103. COMEBACK - Serge Cowan - DDRE (Netflix’s Buying London) - losing a child with cerebral palsy - divorce - starting over in business - living with anxiety

Hello Bright Minds, I wonder whether you’ve seen the Netflix hit Buying London with Daniel Daggers and his team of agents at his property firm DDRE? It’s a lot of fun and very glamorous and my guest today is one of the team who you won’t have seen on screen. I met Serge Cowan on a flight to Nice last September when he was going out to look at a property in Monaco and we got into a deep conversation about his life, including his four children. Serge is a global real estate advisor at DDRE who has sold properties in 27 locations and deals with DDREs international sales. Serge’s 16 year old daughter Emily makes an occasional entertaining double act with him on Instagram and there’s a link in the show notes.

In 2002 Serge set up a property business which he told me he felt like he was married to. His wife worked with him too and alongside their professional life they spent five years trying to have a child. In 2007 along came baby Maddie who was born with cerebral palsy who very sadly passed away in 2017. Maddie’s early years also coincided with the recession of 2009-2012 which hammered the business Serge had built. By 2018, a year after Maddie’s death he realised the marriage wasn’t right and their divorced was finalised in 2024.

You’re going to hear us talk about:

• A father’s perspective of the strain and emotional difficulty of raising a profoundly disabled child.
• Battling the SEN system and local education authority for a child with cerebral palsy.
• His marriage coming to an end and walking away from the business he’d built
• Serge’s experience of ‘chronic anxiety’ 
• Negotiating with French estate agents

I hope you enjoy and extract something useful from my chat with Serge.

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