The Formula for Success Page 5

  By the end of that first year, while I was still at university studying for a degree in computing, I had turned my £2k bursary money into £178k. And it had cost me nothing more than time, commitment, and self-belief.

  What are you doing with your time today?

  Now might be a good time to meet my best friend and discover how he also traded fate for fortune.

  Meet Elliot Guinn

  Back in the mid-1990s, my family moved to Bricket Wood, a small village in Hertfordshire. I was 5 years old at the time, and one afternoon, while retrieving my football from a neighbour's garden, I met Samuel and we became great friends. Although he was a year younger than me, he had an influence on me from an early age and I (almost always) ended up better off for it (occasionally we got ourselves into a whole heap of trouble).

  We went to different schools, mine was in St Albans and Samuel's in Watford, but we would always hang out in the evenings and weekends. Alongside the usual sports, games, biking adventures, and general boyish mischief, we were also quite good at making a few quid. Samuel just had this entrepreneurial streak that meant he could spot an opportunity to get paid. And, as long as it was something he wanted to do – and he could see that the reward was worth the effort – he would have us working really hard. There were all sorts of odd job schemes and selling stuff we'd made to people down our street, but our main enterprise was car washing. We seriously cornered the car-washing market in Bricket Wood for many years – no one else stood a chance. We even had some customers on regular contracts where we would turn up, wash their car, and only then knock on the door to collect payment.

  Growing up and taking life seriously

  Unlike Samuel, I was quite suited to school (not that I was always totally innocent); and when not being drawn into his money-making schemes and extra-curricular endeavours, I studied hard and set my sights on a place a university. After completing my degree in Finance and Economics, I happily began walking the path that society (and destiny) had so nicely laid out for me by taking on a banking sector job in the city. While at university, I had already done a placement year at Lloyds as a Risk Analyst, so it was obvious to me that this was the right career to pursue.

  Like almost everyone else who passed through middle-class schooling in St Albans, I was ready to settle into an ordinary future of a good job in the city, buying a house, working long hours, and living for the weekends. While at Lloyds, a few of my colleagues had got me interested in the stock market, and I made a little bit of money on the fall and rise of their price during the crash, but it was only a dabble.

  Of course, all of this time I would still see Samuel in the evenings and at weekends, and we would talk about everything from Call of Duty to making money and hopes and dreams to boxing. I'd seen Samuel get into trading more seriously, and also recognised that he was doing well at it, so my interest had grown over time. But it wasn't until he set up Samuel & Co Trading that I started to realise just how big this could become.

  Maybe my life pathway wasn't set in stone?

  So, there I was; starting out on a great career with a giant of the global financial scene while helping my best mate run training events for trainee traders at the weekends. Everything was mapped out for me, and my future looked just perfect. I had good money coming in, a secure career path, and great prospects; my family were proud of my achievements and all the ‘successful life’ boxes were getting ticked. But I just couldn't help wondering: ‘what if?’

  So, in 2017, I joined Samuel & Co Trading, and reset the satnav of my ordinary career path. I am, by nature, very much more risk-averse than Samel; I realised that when I was a young age. I know that many people reading this will think that I was mad (some of my family certainly did), but I don't believe in gambling and I never will. I believe in taking measured risks where the odds are highly in my favour and where I believe in the determination, algorithm, and application that support that risk.

  That is why I joined Samuel & Co Trading, and two years down the track it is delivering everything I had counted on it delivering – and more.

  ‘Most people choose (by making no choice at all) to remain average.’

  Chapter 5

  MY CALL TO DUTY

  Ask any child which subjects they enjoy the most at school, and then ask their teacher which ones they excel at, and you'll get matching answers every single time. If global leaders or those in control of national curriculums and education planning were to pay attention to that single fact they could ‘quite literally’ change the world. I get the basic level of education idea – that every child should learn how to read, write, and do a little bit of maths. But what if, after that, they simply focused on the things that they really enjoyed doing? What if we created a whole generation of children who absolutely loved school and education because they were doing the things that they enjoyed?

  I know some of you are already thinking that we would end up with nothing more than a load of brilliant film critics and music buffs, the world's best online gamers, and a handful of great football players and Olympic athletes. But bear with me, because there is more to this than initially meets the ear. There are children who genuinely enjoy maths and science; some are fascinated by the animal kingdom, biology, and what makes us work; others are keener to understand what goes on inside a PlayStation than to pick up a controller; and I've met 10-year-olds with incredible ambition and ideas about how to solve the world's problems. Yes, they may well be in the minority, but what percentage of the population end up becoming brain surgeons, rocket scientists, law-makers, archaeologists, and university professors anyway? In my experience, most children are hungry for knowledge – they just prefer to learn things that interest them.

