In our latest episode, Jo unpacks the lessons learned from her short stint as the owner of the Big Bite cafe, where dreams of financial freedom and being a present parent collided with the harsh realities of rent hikes and the bottom line. And if you think managing a bank branch had Jo prepared for this adventure, think again.
This candid talk is a mix of humor, hindsight, and hard truths about the entrepreneurial appetite—sometimes, it bites back.
But wait, there's more! A cautionary tale that reads like a thriller novel, only it's painfully true. We peel back the layers of our tumultuous journey with a Two Dollar Shop, where due diligence turned into detective work. It was Mr. W's convincing façade that ensnared Jo & her husband in a deal brimming with deceit, leaving her to grapple with doctored books, financial ruin, and even threats.
Our experience serves as a stark reminder that in the world of business, trust can be as fragile as a shop's glass display, and sometimes, the price tag on learning is more than dollars and cents. Join us, as we share the insights and scars from our adventures in business ownership on the Raising Rich Podcast.
Follow our mother daughter journey towards financial freedom!
In our latest episode, Jo unpacks the lessons learned from her short stint as the owner of the Big Bite cafe, where dreams of financial freedom and being a present parent collided with the harsh realities of rent hikes and the bottom line. And if you think managing a bank branch had Jo prepared for this adventure, think again.
This candid talk is a mix of humor, hindsight, and hard truths about the entrepreneurial appetite—sometimes, it bites back.
But wait, there's more! A cautionary tale that reads like a thriller novel, only it's painfully true. We peel back the layers of our tumultuous journey with a Two Dollar Shop, where due diligence turned into detective work. It was Mr. W's convincing façade that ensnared Jo & her husband in a deal brimming with deceit, leaving her to grapple with doctored books, financial ruin, and even threats.
Our experience serves as a stark reminder that in the world of business, trust can be as fragile as a shop's glass display, and sometimes, the price tag on learning is more than dollars and cents. Join us, as we share the insights and scars from our adventures in business ownership on the Raising Rich Podcast.
Follow our mother daughter journey towards financial freedom!
Hey Mamas, welcome to the Raising Rich Podcast with your favourite mother-daughter duo, Jo and Lane. Join us as we take you on the rollercoaster ride that has been my mum's life with money.
Speaker 2:Yes, I'll be opening up about the taboo topic of money, from bankruptcy to a six-figure income and all the heartache in between. So if you're a single mama out there trying to figure it all out, then this podcast is from bankruptcy to a six-figure income and all the heartache in between.
Speaker 2:So if you're a single mama, out there trying to figure it all out, then this podcast is for you. Join us for all the ups and all the downs on Raising Rich. Come join you, Come join me on our couch, our couch For episode Four, episode four Now we promised a big one, didn't we?
Speaker 1:we did we? There's a two-part, I guess, leading up to the big one, so we'll just see how long this one goes, whether or not we get into it, who knows.
Speaker 2:Either way, a big one is coming right yeah, this is part one and part two, or maybe just a mega part one. Let's see how we go. So we shall see um episode four. Welcome to the introduction of entrepreneurship, for because I would be like what? 11 um, so how old am I? Now'm thinking so. My third child is about one and a half, and so I'm around 32, 33 at this stage, and I decide to buy a little cafe.
Speaker 1:I actually remember this cafe very well, mainly because I just thought it was lit that I was going to get free egg and bacon rolls whenever I wanted.
Speaker 2:It didn't quite work out that way, but it was called the Big Bite. Yes, and it was just this teeny tiny sandwich takeaway. I was gung-ho at wanting to go into this, remembering I had just had my third child, had been significantly unwell and had to spend quite a bit of time at home, and I was actually looking forward to getting back into the workforce. I had not enjoyed, realistically, any job that I had tried my hand at.
Speaker 1:So what were you doing in the lead up to deciding to buy this cafe? Like I remember, at one point you definitely worked for banks. Like I remember, you worked for St George.
