Fast Lane: Adrian Portelli debuts in The List as a billionaire
Fast cars and failures have led an ambitious kid from St Albans to the billionaire club and cover of this year’s The List. But is there more to Adrian Portelli than publicity stunts?
With Adrian Portelli, what you get is not necessarily what you see.
The public sees the publicity stunts, the “Lambo Guy” nickname, due to his collection of expensive Lamborghinis, and that time he had his $2 million McLaren Senna GTR hoisted by crane into his $39 million penthouse on the 57th floor of a Melbourne high-rise.
There are the TV appearances on Nine Entertainment’s The Block, in which he bids millions of dollars for renovated homes, and the headlines he constantly generates, whether for being pulled over by the police while driving one of his sports cars, or for the $200,000 reward he offered for leads after thieves broke into his business in February.
This article is from The List — Australia’s Richest 250, published March 15, where Adrian Portelli appears for the first time.
Then there is the barrage of social media appearances for his LMCT+ promotions business. One week he’s giving away a $2.2 million house to one of his members, the next a fancy sports car, a holiday to Bora Bora, up to $350,000 in cash or a boat.
Earlier in March, Portelli even used social media to announce the purchase of his own private jet.
In reality, the 35-year-old is a bit of a technology nerd – a spreadsheet and data guy who has put together an impressive and fast-growing database of loyal customers that underpins his burgeoning business empire. He’s also recently become a father for the first time, with partner Karlie Butler giving birth to a boy in late January.
Yes, he has tattoos, and loves his collection of fast cars, as his photo shoot for The List shows – Portelli himself jumps into a Lamborghini, revs the engine loudly and manoeuvres it into position for the right shot.
But he is also an ordinary, fast-food-loving guy from Melbourne’s tough, hard-working western suburbs who has now more than fulfilled two of his childhood dreams: becoming a millionaire and owning a Holden Special Vehicles Coupe GTS and later a limited-edition orange Lamborghini Murciélago.
Portelli’s LMCT+ is booming, with more than 100,000 subscribers paying between $19.99 and $99.99 each month for the chance to win cars, boats, cash and other giveaways, and also to use their memberships on discounts at hundreds of retail partners.
In early February, he gave away $70,000 to shoppers at a Coles outlet at Melbourne’s Taylors Lakes via $200 vouchers and, later, cash. So popular was the giveaway that Portelli required a police escort at the supermarket, which he chose because it was where he used to shop when he was growing up and “doing it tough”.
Annual revenue for LMCT+ is more than $100 million and it gave away more than 75 big prizes last year. It has very healthy profit margins and is growing quickly.
“[The business] is a loyalty rewards program and we use that and the giveaways and it generates a shit-ton of traffic,” Portelli says succinctly. “I thought last year that maybe it would plateau off a bit, but we had 100 per cent growth. This year we’re already looking at 60 per cent growth [in subscriber numbers]. So it is continuing to grow and grow.”
Portelli has also started Luxe Plus, a similar business aimed more at women. A $9.99 per month membership gets access to discounts at more than 600 shops and online brands, and a chance at giveaways such as Louis Vuitton and Fendi bags, designer shoes and other fashion accessories. Luxe Plus, Portelli says, is also almost fully automated and serves as a technology testing ground for his wider business.
There’s also a portfolio of property investments along the eastern seaboard, including Melbourne, Sydney and the Gold Coast, and health-related commercial development projects. He has also helped launch an energy drink and a ready-to-drink alcohol brand.
And there are dozens of cars, which are significant investments in their own right. “They only appreciate [in value],” Portelli explains. “I only ever buy cars that are in low production volumes, so I know they are always going to go up in price.”
It all adds up to an estimated fortune of $1.3 billion, enough for Portelli to join the ranks of the Richest 250 for the first time this year.
There have been whispers that Portelli has been considering a sale of LMCT+ but has yet to be offered the price he thinks the business is worth – some gambling companies kicked the tyres on his business last year as part of an informal exercise testing the appetite of potential investors or acquirers.
If there are any question marks about sustainability and continued growth in Australia then Portelli’s answer is to potentially replicate his success here in markets overseas. “It would not be the exact model, it would be something more online and transaction-based,” he reveals.
“I’m happy to be doing what I’m doing, but we’re looking to go offshore and globalise it, with the same brand.
“If someone wants to buy this Australian business, they are more than welcome to, if they have the money. I’m always open to it, but I feel that I can grow this overseas [in places like] Europe.
“It is exciting – we’ve got the brand now and we’ve got the funding and it’s fun.”
Portelli is talking to The List in his Melbourne premises, surrounded by a collection of fast cars that mix his pleasure with business. There are Lamborghinis and Maclarens, and there’s even a restored Volkswagen Kombi van that Portelli backs out to manoeuvre his Lamborghini into position for his photo shoot.
Nearby is the second car he ever gave away, a Nissan GT-R that he bought back from the owner a few years later for a bit of nostalgia.
Portelli’s family and business history all provide clues as to how technology, data collection and a sharp focus on customer service and knowledge underpin his success.
