User Power
Value/Post Ratio
154%
- Sep 12, 2012
- 227
- 350
- 29
Hello everyone, my name is Valon K., a 17 year old whose parents left at the age of 18 from Kosovo to Belgium, with 10,000 euro in debt, and no one to stay with. This may be a long story, but trust me when I say that it's unique.
Needless to say, the first few years of my life were lived in poverty, I hadn't seen my father in years, because he left for work before I woke up, and came back when I was already asleep. Nonetheless, he was a big risk taker, taking a loan for a house whilst only working a job for 1 month in Belgium and without even having the papers to stay over here. I had a good childhood, despite the poverty, our family was very warm and caring, and the Albanian refugee community stood up for eachother in the city we lived in.
Fast forward a few years, I was 11, life was a little bit more stable, my dad had worked as a gardener in the same company for 11 years by now, and after a while we could afford to buy ourselves a computer. Keep in mind my father had to provide for my mother, me, my little brother, my grandfather and my grandmother, at a small wage. I was thrilled by having a computer, the first thing I did was insert the Red Alert 3 disk I had bought with the PC, played that same game for months and months until it got boring. After a while we had internet too, started playing an MMORPG called Runescape, good times, no worries. Actually learned the basics of world economy by playing that game, must of been 12 at the time, a freshman in Middle school, I had set up a way of 'botting' on the game, while I was studying I raked in game currency that I sold for at least a profit of 160 euro each schoolday. Life was good. Did the same thing with Counterstrike 1.6 when I was 13. I had a dozen or so servers that were linked with an RPG system, and people could pay RPG credits on that 'franchise of servers'. Each day after I came from school I had a dozen or so letters from all across the world with money in them. Norwegian kroner, american dollars, japenese yen, the world was at my feet.
Carried that on for a years of course spending every dime I had (a lot I gave to my parents, a lot went to candy and the local playhouse). By the time I was 15, my father had promoted himself to partner of the CEO of the company. This had changed a complete new world for us, by now my father had over 25 employees working for him. He carried on for a year, saving the company from the gutter as his partner was in a huge divorce, my father had put all his savings (80,000 euro) and was working 20 hours a day. The company wasn't only saved, it had 140 percent more sales than it used to. (of which 45 percent by me, I told my father to stop paying the workers from home, but give them a mileage compensation, almost equal to what they got, the workers would still remain happy whilst squandering less hours on the toilet etc because their driving time wasn't paid in hours). One day, after working on the desk there for a whole summer, we go to the company to grab a few materials for the next day, and we see my fathers partner carry 700,000 euro worth of materials to a different place, vehicles, cranes, bobcats, everything...
My father was backstabbed, he was devastated by that act. As his Dutch wasn't that good, I practically quit school for 3 months to talk with lawyers, police officers, curators etcetera. Imagine a 15 year old leading the word at a table with over 10 grown ups. This procedure still hasn't finished, and it still has to appear in front of the judge. But I can tell you one thing, since that day, I knew I was destined to do business, I was hooked to it, as soon as I went back to school, my grades dropped immediately. I simply wasn't interested anymore, I had learnt more in life in 3 months than I had seen my entire career in school. And I was a grade A student, I explained my vision to my teachers but none of them would understand me, all saying I would doom my future by doing this.
I actually finished my school that year, to keep my parents happy. Studied all day, everyday and did 3 years of class in one exam period. What now? I couldn't get a daytime job, it was simply not cut out for me, so I started getting interested in women, I wanted to be the casanova everyone admired. Keep in mind, I was 16, but looked 22. I gave myself the assignment of getting to know 10 new females everyday. And trust me, I would keep up to it, cold approaching every single attractive woman I saw, wether at the grocery store, a bar, on the street, a busstop. I soon new every female in my 70k populated city. I started getting a fascination for people, and became a very good listener, socializing with everyone that interested me. One day, me and my nephew, were sitting in a bar that had a dancehall attached to it, I thought it was horrible how rarely the dancehall was used, and proposed to my nephew to throw an event there. The place cost 50 euro to rent for an evening, and 100 if you didn't get a certain quota in liquor sales. So I put down the 50 euro, made a poorly designed flyer with the caption above 'Kickin it oldskool', uploaded it to facebook and invited my friends. I had a 5 euro cover charge and a befriended deejay of mine who charged me 50 euro for a night.