Speaker 2:I remember you worked for the police academy so I had, after working in the food industry as a manager with your dad and then my second husband, I had taken a bit of time obviously being unwell. But in between the last two children I did work at a bank and I became like the branch manager and I didn't mind it but I didn't love it, yeah, and it wasn't particularly fulfilling financially, it was just a standard wage um and it just I don't know, it just wasn't my calling um. So after having the third child I was obviously not working and I thought you know what I really enjoyed actually working at Hungry Jack's as a manager and I thought, well, maybe the food industry is the way to go and owning my own cafe, I really thought I was going to set the world on fire and I would be taking an income worth my time.
Speaker 2:So, remember we're always trading time for money Got this cafe for an absolute steal off someone who had bought it and within two weeks realized that it was a lot harder than he thought. So he was just wanting to get out of the cafe as quickly as possible and so I got it for an absolute steal. The only catch was that in the lease the rent was X amount of dollars. However, that had been given to the previous tenant and I didn't realize. In the lease it said if he'd sold um sold the business, the rental amount would go back up to what it originally was, which was significantly more. So it meant that I really had to put in a lot of time and effort.
Speaker 2:It's. It was good, fun, it was enjoyable. It was early morning until early afternoon, so hubby number two would take all the kids to school and I'd be working at the cafe from about four in the morning and then I would finish around half past one, two o'clock, go home, pick you guys up from school, and it kind of worked out in that respect, because I was still achieving being available for my children in the afternoon after school.
Speaker 1:I don't really recall you having the cafe for a long period of time, though I did not. How long did you have it for?
Speaker 2:Not even nine months.
Speaker 1:Oh, really that short a time, I did not realize that.
Speaker 2:Because I just realized that for the time that I was putting in the remuneration again was not Not cut net. It was not cut net and it was not making the life that I had with my parents, who were you know my dad was the entrepreneur, so I kind of I was expecting that.
Speaker 2:So I was lucky enough to on sell the business. It was making a profit. So you know it was. You did make it something, I did make it something, I did make it something and I did make a little bit of money out of it. Um, once I sold it in comes the next chapter.
Speaker 1:Well, we definitely have lined up for a bigger episode, then Cause that story lasted what? All of three minutes.
Speaker 2:It was because I guess that's just my introduction into entrepreneurship and I've kind of got my taste for being my own boss, making my own money, making decisions where my money was going to go, putting stuff in that you know could cover me if I wanted to see you guys do you know sports events or what have you, and it kind of it.
Speaker 2:It it worked in some ways and not in others. So from that moment on I was definitely looking for somewhere else where I could be my own boss, run my own hours, run my own business, train staff where they could look after the business and I could again fulfill my time being a mum and hanging out with you guys. And it was interesting my husband at the time the second husband. He came home and he started talking about this guy that he'd met over the last five years. He'd been doing some work for him. So my husband was a subcontractor and he was in a lot of people's homes because he actually was a carpet cleaner, yeah, and so he would visit a lot of people and he would meet a lot of people and he had met this particular person that he was talking about. Call him Mr.
Speaker 1:W. Yeah, I think Mr W can also stand for Mr Wanker.
Speaker 2:There's a lot of things I could say about that, mr W.
Speaker 1:Okay, let's go with.
Speaker 2:Mr W. Okay, so my husband is talking about this Mr W, he's a fantastic guy, he's very wealthy, he's made it, he has a business opportunity for us. And so, of course, I'm intrigued. I'm thinking, okay, great, and my husband talks about Mr W quite a bit over the next say six months or so. He talks about the great car that he drives. So he's driving this bmw 7 series. He lives in hampton, brighton sort of area, and he owns two dollar shops, okay, which I guess most of us are familiar with. Yeah, okay, it turns out, you know, after all this talking, my husband says, oh, look, mr w's got a business opportunity for us. And I'm thinking, yep, cool, okay, mr W is selling up his shops and he's going to be building a hotel in Fiji. Ooh, I'll pen to Fiji Now, the thought of having our own hotel in Fiji where we can holiday as often as we like with all our friends. And because we're going to be part owners in this hotel, we're thinking, oh, this sounds really good. So, anyway, does it sound good to you?
Speaker 1:it does, but I did not. I did not know any of this part of the story, like I didn't know about this Fijian hotel.
