I picked this title for the thread because of where I was born: Mumbai, India.
I was a misfit and a rebel growing up. I dropped out of 8th grade and never looked back. Getting an education in India doesn't pay well unless you have numerical intelligence.
I started out flipping cellphones in the offline world, and selling contraband online. I dealt with a lot of contraband online and offline- but I do not advise this and wouldn't do it if I were in the same situation again. To give you an idea of the scale of contraband, I use to send out hollowed-out cricket bats with several kilos of contraband in them by regular air mail and they all made it to their destinations. I was 14 years old.
Then without knowing much about *nix, networking or server administration, I started a web hosting business. I sold it a year later for about $20,000. This is about the point in my life when I started drinking too much and doing drugs- which would cause a lot of problems for me down the line and still does to an extent.
Because of the excessive drinking- I contracted tuberculosis of the bone and lost a lot of weight. I weighed 32KG in late 2006, it was that bad. But there was a silver lining to this. The booze and drugs were out- because of the medications I had to be completely sober for a year. I started a leather exports business and made $100,000+ profit within a year from one forum thread selling directory submissions. A natural progression of this was the formation of an SEO and Social Media services company that I'm still involved with to this day. In my 1 year sober, I made money (well over a million dollars), started working out (literally doubled my weight) and could have made a lot more money if I were level headed and cared about customer retention. As you can see on the Digital Point thread, I blew that gig/got complacent, and it coincided with Google Updates that made links from directories less effective (quality over quantity).
I spent the next several years in a daze, getting black out drunk on a near-daily basis and doing the bare minimum work required to keep coasting. I was making $3500-5000/mo which is a pittance and should have been my daily income if I were working at full capacity, but it was sufficient to live well as a teenager in Mumbai.
I went to "rehab" in 2013 for 6 months- which did a lot more harm than it helped. After I got out, I spent the next couple of years living illegally in Thailand- which was a positive experience on the whole although I did not make much progress financially.
I am now in Sihanoukville, Cambodia and this is the story of my life so far. I am almost 26 years old.
I am tired of trying to work up the next big scam and want to improve my personal integrity and build real businesses that last (still with a fast-lane approach though). Basically, make my life more like Tetris. Consistency over short lived thrills and wins.
I like this forum.
Ravi a.k.a "Jay"
I was a misfit and a rebel growing up. I dropped out of 8th grade and never looked back. Getting an education in India doesn't pay well unless you have numerical intelligence.
I started out flipping cellphones in the offline world, and selling contraband online. I dealt with a lot of contraband online and offline- but I do not advise this and wouldn't do it if I were in the same situation again. To give you an idea of the scale of contraband, I use to send out hollowed-out cricket bats with several kilos of contraband in them by regular air mail and they all made it to their destinations. I was 14 years old.
Then without knowing much about *nix, networking or server administration, I started a web hosting business. I sold it a year later for about $20,000. This is about the point in my life when I started drinking too much and doing drugs- which would cause a lot of problems for me down the line and still does to an extent.
Because of the excessive drinking- I contracted tuberculosis of the bone and lost a lot of weight. I weighed 32KG in late 2006, it was that bad. But there was a silver lining to this. The booze and drugs were out- because of the medications I had to be completely sober for a year. I started a leather exports business and made $100,000+ profit within a year from one forum thread selling directory submissions. A natural progression of this was the formation of an SEO and Social Media services company that I'm still involved with to this day. In my 1 year sober, I made money (well over a million dollars), started working out (literally doubled my weight) and could have made a lot more money if I were level headed and cared about customer retention. As you can see on the Digital Point thread, I blew that gig/got complacent, and it coincided with Google Updates that made links from directories less effective (quality over quantity).
I spent the next several years in a daze, getting black out drunk on a near-daily basis and doing the bare minimum work required to keep coasting. I was making $3500-5000/mo which is a pittance and should have been my daily income if I were working at full capacity, but it was sufficient to live well as a teenager in Mumbai.
I went to "rehab" in 2013 for 6 months- which did a lot more harm than it helped. After I got out, I spent the next couple of years living illegally in Thailand- which was a positive experience on the whole although I did not make much progress financially.
I am now in Sihanoukville, Cambodia and this is the story of my life so far. I am almost 26 years old.
I am tired of trying to work up the next big scam and want to improve my personal integrity and build real businesses that last (still with a fast-lane approach though). Basically, make my life more like Tetris. Consistency over short lived thrills and wins.
I like this forum.
Ravi a.k.a "Jay"
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