I was expecting 20-30 friends, optimistically.
My mind was blown, 360 people had dropped by. Leaving me with a net profit of 1700 euro. I realized something, I just started a business here, but I had to keep it rolling, I had to make this the most awesome party a lot of people that night had seen. With 1700 euro I made a deal with the bar owner to buy 90 bottles of bubbles from him. I gave away 1700 euro in booze in one single night, almost every second person had a free bottle of Spanish Cava. Every 5 seconds you saw a firework sprinkler go off, people called me crazy.
Life was rolling, I was popular, making good money and getting to know a lot of people. Started throwing an event for around 800 people every 2 weeks. Leaving me with approx. 4,000 - 5,000 euro profit every single month. Meeting club owners, security CEO's, crazy DJ's (Steve Aoki, Dj Antoine, and many others) at the age of 16. Of course, it was surreal to me, I wasn't with my feet on the ground, so every weekend I went away opening bottles of Louis Roederer Cristal, Dom Perignon, Moet, Veuve, Grey Goose, Louis XXIV, eating out... I was living a Bourgeois life.
The club I was promoting was slowly discinerating because of bad management, and one of the most prestigious Champagnebars in the country was sold for a huge amount (the business only, no property) to a fils a papa drunk woman. It didn't take it more than 1 month for her to completely destroy the business. Yelling through the microphone at 3 am for everyone to leave because she wanted to go to sleep, snorting cocaine in the womens bathroom, publicly fighting with her boyfriend, etcetera... I was intrigued, she had hired a manager to run the place because her friends advised her to quit, for the sake of her reputation. I had offered the manager several times to let me throw an event there, always telling me he'd contact me yet never hearing from him. Didn't mind me much, I was making good money. Until one day I walk past that venue, going home, and I see the drunk lady waiting in front of the champagnebar which was closed at the time. I knew it was her, wearing Louboutins, a chanel suit, a Dries Van Noten handbag, her outfit must of cost at least 20,000 euro. I myself was dressed very smart that evening, I walked up to her, shook her hand and introduced myself.
'Hello, my name is Valon, I am practically your competition, I work for Club ****'
She was flattered, laughing as if I was flirting with her.
I told her how I tried to contact her manager to offer to throw an event, but hadn't gotten an answer in over 2 months. She was astounded, furious, seemingly unsatisfied with his services. And told me he is staying in the restaurant just across the street. She asked me to follow, so we could ask him directly what was going on in the restaurant. I hesitated at first, as this seemed very rude to me, yet she was determined to take me with her, and there I saw an opportunity. When she asked the manager, a very dandy person, white suit, tan, 4,000 euro ring on his finger, why he didn't contact me, he simply laughed in my face and said I was too young. Next to him was standing a tall, big, black man, seemingly the security of the place, and he looked at me with a frowned face. The woman said she'd contact me, and I left.
When I came home, I had told my mother all about what happened, and she simply shrugged it away.
Each day I would hear bad reports how the champagnebar was doing, from friends and relatives, and I always casually told my mother. Telling her how I could do the job so much better than that guy. After a while, she asked me why I hadn't contacted the woman yet, ask him if the position is maybe open. I hesitated, laughed it away, telling her I was too young. I started believing the lies the manager had told me, doubting myself. And my mom simply answered: 'Valon, you're too young for what you're doing now anyway, you've already proven that age is no concern' That same night I called the woman up and set a meeting at her loft. It was the first time I would take a risk this big, and while I was walking towards there, smoking cigarette after cigarette out of stress, I finally convinced myself that the worst thing that could happen was she laughing in my face and ordering me to leave her loft.
