One Shot, One Opportunity!

All I have is one opportunity. This is a thought that I constantly crosses my mind because it is unlikely that I will be able to add significant capital to my portfolio over the next few months or years. There is one last cash injection to come (which I will discuss in a later post) but after that I have to make this work with what I have already got.

Throughout my life I have learnt that I like working for myself. This even stretches back to when I was sixteen I owned a retail business for a couple of years. After this I moved into the property industry, and if I am honest I didn’t enjoy my life. I hated waking up to go work for other people and found my work life to be somewhat stagnant. This probably wasn’t helped by the fact that the private company I worked for was undergoing a transformation with the father passing the business onto his son who had absolutely no idea how to manage people or projects, let alone run the numbers over potential developments (but that’s a story for another day).

Anyway it had always been a passion of mine to work in the stock market and to be honest I don’t know why I didn’t follow that path sooner. Towards the end of my property career I tried applying for a number of graduate roles, however I had in part studied the wrong degree. It was basically an economics degree which applied the theories and modules to property, however when recruiters saw that I studied a Bachelor of Property, they didn’t seen the economic side of things that dream was eventually shattered.

In the end it probably was a positive thing because I don’t know if I could have gone on to work 80 hours plus a week in the city, which would leave little time for my family and other activities I enjoy (soccer and going to the gym). Anyway I continued to muddle along and switched to working in residential sales, it didn’t last long and I reached another cross road in my life. Basically I was forced to go work for someone else or grow some balls and risk it all again to work for myself.

That is when I expanded an online business that I had previously only run for some additional income on the side. I increased the businesses advertising tenfold and with it came a corresponding increase in revenue and profitability. I was not rich, but I had the enough money to pay an average wage, keep the wife happy and press on with my dream of working for myself and eventing into the stock market once more. If you read my original welcome post you would know that I feel at home in the market and this was kind of like returning to my roots, even though I am only 22.

As a result I am writing this piece today. I have this one opportunity and need to make it work. I am not under any illusions of how hard this is going to be and realise that to do this full time I need to get a number of “10 baggers” within the next 3 to 5 years. To ensure I can make enough to realise this dream I have to throw everything I have against it. I have to be willing to take on more risk than ever before and back my own research. This is not about being reckless or throwing good money after bad, it is about taking the steps that could result in a life changing outcome. As I mentioned at the start I have a limited amount of capital with which to work with and being married does limit my access to future funds (as we are also saving for our own home one day, as a result I have one shot at making this work and to change the course of my life.