Speaker 2:Yes, so well, that was kind of the promise or the premise in which we met up with this guy. He was invited to our home, he sat down and he told us his plans. He was building a hotel. He'd already purchased all of the materials. They were being shipped over as we spoke, he was just organizing contractors from Australia to go over there to build it properly. He even showed us his business plan, his engineering plans, receipts for transportation of all the goods. He even involved, you know, or tried to involve, us in selecting, you know, the marble benchtops for the kitchens that you know. Just uh, he had it all going on. He had it all going on. Do you remember meeting mr w?
Speaker 1:at that time I don't remember meeting him like in our house kind of situation.
Speaker 2:There is a particular memory that I have of him, but I think that we'll get into that as the story rolls, yeah, so anyway, we kind of I say to my husband you know, let's do our due diligence, let's look into it, and my husband's like I've known this guy for five years, he is legit, like he is making the money and he's inviting us along because he knows you know my husband and they're like best buddies, apparently Interesting that I had not met him.
Speaker 1:I was just about to say like first red flag, being best friends with this bloke for five years and never met the guy. Yeah, ricky Stinicki vibes. But yeah, okay, who's Ricky Stinicki? Oh, it's a new movie. Oh, okay, I'm so sorry.
Speaker 2:Anyway. So we decide yep, we are going to give this a crack. He also offers us to purchase one of his $2 stores that's doing really well and whilst this hotel in Fiji is being built, he's going to sell us this $2 shop. We're going to make lots of money from this shop because it's been running really well, and when we move over to Fiji, in this hotel that we're all going to own together, we can either sell the $2 shop or we can get other people to run it. But because it's going to take a couple of years for the hotel to build, this is kind of like oh okay, well, we're all sort of going to go into business together our beautiful home with the movie theater, the swimming pool, the outdoor bar, the five bedrooms, the study with the computer because they made a switch at the time the nursery offset from the main bedroom.
Speaker 1:We'd sell that gorgeous house and I distinctly remember you guys selling that property at that time for like an obscene amount of money back then, which was only like half a million dollars, yeah, but it was like massive in 2002. That was huge, particularly for the area that we were living in as well. So to be like, oh my god, like we sold our house for half a million dollars, which is like next to you can barely buy an apartment for that thing days.
Speaker 2:But yeah, no, it was, but because we had designed the house ourself.
Speaker 2:It was very unique and, like I said, it had that cinema room that nobody else had, yeah, and so you know the lady who purchased it she didn't have enough money but begged us to give her a longer settlement, and so we did all of that and then her finances fell through and, look, we could have kept her a deposit, because that's the law in Australia, but we just a longer settlement, and so we did all of that. And then her finances fell through and look, we could have kept her a deposit, because that's the law in Australia, but we just said, no, we're not going to do that, we'll wait a little bit longer. Yeah, so we waited maybe an extra two months and she came up with the money and you know, everybody was happy, that's nice. So we've sold the house and we got the nice price paid off a little bit of the mortgage, and we decide that we are going to give this $2 shop a go. So we make the move to that massive townhouse, closer to the shop, and what a journey that was.
Speaker 1:Well, I mean, we had to pick up our entire lives, basically, and move. Like we started a new school, my sister went to a new creche. You, you guys, were leaving your friends behind. On top of that, I stayed down because I wasn't super smart, so so I was going to a new school Like yeah, yeah, yeah, look, and it was a big move.
Speaker 2:But we really just had a lot of faith in Mr W. You know he was, remember he was my husband's best friend, so we were ready to jump into entrepreneurship once again. So we make the move and we start with due diligence.
Speaker 1:So what did you actually do in terms of your due diligence? I?
Speaker 2:can never say that word.
Speaker 1:Due diligence.
Speaker 2:Due diligence. What did you guys actually do? So the due diligence whenever you're purchasing anything I guess a shop or a $2 shop, a food shop, purchasing anything, I guess a shop or a $2 shop, a food shop there is a couple of things that you should be doing, and the first thing is looking at the register rolls. So the owner should be giving you the register rolls so that you can have a look at them and see the total takings for the day On those register rolls. They also have how many transactions you've had for the day.
