Graham Doessel | MyCRA Lawyers | Armstrong Doessel Stevenson Lawyers | Chief Executive Officer

Graham Doessel
MyCRA Lawyers Founder & 
Chief Executive Officer

Hi, I’m Graham Doessel, And I Help To Get Good People Out Of Bad Situations.

A Little About Graham Doessel & Makes Him Who He Is Today:
“I suppose this all stems from being ripped off in business in 1999, and then getting crappy advice from my solicitor to go bankrupt in 2000.”

After being ripped off but before going bankrupt, my entire life went to… Hmmm, “PUTTY”.

One of the lowest moments of my life was receiving a phone call from a creditor who I had absolutely no ability to pay, not so politely asked me the following question/statement:

“what sort of father are you, teaching your kids not to pay their bills?”

The LOWEST moment of my life happened shortly after.

I was driving my brother’s car (mine had been repossessed), absolutely shattered by the creditor’s comments. I was questioning my ability to parent and the contribution could make to this world and it all simply felt “too hard”.

I remember staring at a telephone pole which is getting closer and closer at an alarming rate. I remember thinking “it won’t hurt”, and time seemed to slow down. It was like I was stuck in quicksand on the telephone pole was sucking me in.

I feel like other thoughts were probably racing through my head, but I can only really remember being fixated on that telephone pole and genuinely believing that that, would make things better and easier for everybody.

Then thankfully, I snapped back to reality and thought about my wife Helen and my three amazing kids, Steph, Cory, and Joel, corrected my focus, wiped the tears from my eyes, and continue down the road. I’ve never contemplated that sort of action again but I’ll never forget the time that I did.

Six months into my bankruptcy I discovered how crappy my solicitor’s advice really was, and that I hadn’t needed to go bankrupt at all, because it turns out that prior to going bankrupt I’d actually had many other options available to me that I didn’t know about. Unfortunately, most of those opportunities had now dissolved and I was stuck in the bankruptcy with the bitterness of now understanding what my ill-informed decision had cost me.

I can say that I was pretty shitty on life for the next 2 1/2 years of the bankruptcy, and for the following four years as a discharged bankrupt (seven years in total) with a credit file that made me look, and feel like a financial leper.

Since then, every business I’ve undertaken has helped people recover from, or improve some level of financial adversity.

The first major introduction to helping people with financial adversity was seeing my then mortgage business “Mortgage Now”, rise rapidly from inception to become known as the largest exclusively nonconforming mortgage business in Australia.

This meant through Mortgage Now, I was able to help someone get a mortgage even if they had bad credit, had unusual income sources, unusual property type, unusual property location, or pretty much anything else the banks simply didn’t like. I could usually do this for as little as 1% above the market rate, which made my service very popular.

Unfortunately, the GFC in 2008 saw a massive reduction in the products I had to offer, combined with a massive increase in clients needing help, that I now couldn’t help. Because I’m so passionate about and I take what I do so seriously, I internalised this stress (of not being able to help these people) and in January 2009 this resulted in being diagnosed with cancer.

Jumping forward to September 2009, I had beaten the cancer (in remission), and was looking for a way to rebuild my businesses. I had lost the passion to be a mortgage broker and lost all bar two of my staff, and I blamed the mortgage industry, the GFC, and the stress it caused for giving me cancer, but I still wanted to help the same style of people.

I came up with the idea of, instead of putting a Band-Aid on a person’s nonconforming bad credit problems (by giving them a nonconforming loan) perhaps there was a way to fix the bad credit problem. I started investigating the opportunity to remove a person’s bad credit defaults and the idea that later became MyCRA lawyers was born.

I’m enormously passionate about helping people avoid the same pain I went through. Let me explain how.

See, when I was ripped off in 1999 I suddenly had no cash flow, as it was being eaten up by trying to catch up on outstanding bills that I thought it already been paid whereas, in reality, my ex-business partner had diverted the funds to himself.

This lack of cash flow meant that I couldn’t borrow money. Additionally, a lot of the money that was stolen by my ex-business partner was the result of loans taken out by me personally (encouraged to do so by my ex-business partner) to fund the “future business growth”, which now showed on paper that I had high debt, low income and poor money management.

Had I been able to access finance, I believe I would have easily been able to work my way out of debt, as the business itself was very strong.

The majority of my clients with MyCRA Lawyers are suffering from a similar pain. In their case, it’s their bad credit rating that’s stopping them getting, or accessing finance either at all or at reasonable rates.

My role with MyCRA Lawyers then is to do everything I/we can to fix your bad credit ratings, to give you the ability to access the funding you so desperately need, and to access it at the best rates possible.

So Why Am I The Right Person To Help You With Your Bad Credit Problems?

I have genuinely walked in your shoes and I can still remember the crushing feeling, the gut-wrenching pain, and the strength-sapping embarrassment and humiliation of not being able to do the things I needed to do to provide for my family.

I’m invested in your success so if you need help, please just ask.  Call me or my team for a chat today on 1300 667 218.