  Even if you've come with me this far into my please-everybody education rehash, you are probably now thinking that the majority of children will still only want to play games, browse the internet, or watch movies. Well, so what? I cannot think of a better way to learn anything than by fully immersing myself in the world of that subject – can you? I actually think that, given the opportunity to choose, a lot of children might even surprise us; and whatever they did choose, the second part of my revolution is where the real magic happens. It would mean a teacher's role becomes encouraging whatever the child enjoyed doing; then starting to identify the innate skills and interests that activity revealed in the individual. Before you know it, we would have schools full of enthusiastic young people focusing on skills that would actually make a difference in the world.

  I realise this is just a high-level seed of an idea, and the details need further study, testing, and planning; I'd love to think that someone reading this book might even run with it one day. But the reality is that no one ever will, and that is because of the second big problem with the education system (and for most people the entire passage of their life). People are scared of doing things differently and accepting that there might just be another way – a better way – than what society has been doing for hundreds of years. If it ain't broken don't fix it – yes – but what if it is broken and no one seems to have noticed or acknowledged that it needs fixing? We need to change the way we think about education – and pretty much everything else …

  The course taken by the majority is, by definition, average; and it is that which stops them becoming extraordinary.

  Pursuing any passion unleashes ability

  In the previous chapter, I mentioned the year that I spent playing on my Xbox after being kicked out of college. I know that my Dad was incredibly worried for me at the time and felt frustrated that he didn't really have any alternatives or advice to offer me. Whether out of intuition or desperation (I don't think either of us will ever know for sure), in the end he just left me to it. I suppose he was hoping that I would eventually get it out of my system. I have to own up that this was not part of some brilliant super-strategy to become a multi-millionaire over the next five years, but it certainly played a major part in the story that unfolded.

  Now,
I am not proposing that the route to life and business success, for every child, must include a year out aimlessly playing computer games. Nor do I want bored teenagers to go waving this book in their parents' faces as an argument for them getting more game-time. But I would like people to consider what is involved in playing most computer games (or indeed any play or entertainment-based pursuit). You see, to get good at anything, you must spend a lot of time doing that thing – as previously mentioned, some famous studies suggest that if you invest 10 000 hours into any skill, you will, by default, become an expert. The important thing here, however, is not just to do something – but to practise it, study it, proactively improve at it, and, most importantly of all, analyse your development.

  In my business, we work with hundreds of would-be entrepreneurs and traders each year through our various training programmes. Some of the first questions we ask are to find out what they like doing and what they have been doing up to that point in their lives. This tells us a lot about the person and also opens the door to discovering some of the natural abilities that they might have and some of the skills that they have been (unknowingly) honing along the way. For example, a firefighter will have good, fast instincts and be practised in the ability to remove emotions from their decision-making under pressure. A primary school teacher will be well-versed in observing lots of avenues of activity (usually around 30–35) at the same time. Plumbers are usually able to see innovative solutions and workarounds, while still keeping within the all-important safety parameters of their profession. People who like sport often have a competitive edge to them and will not give up easily – football fans, in particular, seem able to remain fiercely loyal, even at the worst of times. Those who like to read or study history and science in their spare time have a remarkable aptitude for detail and remembering things. And mums are often blessed with hidden depths of love, patience, and resilience, beyond that of someone who hasn't known the experience of bringing a new life into the world.

  None of these traits are a coincidence, nor are they little more than marginally based on the genes those people inherited. They are the result of a passion (nature) or a circumstance (nurture) sending them in a particular direction in life. Then, by choice or necessity, that activity takes up a large part of their life, they became good at it, and it gives them a range of skills.

  Most people never stop to consider that they have skills, and even fewer ever decide to see if those skills could be used to improve their lives and the lives of those that they love. Most people choose (by making no choice at all) to remain average. I believe that everyone could be extraordinary and, by default, raise the universal bar of what is considered average.

  Pursuing my call to duty

  Call of Duty is a first-person shooter game available on most major gaming consoles; and from October 2008 to August 2009, I spent between 15 and 18 hours a day becoming the best in the world (almost). On the rare occasions that I had face-to-face interaction with people (often concerned family members) they would say things like, ‘why are you wasting your time doing that?’ or ‘when are you going to go and do something useful with your life?’ At the time, I didn't have any answers for them, but I knew one thing – I was doing what I wanted to do, and I was enjoying being me. Of course, there was a part of me worrying that they might be right and, as I said earlier, I couldn't honestly say that I saw this as part of a great master plan. But, looking back, I can see now that the enormous amount of time, emotion, and dedication that I put into Call of Duty was teaching and perfecting a whole range of seriously strong business and life skills.

