of way, an advantage for you because it drove you. What do small business owners actually need? They need someone to turn to when they're stuck, people who understand what they're going through and the tools that make running a business a little easier and cheaper. That's what I put together with Mentored. You can ask me questions on our monthly Zoom calls, connect with hundreds of other business owners in our community, access an extensive catalogue of resources and potentially save thousands of dollars from over 600 plus software discounts we brought together. Check it out at mentored.com.au. Let's go back to the LMCT plus. So you worked out that I've got to put, after about 12, 18 months, you've got to put your face in front of it and that worked?

• 28:09Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 28:10Speaker 00

  That's a big business decision in terms of a brand. You were starting to realize you could put people back on the subscription program. Because they started, you, you won the, you know, the trust of your audience. All of a sudden, you're building up this big audience base. Did you, when did you decide to move from um, giving away a, whatever the car was, a quarter or whatever it was? Um, to some of the flash stuff that you do now?

• 28:35Speaker 01

  So, so what actually happened was then, you know, that hospitality app I spoke about earlier?

• 28:40Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 28:40Speaker 01

  I actually merged that into LMCT.

• 28:42Speaker 00

  Right.

• 28:43Speaker 01

  So I wanted to broaden the audience, um, and, and, you know, cause not everyone wants to buy and sell cars. So I said, all right, I need to broaden my audience and make this usable to the everyday Australian to be able to grow uh, this business into what it is today. So.

• 29:00Speaker 00

  To build your audience.

• 29:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 29:01Speaker 00

  You need a bigger audience.

• 29:02Speaker 01

  I need a bigger audience and, you know, people that buy and sell cars is a very niche audience. People that wanna use discounts and save money, that's a much bigger audience. So I grabbed all the tech, the app, all, all that stuff and, and remodeled it into LMCT plus. And instead of hospitality, we pivoted towards the automotive industry. So we'd team up with a lot of partners, people that were working on our cars, uh, you know, uh, we'd team up with them and we'd be like, hey, you pay us an onboarding fee, give our members a discount, we'll promote you guys on our app and website.

• 29:38Speaker 00

  Can you give an example of one place?

• 29:40Speaker 01

  Um, so for example, you know, Ultrature not on there.

• 29:43Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 29:44Speaker 01

  And.

• 29:44Speaker 00

  The mechanics, yeah.

• 29:45Speaker 01

  Yeah. And they might give, you know, 10% off or 15% off or a free wheel alignment or whatever. Uh, so we've got 2000 businesses that have signed up and they pay an onboarding fee.

• 30:01Speaker 00

  All in the motor industry?

• 30:02Speaker 01

  No, we, we did start in the motor industry and then we have scaled that now. We went into, we're in every industry now from pet food to, to housing supplies, furniture, gym equipment, the whole lot. We've got everything on there. So we started onboarding all these companies and we started generating traffic from these promotions. And it's like I said, like these promotions, it's no different from, the whole point of promotion is to promote your brand.

• 30:29Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 30:30Speaker 01

  So we run a trade promotion. We've been doing it for 10 years and we promote LMCT plus. The more traffic we generate from these promotions, the more people come in through the app, the more our partners benefit from that. So.

• 30:46Speaker 01

  It works extremely well to the point where, you know, one business in particular paid a $200 onboarding fee and has generated about 1.3 million in sales.

• 30:58Speaker 00

  A better return.

• 31:00Speaker 01

  I've never had that return.

• 31:01Speaker 00

  That's a pretty good return.

• 31:02Speaker 01

  That'd be great.

• 31:03Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 31:03Speaker 01

  So one vendor.

• 31:05Speaker 00

  200 bucks to be on boarded on to LMCG plus platform. They've made how much you say?

• 31:10Speaker 01

  1.3, 1.3 million.

• 31:13Speaker 00

  Wow.

• 31:15Speaker 01

  We have 2,000 businesses on this platform.

• 31:18Speaker 00

  That's just.

• 31:18Speaker 01

  That have paid $200 and they're there for life. Just look after our members. They add the value and our members get the benefit of getting mates rates or discounts. Um, and even my brand. So I've got, you know, I've got an energy drink and, and the alcohol company. And we've put them on there as well and we've generated, you know, six figures in sales just by having our brands on there. And it works really, really well. And the, the trade promotions, that's what I mean. We're just skyrocketing that brand. And we were able to do it in a way where we just fine tuned it to a T where we were like, we scaled very, very aggressively.

• 31:59Speaker 00

  So obviously the brand comes first, but what comes second let maybe is it building the audience or is it building the vendors?

• 32:07Speaker 01

  They go hand in hand.

• 32:08Speaker 00

  So you're sort of doing one than the other than.

• 32:10Speaker 01

  They go hand in hand. The more noise you create, the more the influx of businesses that come in.

• 32:16Speaker 00

  In the beginning, you probably had to go to them.

• 32:18Speaker 01

  In the beginning, we had to go to them.

• 32:20Speaker 00

  They come to you now?

• 32:21Speaker 01

  They do come to us.

• 32:22Speaker 00

  Can we get on your platform type of thing?

• 32:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. So in the beginning, yeah, we did. We cold called, we, we door knocked to be signed these people up. Each one of these 2,000 are independently signed up. Um, and they've given us an exclusive discount. A lot of people have this misconception that, you know, these discounts are found online, but they're not. We actually, we actually do have a team that's putting these deals together.

• 32:48Speaker 00

  Negotiates the discounts.

• 32:49Speaker 01

  Negotiating, yeah.

• 32:49Speaker 00

  With a vendor.

• 32:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, of course. So, uh, it, it, it started with maybe, you know, maybe like 20, 30 places. And, and then we expanded and then our customers would tell us what they want and where they want.

• 33:01Speaker 00

  Or you ask the customers, you're actively engaging.

• 33:02Speaker 01

  And they'd be like, you know, we want, you know.

• 33:04Speaker 00

  Find them in discounts?

• 33:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 33:06Speaker 00

  Or something like that.

• 33:07Speaker 01

  Yep. They'd be like, oh, we need more in Queensland or we need more in the.

• 33:10Speaker 00

  It's also regional and by geography too.

• 33:12Speaker 01

  And then we got, okay, well, some people are remote, so let's bring on some more online businesses. So they can post anywhere in Australia. And it just, yeah, we, it worked to a point where.

• 33:25Speaker 00

  It's not genius. It's pretty basic.

• 33:27Speaker 01

  Basic. You're only, you're matching up, you know, A and B.

• 33:32Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah. You're putting parties together through a platform. Okay. What about the cars? The, these things you give away?

• 33:38Speaker 01

  So then the cars, you know, I, I gave away this, this GDR and then I gave away, I think another, uh, Japanese car. And then the same thing, I needed to build my audience. So, okay, let's go to a different demographic. So we grabbed a HSV, Holden, and we targeted that demographic and we brought them on board.

• 33:58Speaker 00

  So you went, okay, you didn't just say I need a more expensive or a more flash car.

