Auctioneer Haesley Cush has spent the best part of his life staring down the stereotype.

“I get that people see the shine – I’m standing out the front of a property like a spruiker, and you’ve got to do your thing, but you have to hold your integrity,” says Mr Cush, 46, nattily dressed in a plaid suit. “There are agents who match the stereotype – they’re in it for themselves, not their client. They don’t ask, ‘what’s the best thing to do here?’ – they want an easy buck.

“But like most industries, people who match the stereotype won’t survive, or they change brands all the time because they have to hide from their mistakes and run from the past.”

Mr Cush has been with Ray White since age 18, and on Thursday night the group of offices he owns with childhood friend Matt Lancashire scooped a big win at the company’s 2024 awards.

The Collective – comprising New Farm, Bulimba, Clayfield and Toowong – won Number 1 Multi-Business Network Internationally after clocking up annual sales of more than $1bn.

“Not bad for a couple of ratbags from Moorooka (in Brisbane’s south) – isn’t it nuts?” Mr Cush laughs.

“For Matt, my work husband, and myself, our biggest challenge is accepting that people give real estate agents a bad rap, so we do a lot to fight the stereotype.”

Just last Sunday, the pair rolled up to Holy Spirit School in New Farm where Mr Lancashire donated his commission for a future sale; it raised $90,000 at auction (for the third consecutive year).

Mr Cush also donated hours “training little kids to be auctioneers” and they raised $10,000 selling their art.

It might seem small fry but it was a big win for the school, and Mr Cush – arguably Queensland’s most sought-after auctioneer – is chuffed.

“It’s such a silver lining to what we do,” he says.

Like the Ray White story – which began in a tin shed in the small town of Crows Nest on the Darling Downs in 1902 – Mr Cush had humble beginnings. Raised in a middle-class neighbourhood with younger brother Charlie Cush – a success in his own right as CEO of Brisbane Festival – he reflects on a childhood in which he felt deeply loved but also devastated by the divorce of his parents when he was 12.

“It was one of the saddest things – which will not be enjoyable for them to read – it was really, really hard but it made Charles and I very close,” he says.

“The hardest part was it was completely out of your control, and everything you had inside your home that made it safe, like your mum and dad both being there, changed very quickly.

“And because people move in and out of love at different speeds, it affected them over the next period differently, and you watch that.”

But Mr Cush found an upside.

“I would hate my parents to think they’d done me wrong because, in fact, their breaking up was one of the greatest things that happened to me, as a parent and a husband, because you learn that’s not the path you want to go down. I’m really close to both of them.”

Every Monday at noon, he and mum Judith Cush go for a walk.

“It’s amazing, we get really good quality time,” he says. “We meet on Brunswick St and walk to New Farm Park and we get a meal; we worked together for six years and she still comes into our offices; she is a big personality and everyone loves her.”

On Friday morning, it’s coffee time with dad Denis Cush.

“My dad is a good guy, never had a drink in his life. He was the captain of Salisbury State High and his career as a mechanical engineer with Hastings Deering (a caterpillar equipment dealer) took us to New Guinea for two years. I think the world of him too.”

The couple’s split saw Judith Cush go into real estate, paving the way for her eldest son, although he had other ambitions when leaving St Laurence’s College in South Brisbane.

“I wanted to get into television,” explains Mr Cush over lunch at Fatcow on James St.

“I made it to the final round of auditions with Channel 7 to host a show called Saturday Disney.

“But then I got a letter saying they were going to stay with the current host and I thought, that’s a bugger, because I was planning on being the next Leonardo DiCaprio.”

Studying at the National Actors Conservatory by night, he needed a job, so hit up his mum.

“She owned Ray White Moorooka and in my first weeks I watched an auctioneer by the name of Phil Parker (then chief auctioneer for the Queensland group), and I realised my stage needed to be the properties, so I asked him to train me,” he says. “But in those days you had to be 21 to be a licensed auctioneer so the only auctions I could do were for charities, so I did them any time I could. I’d drive hours to do a school fete, and once you do them once, you fall in love with the charity and they call you the next year and say ‘hey, we’re on again’.”

