My name's Davie, and this is my story of how I went from $500 to 500 million. I was a very insecure kid. I was slightly pudgy.
And now I'm on the Australian financial rich list under Margot Robbie. I have bought my dream home and bought my girlfriend her dream car. I don't actually like telling these stories.
Sometimes I feel like they come off very, very arrogant, especially to people who don't know me, and I'm slightly introverted. But it is a really, really good story for young entrepreneurs to hear, and there are lots of lessons. So here it is: this is my story from $500 to 500 million in just five years.
I was born in a not huge city in Australia; it's called Adelaide. I was a very insecure kid. I was the kid who went to the beach and just wouldn't take my shirt off.
I would have to swim in my shirt. I had a very supportive family when I was young. They supported me both emotionally, but they also worked incredibly hard to support me financially.
After school, I would go and watch them sell furniture. They had a small furniture business in Adelaide, and I would just get to watch them constantly working really, really hard to put me through school. School was difficult for me for a very long time.
I was told that I was stupid at a very young age, especially through primary school, and I believed it. It was probably exacerbating my insecurities, and I just never tried. I was constantly arguing with teachers and constantly getting detentions.
Everything just felt like it was going downhill. I had a parent-teacher interview; I think it was in grade 10. All of my five teachers just said that I was failing and that I was incredibly difficult to teach.
After that, my parents pretty much had enough. They gave me an ultimatum: either start working hard, or they were going to find another school or even just stop supporting me overall. I felt a deep sense of shame at that point.
I knew that there was something within me. I knew that I wasn't stupid, and I had a decent amount of intelligence—enough to make a good life for myself. But it wasn't until I was scrolling through YouTube that I started to change.
I used to watch mind-numbing viral videos, like "Charlie bit me," and I came across all of the old Nike commercials. These were so exhilarating in every single way. You would watch them and could just feel like you could run through a wall.
I watched the Jordan commercial where he talks about how many game-winning shots he has taken and how many he has lost. After that moment, I started to realize that all greatness was just a willingness to work hard and fail. So I knew I needed a plan.
I needed to get better grades, get a job, and go to university to make money. Well, I thought university was the right path at that time. This was the path that I could feel better about myself and maybe achieve greatness, which I didn't actually really know what it was then, but I knew I wanted to do something awesome.
My first job was moving things around in a warehouse, and I was getting minimum wage, which I think was about $16 an hour even back then. Then I used that money to go to the gym. I started to get absolutely obsessed with the gym, which made me feel so much better and was kind of the first lesson that small bits of compounded effort can actually improve over time and just help your mental and physical health.
Then I got a tutor to help me with the subjects that I was struggling with. I enrolled in difficult subjects like math, physics, and chemistry. I knew it was working when, one year after I decided to change, I had a parent-teacher interview.
I only had one teacher who was the same as previously. He said, "In my career, I've never seen a child turn their life around as much as David has this year," which really cemented that I was on the right track. I ended up finishing school with pretty good grades and getting into mining engineering.
I just chose mining engineering because I thought it sounded cool, and you could go straight into a six-figure job, which also sounded cool. On my first day of mining engineering, I walked into this giant amphitheater at Adelaide University, and I couldn't even see the lecturer; he was so far away. He was on a big screen, and he said, “You are all used to being the smartest in your class.
Look to the left, look to the right. Only one of you is going to pass this class. ” And it turns out I was not one of those people.
I hated university. I didn't like the subject. I was only doing it because I was told that I could get six figures out of it, and it sounded cool.
And because there was no structured or forced way of turning up, I, you know, didn't rock up at all and ended up failing. I'd say one of the main reasons why I failed university was that I was just so passionate about business, and I was constantly launching new things. I was trying to sell singlets and hats, and I actually started making a fair bit of money on Instagram.
I started an Instagram where I would go into supplement stores, take photos of the supplements, and write reviews on what was good about them. Then I was able to sell advertising on those Instagrams to fitness tea brands and that kind of stuff. It started off small—making $5 here, $10 there.
I'd be out on a night out during, you know, my young party stage, and I couldn't afford drinks. But then I would sell a shout-out, and we would all cheer because I'd be able to actually buy the drinks. It started to grow really quickly.
I created lots of different verticals of accounts. I created them in workouts and nutrition. I was doing cooking recipes and putting those up.
It probably got to a point. . .
Where I was making the six figures that I wanted from mining engineering just from Instagram, which felt huge compared to, you know, having minimum wage just previously. Then I decided to do personal training because I thought, you know, I could get more into the fitness industry and learn more about it. During the day, I would have six burner phones on the bench.
People thought I was a drug dealer; I think Dad thought I was a drug dealer for a very long time because they would all have different accounts on them. I'd sell shoutouts during the day, train my clients in the morning and the night, working 16-hour days. And I remember, yeah, checking my bank account.
I had about $100,000. Then it all kind of probably went to my head, and things went very, very downhill. I decided to take a lot of the money that I made from personal training to try to build a huge food franchise.
I was really into Vietnamese rolls at that stage and thought that there could be a big franchise of that, which there now is. It's called Roll'd in Australia. So I stopped personal training, took a lot of the money, and set up a shop in my local area where there wasn't really a shop before.
At 5:00 a. m. , I would wake up and go get bread rolls.
Then I would cook pork in the morning, and I would just basically work nonstop. I'd still do my Instagram work during the day, wash dishes at 5:00 p. m.
