While currently only 19, I have certainly been around for a while.
I got my ‘business’ start designing websites in early 2001 for friends and family, and eventually transformed this into a side venture at 12-13 years old. By this time I had held a few part time jobs but felt restricted, and eventually decided to concentrate on working for myself. With only $200 in funding available I started a my first real business, a website hosting company. This business turned out to be very successful and within a year I had launched several expansion companies.
Throughout a majority of 2005 I was also the Managing Director for YAA team Yaussie, which was rather successful. Possibly a representation of our success and dominance in the competition was our ability to lock both the local radio stations and newspapers into exclusivity agreements. Yaussie took out the Company of the Year Title, as well as the Best Marketing title and the Best Media Promotions title. I was personally recognized as one of the strongest managers to enter the competition. As a result I was a finalist for YAA Young Business Person of the Year. As this came to a close I won the local Lions Youth of the Year Contest.
Early 2006 I made the decision to sell my existing ventures to pursue other goalswith intentions of returning in the not too distant future. I took this time to concentrate on my completion of the HSC (for non Australians, that is the final year of High School), where I graduated with a total non-raw UAI Score of 96.25, 93.25 raw, scoring over 90% in 4 out of my 6 HSC tested subjects. Throughout the rest of 2006 I was asked back to YAA to act as a team mentor due to my success not only in the competition, but in the external business world. It was through this mentoring that I booked / managed my first ever live concert tour and made many connections with local bands, who I still utilize today.
Proceeding graduation I decided to test my worth and took up a position within Clearcom Marketing as a Sales Rep. Within two weeks I was the top selling rep within the company. From here I was promoted to both one of the Managers and Sales Trainers, and was incredibly successful in this role with the office performance increasing exponentially.
I left this position several months later due to feeling that the company was not heading in a positive direction, and while on my short break I was awarded the Young Citizen of the Year Award for my local region. I have since been asked to sit on the local Youth Advisory Committee.
Following this I held a string of Marketing and Management based jobs before making the decision to focus on returning to self employment while completing a Bachelor of Commerce at the University of Wollongong in their selective “Deans Scholars” program with a triple major in Management, Marketing and Public Relations.
As things stand business wise I have received several interesting proposals over the past several months and am preparing to move in on several while toying with many new concepts. I am incredibly lucky to still be working in what I consider one of my home fields (aggressive sales), owning, managing and running a small team of elite, skilled sales people who act as my base and launch pad in many new ventures.
I am using this blog essentially to network, so be sure to leave a comment, send me an e-mail and add me to any of the networking sites I use (the links are posted in the menu). You never know what we may work on down the track!
