money-nuggets

  I worked hard to learn C and used it to write some code centered around their learning library and then around Write Once Read Many optical drive technology on a Microsoft AT machine (in 1987).  Then I worked hard to learn MS Quickbasic and wrote a client program called Guardian to monitor failures and page support team members when failures occurred. That program got installed in a Exxon refinery in 1988 and my bosses told me when it paged support workers quickly to respond to refinery failures it saved hundred of thousands of pounds in alerting people before the failure grew even bigger. I was amazed my little program did that but it was a huge success and the customer was happy, and my bosses were more than happy.  This led to me going onsite and working with the refinery workers producing templates on the VM computers to output different format reports. This was quite simple technical work but it was my first experience onsite, my first time working with really smar...

  I only wore my suit on days where I might meet other consultants for lunch or potentially go to a client site. It was a carrot dangled in front of me - when the time is right we will get you out there on our client sites and make you billable. Until then, I drove my motorbike 30 miles to the office and worked there alone in the morning, answering the phone and doing small coding projects assigned to me by the boss. In the afternoons the bosses girlfriend also worked in the office. Very occassionally a consultant or even one of the 2 owners would come to the office but that was rare. It didnt take me long to realize they probably only hired me to answer the phone!! But they did give me some assignments so I spent my days reading books and learning how to be a C programmer. After I showed them some of my work they seemed to have more belief in me so they wanted me to write a QuickBasic program for a real customer. I worked late lerning that language. I worked evening and weekends l...

  I rode my motorbike to that job and turned up in my smartest clothes.  The 2 guys who ran the company after a week or 2 realised how poor I was.  They asked if I owned or had ever owned a suit.  I had not.  Then, they did a kindness I will always remember, they took me out and suited me up. They didnt need to, and maybe they did it so they could send me out to their customers. Or maybe they just wanted to give me a leg up in my new career. Whatever the reason it stuck with me.  I was just a working class kid and this company employed professional smart consultants and were what we would call "posh" or "rich". I was totally out of my depth. But these 2 guys recongnized it and bought me a suit and made me feel like I belonged in this new world. I always remember this as an act of kindness. Acts of kindness are so important to people who receive the help and so rewarding to the people who give the help.  And acts of kindness sometimes open doors and pro...

So I am at college during the day, riding my cool motorbike there and studying math, computer science and economics (when I bothered to turn up).  Im working 5 nights a week as a man-god in the pharmaceutical wholesalers Im working 8-10 hours per week with Taffy stocking those frozen foods in the supermarket Im working at the carnival (fairground) at the weekends learning and maturing under the wing of caring carnival workers who are teaching me all about drinks, drugs, girls, money and their version of happiness. I should have been fulfilled but I knew this was where I am at but not necessarily where I should be at. I kept looking around at opportunities. Were there better jobs out there, should I really be wasting my time doing college when I could be changing the world. And then one day, in the college library notie board, there it was. Wanted: Apprentice / Traineer computer programmer to work in consulting firm. I contacted them. They were interested. They were based in a rival...

  When I left school, we had a choice to go to college or get on the job training.  My mates who did the latter earned more money than me and seemed happy.  I decided to go to college and pretty much hated it.  At college, I would challenge the teachers trying to be contrarian but really I was a pain in the backside.  They gave us quite a bit of freedom so I abused this and did not turn up for courses such as Economics which seemed like such a waste of time because all they wanted us to do was write essay after essay. I still learned the subject matter, I just thought writing essays was a waste of time and time is money. Surely, teaching economics they should know that !!!

  At 16 I wanted a motorbike but mum could not afford to buy me one. After much begging and promising I would pay for it,  she agreed to co-sign a bank loan and I became the proud owner of a Kawasaki KR50 sports bike. She  told me to go get a job to pay for it. I figured I might as well get a few jobs if I could as I had plenty of energy. I worked 5 nights a week in a wholesale pharmaceutical distributor. I was a 16 year old boy amongst about 12 25-40 year old ladies workng the nightshift and also responsible for locking up. Talk about sending a sheep into a den of wolves. Sexual harrassment was not a thing back then and poor innocent teenage me was groped, cuddled, teased and generally treated as a man-god on the evening shift. And I got paid a good wage. Then I worked weekends at a carnival running the rides.  This was a totally different crown of young men and groupies with their own code of conduct. From waxing the slide first thing in the morning to running the ...

  So I went knocking on doors looking for a better way to earn money that delivering newspapers.  "Any odd jobs Mister."  I could earn what my mates earned in a week of paper rounds in one customer. I washed cars, weeded gardens, cut lawns, dug trenches. I helped my grandpa on his door to door "pools round". I found a job delivering Yellow Pages and convinced my mum to drive me around while I delivered the books.  At Christmas I went carol singing for money.  At Halloween or Guy Fawkes night I would do "penny for the guy".  And when I did not have jobs to do, I rode my bike to the fairground and spent my day banging machines trying to make the money fall out.   This is how I learned to be an entrepreneur and how I learned I have to hustle to make money. Opportunities come to those people who hustle - its as simple as that. Put yourself out there and offer to work hard on whatever job you get offered. 

  I was 14, a broke son of a single mum who could not even afford to give me pocket money.  She was on welfare but sometimes she was working multiple jobs.  My younger self would have been called a latch key kid as I sat on my doorstep for hours after school waiting for her to come home and let me in.  I saw some of my mates doing paper rounds, delivering newspapers. It seemed like such a lot of work for such a small amount of money. I even helped them - and thought they were suckers for working so hard every single day.  There must be an easier way to earn money than what most of my mates were doing!!  This was probably the start of contrarian me.  I saw what the majority of others do and decide to do something different, to look for a better way. And throughout my life, contrarian me has been right time and time again. 

  Where to start? Im rich. I was poor. In this blog are some nuggets of advice that helped me go from one state to the other. Im sharing them. Some might be obvious and some might be well known, some might be subtle and some might seem wrong. Thats ok. I'm sharing what worked for me, and maybe I got lucky and it wont work for you. Or maybe I'm a genius.  Read this blog and make your own decision. I try to put each nugget into some kind of context so you can see why I picked it up and also how I picked it up. Disclaimer - everything in the blog is for entertainment purposes and not financial advice. I am not a financial advisor. I'm just a random multi-millionaire on the internet.