It didn't take me 2 minutes of talking to convince her giving me the job. What I didn't knew was that she was in a very emotional stage, her business failing, relationship problems AND she had had me checked by her bankdirector, whose daughter always came to my parties, so the person she held highest in trust talked a good word about me.
I had troubles with the former manager and his security, he actually grabbed me by the neck and started choking me once, I wasn't afraid though, even though I'm a good, honest kid, people tend to fear Albanians in western-europe. So I came off as confident. Everytime they threatened me, I reported this to the woman, causing her in her period of stress to fire the former manager and security without even making a deal with me.
I had a F*cking blank card, I could charge this woman ANYTHING I wanted, either she had to pay me up, or lose her business completely. People were already badmouthing me, saying I could never do this, etc...
At that time, my niece was together with a beaumonde son of a media magnate, Sebastiaan. I got along with him, he had the contacts, he had the presence to become the face of this place, and we agreed to work together.
We made an agreement that 20 percent of sales would go to us. That means that if on a particular night we would have sold 10,000 euro, I would receive 1,000 and Sebastiaan would. She didn't have a choice.
Man, the place skyrocketed, we sold more than the original owner, ofcourse our boss didn't see a penny of this, as all her profits went to us. I had proved to everyone in the country that a 17 year old kid could run a champagne bar for the higher societies in this country, but slowly I realized I was doing all the work, whilst my 22 year old partner was getting all the fame. After a while he truely believed he was doing the work, while I was reaping the benefits. This ensued to argueing, we couldn't work together. We did agree on one thing though, we would always stand together against our boss, as we had to kick her out of her own club every single week because of drunkenness. The best time was when she left to bulgaria for a month and a half. We were selling so much Dom Perignon, Moet and Veuve that one of the managers of Moet Hennesy came down to belgium to congratulate us personally.
After a while our argueing became so bad, that we didn't have contact with eachother anymore. No communication. He was telling my niece that I wasn't doing anything, while I was working almost 20 hours a day for the place. I was pissed. Woke up one morning, booked a ticket to Albania to visit my father who was there on holiday at the time, and called a cab. Left without telling him anything, saying it was an emergency. That week my partner realized how much work there actually was, and after I came back I set up a meeting with him, asking me if he finally understood. And he said he did.
In the meanwhile the entire city was fond of me, talking good about me and they almost completely forgot Sebastiaan. One night I was closing by myself, when the drunken boss arrived again. I had her thrown out, she was so drunk she was sent to jail for the evening. Sebastiaan took his chance, backstabbing me offering her to throw me out so she had to pay only one manager. What he didn'nt knew was that my boss had offered this me over 30 times the past 2 weeks, but I never did it, out of principles.
I was mad for a day, furious, yet realized there was nothing I could do. I did boycott it completely though, by simply posting on facebook that Sebastiaan had backstabbed me and I no longer had anything to do with the club.
Sales dropped completely, they couldn't sell one bottle of champagne in a night. At most they had 3 - 4 people frequenting the club.
All this was in a timespan of 6 months, the biggest gain I got from working there were my contacts. The person who distributed the flyers and wallposters all over the country had gotten a job at the regional television station, but the guy didn't have a business, he did everything under the table, so he couldn't bill the TV station, and as the TV station is noted on the stock market, they couldn't hire him. The CEO of that TV station frequented our club very often, and asked me if I knew some good looking women to distribute his flyers. I said yes, definitely, and asked him what the project was so I could maybe aid him further. He told me the entire history, how he can't hire him, etc... I had a lot of undeclared money on the side, so I took the job, of 14,000 euro, which was supposed to give me a 11,000 euro profit and did the entire activation for him. The guy who distributed the flyers was so amazed that I did this for him, that he and his collegues (who have a monopoly on these kind of jobs) agreed to work with me fulltime. I now have all of them employed, and have the entire nightlife marketing scene monopolied. Effectively, I had started an advertising agency.
Right now, the club has gone broke, Sebastiaan can't find a job anywhere, and I have an advertising agency which is growing steadily, and I'm only working on it for 7 months now
That's my lifestory so far, if anyone ever wants to add me on facebook, (http://www.facebook.com/VVVALON) feel free.