Speaker 2:On those register rolls. They also have how many transactions you've had for the day, and so then you can determine the average price or average customer spend. Once you've done that, you can also sit and actually just watch the store. You can watch and see how many customers come in and out of the store, what they are purchasing and how much they're kind of spending, and seeing if that's actually matching up with that register role. And then, of course, the most important thing is the books prepared by the accountant, the. These books you take to the bank if you need finance and it it basically states the profit and loss of the business.
Speaker 1:So we commence that process so you're doing all your due diligence.
Speaker 2:Yeah, bing bang, boom, yes yep and things are looking okay, other than the books are not matching up with what he's telling us, what Mr W is telling us. So Mr W is obviously saying it's a great business, it's making a lot of profit, but when we look at the books, the books are not matching up. Red flag.
Speaker 2:But remember, you know, we think this guy's really nice, he's a great guy, so we believe him. When he says, look, the business takes a lot of cash and I don't declare this to the tax office, you kind of just have to believe that my shop is making a lot of money. Look at the register rolls. I only have to show you those to prove the shop's making a lot more money than I'm declaring to the tax office, mm-mm.
Speaker 2:Okay, we're like okay, well, we believe him, don't we? Then the discussion goes on about the actual overall price of the shop. Okay, so how you determine the price of a shop is that you look at the profit that it's making, you look at the stock that's on hand, and they're kind of the two things. And then you've got goodwill. So how many customers do we have, how many customers are we actually buying? And that kind of determines the price of the shop. So at this stage the price of the shop is over $200,000. But we don't have two hundred thousand dollars. After selling our home, we've paid off our mortgage. We've got about seventy thousand left over. Um, so we suggest to him look, we can pay a deposit. We can't get any finance from the bank because we take the books to the bank, mind you. And they, they kind of laugh, they're like oh, no way, this shop is not making profit, we are not going to lend you any money just another red flag, thanks for that.
Speaker 2:Oh, if only you were around to tell me and point those out back in that day. Um, anyway. So the bank says, yep, absolutely no way. So I start to look at outside sources so you can borrow money from other wealthy individuals. They sometimes take equity out of their homes or they've just got, you know, a lazy 200k laying around in the bank. Oh yeah, yeah, as you do, and they'll lend it to you, but obviously at a higher interest rate. We even tried to do an unsecured loan. So we were trying everything because we really trusted mr w all right.
Speaker 2:So now, obviously that failed. We couldn't get the money. We only had the money for a bit of a deposit. Mr W comes up with a plan and he says look, I owe my contractors, or the people that I purchased the stock from your suppliers, the suppliers. I owe them money because you get your supplies and you can take it on consignment and you can pay it at the end of the month. He says how about you take the consignment on board and you make the payment? And so we're like we're thinking, oh okay, well, that's not too bad. And then he says you know, if there's any difference, we can just make an agreement that you can pay me a weekly amount from the takings of the shop, because, remember, the shop's taking a lot of money.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and that can be pretty normal though right, like if you are buying into a business paying off a certain amount per week, like that wouldn't be a red flag in your opinion?
Speaker 2:Well, I mean, it's a red flag to try and get finance in order to do that. But because he was our friend, we thought he was helping us out Generally. No, you would have to come up with the full price the full price to pay for the whole. It's like when you want to buy a house, you have to give the owner of the house the whole amount. You know you have to pay for the whole sale. You can't pay for a little bit. Move in, go. Oh, I'm gonna pay you back later.
Speaker 2:But that was kind of the situation that we were getting ourselves involved in. So we pay a deposit, we're going to take on his consignment, we're going to also make weekly payments and, if all else fails, we are going to allow mr w to put a caveat on one of our properties. So for people who are listening, who perhaps don't know what a caveat is, it means, um, his name gets lodged on the title of our property and when that property sells he gets the money owed to him. So he lodges x amount of dollars on the caveat and he gets to keep that when the sale of the house goes through.
