Heir to $3.3bn property empire reveals surprise side hustle
Jack Hutchinson is the heir to the Hutchinson’s building empire but he’s kept his surprising side hustle a secret, until now.
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We’re familiar with his name, the legacy and the billion-dollar building empire, but there’s a part of Jack Hutchinson’s life he’s kept hidden for years.
By day, he’s all business as a director of Hutchinson Builders, known as Hutchies, one of Australia’s largest private construction companies.
It’s a high-pressure, high-risk and high-reward environment, with Hutchinson, a quantity surveyor, set to succeed his father, Scott Hutchinson, as the chairman of the Brisbane-based, 113-year-old family company, which increased its revenue to $3.3bn in the 2023-24 financial year, up from $3.1bn the year before.
But in the stillness of his evenings, or whatever spare time he can find, Hutchinson, 32, transforms into a storyteller dreaming up wild characters and tales which step into worlds far removed from his everyday life.
For the past six years, Hutchinson has been quietly writing short fiction stories. It began as a hobby, inspired by his dad’s love of folk legends such as Bob Dylan, Neil Young and Leonard Cohen and their storytelling.
It later grew to an interest in literary authors, with Hutchinson listing his favourites as Russian writers Fyodor Dostoevsky and Leo Tolstoy as well as American writers Ernest Hemingway and John Cheever. Then in 2019, he felt inspired to start writing his own stories.
“I guess it’s broadly the genre of social realism … my writing is more just about domestic interactions, relationships, friends interacting, that sort of thing,” he says.
“Some of those American New Yorker 20th-century short story writers were influences, so stories about marital issues, social class or little snippets of life I guess.”
Hutchinson’s pieces have been published in literary magazines such as Quadrant, Backstory and Hobart and boosted his confidence.
“You can feel like a million bucks when you’re writing and think this is great, but then you start to question yourself, am I delusional or what’s the point of this?” says Hutchinson, who studied construction management and quantity surveying at university.
“So I think getting published does give you that reassurance and gratification that someone else likes it.”
Hutchinson enjoys the creative outlet beyond his usual world of construction. A world which has seen him work as a quantity surveyor at Slattery in Sydney, pursue an MBA at London Business School in the UK and work for family-owned British building company Wates, before returning to Brisbane and joining the board of Hutchies.
“Obviously my day job is in construction and the family business and this is really a kind of personal hobby that is now a little more public, at least among friends,” Hutchinson says.
“I keep it pretty low-key from work and colleagues, I don’t know how many know.”
Until now, that is, with that once-quiet hobby now a passionate side-hustle gaining traction.
Hutchinson and his friend Charles Cottier, 32, an ex-Home and Away actor, have adapted one of Hutchinson’s stories into a short film, The Full-Time Love Rat.
The Brisbane Boys’ College mates, who graduated in 2009, have also launched a production company, Bad Feature Productions, with plans to create feature films. They recently celebrated the global premiere of their 15-minute film in Los Angeles at one of America’s biggest independent film festivals, Dances With Films.
It screened at the popular landmark cinema TCL Chinese Theatre in Hollywood, known to have hosted some of the biggest film premieres.
Earlier this month, The Full-Time Love Rat had its Australian premiere at one of Australia’s biggest film festivals, Revelation Perth International Film Festival.
Initially, they set out to just make a short film but it quickly steamrolled into launching a production company to, as Hutchinson says, “own a piece of it”.
And Cottier says: “Once we started dreaming up an actual future together of making stuff, we were like, it makes sense to actually start a company and do this properly and that’s what we did.”
The friends behind the film have long shared a creative streak and once played together in a band called the Arks.
But last year, their creative paths crossed again when Cottier came to Hutchinson with an idea. Cottier’s mother, Charlotte, an independent professional editor, had worked on Hutchinson’s short stories and shared the collection with Cottier.
