Anyone care to share their story? Part 2.

Darragh29 wrote: »

I decided to go out on my own after having a series of completely inept and utterly useless & highly devious managers.

lol

Love the honestly.

I'd sent this in an email to somebody before, so excuse any excess waffle, but this is from the start to present.

Age 13: Convinced my brother and friend to put our pocket money together and save up £70 each for a CD burner costing £210 to run an underground cd selling business in school. After making a lot more sales then they did, I ended up "buying them out" (giving them back their £70) after a few weeks and I then fully owned the CD burner and built my collection by selling CD's at £5 instead of £10 to anyone who would give me their entire CD collection overnight, where I would then go home and copy the whole lot to MP3 and bring their CD's back in the next day along with a copy of whatever album they wanted.

This was when MP3's were only young and nobody really knew about them or the technology. This carried on throughout my school years having sold CD's to half the school and being known as the "CD guy". I printed out an updated list and got a hot teacher to let me into the photocopying room with her so I could make a few hundred copies to distribute among the pupils.

I also imported MP3 CD players (very new technology at the time) from the US and sold these along with MP3 CD's (14 albums per disc, brilliant at the time:)) for a tidy profit. They all had a fault so I had to return them all to the US where they got lost in the mail so a compensation battle ensued and after getting onto the head of consumer affairs and everything I got the money back and refunded everyone, months after having left school.

By the time 6th year came MP3s and the technology, along with faster internet was getting widespread, so I decided to repent my sins of selling copyrighted material and focus on a more moral business... gambling..


So at about 18 I went to my first big poker tournament run by the UCD poker society, they made themselves a mint that night, back when people hadn't a clue what a good value poker tournament was. So I instantly saw a great opportunity and at one of our kitchen table poker games at home, I said we should do the same thing, run tournaments and make millions. So I hopped online and www.poker.ie was available to buy so between my brother, 3 friends and I, we all chipped in what we could to buy the domain and I ordered a few hundred poker chips from the states.

We ran our first tournament in Bray and had about 40 people show up which was great, we didn't really have a clue what we were doing but it went well. At this stage one of the 3 friends had dropped out of the "business" because it was too much and at the tournament both him and our other friend came 1st and 2nd so it looked pretty dodgy, but it was all legit

After this we learned of a few casinos in town and thought there's no way we can really compete with them guys so we went a different direction with the site. Instead of running tournaments we just sent people to online sites and tried to make money off affiliation. It worked well for a while then we wanted to go do a bit more. At this stage it was really just my brother and I putting the effort so we bought the remaining two friends out.

Since then we have gotten our own poker room software, so people download and play directly with poker.ie. All this was going on while I was also doing an apprentice in carpentry, which I left after 2 years, and then I did a course in furniture design which I finished. Because poker.ie is a business where you put in loads of work and hope for a return in a few years, I wanted to try my hand at an instant money earner, job done, money up front.

I never really fancied working for somebody else, this wish was strengthened in my time as an apprentice carpenter, having to listen to the same radio station every day, which pumped out the same **** songs and repeated them about 5 times a day. I did attempt to switch on lyric FM to escape but once the foreman came in, he'd switch it back to Spin 103. It drove me mad and I think it had a knock on effect.

I first considered just something quick like turning my little ford fiesta into a taxi, I mentioned this to a friend on the poker forum and he advised me to stay away and to set up something like he had going, a van business. I gave it a thought and decided why not. I had some leeway because at 21, I still lived at home and could give it a go without too much risk. I was broke at the time because poker.ie wasn't really giving us anything back and we still had to earn enough to pay off my a site redesign and to get our sister site, www.pokermap.com made.

So I pitched the idea to my brother and my friend, both poker players and then my dad, I managed to get some money off the three of them to invest in a banger of a van I found on the buyandsell. It was left sitting in the driveway for months while I got everything else sorted out to make it look like an attractive business. I wanted the website looking crisp and the business cards to match. So this took from October 2006 till about March 2007 in which time I had a little part time job delivering pizzas for Dominos.

I had also been planning on moving out of home for ages, since I was about 14 really, I was always buying things that I'd need for when I moved out, my own laptop, bedsheets, towels, so I'd be ready when the time came but the opportunity came around December 2006 when the girl living underneath my friends place in Dun Laoghaire was moving back to Finland so her place was going to be free. If I didn't take this opportunity I could be stuck at home for who knows how much longer, so because I had the money borrowed, I had a bit to give to the deposit so moved in.

€600 a month in rent plus bills was quite a chunk to be taken from a man already in debt and earning very little a week but I still took everything quite easily and took my time with everything making sure I was always getting the best deals and saving money every possible way I could, from haggling and price comparing with different suppliers to doing everything myself when I could. I don't drink, smoke, do drugs or gamble so I had no addictions to feed, not even tea or coffee thankfully.

It was around March I got my very first non family/friend job. I was to take Cathy Davey to Cork for a gig, then the rattle started again. A rattling sound started whenever I seemed to go above 70kmph in the van. Hadn't a clue what it was, this was the first long trip so for 3 or 4 hours we were overshadowed by an incessant rattling noise the whole way to Cork. So much so Cathy had to put earplugs in so it wouldn't wreck her for the gig that night. It was so loud. So we got to Cork fine, the gig went fine and all then the next morning, the van wouldn't start, being a bank holiday there was nowhere to buy jump leads but luckily there was a carnival in town so one of the guys went off and borrowed some jump leads off the carnie folk.

This wasn't the only time the van broke down on a job, I've had customers having to push my van to start it, more than once. So I decided to invest in a new van, with no money. I went to the banks they took a quick look at my accounts and said not a hope. I needed 10K. So I went to my dad, not in a "daddy can I have a new Mini Cooper" way, but more an business plan approach. All I wanted was him to go guarantor anyway, I wasn't asking for money, I'd be paying it all back. So I got the loan and got my new van, 2nd hand of course, but it was good, it was clean and it finally looked like the van I had on my cards, not some rusty banger like I had been driving.

With google adwords, I was getting a great return on the money I was putting into advertising so it's been going steady since, but the whole plan of setting up this business was so I wouldn't have to work in it too long, I just wanted to be able to set up a business that would eventually run itself. So that's next on the cards. Try and get another van and somebody working for me, see how that works out and then get another van and another worker and so on.

I do want to get back into the furniture design (as well as carving, wood turning and everything) and I still have cormacosheehan.com for when I'm ready to make a site for that venture. But being what it is, you need to establish a name for yourself, so I just want to take it easy and I had visions of having a little cottage in the French countryside where I could set up a little workshop out the back near the little river that ran alongside my garden, and walk down to the village market every weekend to sell my pieces.

I've got a few other great ideas too which could be really great businesses I reckon, but I don't want to put too much on my plate at the moment so maybe I'll try them out at a later date

I'd love to take the first few steps to launching my own business but the finances are lacking at the moment :mad: I'll suscribe to this thead though to get ideas and see how it has worked out for others

Best post Ive seen on this forum, Cormie. Thanks for the input.

Good luck with the launch Ianod.

Thanks everyone

Hehe, nope, not application to the apprentice, it was for a program on RTE that never went ahead. They approached me and asked me would I be interested and to send them a brief run down so that's what they got

Isn't the apprentice about working for somebody else? No thanks

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Superb post - thanks for sharing.

Granty2007 wrote: »

Thanks for the comments. The shop is located in Dublin South Side and I would prefer not to name as this was not meant to be a PR push for my shop, just a bit of help if anyone was interested in my story. Thanks again..lets hope i can post here in six months with great success!

good stuff, what kind of shop is it out of interest?