• 34:01Speaker 01

  No, no, no.

• 34:02Speaker 00

  I need a different demo.

• 34:04Speaker 01

  Different demographic.

• 34:05Speaker 00

  So you worked out.

• 34:05Speaker 01

  We weren't, we weren't just scaling the level of price. We were going to different demographics.

• 34:09Speaker 00

  To add on to the current demographics. Okay. So how do you know who these people? I mean, I guess you're, you're in, you're a car guy. You don't understand cars. Was it more instinct or was it, um, did you go out and research and say, okay, let's find out if we find guys between 35 and 45? Um, we need those in our system because they like to buy gym equipment, et cetera. Um, but therefore what we need to do is get them more of those. We'll get their HSV people. Is that, is that the deal?

• 34:35Speaker 01

  Well, it's funny, depending on what car you know, what definitely you, you know who you're targeting. So, and, and being around cars and the car scene in, in Melbourne. You know, definitely, uh, educate you in that sense. So, you know, me doing a GDR, uh, uh, and it was a 1990 GDR. So it was like people around my age were around that car and then some, you get some younger as well. Uh, but that's the demographic. So males, uh, you know, maybe like 25 to 40 year olds.

• 35:04Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 35:04Speaker 01

  Bang. And the HSVs, it's like, okay, now, you know, it's a newer, we go for a newer car, you know, then we're targeting 18 to 30 year olds.

• 35:12Speaker 00

  And do they bite?

• 35:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, of course. Yeah. And then, you know, we did HSVs and it's like, okay, what else do we need? All right, let's go muscle. So we'll get an old school muscle car, an old Mustang. So now we're, we're bringing in.

• 35:25Speaker 00

  Love those cars.

• 35:25Speaker 01

  Yeah. Now we're bringing in males, you know, from, uh, you know, the ages of 40 to 70.

• 35:31Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 35:32Speaker 01

  And we're building this.

• 35:33Speaker 00

  I just fit in.

• 35:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, it just fit in. We'll find something off. But, um, no, so we're, we're building on the audience.

• 35:41Speaker 00

  So when, when, when, sorry, I just interrupted. But when you find, when you're thinking about what audience do you want? Do you actually, um, break them down? Do you break that audience up into, um, sex, age, maybe location, maybe even income? Do you think about, do you get into that level of detail in terms of these cohorts you're trying to chase?

• 35:59Speaker 01

  Of course. When you're, when you're, when you're pushing these, the, the marketing for these, uh, demographics, you're definitely targeting that, that specific, uh, genre of people. So, and that's what it was. We were just tapping out audiences and building that network. And it was all male predominant audience. Um, there was, you know, a very small percentage of females. So, you know, I got to a point where we've covered all cars. We did, you know, the four by fours and that was just, you know, a broad, a much broader audience as well. And then we tapped out and it's like, okay, um, you know, we've covered.

• 36:33Speaker 00

  When you say that about your growth, it was slowing.

• 36:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. Our growth was slowing. It's like, okay, we've, we've done everything in that sense. We need to find a new audience. And then it's like, okay, let's try, you know, we got into boats, targeted the fishing audience, got into motorbikes, targeted that audience.

• 36:51Speaker 00

  And each time we do a giveaway that appeals to that particular audience.

• 36:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. And, and then, you know, just growing, growing, growing. And then it's like, okay, you know, we've done, we've got a lot of males. How do we bring on females? But now, it's like, okay, let's do houses.

• 37:07Speaker 00

  House, yeah.

• 37:07Speaker 01

  Yeah. So we got a house on the Gold Coast waterfront, all styled nicely. We started targeting females. Start leveling out our demographic, our audience.

• 37:17Speaker 00

  So you're not just giving stuff away. You're actually, um, being very, uh, very, um, strategic about it. You, cause we want females and we know the females are more interested than interested in muscle car, for example. Some would be, but they would be interested in place on the Gold Coast.

• 37:31Speaker 01

  Correct. So we ran the houses that leveled up the playing field, the block, when we went on the block. That build our audience.

• 37:39Speaker 00

  You bid for every house at one stage on one of them?

• 37:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. Yeah. We took every house on the block and.

• 37:46Speaker 00

  And what do you do with that? Did, did you give those away too? Or you sold some of those too, didn't you?

• 37:52Speaker 00

  Cause not of all, they're not always going to be great resales.

• 37:54Speaker 01

  Oh, well, from the outside perspective, yeah, people see like, you know, the, oh, the house you're selling. For example, these Phillip Island houses.

• 38:03Speaker 00

  Yeah, that's the more recent one.

• 38:05Speaker 01

  That's the most, that's the one I bought the whole complex.

• 38:07Speaker 00

  You're right.

• 38:09Speaker 01

  Now,

• 38:12Speaker 01

  for someone that's business minded, will understand what I was doing. Um, when I bought those houses.

• 38:22Speaker 01

  Anyway, I'll, I'll talk about it, but whatever. So I bought these houses.

• 38:25Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 38:26Speaker 01

  I wanted to buy these. I, I had the idea in my mind, what I wanted to do. There's five houses there.

• 38:32Speaker 00

  And get great property city. You're running off the back of a TV show.

• 38:34Speaker 01

  Correct.

• 38:35Speaker 00

  Cause you're all being, um, filmed and broadcast and social media and everything.

• 38:39Speaker 01

  There's five houses and there's all the communal areas as well. So the five, between the five houses, the five owners of these properties, they've got to share the communal areas. But if I bought the whole five houses, I get all the communal areas for free.

• 38:49Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 38:51Speaker 01

  There's a lot of land there. So before even the auction, I took my team down there. We filmed, we built the website. We applied for our permits. We set up the whole promotion in the sense that I bought all these properties. So we were working for weeks and weeks and weeks before the actual auction day. Then came the auction day. I wanted to buy all five. I knew if everyone caught on what I was doing, then people would just, you know, try and make me pay through the ringer. So I put in buyer's agents in there as well and we managed to, you know, get all five. And then just to piggyback off all the publicity and hype, we said, we need to open like, as soon as the show airs,

• 39:32Speaker 01

  come midnight or six, seven AM, we open the doors and we just hijack all their media. And, you know, we paid off that whole investment in less than 48 hours.

• 39:42Speaker 00

  Wow. With new subscriptions, with new.

• 39:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 39:47Speaker 00

  Yeah, that's amazing. That's a good, um, a good ambush. That's a marketing ambush.

• 39:52Speaker 01

  It was structured to a T. It was my finest moment. And now it's like, you know, some of the winners are selling the properties and they're selling for two million less than.

• 40:00Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 40:01Speaker 01

  And you're seeing people laughing in the comments, you know, that I've lost money and this and that. I'm just like, guys, come on.

• 40:06Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 40:07Speaker 01

  The, um.

