Hi everybody!
After reading the book I decided to visit the Fastlane Forum. This text is going to be longer than expected. I am unveiling as much as possible, to benefit and learn as much as possible.
Originally I am from Croatia and moved to Switzerland at the age of 2 years. That was not my decision, but it was a great decision my parents made, as a few years later the war started in that region.
Supporting our family down there with money and having my parents working night shift jobs to be able doing that, my brother and I did not have the material need fulfilment our school mates had. If we wanted something, we had to work for it.
At the age of 13 we had the first “family computer”. I was the last one in my class, that joined the cool people club talking about games and a little later about the internet. Need for Speed and Unreal Tournament kept me busy for nights.
After school, in the evening I delivered advertisement brochures by bicycle in my neighbourhood. Reading the book remembered me a lot of that time. You do something with limited time and income opportunity. At least it gave me a little bit financial freedom. This feeling was unknown till then and it felt just awesome.
I used Windows and as it crashed often and sometimes really messed up the whole computer, I had to read a lot about how to fix that. Soon I became an expert in the field of fixing IT problems. People hired me to also fix their problems. My parents used to go to church with me Sundays. After the Mass, people complained about my pricing and told my father, that I am pretty hard to negotiate with. He just proudly told them “that’s my son, and his pricing is more than fair!”. My parents always supported me and I did never blame them for the fact, that I had to get to the point where I am today the hard way.
When regular school time came to an end, it is usual here to apply for a 3-4 years apprenticeship and learn a profession to join the slowlane lifestyle. That was not very easy for me, as I decided rather not to go to school sometimes and stay at home developing my first websites. My grades got worse every semester and I successfully killed every chance to get a position for any apprentice position. So I had to visit a school where you learn how to get an apprenticeship position, what bored the life out of me.
Downloading stuff with a few kilobytes per second at this time (early 2000) kept my computer running day and night. The noise of the fan was very loud and I decided to change that. When I realised how expensive water-cooling systems for computers where and that there was no shop in Switzerland selling it, I decided to start doing that. I bought an online shop software and created a website. I became the exclusive contractor of a German water-cooling-system manufacturer. After one post in a forum, where case modders reported their projects, I sold immediately a load of water-cooling kits. Earning 20k a month at the age of 17 was showing me, that there must be other ways to live a life. I went to LAN parties promoting my products, by gaming 48 hours with people I like to hang out with. What a life. A picture of my room with a self built water-cooled cube computer, which I also sold online, is attached ;-).
After some time my parents encouraged me to give the apprenticeship another try and said, that I have proved everybody that I can do it on my own and now it is time the get a solid fundament for a life with at least one profession learned. My inner voice told me, that my parents could be right and as sales dropped after a few months I sent out another 100 applications. I got 1 positive response and took the job. Three years of 9-6.30 frustration started.
After my apprenticeship I knew exactly what I am not expecting from life and switched from salesman to a position, where I created websites and maintained the IT for a motivational speaker. Working in his villa on the hills of a very nice area again opened my eyes. This motivational trainer really practised what he preached and that left a deep impression on me. He was not a simple “guru”, he was walking the talk.
Again I founded a company, this time together with my brother. We built a company offering security services, especially guarding night clubs and events. We hired 15 people and earned a living with that. We recognized that the clubs where empty during Sunday evening and the days from Monday-Wednesday. Poker tournaments became legal by law in Switzerland, so we organized tournaments in the clubs, paying no rent. After a lot of nights working and private circumstances not allowing my brother to invest more time in that business, I decided to sell this company and as well the poker company we founded. 6 months after the exit, poker became illegal again, due to casino’s which were fighting hard against the privatization. I gave a part of the money back to the guys who bought the company from me, as it felt right to do that.
In the meantime, while standing at the front door of clubs and talking to people, many of them told me that they like my website and asked who built that. I did it all alone and the people were surprised and asked for the price of such a website. This was the impulse I needed, to start an IT company as well, building websites and doing search engine optimization. As I had a lot of requests for that, I soon hired students working for me.
Every time I faced some problem and solved it for me, I created a business if the figures made sense.
I have learned that I am never the only one, who is frustrated about some circumstances. Nobody is responsible for me feeling not good about something. It is always up to me to make something good out of every situation.
Scalability crossed my way in all projects. I was excited to learn more about how to get the right things done. So I studied business economics with major in Entrepreneurship for four years as a part time student. Means I was still working close to fulltime working.
Once I hired a friend to run one of my companies and failed. I learn the hard lesson, why you should not hire very close friends and lost a six figures amount in my early 20ies. We are still very close friends and I take the blame on me, for having made such a decision.
Now I am creating a scalable business that helps solving the problem of “not getting started” with a business idea. I built a platform where entrepreneurs can develop their business model on a canvas, create the business plan in a very easy way, create all the analyses required and take part in all the competitions around the world. In addition to that, I am writing a book together with a professor from the University where I studied. The times where people had to use a lot of tools, excel spreadsheets and become experts in marketing, finance and more before launching a business are over (that’s what I hope to reach with this startup). As we also walk the talk, the book will be out in December of this year.
I learned how to meditate and how to view things from a different angle. I get up every morning at 4.30 and put on my jogging shoes for a run, no matter what weather is waiting for me outside. Hopefully I can bring some value to this forum with my mindset and actions. I am excited to be a part of this.
A lot of things are going on and I want to learn in a surrounding of people who create value. Sometimes I, as an entrepreneur, need people who understand what I am doing and going through..I think that we are different than other people in many ways.
Thanks for reading my story and I love to read yours as I am going through the posts here for already a few days!