I have been lurking this forum for several months and today is finally the day I decided to register.
This is me
Needless to say, the first few years of my life were lived in poverty, I hadn't seen my father in years, because he left for work before I woke up, and came back when I was already asleep. Nonetheless, he was a big risk taker, taking a loan for a house whilst only working a job for 1 month in Belgium and without even having the papers to stay over here. I had a good childhood, despite the poverty, our family was very warm and caring, and the Albanian refugee community stood up for eachother in the city we lived in.
Fast forward a few years, I was 11, life was a little bit more stable, my dad had worked as a gardener in the same company for 11 years by now, and after a while we could afford to buy ourselves a computer. Keep in mind my father had to provide for my mother, me, my little brother, my grandfather and my grandmother, at a small wage. I was thrilled by having a computer, the first thing I did was insert the Red Alert 3 disk I had bought with the PC, played that same game for months and months until it got boring. After a while we had internet too, started playing an MMORPG called Runescape, good times, no worries. Actually learned the basics of world economy by playing that game, must of been 12 at the time, a freshman in Middle school, I had set up a way of 'botting' on the game, while I was studying I raked in game currency that I sold for at least a profit of 160 euro each schoolday. Life was good. Did the same thing with Counterstrike 1.6 when I was 13. I had a dozen or so servers that were linked with an RPG system, and people could pay RPG credits on that 'franchise of servers'. Each day after I came from school I had a dozen or so letters from all across the world with money in them. Norwegian kroner, american dollars, japenese yen, the world was at my feet.
Carried that on for a years of course spending every dime I had (a lot I gave to my parents, a lot went to candy and the local playhouse). By the time I was 15, my father had promoted himself to partner of the CEO of the company. This had changed a complete new world for us, by now my father had over 25 employees working for him. He carried on for a year, saving the company from the gutter as his partner was in a huge divorce, my father had put all his savings (80,000 euro) and was working 20 hours a day. The company wasn't only saved, it had 140 percent more sales than it used to. (of which 45 percent by me, I told my father to stop paying the workers from home, but give them a mileage compensation, almost equal to what they got, the workers would still remain happy whilst squandering less hours on the toilet etc because their driving time wasn't paid in hours). One day, after working on the desk there for a whole summer, we go to the company to grab a few materials for the next day, and we see my fathers partner carry 700,000 euro worth of materials to a different place, vehicles, cranes, bobcats, everything...
My father was backstabbed, he was devastated by that act. As his Dutch wasn't that good, I practically quit school for 3 months to talk with lawyers, police officers, curators etcetera. Imagine a 15 year old leading the word at a table with over 10 grown ups. This procedure still hasn't finished, and it still has to appear in front of the judge. But I can tell you one thing, since that day, I knew I was destined to do business, I was hooked to it, as soon as I went back to school, my grades dropped immediately. I simply wasn't interested anymore, I had learnt more in life in 3 months than I had seen my entire career in school. And I was a grade A student, I explained my vision to my teachers but none of them would understand me, all saying I would doom my future by doing this.
I actually finished my school that year, to keep my parents happy. Studied all day, everyday and did 3 years of class in one exam period. What now? I couldn't get a daytime job, it was simply not cut out for me, so I started getting interested in women, I wanted to be the casanova everyone admired. Keep in mind, I was 16, but looked 22. I gave myself the assignment of getting to know 10 new females everyday. And trust me, I would keep up to it, cold approaching every single attractive woman I saw, wether at the grocery store, a bar, on the street, a busstop. I soon new every female in my 70k populated city. I started getting a fascination for people, and became a very good listener, socializing with everyone that interested me. One day, me and my nephew, were sitting in a bar that had a dancehall attached to it, I thought it was horrible how rarely the dancehall was used, and proposed to my nephew to throw an event there. The place cost 50 euro to rent for an evening, and 100 if you didn't get a certain quota in liquor sales. So I put down the 50 euro, made a poorly designed flyer with the caption above 'Kickin it oldskool', uploaded it to facebook and invited my friends. I had a 5 euro cover charge and a befriended deejay of mine who charged me 50 euro for a night.
