Many years ago, a pastor met 27 year-old Gordon Kelly, who had by that time collected more jobs than years, and with no clear reason to do so, he gave him a go.
"I wasn't doing particularly well financially. and the pastor of the church we joined up, he approached me one day and said, 'how are you going?' and I'm like 'I'm very excited, great,' you know, and he's like, 'No, be real.' He said, 'You gotta actually take responsibility for yourself and you've got to actually do something,' so he said, 'what are you gonna do to get yourself out of trouble?'"
The pastor answered his own question, giving Gordon the money to start his own business, and a new life.
"For someone to go, 'mate I'll get the five grand and start you with something - I had to take responsibility for myself, so that was a big change in me.'"
For four years, Gordon has been dedicated to giving the long-term unemployed a future. Source: SBS Small Business Secrets
From that one act of generosity, Gordon cobbled together a business, and a single shoe repair shop has since expanded to 18 successful franchises.
Now the (meticulously repaired) shoe is on the other foot and Gordon is paying an old kindness forward.
For the last four years, he's been running Brothers Garage, giving zero-cost courses on cobbling and cars for the long-term unemployed, including at-risk youth, refugees and asylum seekers.
"I didn't want to die and just leave a shiny car and a big house."
Brothers Garage caters for the disadvantaged who want to upskill. Source: Supplied
Gordon put his money where his mouth was, although now he is the first to admit putting his family home on the line wasn't necessarily the best financial move.
"My wife and I we started this social enterprise by extending the mortgage on our house which I don't actually recommend to anyone... So I leased out several of my businesses and that gave me not a big income but a stable income."
The endeavour wasn't breaking even, so the Kellys had to change tack, or risk joining the jobless queue.
"We had the opportunity to take over another registered training operation. so we took that over and that brought accreditation which meant we could then charge for it. So we started doing apprentice training and charged back to the government and that became profitable."
However, the tough times continued, and Gordon began to question Brothers' future.
David Kelly oversees a cobbling class. Source: SBS Small Business Secrets
"It's emotionally exhausting so about every year the funding dries up, every year I'd think should we keep this going or should be close it down?"
At that point, Gordon's sons David and Andrew stepped in to help, with David in charge of shoes and Andrew at the helm of the coffee shop.
"We came on board because we want to help people. We want to go, 'these kids are valuable and can make something with their lives'. So we came on board saying, 'Let's do the training and Brothers footwear and try to make it sustainable so we can help these kids without going into debt'," David said.
These brothers want to see the Garage become a more mainstream endeavour.
The Kelly family want Brothers Garage to provide more mainstream training. Source: SBS Small Business Secrets
"What we'd love to do is to grow the instead of just weird mechanics, shoemaking and coffee, if we could have more businesses and more training for the students so we could give more experiences for the students, but grow the industries," Andrew said.
They are yet to reach their target, but the Kelly family is proud of what they've achieved already.
Brothers Garage's graduating class of 2016 has 240 members - each has been shown a new path, and now has the tools and footwear to follow it.
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