I was born in a small energetic city called Fort St. John, B.C., also known as the City of Champions. Some of my friends were world champions at their sports. Everyone noticed that for the small population of 20,000 people there were a lot of talented people. There may be something in the water but most of us concluded it was most likely due to the extreme cold weather and the fact that there weren't a lot of things to do, no distractions, the people there were able to focus on what they did and got really good at it. I grew up very fortunate, had a brother and a sister and a dog named Roxy.
We had a big house with a field for a backyard, with endless nature. We would just open the door and Roxy would walk herself. It was good, I did well in school, mostly A's and B's, had a great reputation, lots of super good and cool friends, excelled at sports and also had lots of girlfriends. When I was 16 I won the bc championships for racquetball, and acquired a few gold medals and trophies most every year in various sports like soccer, badminton, and wrestling. My dad coached my soccer teams, and was a great coach throughout my life. He would take to me to games and tournaments. He even took me to the Nationals in Racquetball all the way in Saskatchewan. Winning in sports gave me a lot of confidence, my dad would tell me "never give up." I would go all out in sports and hold nothing back, I liked to push my maximum for as long as I could in order to win. My dad was extremely proud of me, and he helped me win in a lot of ways, I'm so grateful for having great parents. My mom and dad met and fell in love at UBC married and found teaching jobs in Fort St. John, they were very highly respected high school teachers in the community. After I graduated from North Peace Secondary School in 2004 I decided to do a year of general studies at the local college and then my plan was to get my Commercial Helicopter Pilots License. I completed my school and training I had racked up a line of credit that was roughly about $50000 in student loan debts. While my parents helped me out a lot, they didn't pay for my expensive helicopter license and I didn't expect them to. I worked about a year trying to make this massive loan disappear as a helicopter pilot but the industry was not good for beginner pilots, I do not recommend being a pilot if you like money as I do. I was making 14$ an hour after spending $80000 on a license. It made no sense. I was losing everyday in this new job and it was going to take too long to move up. Working for somebody else's company was not good for me. I got fired and was cut from their helicopter team, it was upsetting at the time but it was the biggest blessing of my life to get fired there. I realized that nobody was going to pay me what I deserved, companies for the most part try to get away with paying out the minimum. I decided to do what I was good at, and what was making me the most money. I found winning in poker to be a lot easier than working. I started playing poker part time, while driving truck in the oil field, eventually I was making more at poker than driving truck and so I just did what made sense. Poker is not an easy game it takes a lot of talent and discipline. It was worth it for me to dedicate a lot to the game because I was passionate about self improvement, I liked the idea of being my own boss, and I could see the value I was creating. My dad was always a very solid poker player and we helped each others games out a lot.
I had a huge advantage in this game for many reasons. My athletic background didn't hurt, I got in at a good time when the game was booming and because I had a very supportive dad. Very lucky too that my brain just works well for this strategy game. Poker's a game of decision making. I found that it was very hard to play perfectly. I would make mistakes and I'd think to myself at the end of the session, "If I just folded that hand, I would have been up $100 more than I was already up." I would write down all my mistakes. When I started I would make 4-6 mistakes, after a few months, I was making 1 or 2 mistakes a game. I would make sure I never made the same mistake twice, I'd plug my leaks with every hand. I got tighter and tighter. More patient more disciplined, stronger and smarter. I found it easier to set up win win situations. I learned everyday how to improve and became unbeatable at poker, I found it easy to work hard because I was being rewarded with stacks of money. I'd play for 24 hours straight regularly if the game was good once a month I'd do these marathon sessions. I'd play 15 hours everyday, then sleep in the parking lot come back for more money. I was winning huge. People would tell me I was the best player in the casino. One day I played 32 hours straight, I always liked to break my personal records. One session I turned $2000 into $12000 playing in a cash game, I'd make a couple thousand dollars at will.
I was able to pay off my helicopter license in a year, buy a new bmw 7 series, buy whatever I wanted and had a bankroll to play the biggest cash games in town. I made so much money from poker that would buy stocks and mutual funds. The mutual funds were slow and I lost money in the stock market every year for the first 6 years of doing it, I somehow kept putting more money into it. In 2016 I was doing my taxes after having another couple thousand dollar loss and I asked my accountant how many people win money in the stock market. He said only 1 in 7 win in the stock market. I almost gave up and sold all my stocks after hearing that. I decided to keep investing because I liked the idea of making money while I sleep and felt like it would be valuable to learn how to have my money work for me, I knew I'd have a lot of money one day and that I should probably get good at allocating it and do more research. I would copy a lot of successful people and do what they were doing. I liked the way Warren Buffet did it. I bought what he bought and implemented his thinking about investments, I learned about compound interest from him. I studied success almost as much as I played poker. I liked autobiographies and audio books, like Jim Rohn and Tony Robbins. One valuable thing I learned from Tony Robbins was to say to yourself. "Everyday and every way, I'm getting better and better yes!" and believe it, feel it.
The goal is to have the best year every year. Everyday getting better and better.
