For fifteen years, Dustin Watts operated in the background of some of the most high-profile lives on the planet. The kind of work where discretion is not a professional courtesy, it is the entire product. Where trust is built quickly or not at all, and where the gap between thorough preparation and getting it wrong can be measured in consequences nobody wants to contemplate.
He is not in that world anymore. But he brought everything it taught him into this one.
The former Hawke’s Bay Magpies rugby player spent 12 years with the New Zealand Police, including five on the counter-terrorism unit in Wellington and completed his formal training with the Prime Minister’s protection detail.
When he left the force in 2008, he headed to Afghanistan as a private contractor protecting American clients ranging from navy seals tasked with eradicating poppies for the heroin trade to a human rights lawyer navigating one of the world’s most dangerous legal environments.
A shoulder tap mid-deployment to join the security team for Metallica’s South American tour opened a door that stayed open for the next fifteen years. Tour managers talk, and they take trusted people with them.
His client list grew to include Linkin Park, System of a Down, Limp Bizkit, Nickelback, Hugh Jackman during his Greatest Showman tour, and Taylor Swift, where a team of around a dozen professionals surrounded the operation at peak.
He also provided full-time security for a Hong Kong family whose wealth he describes simply as “incomprehensible.” Bruno Mars and Missy Elliott performed on consecutive nights at their Rome wedding.
The threat landscape across those years ranged from obsessive fans and stalkers through to coordinated terrorism. When major attacks struck Europe during a period Dustin was working the continent, his team was already squared away.
He had pre-visited every venue, walked every floor plan, met local police and security contacts, and gamed every scenario. The work had been done long before boots hit the ground.
“The key is in the preparation. You have to have systems. But you also have to be completely comfortable when things go off-script, because they will.”
Despite his considerable physical presence, Dustin is quick to correct any assumption that size is the primary asset in his line of work.
“If you’re fighting, you’ve already lost. Your greatest weapon is your communication. It’s how you read a situation, how you communicate, and how you de-escalate before it ever reaches that point.”
The next tour begins at home
After years spending three to four months annually out of the country, the calculus changed. A daughter was growing up faster than the passport stamps were accumulating.
The pull of home became stronger than the pull of the next tour, and Dustin decided it was time to plant his feet in Hawke’s Bay and build something that did not require a boarding pass.
He reached out to Colliers to pursue an interest in commercial real estate sales, and found himself being recruited onto the team instead. Colliers is no small operation.
One of the world’s most recognised commercial real estate brands, with a global platform, deep institutional credibility, and name recognition that travels well in the rooms Dustin has spent his career working in.
“It’s a brand that sophisticated investors already know and respect. That matters when you’re having conversations with people at that level.”
The network he brings to this role is genuinely unusual for this market. Former clients include senior figures from some of the world’s largest investment firms.
High-net-worth individuals from Hong Kong and the United States who have visited Hawke’s Bay and fallen for it. International contacts who already know and trust him personally.
“I’ve brought people to Cape Kidnappers before. I know how they think, what they value, and what it takes to earn their confidence. That doesn’t come from a business card.”
What vendors, landlords and investors will get with Dustin Watts is someone who treats every transaction as a mission with stakes attached. Someone who prepares obsessively, communicates with precision, and protects the interests of the people relying on him with the same focus he once applied to protecting the people in his charge.
For Dustin Watts, this is simply a new tour of duty. Different terrain, same mindset: prepare thoroughly, earn trust quickly, protect the interests of the people relying on you, and deliver the outcome.
Some careers are a series of reinventions. This one is a straight line.
dustin.watts@colliershawkesbay.com
027 472 3878
