“My father owned several businesses, but he owned this one business that was a store that was failing. It was losing a lot of money, and so he was going to close it. We made a deal that I’d drop out of school, not finish my last semester, and take it over.

If I turned it around I would get 50% of the business and compensate him for the losses that he incurred from the point I took it over until it was successful. The lease was running out, I had about a year by the time I got there to turn it around, and if I did turn it around I’d get 50% ownership and he’d get reimbursed for all the losses. It was no-lose for him and no-lose for me, a real win-win, and that’s what I did.

When I got there, the business, the break even was about three million. It was doing about a million and a half, so it was losing about a million and a half, and we turned it around.

It became a very well-known store in Manhattan visited by people like Madonna, it was in New York City.

It went back to three million, then four and a half million, and then six million, then seven million, seven and a half million or so, and it was continuing to grow.

We opened a music label. We put a recording studio in the store that turned into a music label, a techno music label where we had worldwide distribution on, but I recognized around that time that this was not really my lifelong pursuit, and so I gave the business back to my dad, went back to school, finished my last semester.

Then I decided to take a year off and figure out what was going to be next for me, or should I semi-retire. I kind of knew I was eventually going to do something, but not sure when I would figure out what or when, and that was kind of the end of the first phase”.

“This is just one of the brilliant entrepreneurial stories shared in the new book “Mindset, Marketing & Money”. Get your copy of my new book via Amazon UK here today!  (Amazon US here).