I was expecting 20-30 friends, optimistically.
My mind was blown, 360 people had dropped by. Leaving me with a net profit of 1700 euro. I realized something, I just started a business here, but I had to keep it rolling, I had to make this the most awesome party a lot of people that night had seen. With 1700 euro I made a deal with the bar owner to buy 90 bottles of bubbles from him. I gave away 1700 euro in booze in one single night, almost every second person had a free bottle of Spanish Cava. Every 5 seconds you saw a firework sprinkler go off, people called me crazy.
Life was rolling, I was popular, making good money and getting to know a lot of people. Started throwing an event for around 800 people every 2 weeks. Leaving me with approx. 4,000 - 5,000 euro profit every single month. Meeting club owners, security CEO's, crazy DJ's (Steve Aoki, Dj Antoine, and many others) at the age of 16. Of course, it was surreal to me, I wasn't with my feet on the ground, so every weekend I went away opening bottles of Louis Roederer Cristal, Dom Perignon, Moet, Veuve, Grey Goose, Louis XXIV, eating out... I was living a Bourgeois life.
The club I was promoting was slowly discinerating because of bad management, and one of the most prestigious Champagnebars in the country was sold for a huge amount (the business only, no property) to a fils a papa drunk woman. It didn't take it more than 1 month for her to completely destroy the business. Yelling through the microphone at 3 am for everyone to leave because she wanted to go to sleep, snorting cocaine in the womens bathroom, publicly fighting with her boyfriend, etcetera... I was intrigued, she had hired a manager to run the place because her friends advised her to quit, for the sake of her reputation. I had offered the manager several times to let me throw an event there, always telling me he'd contact me yet never hearing from him. Didn't mind me much, I was making good money. Until one day I walk past that venue, going home, and I see the drunk lady waiting in front of the champagnebar which was closed at the time. I knew it was her, wearing Louboutins, a chanel suit, a Dries Van Noten handbag, her outfit must of cost at least 20,000 euro. I myself was dressed very smart that evening, I walked up to her, shook her hand and introduced myself.
'Hello, my name is Valon, I am practically your competition, I work for Club ****'
She was flattered, laughing as if I was flirting with her.
I told her how I tried to contact her manager to offer to throw an event, but hadn't gotten an answer in over 2 months. She was astounded, furious, seemingly unsatisfied with his services. And told me he is staying in the restaurant just across the street. She asked me to follow, so we could ask him directly what was going on in the restaurant. I hesitated at first, as this seemed very rude to me, yet she was determined to take me with her, and there I saw an opportunity. When she asked the manager, a very dandy person, white suit, tan, 4,000 euro ring on his finger, why he didn't contact me, he simply laughed in my face and said I was too young. Next to him was standing a tall, big, black man, seemingly the security of the place, and he looked at me with a frowned face. The woman said she'd contact me, and I left.
When I came home, I had told my mother all about what happened, and she simply shrugged it away.
Each day I would hear bad reports how the champagnebar was doing, from friends and relatives, and I always casually told my mother. Telling her how I could do the job so much better than that guy. After a while, she asked me why I hadn't contacted the woman yet, ask him if the position is maybe open. I hesitated, laughed it away, telling her I was too young. I started believing the lies the manager had told me, doubting myself. And my mom simply answered: 'Valon, you're too young for what you're doing now anyway, you've already proven that age is no concern' That same night I called the woman up and set a meeting at her loft. It was the first time I would take a risk this big, and while I was walking towards there, smoking cigarette after cigarette out of stress, I finally convinced myself that the worst thing that could happen was she laughing in my face and ordering me to leave her loft.
It didn't take me 2 minutes of talking to convince her giving me the job. What I didn't knew was that she was in a very emotional stage, her business failing, relationship problems AND she had had me checked by her bankdirector, whose daughter always came to my parties, so the person she held highest in trust talked a good word about me.