Speaker 2:Holy moly yeah, so, um, essentially there was a lot of moving parts to the sale of this actual two dollar shop. So mr w takes me to meet, uh, his contractors or suppliers. He introduces me to all the different suppliers. He tells them that I'm going to sign a contract that means that I will be taking over his debt and that the contractor is happy to go ahead and do that. So that's the first thing, that that's the first part of the process that we take on board. We've paid the deposit, we're now doing the consignment. The next thing that we do is to have to sit and watch the shop.
Speaker 1:I definitely remember watching the shop because it never really actually happened. I remember we rocked up one day to do this and he, mr W, was just like no, no, you and your mum go off, have a great day, go do some shopping, et cetera. And I remember being out the front of the shop and I see this rainbow necklace and it had little clouds on either end and it was just right up my alley and I kind of like held it up and he's like take the necklace like it's all yours, you have it like, don't worry about it, go have a good day. And off we went and we never actually got to even watch the shop, did you?
Speaker 2:no, no, and like there were some days I would go and sit and watch the shop and he would, of course, come out, because I'd be sitting out in like the courtyard area watching, and he'd come out and distract me, go and take me to get a coffee, take me to get lunch, what have you? So there was never really any full days where I sat there and watched the, the shop, the movement of the clients coming in and out, like I said, any, any time that we did try to do that, he kind of distracted us like like he did with that necklace.
Speaker 2:But then, as things started to move forward, it was really interesting. One day it was a couple of days later after we tried to watch the shop, you got the necklace, he was out the back in the office and I hear him yelling like screaming at someone down the phone. And so I go down to the back and I say, you know, is everything all right? And he is going off his tree and, as it turns out, one of the contractors refused, or the consignment suppliers refused, to sign over the debt to me, and so Mr W was really upset about that and I was trying to calm him down because I was desperate to take over this shop. You know, I had full belief in him. So I'm saying to him don't worry about it, we'll work through this, we can work it out, it's no stress. The next day he takes us back to the supplier, has a big chat to them and you know we smooth it all over and things again start moving forward.
Speaker 2:My husband and I agree that the business, the new business, should be put in my name completely, because yeah, because he already runs his own subcontracting business and for tax purposes it's better that we spread the income over to people so that we're not paying as high a tax. So I go ahead and arrange all of this. I've taken on the debt of all the consignment. We've then had to decide the final price of the shop. So remember, we talked about goodwill. Well, essentially there isn't any because there's no clients, because, remember, the shop is not making any money. But he comes up with a figure anyway. We then also have to value the stock in the shop, and when you purchase a shop, you will purchase what's called stock at value. Now, the way you ordinarily determine the price of this is that you would do a stock take, you look at the cost of the item and that's the price that you would pay. You pay the cost of what it's cost him to purchase the item.
Speaker 1:Not necessarily like what the customer pays.
Speaker 2:No, exactly right. So you just you pay the stock. It's called stock at value. Okay, so he does the stock take and there's a whole lot of stock like it comes up to a ridiculous amount. And when I say ridiculous like and I remember it being around $200,000. And the more we spoke to people they were saying that's impossible, you can't have that much stock in a $2 shop.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and we're like, oh, okay, okay. So Mr W says, all right, well, how about we do this? We, just, because there's so much variety, we just put a blanket price on all the items and we divide it in half 50%, okay. So we go. Okay, no worries. So that obviously brings the cost of the stock down to $100,000. So, no goodwill, just the $100, dollars plus consignment. You know those, those debts still are looming anyway. I then take over the shop. I've put all that debt in my name and mr w goes to fiji because, remember, he's, he's building his, uh, hotel motel holiday inn that we're all going to apparently live in?
Speaker 2:yes, yes, so he's gone over there and, honestly, within days there was red flag after red flag after red flag. Things really started to fall apart. So the first thing that I started to notice remember we talked about the register rolls. So for some reason, surprisingly, my sales at the end of the day were around about a thousand dollars a day less than what he had produced to me on his register rolls. Yeah, okay, so you know, over a seven day period, because the shop's open seven days, I'm between seven and ten thousand dollars a week short. So that's the first thing, you beauty. Then we start having customers come in and say look, we've always loved this shop, but why have the prices become so huge since you took over? And this wasn't just one customer, this was several customers so did you ever like?
