One of Ray White’s oldest members is the sprightly Ken McCarthy – aged 89 – a director of Ray White Helensburgh, a proud member of their now fourth generation family owned business.
Mr McCarthy’s grandsons Mattias Samuelsson and Simon Beaufils own Ray White Helensburgh.
Mr McCarthy has been in real estate for 40 years. He is still collecting Continuing Professional Development points and he strives to keep learning at 89 years young.
His says his secret to living a long and productive life is a daily swim and a sneaky scotch every night.
Just one drink though.
“I swim every day yet I have never smoked and I have one scotch and dry every night, just one. I swim in my heated pool every day at noon and do about 10 laps,” Mr McCarthy said.
‘You can blame my parents as I took after them.”
Prior to working in real estate, Mr McCarthy was an assistant accountant for the ABC in Queensland.
But he said the best decision of his life was when he and his wife Patricia moved to the small town of Helensburgh in NSW.
Known as the gateway between the cities of Sydney and Wollongong, Helensburgh is located halfway between the two (45km south of Sydney’s CBD and 34km north of Wollongong).
“The best thing we ever did was to move to Helensburgh in 1971,” Mr McCarthy said, who has been active in the community ever since.
“Helensburgh is unusual as it’s almost like a country town yet it’s practically a suburb of Sydney.”
He originally employed his sons Warren and Patrick McCarthy in his business and now his two grandsons run Ray White Helensburgh.
Director Simon Beaufils said his 16-year-old daughter Ashlea Beaufils (pictured above) has just started working Saturdays on reception as their ‘director of first impressions’.
“Helensburgh is a great place to live and work as it’s the best of both worlds here. We are so close to Sydney and yet there’s no traffic lights here and only five minutes to the beach and we are surrounded by national parks,” Mr Beaufils said.
“We are proud to be a fourth generation family business, just like the White family.
“Ken’s still collecting Continuing Professional Development points and he achieved 100 per cent on his recent Elite Agent course he completed online. If he is not the oldest recipient of this achievement I would like to meet the person who is.
“He’s been the glue who kept us together. Family business is a different kind of business and Ken’s always been there to support everyone 100 per cent.
“He’s like the Godfather, and we counsel his opinion on big decisions and he definitely still loves to attend sales meetings too.”
Mr McCarthy said he loved real estate as it was a people business.
“We are all good natured people and we get along with our customers like a house on fire.I have never had any issues in business and family business makes it fun too.
“In all the years I was in real estate I never came across any angry people.”