• 40:07Speaker 00

  Cause I was gonna ask you about that, Adrian. So the mathematics of making the decision to, I don't know, go buy a HSV or go buy these houses for that matter. There's a bit of a gambling. There's a risk in there. Um, because you know, you're risking, you could, you may not get the subscription. You may not get the extra people into your audience platform paying. You run that, you run a big risk. How do you assess the risk? Like, you know, if you're going to give away something like a house in the Gold Coast. I don't know, maybe it costs you to build it. Maybe it costs you a million halfless, call it, or buy it, or however you go about obtaining it. How is that funded? Is it funded through cash flow from the business prior to that? Or is it, are you hoping that you'll get enough new subscriptions to pay for it?

• 40:51Speaker 00

  Do you just say to the vendor for the house in the Gold Coast, look, I'll pay you 10% now. I'll give you the balance in three months' time. Taking a bet that in three months' time, we'll have enough new subscribers to pay for it. How do you sort of arbitrage that?

• 41:03Speaker 01

  I did that once and once.

• 41:05Speaker 00

  Oh, you did have that? I thought you.

• 41:06Speaker 01

  That was my second ever, um, promotion that I ran. I didn't have the money and I did that.

• 41:11Speaker 00

  You probably don't have to do it now.

• 41:12Speaker 01

  No, we buy the houses, um, outright now. So we just buy the houses and we keep them in stock and. Got to, what we do is to try eliminate a lot of the risk is we do offer a, a cash alternative as well. Cause not everyone wants to win one of these vehicles or even if they did, they can't afford the upkeep or. So we always put a cash option there as well. By putting that cash option there as well is, you know, if we're giving away a HSV, you're targeting the HSV audience. But as soon as I had that cash alternative there, we're opening it up to everyone again. Everyone wants cash.

• 41:49Speaker 00

  And what is it? A discount or what?

• 41:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. It's like, you know, maybe like 20% less or, but if you win the cash, you're not paying any tax on the cash prize.

• 41:59Speaker 00

  Right.

• 41:59Speaker 01

  But if you take the car and you sell it, then you may be open.

• 42:02Speaker 00

  There might be a capital gains tax on it. Okay, I, I sort of get the, the model, although I'm sure there's a lot more sophistication associated with it than, than what you've told me, but I sort of get the model, the business model. Why did you get in trouble then? What was it that got you in a deep water in South Australia? Wherever it was you got in trouble with. I mean, you've upset somebody.

• 42:22Speaker 01

  So, so what happened with South Australia? We were working with South Australia for many years. We had a good working relationship with them.

• 42:28Speaker 00

  Doing this?

• 42:28Speaker 01

  Yes. Yeah. Yeah. So we've obtained a number of permits. You know, we ran dozens of promotions over in South Australia and they've. As a result, they've allowed me to invest millions and millions of dollars into the state of South Australia and build my, not only my customer database, but the partners as well. The businesses have signed up as well. The problem was, you know, in Australia, there's, it's a lot of opportunists. When someone sees someone doing well, they'll literally just clone it and try and rip it off.

• 42:56Speaker 00

  Right.

• 42:57Speaker 01

  People were doing that, but they weren't doing the business the right way. They were scraping discount coupons online.

• 43:06Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 43:07Speaker 01

  Plugging it up to their backend and saying, oh, here we go. We've got, you know.

• 43:10Speaker 00

  Without going fine themselves.

• 43:11Speaker 01

  Without doing the hard work. It was just a quick cash grab. So, you know, dozens of these businesses popped up. As soon as we started making noise, dozens of them popped up. And the problem is, you know, South Australia just had enough. And you know what? I genuinely don't blame them.

• 43:26Speaker 00

  South Australian government?

• 43:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, they had enough. They just said, this is ridiculous. You know, maybe there's been complaints, maybe people not doing the right thing, people getting ripped off. So overnight, they just said, done.

• 43:37Speaker 00

  They changed the legislation.

• 43:39Speaker 01

  Tough luck overnight.

• 43:42Speaker 01

  Do I blame them? No. Um, but for grouping us all in one, uh, category, I don't think that's the right thing to do. Because, you know, we've got a genuine business. We've been around for, for, for a decade. Um, and, you know, we do the right thing. We generate a lot of income for small businesses around Australia and, you know, for them just to close the doors overnight and just bunch us up with these people not doing the right thing, I think was incorrect. So then what happened there was, okay, yeah, we told everyone from South Australia, you know, oh, you sound, um, in our drawers. There's, you know, the, the, uh, media, obviously, uh,

• 44:22Speaker 01

  steering people the wrong way, saying, you know, we're operating illegally in South Australia. We weren't, you know, I blocked South Australia off my email list. Uh, from what we could, cause we don't, we don't obtain people's addresses. What we do is, you know, they just sign up with their phone number, email and full name. I don't need someone's. Yes.

• 44:43Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 44:44Speaker 01

  So what we did was we, we sourced everyone's IP and we, we, we tried to, you know, limit it as closely to the South Australian proximity as we could. And, and banned them from, um, banned them from our email lists, uh, online marketing. We excluded South Australia. There's always going to be people that are going to drip through.

• 45:05Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 45:05Speaker 01

  It's impossible to stop it, especially when you've let me, you know, spend millions and millions of dollars building my business in South Australia. And then you just close it overnight. I, I can't police that. I can tell people, but the problem was, you know, what they wanted me to do then was go back to every South Australian that won a prize and take it off them.

• 45:29Speaker 01

  I'm not going up to Susie, you know, a seven-year-old Susie that just won a million dollars and say, hey, sorry, I need your, need that money back. And I said, you know what? I'm not doing that. Fine me. Give me the fine. I'll pay it. That's where it all started. That's the truth. Everyone thinks, you know, we were running illegal lotteries and taking money off people. We weren't doing that at all. That's not what we did. I was sticking up for the South Australians and said, I'm not taking the prizes back of them. So that's where the whole court case started. You know, we got a $40,000 fine. And I said, just fight it. Like we, we got no conviction. No, it was clear.

• 46:05Speaker 00

  Nothing personally.

• 46:05Speaker 01

  No, nothing. It was just, it was just a regulatory fine.

• 46:07Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 46:08Speaker 01

  You know, businesses face these all the time. I was just like, just, just fight it, just for the fun of it. Um, but look, you know, we've, we, we, the law needed to change. Yeah. And when people come up to me and say, oh, how do you feel they changed the law? I said, I've been telling them to change the law. I've been telling them. I said, you guys need to fix this because there's people out there doing the wrong thing. And, and we've got a team that reports others not doing the right thing.

• 46:35Speaker 00

  Is that not happening though in Victoria, New South Wales, Queensland? The same thing? People doing, copying you or?

• 46:40Speaker 01

  Of course. It's all, it's Australia-wide. But every state has different regulations.

• 46:45Speaker 00

  But are the other states stronger than South Australia in relation to, um, stopping the rort going on, the so-called rort that the others were doing?

