‘Didn’t know how I survived’: Tradie builds multimillion-dollar empire after brutal kidnapping

Joseph Berriman was kidnapped, bashed, and left. Over a decade later, the young tradie has pulled off the unthinkable.

Over a decade ago, property developer Joseph Berriman was kidnapped, bashed, and left for dead. At the time, he promised himself that if he survived, he was never going to take life for granted again.

These days, he’s a multi-millionaire living the tradie dream; he even owns a jetski. However, reaching this level of success was far from an overnight win – it was a decade-long slog.

Mr Berriman was raised in Newcastle, NSW, and ended up in Western Australia, working in the mines and determined to make something of himself.

He’d grown up in a loving household, but his mother struggled to support him and his four siblings, working three jobs to make ends meet.

It wasn’t that he ever considered himself unlucky, but he recalls wondering from a young age why he couldn’t afford the same things as most of his friends.

“The hunger came from growing up with not much,” Mr Berriman told news.com.au.

“I have the most beautiful parents but they just didn’t have much money.”

Mr Berriman explained that he’d always had a “hunger” to succeed. Picture: Supplied

When he was growing up his mum worked three jobs just to make meets end. Picture: Supplied

He always knew that he wanted more

Growing up, Mr Berriman always knew that he wanted the luxury of not worrying about money, but he didn’t end up going to university.

At 14, he was kicked out of school. He was disinterested and would rather go surfing and hang out with his mates than be stuck in a classroom.

“I remember my dad coming to the school and he was upset when he arrived, and after he said to me, ‘you can do whatever you want to do, but you’ve to stick to it,’ he explained.”

Mr Berriman took the advice seriously. He moved to a small country town and got an apprenticeship as a carpenter.

When he looks at his own nephews and nieces now, it seems unthinkable to imagine a 14-year-old striking out on their own, but even as a teenager he was driven.

“I just really wanted to be a really good carpenter,” he said.

He left school and started working full-time from just 14 years old. Picture: Supplied

He then moved to WA because he wanted to learn more. Picture: Supplied

The move to WA turned into a nightmare

Mr Berriman finished his apprenticeship and moved to Western Australia to do a traineeship in order to become an underground driller.

“I always wanted to educate myself and I wanted to get better at things and I wanted to learn,” he said.

At the time, the move felt like the right decision. However, once he arrived, even though he didn’t mind the actual work, he found being so far away from everything and everyone really hard.

“It was a pretty stagnant place. I wanted freedom to be able to surf and travel and I think I felt trapped,” he said.

Looking back, Mr Berriman said that boredom played a role in his falling in with the “wrong crowd,” but he was also young and having fun like everyone else his age.

Mr Berriman’s party boy stage ended in broken bones when he was mistaken for someone else in 2013, at this point a 20-year-old man. He was kidnapped by a gang of four men outside a tattoo parlour in Margaret River, bundled into his own car before being taken to bushland 4 kilometres from town. Here, he was beaten nearly to death.

Mr Berriman doesn’t remember all the details, he’s not even sure if he wants to, but he does remember thinking he was going to die.

“I was beaten and it was pretty traumatic. They thought I was someone else, and I remember being handcuffed to a tree and thinking, ‘this must be it’,” he said.

The doctor was amazed that he survived. Picture: Supplied

He said he was a “mess” after he was beaten up and left for dead. Picture: Supplied

He doesn’t know who, but someone came back and un-handcuffed him from the tree where he’d essentially left in a dire straights.

“I remember them saying to me, ‘you’re a good person and we’re sorry but you’ve got to head’.”

At that point, he had no idea where he was, but he forced himself to start walking, despite being in excruciating pain and having no clue where he was heading.

“I was a mess,” he recalled.

“I just remember walking through this bush and the first person that come across was an off-

duty paramedic and she basically saved me.”

The attack left him with a fractured leg, nose, and broken knuckles. He also needed stitches in the back of his head and rehabilitation.

“The doctor didn’t know how I survived. They thought it was crazy that I lived through it,” he said.

Mr Berriman moved back to Newcastle after the attack. He said he is only just now starting to comprehend what happened to him, over a decade later.

“I just didn’t take it to be as serious as it was. I was like, ‘okay let’s just get on with it’,” he said.

“I moved back to Newcastle and that was the moment that I thought, I have to go for it, and life isn’t meant to be taken for granted.

“What happened to me was crazy, and I wanted to make something of myself, and it made me fearless.”

It took Mr Berriman years to process what happened to him. Picture: Supplied

He suffered a fractured leg, nose, and broken knuckles in the attack. Picture: Supplied

Starting again after the brutal beating

It was a lengthy process to recover; Mr Berriman couldn’t work for months and he needed to attend regular rehab and physiotherapy.

