Lorenz Grollo, chief executive of Melbourne property group Grollo Group, has a distinctive way of getting ready for a difficult day in the boardroom. He schedules a hard leg workout for the same morning.
"If I'm coming into a heavy meeting day, say of board meetings, I try and couple that with a leg day in the morning," Grollo said. The logic, he explains, is that once the body has been pushed through a punishing session, sitting through a tense negotiation or a difficult board discussion afterward feels manageable by comparison.
A third generation builder
Grollo is a third generation member of one of Australia's most prominent construction families, a business built from the ground up by Italian immigrant Luigi Grollo, who started a small concreting operation with a single truck in the 1940s. Over the following decades the family business grew into one of the country's largest construction and property groups. Lorenz's father Rino and uncle Bruno later developed and built the original Rialto tower, which remains one of Melbourne's most recognizable skyline landmarks.
Today Grollo Group's holdings span the Rialto Towers precinct on Collins Street, the integrated development and project management business Equiset, and the Buller ski resort operations. Grollo has also pushed the family business into technology, founding Equiem in 2012, a platform that lets corporate landlords communicate directly with the people working inside their buildings.
Fitness as a family venture
The workout habit fits into a broader wellness push for the Grollo family. Lorenz and his wife Manola co-founded SFIDI, a health and wellness club based at Rialto in Melbourne, extending the family's property expertise into a business built around the kind of intense training that helps prepare its co-founder for his own toughest days at work.