• 46:52Speaker 01

  We work, like I said, we, we, we've got a close relationship with the gaming commissions and we've report, we, we help them do their job. Where we report people not doing the right thing because it's, it's not just, you know, dibby-dobbing on people if someone wants to say that. We, we're protecting the industry we created, you know, and, and it hurts. It affects everyone. Um, the trust that I've spent hundreds of millions of dollars building, um, with the public for someone just to piggyback off my coat tails and, and try and do the wrong thing and steal from people and not do the right thing. So, uh, everyone thinks, you know, I did this, you know, with the wrong intentions. You know, when I started this business, I, I was broke.

• 47:35Speaker 01

  I didn't know what it could become. I built my software. I built my apps. I've built the platform. And then I was using trade promotions as they should be to build the, the brand. Whereas other people, they've seen the success of me and their meaning, their, their, their drive is to replicate what we've done and try and make as much money as they can.

• 47:54Speaker 00

  As fast as possible.

• 47:54Speaker 01

  As fast as possible. That wasn't my intention because I, I, I didn't know what it could become. I didn't know that I was gonna, you know, be in the position I am today. I'm just an entrepreneur. I just love building businesses. I love to hustle and, and this is where I am today as a result. But when, you know, these other businesses carve and copy my business, make my, their marketing look like mine, their websites look like mine. And then take shortcuts and, and, and create all this heat on the industry and then heat on the government to change the legislation. You know, I'm, I'm obviously affected.

• 48:27Speaker 00

  So you, you did post recently something about that your, some government authority froze the business and you couldn't make payroll and stuff like that. But what's that about? Was that any, was that related to the South Australian stuff?

• 48:39Speaker 01

  No.

• 48:40Speaker 00

  What, what is that?

• 48:41Speaker 01

  This is the ATO.

• 48:42Speaker 00

  ATO, okay. Well, they're not an enemy you wanna have.

• 48:45Speaker 01

  No.

• 48:46Speaker 00

  So what, do you mind explaining that?

• 48:48Speaker 01

  So same thing. It was, it's, it's just a really strange situation. Um, you know, we, we.

• 48:56Speaker 01

  You know, there's.

• 49:00Speaker 01

  When, you know, I'm on my business, uh, you know, I pay, you know, as many of you would know, like that own businesses, you pay, you know, we were on a payment plan.

• 49:14Speaker 00

  For tax?

• 49:15Speaker 01

  For tax.

• 49:15Speaker 00

  Yeah. So you see, you get the tax bill.

• 49:17Speaker 01

  You get your tax bill.

• 49:18Speaker 00

  Get your assessment.

• 49:19Speaker 01

  We're on a payment plan.

• 49:19Speaker 00

  You sell, pay it off over two months, whatever it is, monthly or whatever.

• 49:22Speaker 01

  So we have that.

• 49:23Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 49:24Speaker 01

  Then you've got your, you know, your installments.

• 49:26Speaker 00

  Yeah. Yeah. You've got to pay your installments.

• 49:28Speaker 01

  Installments.

• 49:29Speaker 00

  Could be monthly, whatever it is, quarterly, whatever it is, yeah.

• 49:31Speaker 01

  Yeah. So we pay our installments as well. And their projections, you know, you, you have a good year in one year and they're projecting, oh, yeah, you're going to make thirty percent extra next year.

• 49:38Speaker 00

  Yeah. So they give you a new payment plan based on last year's income and plus something.

• 49:43Speaker 01

  Something.

• 49:44Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 49:44Speaker 01

  At one point.

• 49:46Speaker 00

  So you pay in advance.

• 49:47Speaker 01

  We pay in advance.

• 49:47Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 49:49Speaker 01

  At one point, we were paying about seventy, eighty percent of our turnover in taxes.

• 49:55Speaker 00

  Wow. Yeah. So seventy, eighty percent of this year's, of a year's turnover, which relates to, but the taxes relating to previous periods.

• 50:03Speaker 01

  Makes up of.

• 50:03Speaker 00

  Takes up seventy, eighty percent of this year's. Yeah.

• 50:06Speaker 01

  Makes up your payment plan, your installments, your GSTs. I was up to about seventy, eighty percent. I said, this is ridiculous. You're going to sink the business. This is crazy. On top of that, I pay a quarter of a million dollars weekly auto debit.

• 50:20Speaker 00

  What's that?

• 50:21Speaker 01

  That's just auto debit, just to keep them happy. Just, you know, just.

• 50:24Speaker 00

  Auto, automatic debit.

• 50:25Speaker 01

  Automatic debit.

• 50:26Speaker 00

  Yeah, direct debit.

• 50:27Speaker 01

  Direct debit.

• 50:28Speaker 00

  How much?

• 50:28Speaker 01

  Two hundred and fifty thousand.

• 50:29Speaker 00

  Every week?

• 50:30Speaker 01

  Every week. That goes to them. And I've been doing that for four, five years or whatever. And.

• 50:36Speaker 00

  That's twelve million a year.

• 50:37Speaker 01

  Just, yeah. And that, that was just putting a, not even a dent in it, but that's showing, you know, I think they were nervous because it's, the business is privately owned with, by one person, the scale of the business. And, you know, I think they wanted some sort of weekly commitment from me, which I'm fine. I'm happy to do it. I'm, and like I said to you before, I'm an open book. I encourage audits. We, we do get weekly audit. I'm probably one of the most audited people in this country. You know, I get ordered from the ATO, I get ordered from the gaming commissions, the state, every state in Australia. So, you know, it's not uncommon for me to sit in a room with a bunch of these, um.

• 51:21Speaker 00

  Tax people.

• 51:21Speaker 01

  These, or.

• 51:22Speaker 00

  Or regulatory.

• 51:23Speaker 01

  OIs and regulatory people, you know, they'll, they'll say, all right, can you come to Sydney? And so I walk in there with just me and my laptop. There's a bunch of ten people all suited up. I'm just me and my tracksuit. I said, okay, I'll show you everything. So I open up my laptop, I connect it to the big screen, and I show them everything from the software to the promotions, to the winners, to the income we make. This is how, a hundred percent of the income is coming through one source. You know, there's no cash payments here and that, everything's through there. So whatever you're seeing, that's the business.

• 51:57Speaker 00

  Cause everybody pays by credit card.

• 51:58Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 51:59Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 51:59Speaker 01

  So it's like, that's it. And I've done that with the ATO. I've done that as well. I've done that with the gaming commissions. Yeah. Use my laptop. Take it. Everything we do is by the book. You know, I grew up in the Western suburbs. There's a lot of dodgy people. So when I finally made it, the last thing I want to do is, is do something illegal. Like, why would I? I'm finally in a position where, you know, I'm making this money. Um, do everything by the book. Make sure everything is done perfectly. So, um, we did that. And then, you know, I'm paying these, my, my taxes and all this. And it just got to a point where I'm like, I'm not, what? This, this seventy, eighty percent's ridiculous. It's ridiculous.

