"Crowded".
"Drinks flowing".
"Little bit of mischief".
These sound like the terms you might see in a review of one of John Elsley's nine venues. Maybe the glitzy inner-city cocktail bar Bartholemew's or the buzzing Hamilton brewery Good Folk, or the breakfast-until-late Maitland institution, The Whistler.
Those words, however, come up when John is asked about his childhood, spent in the suburbs of Newcastle.
"At one stage there were 11 of us living in a three-bedroom house on Turton Road, which was chaos 24/7," he says.
"Mum was a single mum, and she had a boyfriend move in. There were four of us in one room, two of us sharing another, people in the garage.
"It was pretty fun, but we never had anything ever. We grew up super poor - Mum could barely afford bread. Everything was Homebrand."
He speaks with a matter-of-factness, maybe even a splash of pride; these humble beginnings spurred his first forays into work as a teenager, buoyed by the real estate books he'd read at home, and dreaming of a better life.
"I did a year 10 work experience at Elders Real Estate in Elders Street, Lambton," he says.
"Those guys seemed like they had heaps of money, so I thought, 'yeah, I'll do that'... I did a couple of real estate courses. It just seemed like the path out of that situation."
Despite his initial enthusiasm, it didn't stick.
"I hated it. You're just always selling to everyone all the time," he says.
After leaving school, John found himself in the wilderness of low-level finance jobs, trying to find the right fit in an industry that churns through grind-obsessed youngsters chasing big pay cheques.
At 18 he managed to earn enough money to go halves in a house with his mum in Islington, but it wasn't feeding the entrepreneurial spirit inside of him.
Then, while working as a broker and investment consultant in his 20s, a chance meeting at a buck's party lured him into hospitality.
THE FIRST HOTEL
He and his mum took out the equity in the house and pooled their money with John's brother Phil, and the trio became half owners of The Mark Hotel in Lambton.
Within hours of signing the lease, the partnership between the Elsleys and their co-owner began to disintegrate, and things didn't improve.
John was stuck with the job captaining a leaky ship, working for little to no money while figuring how to run a pub - about as steep of a learning curve as one can attempt to climb.
Though, like real estate, he saw potential for them to make money in this industry, so they brought in John's then-fiance's father, Andrea Rufo, for their first true venture of their own, opening craft beer bar, the Blind Monk, on Beaumont Street in Hamilton.
The stress of helming the failing Mark Hotel, combined with the pressures of opening a new venue began to manifest itself physically in Elsley, and within a month of pouring the first beer at The Monk he'd dropped from 86 kilograms to 60kg.
He was diagnosed with Crohn's disease, an inflammatory bowel disease that causes chronic inflammation of the gastrointestinal tract.
"I was in hospital for three weeks, and it took about three months until I could walk again, but not well. I just had no muscles in my legs," he says. "Since then I've been prescribed some heavy drugs."
Having released their ownership of The Mark, and the Monk in Phil's safe hands, John took a job at ANZ while his health mended.
He and his wife Lani decided they needed a holiday, or as close as someone with a mind like John's can get to a holiday - there's always something cooking.
"When we got married, with Lani's Italian family we obviously had a huge wedding. After it we had enough money to either do six weeks in Europe or live in a van for six months. So we chose to drive around Australia for half a year."
TRIVIA HEAD
It also provided the perfect opportunity to pitch Trivia Head.
"When I was at The Mark, we were using some trivia company and they were charging like 300 bucks a week, but it was just too expensive," John says.
"Then we were hosting it ourselves, but writing the questions was such a big job every week.
"There were companies out there that were making question packages, but even they costed around $100 per week, and they'd send it by mail along with a CD. None of them had got up to speed with the fact that you could just email it all out.
"It just sat in my brain that whole time thinking, this could be a good idea. I probably read a couple of the internet millionaire's books. And I was like, yeah, I'll do it."
He went into hundreds of pubs around the country while travelling in the van, trying to sell his trivia package - which undercut the going market rate considerably - and was repeatedly knocked back or redirected to manager's emails. Dead-ends.
"Then I set up a little website for 300 bucks and did one Google ad. I thought I'll throw a thousand dollars at this thing and see if I can get it to work," he says.
He can still recall the moment about a decade ago that he got his first customer.
"I was in the van, and I got a phone call saying, 'I've just bought a trivia pack and I can't download it. I didn't get any email.'
"I'm like, 'oh shit. I'll have it to you in a minute, mate.'
"I pulled over and wrote it on the spot. It's the worst package I've written. I've still got it, it's hilarious. I sent it to them and they're still a customer today."
It turned out to be a pretty productive honeymoon. Elsley returned home to Newcastle with around 25 customers and now has around 100 all over the country.
In terms of effort-to-income ratio, it's by far his most lucrative enterprise, one of those ideas that has you asking, "why didn't I think of that?" or, if you did think of it, "why didn't I roll the dice on that one?"
The Monk was humming along nicely at this stage, something that Elsley takes little credit for.
"It was pretty tough times at the beginning, but it got us on the right track of making money," he says. "We got lucky, we got a good team. Phil and [manager] Ryan Duck were instrumental in making that happen."
Three months after landing back in Newcastle John quit his job at the ANZ bank and the group signed the lease in The Whistler in Maitland. And Elsley began etching his business' DNA.
"I worked there every day for six years, so I know that place better than anywhere else," he says. "At the other venues, I'm a background character. I can come to, say, Bartholemew's and no one even knows who I am. But The Whistler is my baby, that I brought from nothing all the way through."
PLAYBOOK FOR SUCCESS
The success of the Whistler marked a turning point and set up a playbook for the next eight years. John, Phil, and Andrea would invest everything they had into buying the next venue, and work non-stop to turn it around, all the while keeping a watchful eye on the market for the next prospect.
Now, their portfolio, includes part or full ownership in The Sherwood Hotel in Lismore, The Whistler in Maitland, The Family in Maitland, The Blind Monk on Beaumont Street in Hamilton, Bartholomews on King Street in Newcastle, The Grand Hotel in Newcastle, The Lambton Park Hotel, and their most recent project, Club Kotara as well as Good Folk Brewing. Calling it an empire might be a stretch, but they're definitely on their way.
It hasn't been all beers and big bucks though. Elsley and his fellow investors have copped severe flooding in Lismore, racked up hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal bills over the name of one of their bars, and endured COVID.
But, according to John, sticking to two key principles when breaking ground on a venue, sets them on the right track to building a profitable business.
"One is obviously the right team, especially now," he says. "We can't be the ones on the ground. So the right people is number one, because most people go to a venue for good staff and good service.
"Number two is to tailor the business to what the building and the area needs rather than what we want. So not forcing our idea into a space that doesn't work."
Now the father of three girls, John has cut his working week down to "five-and-a-half 11-hour days," and even has started to put his phone on silent some evenings.
But he still runs on the same fuel that he did as a teenager.
No, it's not the Homebrand devon sandwiches.
Rather, the burning desire to build the best possible life for his family.
