I've sold and built billions. I'll help you achieve your goals.

Nothing prepares you for it. Nothing.

Prison is an alien, dangerous place, full of violent men who have committed horrific crimes. Hard drugs are rampant — they run through the place like a second bloodstream. My first night, I was locked in a filthy cell with an inmate who was obviously high on drugs and out of control. He didn't sleep. He paced, screamed, and kicked the cell door until the sun came up. I'm not ashamed to admit it: I was scared, cowering there on the top bunk, wondering how a person ends up here.

To answer that, you have to go back to the beginning. Not to the collapse. Not to the courtroom. Further back than that.

No money. No connections. No fallback. No Plan B. Just a suitcase, a hunger that only comes from having nothing to lose, and a wife who believed in me before there was anything to believe in.

We set up our first Australian home in a caravan park in a Western Sydney suburb called Prospect. Maybe the name was an omen. I took a job with a property marketing company.

My first day was an introduction to a bloodbath — the kind of company that throws as many young hopefuls as it can into the field and watches who survives. No wage. Commission only. A long room of desks, no air-conditioning — just the heat and a dozen voices on the phones at once. It had the feel of a meat factory, not an office.

The sales manager who ran the floor had seen a thousand of us come and go. Sneering, battle-weary, he didn't so much walk the floor as patrol it — the way a sergeant sends the next wave over the top, already knowing most of them won't make it back. On my first day he handed me a phone and told me to call until my throat hurt, and book as many face-to-face appointments as I could for the "real sales blokes." So I did. I could see the other new hopefuls around me dropping like flies, unable to handle the rejection — and behind them, more eager young hopefuls standing in the background, waiting for their chance. I remember thinking: more meat for the grinder. I persisted, convinced that every rejection got me closer to a yes. It was book an appointment or don't eat. Eventually, after a few hours, I booked an appointment. Then another. Then another. It went on like that for days. I was on fire.

The owner had a habit of napping in the office during the day, but he must have had one ear listening, because one day he slowly stretched, got up. People stared as he walked toward me. He stopped, looked me up and down. I thought I was gone. Then a tiny grin appeared, and he turned to the sneering manager and said, "Give this bloke some face-to-face appointments. I think he's got something." The next evening, there I was, face to face with prospects. I got the sale. Driving home that night in my old, clapped-out 1975 Celica, I literally howled out loud, swerving down the road, delirious with happiness.

I'm hopeless with my hands — always have been. But I'd been given something else instead: an ability to connect with people. To listen. Properly listen. Most people think a conversation is two people taking turns to talk. I'd noticed, even as a kid, that we're built with one mouth and two ears, and almost everyone uses them backwards. They talk. Nobody's actually listening to what the other person is saying or needs.

I never understood the old line about a fast-talking salesperson who could sell ice to Eskimos. In my experience it was the opposite: the less I said, the more the sale closed itself.

Face-to-face with a couple, I developed a technique. I took the prospects on a mental journey: "Imagine, here we are, years from now — you didn't buy that investment property. What does life look like?" Then I'd say nothing. Let them sit with it. "Now imagine you did buy it, all those years ago. Is it worth more today? Is life better, having it?" I never argued the numbers — every Australian already believes in their bones that property goes up in value. Trying to convince them of it was a waste of breath.

What they actually wanted was a comfortable future. The property was just the vehicle that got them there. The bricks were just the receipt. The product was never the point. The future was the product. So I stopped selling bricks and mortar, and started selling future prosperity. I simply said the things that enabled people to arrive at their own answer — which was usually to buy, no pitch, no pressure, just the truth, but their truth, told to them by themselves.

I just didn't argue with prospects. I listened. I realised that everything a salesperson tells someone could be a lie, but everything someone tells themselves is the truth. So my philosophy was simple: the best person to close the sale for you was the person you were trying to sell to. Sounds simple, but most people selling anything — or trying to persuade another person of anything — don't grasp that one truth. And none of this was really about property. Swap the product for anything you like — a car, a service, a t-shirt, yourself in a job interview — and the principle doesn't move an inch. Salespeople don't really close sales. The genius ones simply create the environment for prospects to close themselves. Master this technique and you will become a genius salesperson.

I chased that instinct wherever and whenever it took me, seven days a week — including a seven-hour drive to Griffith, in rural NSW, for a single prospect, with my wife in the passenger seat, along for the trip. I didn't get the sale. We stayed the night in a roadside motel so downmarket the carpet had been run up the walls as wallpaper. Lying there, with the musty smell invading my nostrils, I remember smiling — not because the day had gone well, but because I finally knew, without doubt, that I'd found the one thing I was built for, and I was prepared to do whatever it took to ride it all the way up. I was hooked.

My sales broke every record in the company. Before long I was selling more myself than the combined team. Within six months I was asked to become national sales manager. I didn't want the job — I knew it would slow me down — but I took it anyway. It hadn't come from having more knowledge about property, charm, or some gift for pressure. It came from listening harder than anyone else in the room and implementing the presentation I had perfected.

One evening I was having a drink with the day-napping owner of the company — I remember sipping a cold light beer — when he looked at me and said, "William, you're like a lion in a cage. Pacing, prowling. I won't be able to contain you much longer." He was right.

So I went out on my own.