• 52:41Speaker 01

  So I'm like, why am I paying my installments? I've got all this money that's bunched up, millions and millions of dollars for installments, for future taxes, that I, future money that I, income that I make. And I'm not getting interest on that. So you.

• 52:57Speaker 00

  Yeah. You're paying advance, but not getting paid.

• 52:58Speaker 01

  You're getting like seven, eight figures just sitting there. I don't make any money on that. They're holding that there.

• 53:03Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 53:04Speaker 01

  Right? But then on my payment plan, I'm getting charged interest. So you're holding my money here.

• 53:11Speaker 00

  So you're getting charged interest on the amount that you haven't paid.

• 53:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 53:14Speaker 00

  Yeah. On the balance.

• 53:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 53:15Speaker 00

  Yeah. And it's quite high usually.

• 53:17Speaker 01

  But then there's all this money sitting here that will pay off all my debts, pay off everything, and I'll be in the green. So I'm just like, you guys are like, just leeching off me. It's incredible. So anyway, so I'm like, I don't want to pay my installments. Yeah. I've, I've relocated to Dubai. You know, I'm, I'm, um, you know, I'm not a resident anymore in Australia. Um, you know, it's like, everything's up to date. And then I was in China. And, you know, I started, you know, made some good contacts there and I wanted to create, you know, another arm to LMCT. And that was like importing goods.

• 53:58Speaker 01

  And I don't know, there was someone at the ATO that just like, you know.

• 54:03Speaker 00

  I shouldn't have been talking like this.

• 54:05Speaker 01

  But no, no, not thought I ran away though. Caught up my accountant and they said, you know, um, you know, Adrian's creating businesses with our money.

• 54:15Speaker 01

  He's got no respect for the ATO. Hangs up the phone.

• 54:21Speaker 01

  Go to pay my bills at night, you know, in China on my, on my laptop and it's not going through. I'm like, what the hell's going on? Caught up my banker. He's like, it's like fifteen million or something, ten million, something's been wiped out of your accounts. I'm like, what? So I look in my business bank account. There's like twenty cents in there.

• 54:40Speaker 00

  Whoa.

• 54:41Speaker 01

  I said, where's all my money gone? No word, no letter.

• 54:46Speaker 00

  But they just went and took it.

• 54:48Speaker 01

  Boom. Gone.

• 54:49Speaker 00

  They can do that, can they? They can just kind of take the money straight out of your account.

• 54:52Speaker 01

  I don't know.

• 54:53Speaker 00

  Ring your bank up.

• 54:56Speaker 01

  They did. Yeah. My accountant had no word of it. We had no word of it. They do that. They, they've, you know, if, um, if they're going to take money out of your account, they, they send you a letter. And they said, hey, if you don't pay this, we're going to take the money forcibly.

• 55:12Speaker 00

  So it makes sense, yeah?

• 55:13Speaker 01

  Yeah. That's fine. If you want to work for it.

• 55:16Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 55:16Speaker 01

  Um, but, you know, it just wiped out the accounts. Then on top of that, they had a lien, like a thirty percent lien on my Stripe account, so my payment gateway. So they were freezing money in there as well.

• 55:31Speaker 00

  So the money was coming in.

• 55:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 55:33Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 55:33Speaker 01

  So they were freezing thirty percent. So there's, you know, a few millions stuck in there. And then, you know, my daily payouts from my Stripe to my, my bank account were frozen. So I couldn't send money out.

• 55:46Speaker 00

  Cause you had no money coming in.

• 55:47Speaker 01

  Well, the money was coming in.

• 55:49Speaker 00

  But it was getting, but it was grabbed.

• 55:50Speaker 01

  It was grabbed. It was frozen.

• 55:51Speaker 00

  Yeah. So you had no money coming to your own business bank account.

• 55:54Speaker 01

  It was actually sitting in the account.

• 55:55Speaker 00

  But you couldn't grab it.

• 55:56Speaker 01

  I couldn't transfer it to another account. I couldn't pay bills. I couldn't pay my wages. Couldn't do anything. And they just froze it.

• 56:04Speaker 00

  So what did you do?

• 56:05Speaker 01

  And then I was like, this is ridiculous. What the hell's going on? Thank God. I go, I, I think ahead, you know, I've got bank accounts all over the world. Um, and, you know, I had, you know, other bank accounts here in Australia. So I was able to, you know, survive, but, you know, I was just like, this is extremely strange behavior. And then when we found out it was the ATO, you know, we were trying to, um, find out what was going on because, you know, we had no word of it. The accountants didn't know what was going on. And then they received, you know, funny enough,

• 56:44Speaker 01

  we, uh, received, you know, a few days later, a letter from the ATO to say that there was this garnishy order and, and it was backdated.

• 56:56Speaker 01

  I'm not going to say that's what they did, but we all know what happened here. We got a letter. I got one and my accountant got one. And then the date on it was prior to when they took the money out.

• 57:08Speaker 00

  But you hadn't, you, you're saying you didn't receive it, you didn't receive it prior to them taking the money out or stopping the money being paid.

• 57:14Speaker 01

  My, from my theory is they backdated that letter and sent it out.

• 57:18Speaker 00

  That's heavy. Yeah. Wow.

• 57:21Speaker 01

  My accountant's in Sydney. I'm in Melbourne. We both received it on the same day.

• 57:26Speaker 00

  So was this, do you think this was off the back of you announcing you're going to go to Dubai?

• 57:31Speaker 00

  Do you think they're related events that they were, and here you are in China, they're worried that you, like, the guy scarpered?

• 57:37Speaker 01

  But that's what I mean. I was always committed, you know what I mean? I was always paying that two fifty a week.

• 57:42Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 57:43Speaker 01

  So it wasn't like I was, you know, there was always that, the war of, um, you know, uh, you know, I was always there, I was always committing.

• 57:52Speaker 00

  Where is it now? They still got, those orders are in place, those Ganeshi orders are in place?

• 57:56Speaker 01

  No, no, everything's been lifted and it's business as usual. This money, I don't know.

• 58:02Speaker 00

  You're still paying your payments?

• 58:04Speaker 01

  Well, no, now I'm still trying to, I'm trying to find out what's going on, to be honest.

• 58:08Speaker 00

  Yeah, but it's been lifted, so.

• 58:10Speaker 01

  So we were in credit, apparently I made millions and I haven't seen any of it, so.

• 58:15Speaker 00

  Wow. When you said really early on, you said like you tend not to worry about things, what, how did that feel? I mean, that would have sort of got on your skin a little bit, I imagine.

• 58:25Speaker 01

  Nah, it's just, you know, you just gotta laugh about it.

• 58:27Speaker 00

  Yeah, I see you, I like, I'm seeing, oh, this guy's got so much money laying around for his joints, it doesn't really matter that much to me in a relative sense. Oh, that or he's unbelievably good at, um, sort of not feeling stressed.

