“A Setback Can Change the Direction of Your Life, Without Deciding Where You Finish”: David Caruso’s Story

It is easy to know the broad outline of your dad’s life without knowing much about the decisions behind it. In the second article in our four-part series inspired by Your Story, Dad, a guided keepsake journal published by Penguin, David Caruso looks back at the setbacks, risks and advice that changed the direction of his life.

David, 56, grew up in Blacktown in Sydney’s west and now lives in Thailand.

His mother raised the family alone and money was always tight. At 16, David was kicked out of home and moved in with his paternal grandparents in Riverstone.

His Italian grandparents were loving but strict, and living with them gave him the work ethic that would later drive his business career.

“A theme in my life is that I’ve always come out of adversity better than I went into it,” he said.

David was still living with his grandparents when he started his first business at 21. One public holiday, he decided to sleep in rather than open the shop, only for his grandfather to appear at his bedroom door and demand to know why he was still in bed.

David explained that it was a public holiday and the shop did not need to open. His grandfather’s response was blunt: forget the public holiday and go to work.
“So I got up and went to work,” David recalled.

After completing Year 12, David thought he would become an accountant. The only university that accepted him was in Wollongong, which was too far away while he was contracted to Polonia and playing semi-professional soccer in the State League.

Instead, he secured a cadetship with Cumberland Newspapers, part of News Corp’s local newspaper division, before moving into advertising sales.

Spending his days meeting small business owners across Sydney gave David an education he could not have received in a lecture theatre.

“I watched how they worked long before I ever tried it myself,” he said. “It was good grounding in how small business actually works and put together with my grandparents’ work ethic, it shaped me early.”

Two businessmen were particularly influential during David’s formative years. One was John Trilin, better known as John L, a well-known car salesman during the 1980s. The other was his second cousin, Tony Falcone, whose straightforward approach to business inspired him.

Later, after joining the Hire Association, David found mentors among other hire company owners, although he said he eventually “outgrew them one by one” as his own company expanded.

In 1991, David left his job to establish a party and equipment hire company in Blacktown. He was in his early twenties and had no safety net, but he had spent years watching other people build businesses.

“I had the arrogance to think that if the people I was selling advertising to could run a business and make it work, I could too,” he said.

The company grew into a multimillion-dollar business, which David exited in 2010 at the age of 40. He later spent eight years speaking to business audiences throughout Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom.

His success had not come without upheaval. David’s first marriage ended in 2002 after three years, leaving him with significant financial losses and a $500,000 tax debt.

“There was no clever way out of it,” he said.

David approached the Australian Taxation Office, negotiated a payment plan and began working his way through the debt. Interest continued to accumulate at 13 per cent a year while he paid it back.

“I paid off every cent,” he said.

The divorce also affected the way David approached his personal relationships. Being forced out of home at 16 had already taught him to keep some emotional distance, and he believes he carried that into adulthood.

“My grandparents were wonderful people, but they were old school and hard, and affection wasn’t something they showed,” he said. “I’ve carried a bit of that distance through my life, with friends and family alike.”

The end of his marriage reinforced David’s belief that adversity does not have to determine what follows it.

“The marriage ended early in 2002 and I met Renoo later the same year, so the worst year I’d had is also the year everything good started,” he said.

David and Renoo, who is Thai, have now been married for 20 years. In 2019, when David was 49, they started an ecommerce company from scratch. David said the business now sells more than 60 brands into 32 countries and is operated from Thailand.

The couple live in a family compound with Renoo’s parents, her two sisters and their husbands.

David has two adult daughters from his first marriage. Kayla runs a music education business and is getting married, while Tia recently completed a speech pathology degree. David is now trying to persuade Tia to establish her own practice.

He would also like both daughters to join him in Thailand and regularly encourages them to consider moving into the compound.

“Family units matter enormously here,” he said.

Growing up without much money and later giving too many years to his first business influenced David’s approach to fatherhood. Both experiences taught him what he did not want to pass on to his daughters.

The lessons he hopes they will carry are not only about working hard. One of John L’s observations took David years to fully understand.

“He told me once that he was no good at doing nothing,” David said. “I was young and I had no idea what he meant.”

David understood it at 40, after exiting his company and retiring. Within about 12 months, he was climbing the walls and looking for his next challenge.
“Turns out I’m no good at doing nothing either,” he said.

Tony Falcone gave him another piece of advice that stayed with him: a business is only the cashflow driver, and what matters is what you do with what it produces.

“That one took me longer to appreciate, and it’s the thing I most want my daughters to understand,” David said.

Looking back, David’s life did not follow the path he imagined when he left school. He did not become an accountant, retirement did not suit him and one of his most difficult years introduced him to the woman with whom he would eventually rebuild his life.

If his daughters take one lesson from his story, it may be the one David has had to learn more than once: a setback can change the direction of your life without deciding where you finish.

Your Story, Dad is published by Penguin in hardback. RRP $26.99.

PART ONE: ‘That’s what my mum and dad felt about me’: What I learned when I asked Dad about the boy he once was