Mr Cush has lost count of the unpaid auctions he’s done in his near 30-year career, but his motivation has changed.

“I started for practice but now do it for social justice – and it’s easier than handing out soup at 4am.

“To hear people’s stories, of overcoming adversity or dealing with tragedy, there are a million great stories and every week I get to hear one.”

Phil Parker didn’t only introduce his protege to the adrenaline-charged world of auctions – he led him to his future wife.

“Aleesha (nee Daley) was coordinating the auctions for Phil, and I knew the moment I saw her,” Mr Cush says.

“She laughed at every single one of my jokes and I thought the sun rose and set on her shoulders, and still do.”

Asking her out was a different matter.

“I was worried about ruining what we had, so I talked it over a lot with Charles, who was cautious and said, ‘what if you lose your job, what if, what if?’ then one day I said to him, ‘I’d be prepared to risk everything for her’.”

Two decades on, the couple have three children, Vivienne, 12, Louie, 10, and Teddy, 8.

Mr Cush is convinced his parents’ divorce has made him “a more conscientious father and husband”.

“I know if I tell my wife I love her, give her quality time, do things around the house that don’t come naturally, say thank you, accept that when I walk into the house the role is 50:50, that’s going to play a role,” he says.

“And if I can call an auction without looking at my phone then I can have dinner without looking at my phone. If I can be at lunch with you and have my phone turned off, why can’t I do that for a week on a family holiday? So all those things I do now.”

There’s another part to Mr Cush’s success: planning.

“Every bit of my day is allocated and accounted for,” he says. Rising at 4.30am, he exercises for an hour before devouring loads of vegetables.

“Veggies are good for you and breakfast is a meal I can control; I have zucchini, broccoli, eggplant with two fried eggs and Dijon mustard.

“I then play music in the shower, anything from opera to gangster rap, and say affirmations. The main one is, ‘I am lucky, I was born in Australia, I am in love, I have three happy, healthy children’, and then I say, ‘Today you can leave the shower comfortable or exhilarated’, and I switch the water to freezing cold at the end.”

The final piece of the puzzle is the outfit.

“I wear a full suit, my best clothes, every day – even if I was a zero, I’m now going to be a six, and if I’m a six then I’m going to be a nine.”

He drops Vivienne at school (All Hallows’) at 8.15am, and at 8.20am makes his first work phone call. The day continues to unfold, with a mind-boggling array of appointments.

“If something’s in my calendar, I’m doing it,” he says.

“People look at my calendar and say, ‘that looks stressful’, and I say, think of it like this: if you knew how to drive from here to Mount Isa, you had a full tank of fuel and knew where you were stopping, is that more stressful than just taking off, without enough fuel and going off at every exit? My days are calm and easy – I know where I’ve got to be next.”

It’s a way of life that gels with his “work husband”.

“I’ve known Matt since he was four; I went to kindy with his older brother, and when Matt came to work with me in 2006 at New Farm, I realised he was process-focused too,” Mr Cush says. “Over time, although he was painted with a brush like the rest of us, I knew if things went bad I could really back him.”

Their partnership in The Collective began in 2017.

Fighting the stereotype feeds into the way they run their group of 160 people.

“We have an ice bath, a sauna and a personal trainer to assist with their wellbeing, and a marriage counsellor speaks to them twice a year about protecting their relationships,” Mr Cush says.

“All of this is to help them deal with the fact people are going to call them overpaid wanker real estate agents.

“My life is infinitely better for accepting that most industries carry a stereotype and I can either be it or not be it – and I choose not to be it.”

Haesley Cush verdict:

220g wagyu rump, medium rare: 9/10

Fatcow on James Street, Fortitude Valley