Speaker 1:stop any of them be like? Can you maybe explain what you mean absolutely?
Speaker 2:absolutely we did, because it was just too frequent, there were too many people saying the same thing. So this lady had come in. She was really lovely, she would come in each day just for a chat. And she said oh look, you had knife and forks. We sold them separately. They were $3.95 a piece, but they're now $6.95. And I'm like, oh well, okay, but I believed that they'd always been $6.95 a piece. And then she pointed out a little doll house that she'd bought for her granddaughter.
Speaker 2:Now she said originally you know, a couple of weeks ago, before I took over the shop that this little doll house was $14.95. My price now was $29.95. That obviously rang alarm bells, waving another red flag. And I went into one of the suppliers and I'd said to him I've had some complaints, can you tell me how much this doll house is? And the sale price to Mr W was $7.95. So he's then, on, sold it in his shop for $14.95. But then when he sold the shop to me, he's put the price up to $29.95. What was even worse was that that particular supplier pulled me aside into his office and he said look, I really have to tell you. I'm so sorry that I didn't tell you beforehand but due to privacy, because he was our current client, I couldn't say anything to you. And I'm you know, I'm thinking well, what do you?
Speaker 2:mean yeah, and he says, unfortunately, this is what Mr W does. He buys a lot of stock. When I say buys, I'm putting it in inverted commas. He gets a lot of stock on consignment. He builds up a shop and then he sells the shop, pretends it's making a profit and off he goes. So he kind of has like this ponzi scheme going, you know where you borrow money from one person to move on to the next person, to move on to the next person and the next person.
Speaker 1:My god, that's so horrible like, and also just in the scheme of the privacy laws, like that supplier could have literally stopped and pulled you aside just, you know, a few weeks earlier.
Speaker 2:Absolutely wild yep, and it could have stopped an incredible amount of heartache and, uh, you know, a whole family was ripped apart and, yeah, it could have stopped a lot from happening. So that was yeah, that was a really devastating time.
Speaker 1:Can I just ask like, after that moment with that supplier, were you now like, oh my God, this cannot be happening to me?
Speaker 2:Yes, most definitely. And you know, I'd got on the phone to my husband straight away and I said you are not going to believe this. It started to match up with the other things that we were discovering. So not only the register tapes weren't matching up, the suppliers were now telling us you know, this guy's a shark, this is what he does for a living and we have customer complaints.
Speaker 2:Then we have a lady. She was a really lovely lady. We had kind of met her in the last month before mr w moved to fiji. We were introduced to her as his new girlfriend and unfortunately, like she went to fiji with him but then returned very abruptly Don't know what happened she came into the shop to explain to us that she had been having an affair with him. She had a son, but anyway she had come back to tell us that essentially she'd got quite a large payout from her marriage and Mr W talked her into getting the money from her and she didn't see any of the money anymore. The relationship broke down and she had essentially lost that money. Holy moly, yeah, this was in a very, very short period of time. Then we start doing more investigating, and in the back office there was all these boxes, boxes and boxes and boxes, lots of stock. And we find this box of register rolls. So remember the register rolls that he was showing me.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you were saying that. You know, in comparison you're losing out on, you know know, $1,000 to Mm-hmm.
Speaker 2:Mm-hmm. So we're losing $1,000 a day compared to what he had told us. When I went through those register rolls now I sat there. If you can imagine, this was like a one meter tall box by one meter.
Speaker 2:Oh wow, Opened it up full of register rolls, all of the register rolls that he showed me, with the dates when we were looking at purchasing the shop. I went through every transaction. I bet you would have every single transaction. And it was interesting around lunchtime each day, probably, when I went to go and get lunch, or in the afternoon about half past three, when I would go to pick you children up from school, there would be a very large transaction, one transaction of around anywhere between one thousand dollars, twelve hundred dollars or fifteen hundred dollars. So he was essentially just ringing up a large transaction so that at the end of the day when I came in to have a look at the register roll, of course it all tallied up, didn't it?
Speaker 1:so when you're looking at these register rolls and you're seeing that total amount, did you do you not get the opportunity to see what was before it, being able to see like, oh, there's one lump sum a day, absolutely absolutely.