I had troubles with the former manager and his security, he actually grabbed me by the neck and started choking me once, I wasn't afraid though, even though I'm a good, honest kid, people tend to fear Albanians in western-europe. So I came off as confident. Everytime they threatened me, I reported this to the woman, causing her in her period of stress to fire the former manager and security without even making a deal with me.
I had a F*cking blank card, I could charge this woman ANYTHING I wanted, either she had to pay me up, or lose her business completely. People were already badmouthing me, saying I could never do this, etc...
At that time, my niece was together with a beaumonde son of a media magnate, Sebastiaan. I got along with him, he had the contacts, he had the presence to become the face of this place, and we agreed to work together.
We made an agreement that 20 percent of sales would go to us. That means that if on a particular night we would have sold 10,000 euro, I would receive 1,000 and Sebastiaan would. She didn't have a choice.
Man, the place skyrocketed, we sold more than the original owner, ofcourse our boss didn't see a penny of this, as all her profits went to us. I had proved to everyone in the country that a 17 year old kid could run a champagne bar for the higher societies in this country, but slowly I realized I was doing all the work, whilst my 22 year old partner was getting all the fame. After a while he truely believed he was doing the work, while I was reaping the benefits. This ensued to argueing, we couldn't work together. We did agree on one thing though, we would always stand together against our boss, as we had to kick her out of her own club every single week because of drunkenness. The best time was when she left to bulgaria for a month and a half. We were selling so much Dom Perignon, Moet and Veuve that one of the managers of Moet Hennesy came down to belgium to congratulate us personally.
After a while our argueing became so bad, that we didn't have contact with eachother anymore. No communication. He was telling my niece that I wasn't doing anything, while I was working almost 20 hours a day for the place. I was pissed. Woke up one morning, booked a ticket to Albania to visit my father who was there on holiday at the time, and called a cab. Left without telling him anything, saying it was an emergency. That week my partner realized how much work there actually was, and after I came back I set up a meeting with him, asking me if he finally understood. And he said he did.
In the meanwhile the entire city was fond of me, talking good about me and they almost completely forgot Sebastiaan. One night I was closing by myself, when the drunken boss arrived again. I had her thrown out, she was so drunk she was sent to jail for the evening. Sebastiaan took his chance, backstabbing me offering her to throw me out so she had to pay only one manager. What he didn'nt knew was that my boss had offered this me over 30 times the past 2 weeks, but I never did it, out of principles.
I was mad for a day, furious, yet realized there was nothing I could do. I did boycott it completely though, by simply posting on facebook that Sebastiaan had backstabbed me and I no longer had anything to do with the club.
Sales dropped completely, they couldn't sell one bottle of champagne in a night. At most they had 3 - 4 people frequenting the club.
All this was in a timespan of 6 months, the biggest gain I got from working there were my contacts. The person who distributed the flyers and wallposters all over the country had gotten a job at the regional television station, but the guy didn't have a business, he did everything under the table, so he couldn't bill the TV station, and as the TV station is noted on the stock market, they couldn't hire him. The CEO of that TV station frequented our club very often, and asked me if I knew some good looking women to distribute his flyers. I said yes, definitely, and asked him what the project was so I could maybe aid him further. He told me the entire history, how he can't hire him, etc... I had a lot of undeclared money on the side, so I took the job, of 14,000 euro, which was supposed to give me a 11,000 euro profit and did the entire activation for him. The guy who distributed the flyers was so amazed that I did this for him, that he and his collegues (who have a monopoly on these kind of jobs) agreed to work with me fulltime. I now have all of them employed, and have the entire nightlife marketing scene monopolied. Effectively, I had started an advertising agency.
Right now, the club has gone broke, Sebastiaan can't find a job anywhere, and I have an advertising agency which is growing steadily, and I'm only working on it for 7 months now
That's my lifestory so far, if anyone ever wants to add me on facebook, (http://www.facebook.com/VVVALON) feel free.
I have been lurking this forum for several months and today is finally the day I decided to register.
This is me
Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum:
Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.
.
