In Africa, we’re building a nomadic health system. It has thousands of moving parts—delivering child surgeries across borders, across language barriers, and often across hope itself. That project—chaotic as it is—has confirmed we are all the same deep down.

• People want stuff, mainly to be happy and well and up with the Jones’s or the Baraka’s.
• To do so the majority of us need opportunity and we also need boundaries.
• Most people crave trust/their truth as part of that.
• In the end we all want a sense of purpose and many people just want a simple life with meaning.

Those lessons apply to real estate, too. And our ratings and advocacy aren’t about complexity. They’re about connection to the things that people really really want, around clarity. Truth. Trust.

This return to clarity over my Christmas trip reignited something I’d become a bit cloudy over whilst standing on homes – sincerity and my love of giving structured, meaningful advice, that can make a positive difference (….for the receiver).

The journey back to Ratings:

Fifteen years ago, James Home Ratings had hundreds of thousands of visitors to their sites…. it was viral.

Then life shifted for me: kids growing into a happy home was my priority and so ratings only became a part of what I did for my clients ….the overall business drifted without focus. Ratings themselves continued to work and still do today basically unchanged in nearly 20 years since its invention.

COVID hit just as I was getting my own time back again and I went back to school. A full-time, face-to-face Master’s at RMIT in blockchain, AI, and digital currencies – mainly for African children and myself, but amazingly also for real estate advocacy by default.

For what I came to see was this: the very same tools transforming child surgery across borders was now transforming Melbourne real estate. Huh?

• The biggest sale in Melbourne recently? Based on Crypto.
• Every contract signed today? Likely on a blockchain.
• And AI? Already endemic in our industry – read the ads on realestate.com.au.

AI and other technologies can all sound overwhelming. But it doesn’t have to be.

Yes, AI can be negative. But so can female emotion. So can male ego. So can your phone and socials and chocolate (ok not chocolate). All of them, in their extremes, can be destructive.

But when channelled well, they can also be life transformative. We are at another dawn of something incredibly good for the world.

That’s my take anyway!

Because I want to be part of a something that makes a difference. morechildsurgeries.com makes a difference. James buyer and seller advocacy makes a difference.

• I want to lead a team that improves lives—not just clients, but agents, buyers, sellers and our wider community.
• I want to fund more surgeries—for more kids. Because one operation changes a child  One changed child frees up a family to be more productive. Several families better off and the village transforms and then a nation becomes more productive, more self-sufficient, as has happened many times in the last century.
• I want to help my own kids find homes in a world that’s harder than the one I grew up in. Boomers helping their children isn’t weakness. It’s wisdom.

But mostly?

I want to stay vital. I don’t want to live off passive income or superannuation or others labours. That was never really my thing. I want to contribute, to be part of it.

In my earlier years I’ve learned the hard way that chasing asset bases can feel hollow. Not for everyone—but for me – yes.

I like the thick of it.

The people.

The puzzle.

The purpose.

Your life can be pretty bloody good when you let it be. See you on the hustings.