Speaker 2:If I had have not trusted this person, I could have absolutely 100% gone through that entire register role. So, even though we think we're doing our due diligence, we've got the wool pulled over our eyes because we're too trusting, you know. So, yes, and that was, that was a mistake on my behalf, absolutely. We've also got that proof. So I decide, I decide to get legal advice because I've signed a contract. I've given him, you know, a large deposit from the sale of the house.
Speaker 2:I've signed a contract with all these suppliers and I've signed a contract with him to say I will continue to make $1,200 a week payments to him, to his Fijian account, until the debt is paid off. And if I don't, he's got that caveat on one of our houses. So and everything, all of that is in my name. So I decide, now that clearly we've been ripped off and I'm not going to pay this shark any more money, I go and seek this legal advice and we decide to send him a letter because, honestly, he's moved to Fiji. We hear nothing, we hear absolutely nothing from this man. So we send him a letter to say you know, what we feel like.
Speaker 2:We've paid enough for this dud shop. We've covered the cost of the goods the at value, the real stock at value and so we just say we're not going to pay you any more money.
Speaker 2:Well, of course we get a phone call we get a phone call and it wasn't a pleasant one, put it that way. Um, he was not impressed. He states that he's coming back to melbourne, australia, to a uh, work things out, but I won't say it was in such a nice manner. Okay, basically, coming to get you, pretty much, I'm coming to get you from there. Um, we then have this guy turns up into the shop one day I don't know him, don't know him from a bar of soap, and he starts telling me how mr w did exactly the same thing to him, sold him a dud shop yeah, how did he find you, though, like just just randomly walking by?
Speaker 2:yeah, do you know, I I don't. I don't remember whether we were ever introduced to him as you know, one of the other shop owners or, but his face was familiar. Okay, so you know, it could have been just in passing, it could have been with a supplier, but essentially he was a little familiar. But he starts to tell me his story, and his story is identical to my story. So I asked this guy, you know, have you had any luck getting any money back from him? And unfortunately he'd taken mr w to court. He'd won the judgment, right.
Speaker 2:So this is great, he's won the judgment. But mr w says he's broke and can't afford to repay him. He offers mr w, offers the court, you know a measly 200 a week, right, it's probably gonna have to pay until he's 927 years old to pay this poor guy back anyway. Apparently he made the first three or four payments and then cried poor again. Now in australia, if you have a judgment against you and you can no longer pay it I mean this is back then you could go back to court and ask for a lesser repayment plan. So apparently this is all he did oh, each time just like oh yeah, each time.
Speaker 2:So then, through freedom of information. You know we did have the internet back then, believe it, or? Not, I'm not that old I did find that he had many judgments against him, mr w. He owed a lot of people, a lot of money. So unfortunately, I was just in a queue of people that, yeah, take a number babes. Yeah, that I. I was ripped off by him. You know, get in line with everybody else oh, that is rough.
Speaker 2:So yeah, one year goes by. We do try to make the shop work, unfortunately, you know, seven days a week to make essentially no money, because I still had to pay all the suppliers, um, because I still had contracts with them yeah, so it wasn't just with mr w.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. So I well, we, we tried to make the shop work and, um, unfortunately it just just wasn't going to happen for us. So one year goes by and we hear along the grapevine, because by now there's a little network of haters of mr w you got a little crew going Like Melrose. Place? No, you don't know. No, no, Not a good. What do you call it when you? It's not alliteration, what is it?
Speaker 1:I don't know, I'm sorry, my brain's not working. I was just thinking of like the standard group chat. You've got a group chat going of all of these people Like a WhatsApp group. Okay, you've got a group chat going of all of these people like a whatsapp group. Okay, we've got a whatsapp group going a facebook group messenger.
Speaker 2:Um of mr w haters and we here on the grapevine. Gee, that took us a while to get back there. Sorry, we're here on the grapevine. He is back in melbourne back in town shut the front. So we find out where he's working. And would you believe, he's got a in the car park. We see this beaten up old BMW 7 Series Remember how he used to rent one. He's got this old beaten up one in the car park.
