He was a dumb kid. That's what everyone said. Rocks for brains. And they were probably right. He'd given up on
school
by the time he was ten years old when his
report card
started coming home with Ds and Cs rather than just Cs.
Not all of them, but several of his teachers yelled at him. Said he'd end up working at
McDonalds
if he didn't straighten up. Some of the older kids beat him up because they said he was so dumb that he deserved to get his head bashed in. Funny thing was that these kids got just as bad grades as him. But they liked to beat him anyways.
He began mowing lawns when he was 12. By 13 too many people were asking him to mow lawns that he began swinging his friend into it. He only had one friend. And soon he had to start tapping into other kids with idle hands and no chance of becoming successful. So he started hiring those older kids who used to beat him up. Now he made them mow lawns and he signed their
paychecks
.
By 16 most his class was applying for college. He had no plans, but he wasn't going to drop out either. Although it was an enormous waste of time in terms of not being able to work and make money, he liked the idea of going to some place just for the hell of it, kicking it with the others, and overall not having to do anything so long as he didn't drink booze out in the open. Plus he knew he could work all his adult life, so why not enjoy school?
Ten years later he sold his landscaping company for $4.5 million. He took 900K of that and put it into real estate. Then the bubble happened and his portfolio became worth 3 million. There was no way the properties were actually worth that much so he sold them. And then on an off chance one of his old classmates told him about a
startup
that his other friend was working on.
He talked to him and had no idea what the hell they were working on, but he loved their energy. So he asked them how much they needed to work on the idea for 18 months. They told him 120K. He ended up giving them 160k and asked for a 12% stake.
Another seven years later, just as he was turning 33, that startup ended up being acquired for 200 million. After some deal cutting to the middlemen he got 17 million. He was already retired, but now he was more rich and retired.
One day one of his classmates got
coffee
with him. And he told this old classmate his life story, and the guy told him he needed to start a
Twitter
account.