• 58:39Speaker 01

  No, I don't, I don't feel stressed at all. I don't, I don't get stressed. I laugh about it and, uh, you know, I just think, oh, you know, it's a, it's a blessing to have these problems. Wow. Back in the day, we were struggling to eat. Now we're, you know, now we're fighting with the government. Like, that's awesome.

• 58:56Speaker 00

  Well, now you're fighting over the food on the table.

• 58:59Speaker 01

  I love it. I love it.

• 59:00Speaker 00

  Do you think you'll stay in Dubai, like as a Dubai resident?

• 59:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, a hundred percent. We, we, me and my family, we absolutely love it. Like, I love Australia. Australia's the best country in the world. Um, at the moment, it's a bit sketchy, but you know what? I don't wanna keep all my eggs in one basket. You know, I, I, I plan to move much before, you know, all these regulatory changes or, you know, there was like, there was some reports that, you know, the regulatory change is happening and he's fleeing the country.

• 59:29Speaker 00

  Yeah, around the capital gains tax, I read something about that.

• 59:31Speaker 01

  There's online reports, uh, there's online, like, you know, we do like vlogs on YouTube sometimes and we've got videos in there when, you know, from two years ago, you know, in Italy, putting offers on houses. So, you know, we've planned to move for a long time. And it's just, it's just, you know, we, I'm always like, I like to keep things fresh and, and, and fun. And I thought, you know, I don't wanna just keep all my eggs in one basket. Like, let's, let's go live abroad. Why not? Like, we've got, we've got the money, we've got the freedom.

• 1:00:00Speaker 00

  Would it be fair to say that it's probably impossible for you to avoid tax by living in Dubai, other than at a personal level? It's impossible for you to avoid tax in relation to your businesses, because your businesses are all domiciled here.

• 1:00:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think, I think that's what people don't understand. My businesses are here.

• 1:00:16Speaker 00

  Yeah, the economic space of those businesses, where they earn their money is in Australia.

• 1:00:21Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 1:00:22Speaker 00

  And Australian tax laws say if the money's earned in Australia, you pay tax in Australia. I couldn't give a damn where you live.

• 1:00:29Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 1:00:29Speaker 00

  They're, they're the rules, as I understand them.

• 1:00:31Speaker 01

  Of course.

• 1:00:31Speaker 00

  But it'd be different if you lived in Dubai and made all your money in Dubai.

• 1:00:34Speaker 01

  If I made my money in Dubai, it's a different story.

• 1:00:36Speaker 00

  Or even if you live in Dubai and made your money in bloody Sweden or something, the Australian government would have nothing to do with it. But if your business is domiciled here and the income's coming in here, in other words, you weren't from Australians, that you pay tax in Australia.

• 1:00:49Speaker 01

  Of course.

• 1:00:49Speaker 00

  So there, there's no tax relationship with you going to Dubai relative to the money you make here.

• 1:00:55Speaker 01

  Well, yeah, yeah, there's different ways you can look.

• 1:00:59Speaker 00

  You may be able to minimize.

• 1:01:00Speaker 01

  You may be able to minimize it.

• 1:01:01Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:01:01Speaker 01

  And it gives you more control of, of, of the movement of funds. Uh, but, you know, it's, it's, you're still paying your taxes.

• 1:01:09Speaker 00

  Yeah, you're not avoiding taxes or avoiding taxes.

• 1:01:12Speaker 01

  Definitely not avoiding it. And look, we, we got a really good relationship with the ATO. Yeah, funny enough, I think there was a couple of bad apples in there that just had a thing, you know, had it out for me. But, you know, you know, I've had multiple meetings with the ATO and we've, we've told them our plans along the whole, the whole way that, you know, we're doing this and we're doing this and this is what we're doing. And, and, you know, it wasn't, you know, we're not, you know, trying to avoid tax, um, you know, if we, we, we told them the whole journey along the way and they were happy. They said, yeah, that's fine. We, we support you. You gotta pay your G S T, you know, the taxes.

• 1:01:46Speaker 00

  We wanna get our money. Yeah. As long as we're not left at the end of the line.

• 1:01:49Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:01:50Speaker 00

  We're okay. And by the way, they can't be left at the end of the line, because they've got a lien anyway.

• 1:01:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:01:53Speaker 00

  Yeah. So, but, but, but for most of the audience, people don't know what a lien is. It's spelled L I, L I N. But basically it's security over, over an asset which receives income or et cetera. So they've got a lien over their account. So they're covered. Throughout all these years, you know, I've seen, um, videos or photos of you hauling up a car into an apartment and put in inside the apartment and stuff like that. Um, are there any things you regret? In terms of building Adrian Portelli's brand,

• 1:02:24Speaker 00

  Hmm. which you had to do to get traction relative to LMCT plus.

• 1:02:30Speaker 00

  Are there any things you regret?

• 1:02:32Speaker 01

  No, definitely not. I don't regret anything. Like, it's, everything happens for a reason and everything, you know, builds the person you are today. So regret.

• 1:02:44Speaker 00

  Was it that you do differently?

• 1:02:45Speaker 01

  Everything I do is very calculated. Everything's, if, if I've put something online, it's because I want you to see it.

• 1:02:51Speaker 00

  Is this interview calculated?

• 1:02:53Speaker 01

  Well, I haven't done podcasts in ten years since I've been in the public and I've done two in the space of a few weeks. So there might be a hidden agenda here, but everything I do is very, very calculated. If I'm putting a story on social, I don't post for the sake of posting.

• 1:03:08Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:03:09Speaker 01

  I don't care for social media. I don't care for, you know.

• 1:03:12Speaker 00

  It is an objective.

• 1:03:13Speaker 01

  It's an objective there.

• 1:03:14Speaker 00

  Mostly business objective.

• 1:03:16Speaker 01

  It's very, yes.

• 1:03:17Speaker 00

  Is, would I be fair to say rarely ego?

• 1:03:21Speaker 01

  Um, I, I, I don't feel like I'd, I'd, no, no, I think I'm beyond that. Maybe when I was younger. Maybe a little bit, but now it's just very calculated. I, I, I, I think you get to a point where it's like

• 1:03:38Speaker 01

  money and success doesn't mean really anything anymore.

• 1:03:41Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:03:42Speaker 01

  I just like, it's, I'm desensitized to it. Like, when you're starting, yeah, okay, I wanna buy a nice car and show it off and yada, yada, yada. But now it's like, now I'm just on a mission to just

• 1:03:53Speaker 01

  create a legacy. You know, I don't want, I don't, I don't even care for the cars anymore. If, if someone, I always say, if someone came and just offered me a bag of cash, I'd just get rid of everything. I'd love to, I'd love to downsize.

• 1:04:04Speaker 00

  You'd exit.

• 1:04:05Speaker 01

  I'd exit. Like, I've got so many properties and, and I, I do wanna sell, but, you know, obviously now it's not the right time to sell, especially here in Melbourne. Um, everything's taken a bit of a hit, but if I could downsize and just run lean, I would love to. That's my biggest dream.