Speaker 1:So was it you and the whole crew that went down there?
Speaker 2:No, it was just me and my husband, woohoo Vigilantes, batman and Robin style. So we get there and I am screaming at him. He is sitting behind a desk and I'm yelling you fucking took all our money. You've taken everything from us, us, you're nothing but scum. You're a fucking fraud.
Speaker 2:Like I am, I'm, I'm spitballing at him I'm that mad and he's just sitting behind the desk going oh no, it was a fair deal. It was a fair deal and, honestly, I have never I was crying and screaming at the same time because I've never actually hated a person this much yeah, I could imagine what was.
Speaker 1:Where was he working? Were there other people around like just watching you yell at him?
Speaker 2:yeah, there was his boss, who we somehow knew him as well, just around the circles, around the traps. That was one of his friends. So there was him there. And then there was the late, the female receptionist, and she was looking at the other guy, saying should I call the police? Should I call the police? And and Mr W saying no, no, no, no's, fine, it'll all be worked out.
Speaker 2:But here I am screaming, as I said, you know, fire coming out of my mouth, and that was it. Nothing else happened, and all I wanted to do I expected my husband to pull him across the desk, like literally rip him by the throat, grab him by the throat, pull him across the desk. Like literally rip him by the throat, grab him by the throat, pull him across the desk and like literally pummel him. That's what I really wanted, because we felt like he took so much from us, not even financially, he. He took everything emotionally, he took trust, he stole from my children, like literally.
Speaker 2:That's that I felt, you know, because we now had no money. We were living in one of our rentals and when I say one of, we did lose another house, but that's in another episode but I felt like we literally had nothing left and my husband just stood there and did nothing. So we walked out of there pretty depleted and I remember, just getting in the car driving to our house the house that he had a caveat on, just staring out the window, not even knowing where my life was headed there.
Speaker 1:And then what a somber moment, honestly it was so do you?
Speaker 2:you remember that? The house that we moved into, oh?
Speaker 1:yeah, I remember that little unit around the corner. I remember mr w coming along to the auction of that house, because obviously, as he said, he had a caveat on it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I just remember being in the car. You told me to get in the car. I hopped in the car. I can't remember if my siblings were there or not, but I just remember being, you know, a young girl, looking out the window and watching my mom just point and scream and yell and basically just rip this guy a new one, in front of all these people that were thinking that they're just going to a nice little auction in the suburbs that day.
Speaker 2:Yeah, because what had actually happened. Um, I know we sort of fast forward a little bit there, but from that day after, you know, ripping him in the office, we were living in that home where he had a caveat and unfortunately we lost that house due to not being able to pay for it. So the bank took it away from us and it had to go to auction and because he was on the caveat, he was entitled to go to that house and watch the auction. Of course I didn't want that to happen, so I went to the property and the real estate agent and the bank and the police actually stopped me from going in the house. And then that was it.
Speaker 2:I just let it rip. I screamed at everybody wanting to buy the house, telling them not to because there was a caveat on there and that this man had ripped us off. And yeah, if you thought me in the office screaming at him was bad, this was, you know, 10 times worse. And the good thing, if anything came out of you know my hysteria, was that the house got passed in and even though he had a caveat on there, for whatever amount, he ended up. Well, the bank sold the property for almost what we owed, and he only ended up with ten thousand dollars out of that but everything in between yes from you ripping him a new one at the office to ripping him a new one out front of the house.
Speaker 1:There's a lot that went on. There's so much that happened in between there, so that is part two.
Speaker 2:That's for the next episode, and if you thought that that was a roller coaster, just honestly hang on to your heart, because what happened in that 12 months is going to blow your socks off. So we'll see you in the next episode. Thanks, guys. Thanks for listening to this episode of Raising Rich. If any of today's episode has resonated with you, we'd love for you to share it with another mama. It really helps us to connect with the right women.
Speaker 1:And if you would like to share your story, you can connect with us on Facebook, instagram or TikTok Just search for richrippleeffect.
Speaker 2:Is it time for a wine? Yet, oh, mum, oh what.