Lockhart Road
Cultural Attache
- Mar 26, 2013
- 5,429
- 27,778
- AFL Club
- Port Adelaide
- Other Teams
- Port Adelaide Magpies
Has trouble running a small business...
'Worst year that we've ever had': David Koch on family business struggles
TV legend and self-confessed "finance nerd" David Koch has described how he had to step in personally to save his family business from going to the wall.
Koch said he and his wife Libby had to access their superannuation fund late last year or there was every possibility their business would close.
Speaking on the podcast Neil Mitchell Asks Why, Koch said he would have been financially better off over his life to concentrate on his media work and not run the small business.
"I'm like every small business owner," he said.
"2023 for me and my family business was the worst year that we've ever had.
"At the end of October, I had to put a lot of money into the business to keep it going.
"The end of 2023, I was thinking, 'God, we can't go for another year like this.'
"I was really concerned how we would get through the summer.
"Thankfully we had the best December and January we've had in the 20 years of the business, and it saved the business.
"It is really sobering. I often think to myself, 'Why do I invest in these small businesses? I should have just invested in property.'
"But I love small business. I love being involved in it. It's one of the great joys of my life."
When asked if he came close to going to the wall, Koch replied: "Yeah, absolutely."
"I had to put money into it. You can withdraw within a limit at my age out of the superfund, which I put in it.
"It kept the team together and kept us going."
FROM
This explains so much about, and confirms, the impediment that PAFC have been faced with during Koch’s tenure.
Koch has admitted here that he’s not up to the task of running the Port Adelaide Football Club.
PAFC is not a small business, is no place for a small-business minded chairman who admits to loving a business but only if it’s small … who is afraid to focus on and take the hard and ‘nasty’ decisions let alone enact them.
It exposes the weakness at the very top that is the root cause of Hinkley and his family still being with us, tells us why Koch has behaved in such an unprofessional non-football-club fashion without realising it.
Rise up Big Bob. You’re needed. There’s a chair in the corner of the board room waiting for you - the chair with your name on it.