• 1:04:21Speaker 00

  Yeah, ju- and just maybe spend more time with your family. Yeah, lapping it up, soaking it up.

• 1:04:26Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 1:04:26Speaker 00

  Can, can I just ask you this? Just as an observation from my point of view. What you're doing is not sort of new, and I don't mean that in a demeaning way. I mean that it seems to me that your usual personal brand helped build a brand and then you've got to, then you build an audience off the back of that brand. Then you've gone out and leveraged those audience with other people who need that leverage, vendors. And as a result of that, you've gone out and you've built, pretty much that's a definition of a disruption. And one of the things that always exists in disruption is that you find a new technology that is, gives you the same product outcome. Or alternatively, sell the same product but much cheaper.

• 1:05:10Speaker 00

  So you've managed to work out how to give your audience products cheaper without having to make the product yourself.

• 1:05:19Speaker 01

  Correct.

• 1:05:20Speaker 00

  And you've used the Adrian Portelli brand to power that up. And then, you know, you probably made some errors during the process, but during the whole process, you just keep amping it up, amping it up, amping it up. Both in terms of audience, demographics, who they are, and the breadth of audience and the numbers of people per audience. So you're doing it in a three-way leverage, each of which feeds on itself, makes it bigger and bigger and bigger. So your audience just gets bigger.

• 1:05:48Speaker 01

  Correct.

• 1:05:48Speaker 00

  And then, of course, you charge people to be on there because now that you've got the social license to do that, because your audience trusts you. They know you, they trust you, and they know you deliver. So really, in some respects, and people generally speaking don't like these types of people, but, because we, we, we get scared of disruptors. But generally speaking, you'd be best described as a disruptor. You've disrupted things.

• 1:06:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, I, I'd label myself as a disruptor as well. Um, I, I love it.

• 1:06:18Speaker 00

  You know what's interesting about that? A lot of disruptors usually are not noisy people out there, making a lot of noise about themselves. They're generally speaking not seeking admiration or affection or, um, adulation or recognition. They're generally the sort of people, sort of, uh, sit behind computer screens or close themselves inside indoors and, uh, come up with something like this. At the end of the day though, they have to be well known, because to be, are able to disrupt properly, you have to be well known. You have to put a face in front of it. Because I wanna know who the dude is who's disrupting this marketplace, if I'm an audience. And you work that out, you discovered that, and that's what you showed me at the end of the twelve month period.

• 1:06:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:06:55Speaker 00

  When you reflect back on any of that, do you ever think to yourself, how did this quiet kid from the western suburbs of, uh, Melbourne, forget about what money you made and houses and stuff like that, but how did this quiet kid, um, youngest in the family, two older sisters, you say, parents from Alder? How the hell did I get there?

• 1:07:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:07:18Speaker 00

  You wouldn't have dreamt about it day one, that's for sure. You would have had no idea.

• 1:07:21Speaker 01

  And then, you know, most people don't, you know, most people, you know, from, from where you start to where you end.

• 1:07:26Speaker 00

  But do you ever think about it?

• 1:07:27Speaker 01

  It's a journey. It's a, yeah, look.

• 1:07:30Speaker 00

  What do you say to your kids?

• 1:07:31Speaker 01

  I, I think, I think it was like my upbringing as well. My, my parents were very giving, very caring, very loving, um, hardworking. So they instilled a lot of ethics in me from, from, from day dot. I always said, if I am ever, ever successful, uh, my goal is just to, to help. And then a lot of people, like, unfortunately, they paint me with this picture, this light, uh, you know, where,

• 1:07:55Speaker 01

  you know, they all automatically judge me because of my success.

• 1:07:58Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 1:07:59Speaker 01

  Like this whole billionaire narrative and, and, and like, oh, he's, he's just in it for himself because my business, I've created a business that makes an income, that's creating a business. But, you know, I've, I've created a model where, you know, now I can, I can make money from my membership payments and I'm happy to break even on everything else. It just, it's not, it's not rocket science.

• 1:08:20Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 1:08:21Speaker 01

  The, the brick and mortar businesses, they break even. I make my profit from my memberships, that's it. Now I'm deviling into, like I said, the bigger picture, building a bigger audience.

• 1:08:31Speaker 00

  So you're not doing petrol?

• 1:08:32Speaker 01

  Petrol.

• 1:08:34Speaker 00

  So you're disrupting the petrol industry?

• 1:08:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, I can sell it for what I buy it for. Yeah.

• 1:08:40Speaker 00

  And and that, but you make your money.

• 1:08:41Speaker 01

  That brings in more members.

• 1:08:42Speaker 00

  But you make your money out of the membership.

• 1:08:43Speaker 01

  I make the money out of the membership.

• 1:08:45Speaker 00

  So they pay like cost or like fully loaded cost, whatever that is. To get the petrol out of the Bowser into their into their tank. You don't care if it breaks even because you make the money out of the membership.

• 1:08:55Speaker 01

  I think it's pretty expensive.

• 1:08:57Speaker 00

  What we got now? We've got petrol. What are the various silos?

• 1:09:00Speaker 01

  The petrol petrol's good and petrol's petrol's hard, but because you know, it's it's a sense game. And you've got five products essentially on the on the shelf. So it's hard in that sense where it's, you know, you've got to create as much value as possible to justify the membership price. So, you know, if I can average twenty cents a liter in statewide, you know, that's a saving of a few hundred bucks a year. Costco, for example, if you look, people on average save about a hundred and fifty dollars a year. So just on fuel alone, we're saving a significant amount. Groceries now, we're about to open up our new supermarket. That's a little bit harder. I feel like it's a really corrupt industry. But it's a corrupt industry.

• 1:09:38Speaker 00

  Is it?

• 1:09:38Speaker 01

  Because there are two big players that control the market.

• 1:09:41Speaker 00

  And do they protect the plot prices between themselves?

• 1:09:43Speaker 01

  Well.

• 1:09:44Speaker 00

  They're not supposed to, of course, but.

• 1:09:46Speaker 01

  Not supposed to, but you've got to remember the suppliers don't want to piss them off.

• 1:09:49Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:09:49Speaker 01

  So if the suppliers are supplying to me and I'm putting it on the shelf for cheaper than the big two big guys are.

• 1:09:54Speaker 00

  They're getting pressured?

• 1:09:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:09:56Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:09:56Speaker 01

  I'm seeing I'm seeing it now. I'm seeing it now and I'm actually shocked.

• 1:10:00Speaker 00

  Don't give it a portale. You can't sell cornflakes, whatever.

• 1:10:03Speaker 01

  I'm actually shocked. Like we saw their prices and then, you know, for me, it's like, oh, jack it up eighty cents.

• 1:10:10Speaker 01

  So.

• 1:10:12Speaker 00

  But if you're staying there long enough, do you reckon you could break that down? Break down that oligopoly or, you know, that or the duopoly, whatever it is.

