The Right Place at The Right Time, or Genius?

I am not a jealous man by nature, if i hear of anyone i used to know or still know has done really well i am pleased for them.  Especially for example if they have brought a nice new house, has had a promotion at work, or has set up their own business.

Me and my partner have financial problems at the moment and the recession is certainly not helping, we sat down one Sunday afternoon at opposite ends of our dinner table, paper and pens in hand.  We decided we are both reasonably intelligent people and surely we must be able to think of a scheme or business we can jointly run to work our way out of this debt filled situation.

I recounted how a friend of mine years ago made it big, he was only 22 and he brought his first house a four bedroom detached house with a built in double garage, with front and rear gardens and a driveway, he paid 50% of the purchase price in cash he had saved up, how? well he and I were at the time both Car mechanics working for main dealers.  He declared one day he had had enough of working for some one else and wanted his own business.  He proceeded to buy a small van equip it with tools of the trade and become a mobile mechanic.  With advertising he became successful and even sublet some work to fellow mechanics making more money that way.

We lost touch over the years, rolling forward say five years i was a manager in a V.W. garage due to streamlining my job was no longer required [streamlining as nice way of saying go!] i was very upset as i had helped set the garage up and worked my way up from mechanic to service manager.  I registered with job agencies and the like but nothing was coming up in the time frame i needed.

I had what i thought was a “eureka moment” i remembered my friend and his mobile mechanic business, i would do the same i was young enough and had some redundancy money.  I brought a van had it sign written placed an add in the local paper and waited and waited and waited, eventually customers came rolling in, i would go to their place of business or their home and carry out servicing and repairs at a fair and reasonable price.  After a year the business was just paying the bills nothing else, no holidays [vacations] no expensive cars, no dinning out i believe the saying is “Scratching a living” to cut a long story short i wound up the business and got a job back within garages.