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IAM101 - Life Skills, Education, Community. Combating Mental Health in the Construction Industry.

13/10/2026

It might be, but here's the test I'd use.

Mates show up when things are easy. A brother shows up when it's inconvenient, when the chips are down.

Online connection gives you the feeling of being connected, but it can leave a young bloke isolated from the real world, and from himself. The solid friendships I ended up with came from shared physical work and building trust in person.

More on that in this week's blog: https://www.iam101.com/blog/brotherhood

13/10/2026

Having a whole heap of mates and having a Brotherhood are two different things.

It took a business collapse for me to see which one I had.

Full story here: https://www.iam101.com/blog/brotherhood

11/10/2026

I didn't know the difference between a mate and a brother until my business fell over.

Then it got very clear, very quickly.

This week on the blog: Brotherhood, one of the seven pillars.

https://www.iam101.com/blog/brotherhood

09/10/2026

Hard yakka has a funny way of sorting out your priorities.

Nobody halfway through a day on the tools is wondering what's happening on their phone. They're wondering when smoko is.

Happy Friday from the farm.

06/10/2026

You can't talk him into it. I wish you could, it'd be a lot easier.

In my experience confidence shows up after the work, not before it. I spent years running crews of young men on landscaping sites and I watched it happen over and over. A young bloke takes on something hard, gets through it, and stands a bit taller at the end of the day. Nobody had to tell him he was capable. He'd just proved it to himself.

So my answer is to give him something real to do. Something physical, with a start and a finish, where the phone goes away for the day. Then let him finish it himself.

I wrote more about this on the blog this week: www.iam101.com/blog/the-work

06/10/2026

Put the phone away, put in the hours, and the results after even one day are remarkable.

Before IAM101, I spent years running crews of young men on landscaping sites. It was hard, physical, sometimes dangerous work, and every time I watched the same thing happen. The harder the project, the more the team came together, and the more those young blokes started trusting themselves.

This week on the blog I'm sharing what that time taught me, and why The Work is one of our seven pillars.

Read it here: www.iam101.com/blog/the-work

06/10/2026

I won awards as a landscaper. I was doing the high end design work I'd always pictured for myself.

Then the business collapsed.

What I took from those years had nothing to do with the awards. It came from the young blokes on my crew.

This week's blog: www.iam101.com/blog/the-work

30/09/2026

Before a single tent goes up, the man needs to be ready. Ready to commit to the land being our teacher.

The land doesn't need to be ready to hold a place for us, but we need to be ready to allow it to teach us.

Patience and resilience come from working with the land. The farm will not be perfect and ready with open arms to teach you. You just need to be open and ready to receive the lessons.

And in doing so, you leave the land better than you found it.

Follow the build with our monthly update, photos and all. Sign up at iam101.com/newsletter

29/09/2026

www.iam101.com/blog/the-land

I was a bit of a late bloomer. Finished school at 16, found a direction pretty early, and then ran at it too hard.

I dropped out before finishing. Money was part of it, comparison was part of it, but impatience was the biggest part.

It took me a long time to learn that the last 10 percent of anything matters. It's the least exciting bit, the energy's gone, nobody's clapping. But that's usually where the satisfaction actually comes from.

Strangely enough, it's this land that's taught me the most about that. You can't rush clearing a paddock. You do one section, then the next, and it changes bit by bit.

Full post on the blog this week if you want the rest of it.

Peace & Love Always, Dave

22/09/2026

When I bought the farm, I used to head up to a spot where I reckoned there was a natural spring. I didn't know exactly where the water was, so I'd just start digging.

Looking back, that's exactly what I was doing with myself. Digging for what I actually believed in. What I wanted to build my life on.

As I put in the real work on the land, I started seeing results. Not just in the paddock, but in me. That's when it clicked, this wasn't just a farm. It could be an alternative rite of passage for blokes who are as disconnected as I was.

Seven ideas kept showing up along the way: The Rebuild, The Land, The Work, Brotherhood, Fire and Ritual, Discipline, Possibility.

I didn't invent these sitting at a desk. I lived every one of them, out here on this land, rebuilding myself before I ever thought about rebuilding a business around it.

These aren't buzzwords. They're seven things young men need, and too many struggle to find them.
www.iam101.com/blog/the-rebuild

Peace & Love Always, Dave

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