Joining our program on this episode to share his remarkable tale of self-made entrepreneurialism & success is Rory Vassallo - Principal of private family investment office Vassallo Corporation & Founder of Great Beginnings Childcare, a business he seeded with one centre in 2004 before growing to incorporate twenty-two centres prior to selling to ASX-listed G8 Education in 2014 in a $65m transaction.
Born and raised in Kwinana, a blue-collar suburb in Perth’s South, Rory attended Kwinana Senior High School until aged fifteen wherein he determined his interests were more aligned to gaining employment in the workforce - following in his family’s footsteps of being involved in the trades, Rory began working as an apprentice welder, before later moving into the retail and automotive sectors.
His ambitious nature coupled with a strong work-ethic saw Rory work closely as an administration manager with automotive dealer and early mentor Bruce Shanahan, building the means to acquire his first property at aged eighteen.
Two years later, a chance encounter with the owner of a childcare centre set in motion a chain of events wherein Rory borrowed against his house to finance the acquisition of his first childcare centre in Applecross aged just twenty, later remarking ‘I walked into a childcare centre to look at it and walked out the owner’.
From that first centre in 2004, he then acquired his second centre three months later in Kwinana, followed by a third six months later - so beginning his remarkable journey and evolution of acquiring both childcare centre assets and businesses, building and establishing new centres and executing a number of innovations that were revolutionary for the time, best encapsulated in his approach - ‘I learnt a lot because I always bought very average assets where someone had already made the mistakes’.
Over the course of the following decade, Rory rapidly grew the business, continuing to gain exposure to different demographics in different markets across Perth, ultimately relying on his unique philosophy to staff, customers & the business bottom line - ‘Happy staff means happy children, happy children means happy parents, happy parents means happy pocket’.
By 2014 and still only in his tenth year of business, Rory had developed or owned thirty-seven centres & was operating twenty-nine centres before being approached by ASX-listed childcare giant G8 Education - a deal which culminated in the sale of twenty-two centres across Perth in addition to an advisory position across the Group.
Following completion of the sale, Rory has pursued a number of commercial and charitable interests, including building a portfolio of private property developments, Former Principal & Owner of R Marine Perth, Owner & Chairman of Perth Heat Baseball Club & Former Director of South Fremantle Football Club amongst a number of other roles.
In his first exclusive profile, Rory shares his extraordinary journey, the importance he places on innovation & the creation of high-performance team cultures and the fundamentals required to overcome challenges in business.
Founder & Host - Rob Langton
Produced exclusively by Ready Media Group.
