Humble beginnings - no inheritance, no lottery win, no tertiary qualifications - only burning desire

I grew up in the inner city area of Sydney, Australia in the 1960's and 70's.

We were not an affluent family, but both my mum and dad worked in factories so as to provide a good life for us. I was one of the "latch key kids" of the time. Back then, mothers normally stayed home and dad went to work. When both parents worked and young kids would come home from school to an empty house, they were known as "latch key kids".

Life was good, we lived in a single storey home with two bedrooms - mum, dad and us three kids. We didn't have a car and we either walked or caught a bus or train wherever we needed to go.

I was an average student I guess, and as such I managed to scrape into university. However, a lack of interest in formal learning saw me fail and have to repeat a number of subjects. I eventually decided that a degree was not for me, so I dropped out. While doing the degree part-time, I had a couple of jobs and eventually landed a job as a sales rep and discovered I enjoyed dealing with people and had a knack for sales. That's when I decided to drop out of my degree. I worked as a sales rep for around 4 years before starting my own business.

My timing has never been perfect.

Our business struggled for the first 5 years, and within the 18 months of starting, I signed a lease on a premises at the same time as the birth of our first child. To top things off, Australia had gone into a major recession and our mortgage interest rate hit 17.5%pa, and our business overdraft was at 21%pa.

My timing was impeccable!!!

The Gods of Success and Failure threw everything at us, and all at the same time.

As I stated, my business took around five years before it made reasonable money for us. Up until then, things were extremely tight financially in our household. I discovered that I knew nothing about managing people, nothing about running a business, nothing about cash flow, and nothing about managing finances - on top of that, it turned out I was clueless with all other matters as well !!!

No matter how hard it was, no matter how broke we were, no matter the challenges we faced, NEVER once did I contemplate giving up. My company was going to work or kill me. Luckily for me, it worked.

Admittedly, it took about 8-9 years to figure out how to really make it profitable - I have my wife to thank for that because she stepped up and started handling the finances so I could focus on what I was good at - sales, marketing and "ideas".

When we both started working to our strengths, things fell into place, and what we managed to achieve in the following two decades still amazes us to this day.

We worked long hours, made sacrifices but always made sure we received some sort of reward for our toils. A week or two away on a family holiday was always something we loved.

We learned from our past, focussed on the present and planned for the future.

We took to property investing. Buy and hold was our strategy and it worked. We focussed on markets that we knew. We worked, lived a good family life and invested - we always invested.

It is amazing how wealth compounds if you invest wisely and reinvest the returns.

Doing this, we managed to retire early and have the wealth to do whatever we desire while many of our friends and family will work until they are no longer physically capable and then retire on a pension.

Yes, we have enjoyed life along the way and have travelled to many countries around the world and around much of Australia. We have done things and enjoyed many "toys" that the vast majority of people will never experience because we always believed that we could.

Having said that, I can honestly tell you that when we purchased our first motor yacht, I stood at the marina looking at it and was in tears because I was overwhelmed that we had achieved such an amazing goal - considering I'm just an average mug of a guy..

The motor yacht gave me the opportunity to associate with other wealthy individuals that also had big boats at the marina. I have met many owners over the years, and thinking about it, only one person that owned a motor yacht actually had a degree. Nearly all of the other owners I had met were either business owners or tradespeople. There was only one boat owner that was an employee - and he was a pilot for a commercial airline. An interesting statistic, don't you think?!

The point of this lesson is that to be successful and create wealth and happiness, you do NOT need a degree, nor do you need inheritance or a lottery win. You don't need to be in "quality circles" with influencial contacts. You just need to have a burning desire to create the life you want. And, you must never, never, ever quit on your dreams.

Go and make your dreams a reality, knowing that others before you have done it - it is

NOT IMPOSSIBLE unless you decide it is in your head!

One of my favourite quotes is from Henry Ford -

"whether you believe you can, or believe you can't, you're right"!

My childhood home was a single storey house similar to what you see here. This photo was taken in 1958 and only 2 blocks away from where I lived. I was born 3 years later in 1961.