After failing my fifth form certificate I had to go back and re-do the whole year. Well, that lasted a month so my mother packed me off to secretarial college. It was here I learnt my most valuable lesson - how to touch type and I was super fast too!So at age 17 I started my first job as a data entry operator working at Takapuna City Council working with floppy disks the size of a small record!At 21 it was time for my big OE straight to London where I ended up getting married, buying a house and living there for the next 5 years working in a Merchant bank as a systems administrator, a fancy name for tech support.On returning to NZ I went into business with my mother wholesaling all natural jams, chutneys, sauces and preserves to gift shops. We decided to open our own shop in Tauranga called The Pantry Shop selling directly to the public with a mail-order catalogue as well.In 2002 I was talked into getting an eCommerce website built for our mail order, the first of its kind in Tauranga. It took off with orders coming in from London for gift baskets to be delivered locally in NZ. After 8 years I sold out to my mother to pursue my entrepreneurial career.It was in 2004 after running out of cash flow for our property development empire - which consisted of 1 house and 2 rentals it was time to get another business going. The book “Multiple Streams of Income” was super inspiring and led me to start www.eaout.co.nz, an online restaurant guide. This was a great business for many years.After successfully franchising our restaurant guide into Australia, in 2015 I decided to set up the guide in Fiji. Unfortunately, this didn’t work out so well, however, in the meantime, I discovered another opportunity and built a travel agency selling only online. The business took off and grew rapidly. After 3 years I approached one of our main suppliers who then bought the business.My confidence in building websites was increasing and I wanted to get more involved. So in 2018, I was looking for my next opportunity, and this came along by way of a small digital agency that I bought. I was thrown into the deep end and had to quickly get up to speed with learning all the new software and getting to know my new clients. I've been doing a lot since 2018, too much to write about here. Today in 2024/25 I'm heavily into learning and using AI to build my portfolio websites and SEOing local business websites.