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Sighing in exasperation, Nicola realised she’d read everything in the “Starting A Business” section in Books Etc, Oxford St.
She’d either read them all or didn’t like the look of them, titles such as “How To Incorporate Your Business” being too dry, by far.
She was looking for the secret you see, the secret of success in business, the one thing that had eluded her thus far. Little did she know that she was making a fundamental error about businesses, every time she set up a new one. A fundamental error that doomed each to failure.
“It has to be here somewhere” she muttered as she glanced at her watch.
Nearly out of time on the one-hour lunch break allowed and her sandwich and cappuccino not even bought yet. Time was nearly up and a long afternoon at her job loomed like a prison sentence.
“What’s wrong with me?” she thought wearily. “Why do I spend all my time dreaming of owning my own business? Why can’t I just be normal, go to work like everyone else and be grateful to be earning at all, with spare time on the weekends?”
Nicola walked out of the business section, past the self-help shelves, the section she never looked at as she imagined it being full of yoghurt weaving and macrame “how to”.
Just as she walked past the final shelf a book dropped on the floor in front of her, for all the world like a tiny book elf had pushed it out himself.
Nicola loved and respected books and was nothing if not tidy and so she didn’t want to leave the book on the floor to get kicked around. The few staff in evidence looked busy enough.
As she looked for the right section, she glanced idly at the cover.
“Swimming With Piranha Makes You Hungry” by Professor Colin Turner was the rather cryptic title. While Nicola idly pondered whether there should be an “S” at the end of piranha, little did she know that this book would change her life forever.
She turned it over and realised that it was a book designed to encourage people who worked in corporate life to set up a business on the side of their day job, with the ultimate goal of breaking free of Cubicle Nation.
“Preaching to the converted, there, Colin my old love!” she thought, but as the book was under £5 and she didn’t have anything to read on the tube, she bought it quickly before going to buy her lunch.
Over the next couple of days, Nicola raced through the book which was entertaining and thought-provoking but ultimately containing nothing new for this veteran of “How To” books. However, she had a nagging feeling she was missing something so she read it again.
And again, and then again.
Over the next few weeks, she read that little book about 10 times while not quite sure why she was doing that.
One day, just before arriving at her stop in Kensal Rise, Nicola noticed a little drawing near the end of the book. Here is that drawing exactly as she saw it.
She immediately realised that this drawing held the secret, the one thing she’d been looking for, all her life in all those books.
It showed her the difference between being an employee and saver, and an investor. She immediately wrote a 5* review on Amazon.
Nicola started out on a journey to learn how money works, how success works, how business works. How successful people think.
This led to buying a 12 bedroom hotel “no money down”, starting four six-figure businesses, one of which “The Money Gym” went on to become her own first book and mentoring programme, which changed hundreds, if not thousands of people’s lives.
Then, fifteen years later, an email arrived in her inbox from a Professor Colin Turner, who had just been sent a screenshot by a friend, of her review written all those years ago.
“Fancy a chat on Skype?” he said.
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