The idea for a personal web site has long been an aspiration for myself, not some crappy social networking site or some ambiguous free personal web site hosted out there some where on a crappy server hosted by a faceless ISP. No a real web site build by me!
well that's been the plan since 1996, the only thing stopping me was knowledge. I know to you cyber junkies HTML is not some thing you consider difficult, but validation, CSS style sheets, bin hex colour codes, java, etc make this simple task dam outright daunting.
I have to say with out the help of my brother in law Sam, this would have never have happened.
After returning from a dismal Honeymoon in 2005-2006. I returned to Australia to find that the company I had spent the last year building from up from $5k per month in total sales to over $150K. Had been run so badly by the directors son that the company was teetering on collapse.
How can you destroy a profitable firm with weeks or future orders booked in the height of consumer demand for your product (X-Mass)?
Well, Matt found some thing in his masters of business text book that helped him succeed in only 6 weeks! It was only a matter of time till I lost my job as national sales manager with a I.T Peripherals company ritequip.
Ritequip went bust literally 5 weeks after my return from honeymoon in 2006 i later found out that a decision had been made by the share holders to milk significant amounts of capital from the company.
with the company about to close they offered it to me. A shell of the former going concern, at a hugely inflated price.
Biggest issue was that they wanted to shift the company with years worth of un sold and unsaleable products, in fact over 1/2 the value of the company was in dead stock after lengthily negotiations they refused to move on this issue and ament their final price, believing I was desperate for the business or just plain stupid.
I walked away from the deal resulting in the company's very quick closure.
I was originally intending to start my own company selling our strongest product line "digital memory" SD cards etc. I could source these from Ritequips former supplier tekQ,
This did not happen due to many reasons, mostly my lack of funds and inability to get a significant web presence.
After this I tried a stint as a people trafficker (recruitment) but I just couldn't take the endless que of people who after 25+ years of loyal service to the one company who were tossed to the side as their hair started to turn grey. The fact is that companies don't want anyone over 50. the most common line in recruitment is "I know your not ageist, racist or sexist, BUT what would bee the ideal fit in your company?" and you know what the answer is always the same we called it the 3M's
White, 25-35.
That's the basic spec for almost all jobs out there, Ill let you in on another little known secret, almost 1/2 of all job adds are fake. Job adds help you find the best product (person) to reverse can vice back to the market.
As you can tell, this role left me feeling very well shit. So I took a a role with a web site and Google Add words company. This is what really motivated me to start hacking away at the HTML.
The profits are huge, if some one sells you a web site for $3K it would have cost them $650! Don't even get me started on the bull shit ness of Add words. DO IT YOUR SELF WITH GOOGLE DIRECT it is not that hard and you'll save at least 60% on what ever you have been quoted!
Some how i was accepted to an interview with KONE Building Doors Sydney Metro, the pay was huge with a company Credit Card, Car or Car allowance the company Kone is huge. i say to my self this is easy and it was I increased sales in my department 400% in two Qtr's i started to think great i'm on easy street...a Great job...Great Pay... Great Company... and i was then....Bam out of know where.
My wife finished her studies at university, she had all ways dreamed of travelling Europe and after much persuasion and near divorcé. I agreed that we should give it a go. I decided to turn this web site in to a on line diary of the experience.
Rgds,
Stuart W. Moran
memorymen.com.au
2008