He spent around a year couch surfing with family and friends, and remained focused on his physical and emotional recovery, but he was also directionless.

By luck, he had a family friend who saw potential in him and was running a successful building company.

Mr Berriman said the guy took him under his wing and told he was a “good kid”, putting a lot of faith in him.

The man offered him a job as a carpenter at his construction company, where they were building houses. Here, Mr Berriman thrived.

“I learned how to be professional, how to run teams, and he taught me some really valuable things when it comes to running teams and clients,” he said.

He was earning between $50,000 $60,000 at the time, but it felt like a million bucks, and it was enough to get his life back on track.

Mr Berriman said he really felt like things were turning around. He and his girlfriend rented a studio apartment together, booked a trip to Bali and was eager to feel like himself again.

Then everything fell apart.

“I remember receiving a phone call from the guy who owned the company, and he was like ‘Joey, you’ve got to return the ute, we’re shutting up shop’,” he said.

“They ended up going bankrupt, and I was like nooo, just when we were starting to get ahead.”

He’d already booked a holiday before he got the phone call. Picture: Supplied

He spent most of the trip stressing out about money. Picture: Supplied

Starting a company with basically nothing

Gutted and fed up with being at the mercy of someone else, Mr Berriman finally decided to start his own business.

“I started my own company because I didn’t want to let anyone take control of my future,” he explained.

His knee-jerk reaction was to cancel his holiday and focus on building his own company but a mate encouraged him to go on the holiday, and use it as motivation to be able to do both.

Mr Berriman hit the ground running. He bought an old ute, had his cousin, a graphic designer, create a website and logos for him, and purchased some work shirts.

“I just went out quoting,” he said.

He didn’t really know what he was doing. He rang around old clients he’d had a relationship with before the company he worked for went bust and tried to scrounge up as many new clients as possible.

By the time the holiday came around he’d done countless quotes but had zero jobs booked in.

“I didn’t hear anything,” he admitted.

He went on the holiday without having anything locked in for the business. Picture: Supplied

The holiday was tough because he was panicked. Picture: Supplied

He was panicked, but it was too late to cancel the trip, so he went and spent the bulk of the time panicking.

“The last few days of the holiday I just felt sick to my stomach and had like $250 left in my bank account,” he said.

Not wanting to burden his girlfriend with the worry, he tried to pretend everything was fine but she saw through it.

By the time they landed back in Sydney, she was demanding to know what was wrong with him, and he knew he had to fess up.

But just before he came clean about being broke, he decided he’d check his phone and see if perhaps anyone had called while he was away. At that point, even one person would have been a dream come true.

“I opened up my phone at the airport in Sydney and the messages just started going off. I listened to the voicemails, and it was like, ‘Hey Joey, we’d love to go ahead with the quote’,” he said.

Mr Berriman went from having nothing to having a successful business in a matter of days.

“Clients started sending out deposits, and within 24 hours, there was $250,000 in my bank account,” he revealed.

“In the first 12 months, I generated seven figures in profit.”

He said he was down to $250 when he switched his phone back on. Picture: Supplied

He became a millionaire in his early 20s. Picture: Supplied

Creating a $10 million plus empire

The business became an incredible success story, but it wasn’t easy.

“I had to learn really fast. I was a young guy and I was telling people older than me how to do their jobs,” Mr Berriman said.

“I had to understand how to hire the right people and manage the right people who are experts in their fields.”

Having such a demanding job was also tough. He was only 22 at the time, and while all his friends were still partying, he was running sites and managing men decades older than him.

Eventually, he took some time away and went on a trip around Australia with his girlfriend, focusing on maintaining a better work-life balance.

He is the director, founder and coach at Premier and Co. Picture: Supplied

Ultimately, he left the business and dived into property development and he is now the director, founder and coach at Premier and Co, alongside his best mate and business partner, Dylan Nilsson”

The business is an education and coaching company supporting construction business owners to achieve long-term success with the right structures and strategies in place.

If it sounds like everything just fell into place after he went out on his own, Mr Berriman said that couldn’t be further from the truth.

“There was a million trillions, ups and downs, and lows and wins,” he said.

Today, Mr Berriman’s property development company is worth $10 million and he has personally made seven figures in profit.

But even now, he still feels like he is in the middle of his journey, not at the end.

“I think you’re forever learning in business,” he said.

The biggest thing he has taken away from all his success is that it isn’t just enough to work hard and make plenty of money.

“What are you’re doing it for?” he asked.

If you can’t answer that question, Mr Berriman said no amount of success will be enough.

Originally published as ‘Didn’t know how I survived’: Tradie builds multimillion-dollar empire after brutal kidnapping