  There are many variations of the game, but the most popular is called Domination and is basically two teams trying to capture a flag. Each team is made up of six players who take on the role of the SAS, the Marines, or one of the world's other famous Black Ops special forces units. Mostly, the players would be operating remotely (from the relative safety and comfort of their own bedrooms), communicating via headsets and a streaming internet connection. Once you have selected your team and challenged another one, you are ready to enter the grid and start fighting for honour, glory, and your life. And, just like real life, those who enter without a plan or a strategy are not likely to last long and are destined to fall short of even their most mediocre expectations.

  To win at Call of Duty you had to work out your plan long before you entered the field of battle to start the business of capturing your opponents' flag. You needed a business plan.

  I had around a dozen people to choose from in my squad, and I would pick the most appropriate six according to the opponents, the mission, and the specific battleground we were about to enter. For example, I would often pick a sniper to cover the back of our squad, looking out for enemy movement and warning of, or preferably nullifying, any potential threats. A few of the team had super-fast reactions and an eye for the tiniest pixel distortion that might just give away an enemy position. These guys would be at the front of any advance, steering our attack and executing the famous ‘fingers to eyes, two sharp handshakes and a point in a particular direction’ movement that you see in the movies. I was also lucky enough to have access to people who were natural defenders, all out attackers, or strategic thinkers who could come up with the most ludicrously clever ways to get the edge we needed.

  One of these game-winning tactics that we perfected (and, as far as I know, no other team ever discovered) was throwing a frag (grenade) to within a five millimetre spot on a screen, over a roof, so that we could either stop an enemy or learn whether they were there or not. This was one of dozens of drills that we practised for hours on end, just so that we could win more games. It got to the level that every time we entered a battle, we all knew exactly what the other members of our team would be thinking, what they would do next, and how likely they would be to be able to pull off their role – often we didn't even need to communicate verbally at all.

  We also knew most of the other better teams out there as well as we knew our own. We studied our opposition to the finest detail, learned their tactics, and knew exactly how they were going to perform. It was a kind of competitor analysis operation, and it made all the difference. If we were facing an attacking team, we made sure that we were ready for them and had our best defenders backing us up. If they were a more strategic squad, we would set about out-thinking them. No stone was left unturned, and that's how I almost landed myself a £30k salary from wasting my time for a year.

  I died a thousand times

  As a result of dedicating around 5000 hours of my life to a computer game, across a sunlight-starved 10-month period in 2008, I was awarded the second prize in the Call of Duty World Championships. It happens every year, and tens of thousands of people enter the competition – the prize being a salaried position working for the game developer. I was gutted to have only become the second best in the entire world, and the fact that someone else had out-manoeuvred my best game still bothers me to this day. But the skills that I learned that year have multiplied the salary I would have earned by at least 5000%, so perhaps I shouldn't grumble too much.

  Call of Duty taught me how to create a team who could work together and get results that are far beyond the sum of its individual members' abilities. It taught me that strategy, planning, and vision are the keys to everything: those who had none (and that is the majority of people) were easily defeated, and I just needed to be better prepared than those who did. The game gave me confidence in my own voice, and I naturally found myself taking on the role of commander in most games simply because I could see the bigger picture. I learned to read situations and manage risks so that I was always in the most advantageous position before engaging my competition. And, most importantly of all, Call of Duty opened my eyes to the fact that the rules were actually just instructions to follow for ordinary players – and once you understood the rules completely, you could start to write your own.

  The rules of computer games, like the rules of business and the rules of life, are just
an algorithm. They are a set of opportunities, obstacles, certainties, probabilities, skills, and abilities all controlled and influenced by effort, energy, and cognitive inputs. In other words, life, like business, is just a game.

  During my Call of Duty obsession, I must have died a thousand times. And each time, rather than looking at it as a defeat, I sat back and analysed every decision and every action to work out why. If it was a member of my team who had messed up, I still took that on as my responsibility and made sure I did my best to help them improve for next time. So, each time I played the game, I got better and moved further toward my target of becoming the best in the world. In my business, I have had failures too (in fact, allowing for failure is an important aspect of successful trading), but I have applied the same analytical approach to ensuring I never make the same mistake twice. Fortunately, no one has died as a result of my business errors, but that doesn't mean I take them any less seriously than if they had. You see, for it to be effective, it has to matter.

  In life, I have had a few moments (some of which I have, and will, cover in this book) where I've had brushes with death or deep despair. I have fully come to terms with the fact that, as far as any of us really know, we only have one life to live. So, I have decided that I am going to play the best game that I possibly can. I will learn from my mistakes, learn from other people's mistakes, learn from every available resource I can find, spend time practising and perfecting my skills, not waste any time on activities with no benefit to my goals, and spend my time (the only truly limited resource on the planet) deliberately and extremely wisely.