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[Threeshotgamer]

So my daughter saw the Do you consider yourself well off? thread and was fascinated by some of the answers. She came down to my basement office and was asking me about what decisions i've made that I would consider crucial to getting to where i'm at and I found myself reflecting on some key ones trying to decide which ones were indeed critical and which ones just seemed that way but in the long run ended up being not that big. I narrowed mine down to 3 big decisions:
1. After college I accepted a job doing civilian contracting in the middle east. (I built bridges and other infrastructure)
2. I used the money I earned from that (tax free baby) to start my first company after getting my CDL when returning to the states.
3. I managed to secure some big contracts for local highway construction work and those relationships have been very lucrative and led to me being able to expand in several business ventures.

What decisions have you made that landed you where you are today? And do you think that your life would have turned out drastically different if you hadn't made those decisions that way?

 

[Cockles & Whelks]

I wish I hadn't been so self conscious about looks. Back in 20s I landed a dream job at ITN, the big news company in UK. Unfortunately it was when my adult acne was at worst... 2nd day, took elevator down to lunch, stops off at a floor, this trio of hot girls get in. No where to hide in a mirror lined elevator, they get out laughing. I'll never know if they were laughing at me, but it still haunts me to this day. I never went back, I went straight home.

 

[Threeshotgamer]

I wish I hadn't been so self conscious about looks. Back in 20s I landed a dream job at ITN, the big news company in UK. Unfortunately it was when my adult acne was at worst... 2nd day, took elevator down to lunch, stops off at a floor, this trio of hot girls get in. No where to hide in a mirror lined elevator, they get out laughing. I'll never know if they were laughing at me, but it still haunts me to this day. I never went back, I went straight home.

That's awful man. I"m sorry that happened to you

 

[hariseldon]

My biggest reasons for doing ok:

1. I got kicked out of school and was on the path to failure when I went back to a non mainstream school. I was throwing chairs at people and all sorts. I decided I wanted to go back to mainstream and I did what was necessary - biting my tongue in the face of tremendous provocation, and got back.
2. While I wasn’t at school my parents didn’t bother home schooling me. Well my mum did it for about 5 minutes. In a fit of boredom I learned to code. There was no internet so I had to do it the old fashioned way. That led to my current career as a developer.
3. I came back to the UK and decided no more slutting - time to grow up and be a decent human being. I met my wife shortly after and she is the first woman I’ve ever not cheated on. She has been a good influence on me and I suspect that without her I would not have put so much effort and planning into my career.

 

[TaySan]

Being born to the right parents? Good luck basically.

 

[Tesseract]

ground my soul to dust in math and physics books, engine tools, editors like goldsrc, unity, ue5

education reboot at 19, complete understudy of every discipline imaginable, which eventually became a kind of prison

hard work trumps all, never stopped adapting or improving, learning, failing ...

 

[HellforLeather]

-Lots of networking

-Giving a shit about my job (lucky enough to work for a place that recognizes this)

-"Would I regret saying 'no' to this later?" attitude in my 20s.

 

[highrider]

I just was lucky that I was talented in a few things and willing to work, because I was terrible at most things.

 

[Brian Fellows]

I’m nowhere today and it’s probably a complete and utter lack of decisions that left me here.

Looking back I can’t really pinpoint anything I’d do differently though. This was always going to be my life.

 

[John Day]

To make it short: Let's say I put a huge stack of my chips on someone. This someone turned out to be very influential in my life, in a good way in the end, but not the way "10 years ago ME" wanted or expected. But I learned a LOT, and even though I feel I spent quite a few years stagnant, I don't blame that person really.

I'm in a good place now. I've often though if I hadn't met that person, I might have truly not had learned shit of life.

 

[Tesseract]

i've made a lot of mistakes along the way

carved the best path possible, there's only so much you can accomplish / day

 

[Stouffers]

Its all about your network.

 

[Durask]

One thing - I am a lazy sh*t and always had to force myself to work instead of slacking off. It's unpleasant but really forcing myself to work in certain times really paid off. And no, it's not that I did not "find myself" - as soon as a hobby becomes too intense, it starts to feel like work and stops being fun.