• 1:10:18Speaker 01

  You know, a normal supermarket has about twenty thousand SKUs. If I can minimize that by, you know, sixty percent, sit around that eight thousand SKU mark, you know, there's less less competition in my on my shelves. I want people to be able to, the suppliers to fight for the space for the shelves, no different from a petrol station. A seven eleven, for example, you know, you've got to fight to get shelf space. I want that to be a supermarket as well, less competition, less products on the shelves, higher turnover, better margins.

• 1:10:46Speaker 00

  So you've got supermarkets, groceries, let's call it, petrol.

• 1:10:51Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:10:52Speaker 00

  What else we got?

• 1:10:54Speaker 00

  What what what other things you got in your?

• 1:10:55Speaker 01

  Well, I I'd love to do like importing as well, you know, I I believe there's there's a room there to grow that division as well, just importing goods, you know, just from start to finish.

• 1:11:10Speaker 00

  Because it's funny, I had a young fellow on my podcast

• 1:11:14Speaker 00

  this week, actually, and he's doing exactly that. He's cutting out, let's call it the middlemen.

• 1:11:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:11:19Speaker 00

  He reckons like for a tile, it's one square meter tile. His name's Jack Blinford, Blinford. Jack is saying for one square meter tiles made in China, the markup is somewhere between, the cost is seven bucks landed, but the the best you'd be able to buy for an Australian, maybe fifty five bucks. He says probably five different sets of people in between distributors, importers, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, like all the way through.

• 1:11:42Speaker 01

  That's all we saw.

• 1:11:43Speaker 00

  Yeah, he's saying the same thing. And that's why building costs are so expensive. One of the reasons, labour is expensive, but building cost, material is very expensive.

• 1:11:49Speaker 01

  And that's the thing, there's so many middlemen in between. They're all putting their margin on, margin, margin on. Then you've got the government that puts their margin.

• 1:11:55Speaker 00

  And it's cozy though. No one wants to change anything.

• 1:11:57Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:11:57Speaker 00

  It's cozy. They're saying, I won't say, let's just, we just keep making the money. Let's not say a thing and let's just keep marking up. And that was sort of in the mortgage industry, which is one of the ones I got involved in. It was sort of similar. It was cozy. And the typical definition of an oligopoly is that we all price the same. We all sell the same product, exactly the same product. It looks like it's different, features look like they're different, but the price is the same. And we disrupted that, John Times and I, just by offering the same product but a lower price.

• 1:12:26Speaker 00

  Because we cut out all the costs.

• 1:12:28Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 1:12:28Speaker 00

  And it's not that, it's not that brilliant. It's, everyone thinks I was doing something brilliant, but it wasn't that brilliant. And and you don't have to. As soon as people know about it, which is what we did, we had to put ourselves out in the front like you did. As soon as people know about it, they come to you and you make money. Um, and of course it takes money from someone else. And in our case, we we weren't the greatest.

• 1:12:49Speaker 00

  Our biggest fan base was not the banks and they're pretty powerful. And you've got to be careful, that sort of stuff. Do you worry about that? Being careful of the big retailers, the big grocery groups, the big petrol organizations.

• 1:13:02Speaker 01

  Bring it on.

• 1:13:03Speaker 00

  Bring it on.

• 1:13:03Speaker 01

  Bring it on.

• 1:13:04Speaker 00

  Well, that's also a true sign of a disruptor.

• 1:13:07Speaker 01

  It's either work with me or work against me. I'm not going anywhere.

• 1:13:10Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:13:10Speaker 01

  I'm not going anywhere. I said that to one of the suppliers as well. So speak to you us.

• 1:13:16Speaker 01

  Because I'm not going anywhere.

• 1:13:17Speaker 00

  I'm gonna do it anyway.

• 1:13:18Speaker 01

  Let's work together.

• 1:13:19Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:13:19Speaker 01

  Or we'll be competitors. You've got a new competitor.

• 1:13:21Speaker 00

  Yeah, because, you know, if the market gets diluted by with one competitor and let's say everyone else has to lose ten percent of their total business and in other words, they're sharing ninety percent instead of a hundred percent, you know, you're going to take ten percent. Or if you don't run with me, you've got a chance of missing out yourself.

• 1:13:38Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 1:13:39Speaker 00

  You're quite comfortable doing all this sort of stuff. And and what do you do? You keep all your staff and you've got like staff, you must have staff, a lot of staff around the joint.

• 1:13:48Speaker 01

  You know, you know, to be honest, you know, oh, now we've now we've got the petrol station, supermarkets.

• 1:13:54Speaker 00

  Yeah, that's what I mean.

• 1:13:55Speaker 01

  But LMCT in particular, there's only probably like twenty percent of staff on ground here in Australia. A lot of our staff's overseas.

• 1:14:02Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, that makes sense.

• 1:14:03Speaker 01

  Our development team, you know, customers for a lot of it.

• 1:14:05Speaker 00

  You've got my software development.

• 1:14:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:14:06Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 1:14:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, we're very big on the software.

• 1:14:08Speaker 00

  We operate out of Philippines, India, Nepal, where we.

• 1:14:12Speaker 01

  We've got developers all over. So we've got, you know, Russia, Ukraine, Turkey. We've built our own team that work with us full time. But yeah, they're all over, all over.

• 1:14:22Speaker 00

  Yeah, that's your that's your software development.

• 1:14:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:14:24Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:14:25Speaker 01

  And that's the thing, that doesn't need to run out of Australia.

• 1:14:28Speaker 00

  No, no, no.

• 1:14:28Speaker 01

  You know what I mean? Like it's, I'm paying like all these fees and it's almost half. The company essentially is overseas.

• 1:14:37Speaker 00

  Yeah, well, you mean, you can get great developers in Ukraine, for example.

• 1:14:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:14:40Speaker 00

  In place of Lviv and, you know, they're very, very good.

• 1:14:44Speaker 01

  Extremely talented people.

• 1:14:45Speaker 00

  And they, you know, they're all mathematics, sort of majors and PhDs in maths and stuff like that. And you pay them like a third of what you pay someone here in Australia.

• 1:14:52Speaker 01

  No, they're fantastic. They work hard.

• 1:14:55Speaker 00

  And they love working.

• 1:14:56Speaker 01

  And I love, I love, I love that there's people working around the clock, twenty four hours a day.

• 1:15:00Speaker 00

  Yeah. So Adrian, like I really appreciate your frankness. And I appreciate the fact that you allowed me to be frank with you. But I have to say to you as a disruptor and as an entrepreneur, I wish you luck, actually.

• 1:15:11Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 1:15:11Speaker 00

  Because we need to see more of this in Australia. We need to see more of this, more Australians doing this anywhere in the world, for that matter. And I applaud you on it. I also applaud you for your courage for taking on the big, the big, the big guys. You know, that that's hard.

• 1:15:25Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 1:15:25Speaker 00

  That's really hard. And good luck with everything, mate. Go for it.

• 1:15:30Speaker 01

  Thank you. Thank you. I appreciate it. Thanks for coming out and thanks for giving me the time.