Business

One of the things I get the most pleasure from is the starting of new companies, growing them to an operating size and then, either turning them over to staff to run or selling them to someone who would like to operate a "going concern." The "What New Company" link on the left gives you insight into what I'm doing and chasing.

If you were to look at my report cards from the early years, starting about grade three. You would find teachers comments routinely saying things like "If Peter would spend more time on his school work, and less time designing companies, he would be successful."

I remember my grade 7 or grade 8 teacher taking and showing me a picture of a mouse trying to eat a big piece of chocolate cake. She told me to look at that for what I remember being about 10 minutes while she worked on something else. She proceeded to try to "teach" me to not take on things that were too big. While I know, and knew at the time, that was her attempt, I looked at that mouse and thought - "That mouse is going to eat more chocolate cake than any other mouse. That mouse will eat as much chocolate cake as it possibly can. I want to be that mouse. I want to live that way."

That teacher probably did more for me than anyone else up to University in encouraging me to think big grandiose ideas - and then going and doing them! Not the lesson she wanted me to learn of course ...

I was loaned $2,000 when I first got into business from a relative, on the condition that - when I missed my first payment, I had to stop trying to be an entrepreneur, and "get a real job". I of course never missed a payment and I never went and got a "real job" by that definition and I still consider the job of starting companies to be a real job.

Now, you can look at what I'm doing, what I've achieved. I'm no Bill Gates. He is just a little older than me, and I admit, at any age in my business career, Bill, with all his diverse companies (Including Microsoft which he will be stepping down from in June (2008 if you are reading this after the fact), has done far more than I have and has, in any measurable financial and business ways that I know of, done far better than I have. But I am mostly pleased with what I have achieved and how I have achieved it. I am pleased with my levels of success and, while I always would like to have done better, and while as I get older, most of the time I do better. So overall, I am pleased.

But, if you want to be a business partner with me, invest in me, buy from me or sell to me, then you can check out more about what I have done and am doing and decide for yourself.

I always have ideas for those that want to get involved with me as a partner. As I get older, the scale needs to be bigger to interest me. From time to time I have projects that may be of interest for people looking to invest $150,000 or more. And very rarely, $10-50,000. If you want to be informed of possible options, let me know what types of projects and involvement would be of interest and I'll let you know if I have any currently or let you know (no obligation) when appropriate ones come up. Or, take a look at my "What new Company" link on the left to see what I was looking at the last time I updated that page and see if anything there interests you. Also, if you are wondering how I come up with my ideas ... that page is a still a great one to look at.

As people who keep track of my web site know, I've been warning about the Sub-Prime problem since late 2006 - the writing was on the wall (banks bragging about how they were doing things). The result for those that followed my advice, gains in any 3 month period in 2007 or 2008 so far. I don't claim to have a crystal ball, but it is amazing that it took so long for so many to figure this one out - especially in the government and banking sectors.