I did have a moment when I was 25 or 26 when I realized that if I did not stop slacking my life will suck the big one so for a few years the fear really drove me to accomplish a lot.
Had a couple more similar moments after that when I started to slack off and things kinda started to go south, the fear kicked in and really helped me along.

Fear is a great motivator I tell ya

 

[nush]

Took a job in a small dark games shop (Future Zone). I didn't want to work in a games shop, even though I did like games. It didn't even pay as well as my previous jobs, the only perk was to be able to borrow a game for the night. But a friend of mine had already talked to the manager and recommended me so out of respect for the effort my friend had made I went.
The manager was sound as fuck and I got offered the job right away after he'd had a string of interviewees who's abilities he described as "Ive got a SNES, give me a job".

The industry as it was then in the UK wasn't as big or professional as it is today. But finding out that working in a game shop qualified you to be able to get into the trade shows there was virtually no public in these shows and they booths were very open. You could walk up to any booth and be talking with the MD, CEO, lead developer just like that.

So I'm on a booth talking to a staff member there that I happened to know because he lived in the same town. The managing director comes up to me and says, "Come and have a look at this, what do you think?", it was a lightgun game. I told him what I thought, balanced feedback. He then says to me "Come see me next week" gives me his business card and just like that I'd gone from retail to real games industry.

In under two years I'd broken out of retail (Just when it was sucking my will to live) to go on to be employed by many of the big publishers and developers working on lot of popular franchises and traveling the world for free.

Ironically the job I'd taken over at the game shop was to replace someone who had left to go and work of Psygnosis.

Take chances, put yourself out the in the real world, not just online. Don't wait for things to come to you.

 

[Ozzy Onya A2Z]

1. I always had interest in science and technology and self-taught programming/computers at a young age. I thank my brother for having an interest in it but mostly it was just gadgets and games that fueled me. I'm naturally curious and learn for myself. Never stop learning and lean into your natural talents, experiment to find them.

2. Challenging myself, I was never afraid of taking a risk or responsibility back when I used to work for others. It gave me skills, customers, promotions, pay rises, opportunities and generally showed I was capable and willing to take something on. I've always gained the abilities I see in others around me too, I always ask questions and want to learn what others do that I couldn't at the time. Speak up but learn to listen first.

3. The day I quit my job to start my own company (20+ years ago), I got sick of expanding companies or sales or tech or processes etc for other companies/bosses while having to work within their decision making. At first I arranged to work 2 days per week and have the rest of the time for my business, the next morning after realising you have to give it real go I quit completely and never looked back. In short learn to trust and back yourself but always be open to others with skills, experience and networking you may not have access to.

4. Hard work. My family gave me that hard work ethic of "if a job is worth doing it's worth doing right". Those words remain true today. Work your ass off but work smarter as well. I moved back home to build my company from the ground up with fuck all expenses behind me, you have to sacrifice. My wife and I lived with my brother for a couple of years as well (girlfriend at the time), during formative years. It worked for us personally and professionally. For anyone looking at starting something of their own I highly recommend doing that before kids and/or mortgage.

5. Respect. Everyone has my respect from the get go, you may lose or gain more respect but treat everyone equally right out of the gate. Give respect, get respect and above all else respect yourself and your time. If someone doesn't respect you or your time then move to change that or move on.

6. During one of my largest roles at a tech company the boss had a lifelong friend who was also a high end consultant that eventually worked with us to restructure the entire company, he became my mentor and I became his right hand man. My biggest takeaways there were "locus of control" and that as great as he/we did taking that company from 7Mil turnover to over 50Mil within 3 years and 8 staff to 30+ staff he was just an Aussie bloke; that also only worked 6 months of the year and preferred travelling in his Kombi van as much as he could while enjoying his family life at his wonderful beach house most of the year. I'm still inspired by his life in and out of the workplace.

7. Having kids. This has motivated me more than anything else personally and professionally.