After reading the book I decided to visit the Fastlane Forum. This text is going to be longer than expected. I am unveiling as much as possible, to benefit and learn as much as possible.
Originally I am from Croatia and moved to Switzerland at the age of 2 years. That was not my decision, but it was a great decision my parents made, as a few years later the war started in that region.
Supporting our family down there with money and having my parents working night shift jobs to be able doing that, my brother and I did not have the material need fulfilment our school mates had. If we wanted something, we had to work for it.
At the age of 13 we had the first “family computer”. I was the last one in my class, that joined the cool people club talking about games and a little later about the internet. Need for Speed and Unreal Tournament kept me busy for nights.
After school, in the evening I delivered advertisement brochures by bicycle in my neighbourhood. Reading the book remembered me a lot of that time. You do something with limited time and income opportunity. At least it gave me a little bit financial freedom. This feeling was unknown till then and it felt just awesome.
I used Windows and as it crashed often and sometimes really messed up the whole computer, I had to read a lot about how to fix that. Soon I became an expert in the field of fixing IT problems. People hired me to also fix their problems. My parents used to go to church with me Sundays. After the Mass, people complained about my pricing and told my father, that I am pretty hard to negotiate with. He just proudly told them “that’s my son, and his pricing is more than fair!”. My parents always supported me and I did never blame them for the fact, that I had to get to the point where I am today the hard way.
When regular school time came to an end, it is usual here to apply for a 3-4 years apprenticeship and learn a profession to join the slowlane lifestyle. That was not very easy for me, as I decided rather not to go to school sometimes and stay at home developing my first websites. My grades got worse every semester and I successfully killed every chance to get a position for any apprentice position. So I had to visit a school where you learn how to get an apprenticeship position, what bored the life out of me.
Downloading stuff with a few kilobytes per second at this time (early 2000) kept my computer running day and night. The noise of the fan was very loud and I decided to change that. When I realised how expensive water-cooling systems for computers where and that there was no shop in Switzerland selling it, I decided to start doing that. I bought an online shop software and created a website. I became the exclusive contractor of a German water-cooling-system manufacturer. After one post in a forum, where case modders reported their projects, I sold immediately a load of water-cooling kits. Earning 20k a month at the age of 17 was showing me, that there must be other ways to live a life. I went to LAN parties promoting my products, by gaming 48 hours with people I like to hang out with. What a life. A picture of my room with a self built water-cooled cube computer, which I also sold online, is attached ;-).
After some time my parents encouraged me to give the apprenticeship another try and said, that I have proved everybody that I can do it on my own and now it is time the get a solid fundament for a life with at least one profession learned. My inner voice told me, that my parents could be right and as sales dropped after a few months I sent out another 100 applications. I got 1 positive response and took the job. Three years of 9-6.30 frustration started.
After my apprenticeship I knew exactly what I am not expecting from life and switched from salesman to a position, where I created websites and maintained the IT for a motivational speaker. Working in his villa on the hills of a very nice area again opened my eyes. This motivational trainer really practised what he preached and that left a deep impression on me. He was not a simple “guru”, he was walking the talk.
Again I founded a company, this time together with my brother. We built a company offering security services, especially guarding night clubs and events. We hired 15 people and earned a living with that. We recognized that the clubs where empty during Sunday evening and the days from Monday-Wednesday. Poker tournaments became legal by law in Switzerland, so we organized tournaments in the clubs, paying no rent. After a lot of nights working and private circumstances not allowing my brother to invest more time in that business, I decided to sell this company and as well the poker company we founded. 6 months after the exit, poker became illegal again, due to casino’s which were fighting hard against the privatization. I gave a part of the money back to the guys who bought the company from me, as it felt right to do that.
In the meantime, while standing at the front door of clubs and talking to people, many of them told me that they like my website and asked who built that. I did it all alone and the people were surprised and asked for the price of such a website. This was the impulse I needed, to start an IT company as well, building websites and doing search engine optimization. As I had a lot of requests for that, I soon hired students working for me.
Every time I faced some problem and solved it for me, I created a business if the figures made sense.
I have learned that I am never the only one, who is frustrated about some circumstances. Nobody is responsible for me feeling not good about something. It is always up to me to make something good out of every situation.
Scalability crossed my way in all projects. I was excited to learn more about how to get the right things done. So I studied business economics with major in Entrepreneurship for four years as a part time student. Means I was still working close to fulltime working.
Once I hired a friend to run one of my companies and failed. I learn the hard lesson, why you should not hire very close friends and lost a six figures amount in my early 20ies. We are still very close friends and I take the blame on me, for having made such a decision.
Now I am creating a scalable business that helps solving the problem of “not getting started” with a business idea. I built a platform where entrepreneurs can develop their business model on a canvas, create the business plan in a very easy way, create all the analyses required and take part in all the competitions around the world. In addition to that, I am writing a book together with a professor from the University where I studied. The times where people had to use a lot of tools, excel spreadsheets and become experts in marketing, finance and more before launching a business are over (that’s what I hope to reach with this startup). As we also walk the talk, the book will be out in December of this year.
I learned how to meditate and how to view things from a different angle. I get up every morning at 4.30 and put on my jogging shoes for a run, no matter what weather is waiting for me outside. Hopefully I can bring some value to this forum with my mindset and actions. I am excited to be a part of this.
A lot of things are going on and I want to learn in a surrounding of people who create value. Sometimes I, as an entrepreneur, need people who understand what I am doing and going through..I think that we are different than other people in many ways.
Thanks for reading my story and I love to read yours as I am going through the posts here for already a few days!
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