“I just remember not really knowing what to expect but when I was reading them, I was really enjoying them and I remember being quite pleasantly surprised at Jack’s writing ability that I didn’t even know he really had,” says Cottier, who played Dexter on Home and Away for three years before starring in shows such as Please Like Me and the film Cooped Up.
“After I found that Jack was doing the writing, I just hit him up about it. There were a few short stories that I liked that I thought could potentially work as a short film.”
One in particular piqued his interest – about a man with a troubled love life, unravelling under the weight of guilt, shame and dishonesty.
The pair called in fellow BBC old boy, friend and filmmaker, Tristan Barr, to direct and co-produce the film and Barr suggested they make the concept “weirder” to give it some edge.
“If we’re going to see some success at film festivals, it’s extremely competitive, you have to stand out a little bit and we thought how can we elevate this story to be a bit more memorable and visually more exciting,” says Cottier.
“That was kind of those conversations and how we came to the decision of well the story is called The Full-Time Love Rat, so why don’t we actually make him turn into a rat?”
Hutchinson is quick to point out its entirely fictional, but knew it would resonate.
“We’re trying to critique how impersonal the kind of action of swiping is and the judging people off a couple of images, or silly facts,” he says. “We’re kind of trying to take the piss out of modern dating.”
Cottier and Hutchinson spent a month turning Hutchinson’s story into a screenplay and alongside Barr, they leveraged their networks to pull together a crew and cast, including cinematographer Ken Kimura.
The film was shot over four days and three locations in Brisbane in August 2024.
Hutchinson’s connections came in handy with the film shot at a luxury apartment; Fortitude Valley restaurant Petite, run by Hutchinson’s friends, brothers Cameron and Jordan Votan; and studio space Tasty Studios.
“Between us we kind of had a lot of bases covered in terms of film production. Outside of Jack’s writing ability, I have some connections with cast and crew, and Jack has the business and locations, it makes sense,” says Cottier, who stars as the Love Rat. “Jack’s obviously quite connected, so it would have been really hard to source some of those locations for the short film without him and his relationships.”
“And sports cars,” Hutchinson adds with a laugh.
He helped fund the film and turn their project into a reality. “I think we ended up spending about $40,000, so it’s a healthy budget for a short film,” Hutchinson says. “It was mostly out of my savings.”
But the pair are determined to build a reputation based on merit, with their next goal to secure funding for a feature film.
“It’s a totally different business for me. For example, today we still have no revenue, so the model or the plan Charles and I always had is let’s make a short, get it into some festivals, and we’ve achieved that so far,” Hutchinson says.
“Then the idea is on the back of that to raise a budget from not just my back pocket, because Hutchies aren’t really in the business of filmmaking, so we want to go to actual professional film investors or production and get a proper budget to shoot a feature film and sell it to distributors.
“Whether that’s a theatrical release or direct to streaming services, who knows, but that’s the next goal, to get some money in the door.
“We never expected to make a buck out of the short but in the long run, hopefully we have a profitable business as well as an artistic passion.”
It’s all about balance, says Hutchinson, who already juggles the demands of business with family life with his wife, Fatya Junissa Azlika, and their two children, Marianne, 2, and John Jnr (known as JJ), who is seven months old.
He’s also reminded by his father that their business should take priority. “He thinks it’s cool that his son is doing something creative but at the same time, every now and then, says don’t get distracted from the main game,” Hutchinson says. “But he can’t really talk, he’s at Burning Man every year and buying music venues,” he says with a laugh. “So I have to give him some reassurance sometimes that it’s not taking my eyes off the ball of Hutchies and this proud 113-year-old construction business.”
Hutchinson is steadfast on those priorities, but when the working day is done, the kids are asleep and all is quiet, he will continue to plot the next adventure.
“It’s all been working towards long-term being the chairman of Hutchies, so that passion or life plan hasn’t changed at all,” he says.
“That’ll always be the main game but I think there’s time to do other stuff in life. I wouldn’t want to be a one-passion person my whole life and only be a workaholic.
“I think there’s plenty of time to have fun and do creative pursuits and things you’re interested in outside of the business.”
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