The son of Maltese migrants, Portelli grew up in Melbourne’s working-class St Albans. His father ran a truck repairs business that grew to a decent size, with about 90 employees and several workshops. Portelli worked for his dad in his holidays and at supermarket Bi-Lo. He then studied drafting at Victoria University and had aspirations to be an architect, but switched to studying graphic design.
“I used to go to arts and crafts markets to sell business essentials like business cards, photo frames and montages.
I did that every weekend, just about. I remember having to wake up at 2am to drive out to these markets to set up, and my friends were still out partying.”
Portelli saved enough to buy an apartment at 19. He later went to the US for a holiday and fell in love with the country, moving there to set up a chauffeuring business in Los Angeles after an aborted attempt to start it in Las Vegas.
“I set up the business, got the visa, packed the suitcase. Didn’t have a place to live or know anyone. I just winged it.”
He sold the chauffeuring business after a few years, coming off second best in an insurance battle after an accident then, after an attempt to start a plane tour firm, built a digital service linking wealthy people with upscale hotels, cars, yachts and jets.
“I tried a lot of things,” Portelli says. “Some of them failed, some of them succeeded, and I learnt a lot along the way.”
Then he got homesick and moved back to Australia, where he started a social media app called Checkmates then a food app service called Ticker, which put coupons for restaurant deals online.
“I’d hired some mates to help out, but we didn’t have much courage – I’m pretty shy – and 95 per cent of restaurants told us to go away,” he remembers with a laugh. “So my mates dropped off and I was running out of money, so I just went back to what I knew. People say, ‘Follow your passion,’ and mine is cars, and it sounds corny and clichéd, but it was a lightbulb moment.
“I went back to buying and selling cars, building up my bank account, and decided to build some software to calculate profit margins and use [car websites’ data], and in a few seconds it could sort 300,000 cars and show you what you could make [from buying and then selling] each car. So I thought we could sell this software.”
Portelli didn’t get much traction in pitching it to car dealers, but in 2018 that idea evolved into LMCT+ (short for “licensed motor car trader”), which was initially a platform to buy and sell cars, then an auction service, and eventually it included member discounts and services.
“I thought I’d give away a car to get some exposure, and so we ran a raffle selling tickets and it didn’t take long for the gambling commission to ring me up to say, ‘You can’t just go start a raffle,’” Portelli says, laughing.
“So I hung up and thought, ‘There has to be a way around this.’ I called back and said, ‘What happens if I give the car away to one of my customers who buys the software?’ They said that was okay.”
Portelli was away, although he says that first giveaway was no instant success. Subscriptions or memberships to websites were not exactly in vogue, and his software was buggy, so he focused more on options then brought back the idea of offering vouchers or discounts to members.
“The first one I did, I knew I could make it work. I had a few mates at the start, but they ditched me. I stuck at it though. I was the only one on the team and doing everything myself, from graphic design to taking photos to content, Facebook ads, emails, everything.”
That second car cost Portelli about $110,000 to buy from a workshop in Melbourne, but generated enough from subscriptions and memberships for him to make a profit and go on to his next car giveaway.
“I never built it to make money from that, I just wanted the exposure. I come from that tech background, so I could see the value in the business was the [customer] list and the data you could collect.
“But I could see there was something there, and then it was a matter of tweaking and fine-tuning over a couple of years and signing up businesses [to offer member discounts] … and essentially what we are now is a big marketing company. We’ve had a lot of success, the customers love it. They love the coupons and discounts and with these and the giveaways, it just generates traffic.”
Putting himself in the centre of the marketing stunts has also helped personalise the business and make Portelli – who insists he’s still shy – something of a social media sensation. “It is all marketing, and marketing stunts,” he says. “I’m good at getting exposure and it does help. It helps with social proof and aligning yourself to big brands.
“People are sceptical, and there are a lot of people that get scammed. So the biggest thing when I started the business was building the trust of people. When I first started I didn’t have my face on anything. I was very private; my socials were [set to] private. So it was maybe a year and a half or two years into the business where I did one of our Facebook ads and I had my face on it. And the conversions went through the roof.
“We were able to scale the business really quickly. Putting a face to the brand, letting people in, was a bit weird at the start. But it is just part of doing business.”
The various giveaways have also helped LMCT+ grow. At first, most members were men aged 18 to 25 who were interested in the Japanese sports car giveaways. Then four-wheel drives helped expand that demographic to 18- to 40- year-olds. Bikes, boats and other giveaways, such as houses, expanded the audience reach even more. Now, Luxe Plus is helping to increase female subscriber numbers.
Next for Portelli comes that idea of expanding overseas, part of what he says is a hunger to never be satisfied with what he has – or to go back to the days when he was penniless, working on his computer from his bedroom, with his mother telling him he was “a dreamer”.
“My parents were over it. My mum was telling me to get a job. I said, ‘Trust me, it’s going to happen. I’m going to be a millionaire one day.’
“So, more recently, I put up a neon sign in our backyard saying, ‘You’re a dreamer.’ Battling to get to where I am teaches you never to take it for granted. That’s why I want to move aggressively and never be content. I never want to be in that position again.”
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