, head home, and just reset. I wasn't seeing my friends at all. Food businesses are actually really, really difficult to make work.
I was losing money. Luckily, I still had my Instagram business; it kind of evolved. I was flipping Instagram accounts, buying them and then selling them to other people for a bit of a higher price.
I would also just grow them a little bit in the meantime, and that was working really well until I ended up buying an Instagram from someone. It was probably my biggest buy ever. It cost $40,000.
I bought the Instagram, got all the access to it; everything was all sweet. Then it turns out that it was actually hacked. The original owner was like, "This is hacked.
" Instagram gave the account back to the original owner. The scammer already had my $40,000, and I was just left with nothing. That was almost all of my money at the time, so I couldn't buy any more Instagrams to flip them.
My Vietnamese roll shop business was pretty much going down the drain, and I got into a very, very dark place. I remember completely being disoriented in the bathroom, mentally just not even there with a lot of bad thoughts. And it was a really good moment.
For my family, it completely lifted me up out of that. I was constantly drinking at that time as well, so my family taught me a really good lesson. I remember Dad put a rock in my shoe and made me walk down the driveway with the rock in the shoe, and it was poking me and hurting me.
Then he took the rock out of the shoe, put it on again, and said, "Walk down the track. " Obviously, it stopped hurting. And he said, "These mistakes, if you carry them with you, they're just going to hurt you.
Just learn from them and move on. " So I knew I needed a new plan. I packed up, basically gave the shop away, and was going to move to Melbourne, surround myself with great people, learn as much as I can about e-commerce, and launch a brand.
Hopefully, this brand would make me a millionaire and make me financially free. I was working at 5TH WATCHES doing Instagram management and influencer management, also learning photography, videography, Facebook Ads, and Google Ads. It was an amazing time.
I learned so much. I never gave up on launching my own business. At that time, I remember I launched a seasoning business while I was over there.
I ordered six kilograms of parsley and delivered it to my house back in Adelaide. I remember getting a text from Dad when I was flying back, and he said, "Why are all of these herbs on my doorstep? " I think that mixed with the six burner phones made him definitely think I was a drug dealer for a very, very long time because none of those businesses ended up working and I was constantly flying back from Adelaide to Melbourne because I missed my friends.
My girlfriend ended up spending all of my savings that I'd made. I remember checking my bank account; I was back at $0. It felt like I was back at square one.
I had $0 and was back living with my parents. But my mind and the knowledge that I had were just invaluable. All I needed now was a product that was just going to change my life.
I was looking for products everywhere, testing everything. Then I came across an article on Facebook about how weighted blankets can help people with sensory disorders or insomnia. Naturally, I wanted to test it out, got every single blanket in the house, piled them up on the couch.
While that didn't really feel that good because it was maybe 400 degrees under the blankets, I kept looking into it. There were so many glowing reviews on forums, and there weren't that many products out there, especially in Australia, that were selling the product. So I decided to commit to it.
I decided this was going to be the product. It was helping people; it could really make a difference, and I definitely thought it was going to work. So I ended up ordering some stock from China.
I got one sample initially, got my girlfriend and my neighbor—she was about 11 at the time—and I did a photo shoot in the house. I had so many skills from all of those past failures that I could launch the store from scratch. I could launch the Facebook Ads, launch the Google Ads; I could do everything from scratch.
So I really. . .
I didn't need any money to get it started. I had about $500 at that stage that I saved up from doing weddings and other videography shoots. To get the cash for the business, I decided to sell on pre-sell, which is where you sell stock that isn't actually in the country yet.
You are making a promise that you're gonna ship it on this date. So, I would take the order, buy the stock, and bring it in. Because I had no idea what I was doing, they were sending me paperwork to sign.
I had no idea I'd actually get caught in a customs border hold. But the Australian Federal Police scan the product, especially if it's the first time that you're bringing in stock. I remember it was just absolutely devastating.
The stock was about five weeks delayed, and I had about 400 customers. My first 400 customers for my big business were waiting five weeks to get their stock. I almost thought I was gonna throw away this huge opportunity.
I ended up getting the email that they cleared it finally after just constant emails between border security, and it was just the most ecstatic feeling. I was just off from there. I did about $200 in the first day, $1,000 in the first week, and $10,000 in the second month.
I ended up scaling to doing $1. 5 million profit in its first year. From there, I started spending the money as you do.
I bought my Range Rover, which was always a goal for me as a kid. I remember getting in and driving it out of the yard, with people thinking that I was pretty young to be buying it. I just couldn't stop smiling with it.
I was able to buy my girlfriend her car and bought my house that I love. I'm currently looking for a beach house. I get to travel the world because we've just got so many American Express points.
After launching Calming Blankets, I launched the Oodie, which took me from earning millions to tens of millions. We have millions of happy customers, and all of the team, the 60 people that work there, love the brand. We are inclusive, fun, and happy.
We make people feel very comfortable in their own home. It's a brand that I'm incredibly proud of. When I look back at myself in school, watching those Nike commercials and how amazing that brand made people feel, I couldn't have imagined that I'd create something like Oodie that has a very similar effect on certain types of people.
There were always times that I doubted myself throughout the journey, but the main thing is to just never give up. Constantly keep learning, and just really, at least, try to enjoy the process as well. Enjoy the process of learning.
If I can give one piece of advice as well through this video, it's that you're not too stupid. You are in a position to make a change in the world, and just, yeah, enjoy the process. Don't forget to like and subscribe.
Thanks.
