I didn’t find any profession interested enough to study further, so I graduated from High School on 1980 and went to army 1981. After that I worked around 2 years for a furniture store delivering furniture to customers. During the time I was in school, I worked for my father during summer holidays. My father built family houses for sale, so I learned something about the constructing part.
During 1983-1984 I attended a business school, and 1984-1985 my father got also me into purchase a business which had gone bankrupt. I wish that never happened. I was too young and stupid to run that kind of business, and later I understood my father didn’t have all crucial details about the business. Children usually blindly think parents know the “adult things”, so did I. What a disaster. After few years it was time to close the doors. Luckily our local bank gave us a chance to try to pay back the loan we had. Otherwise our reputations would gone for good. There is a saying here: “I wouldn’t change a day in my life.” Well, I wouldn’t change a day, I would change almost 10 years…
1991 I created a business around horses, especially trotters(harness racing), and it took off quite well. I could survive and pay something back to the bank, too. 1993 the economy crisis faced our country really bad, but despite of that, my business went still well. But suddenly, it was March or April in 1994, in a snap, I lost 80% of my customers. It was time to find something else. During that time my good friend and his wife opened a mixed cafe/c-store, and they offered me and my girlfriend to buy it. On June 1994 we took over, and got the business to fly. On June 1996 the last payment of the disaster of 1980’s was paid.
We lived in a small town of around 9000 people, and I started to feel the problems of the small community. You should not live on welfare, but not manage too well. So, on late 1996 it was time to move on. We sold the business to a local sports club, and bought another business 400 km (250 miles) south from my hometown.
This new business was a kind of a betting store, we sold nothing else, not even matchboxes. Lottery, lottery tickets, betting football(soccer), ice hockey, volleyball, basketball, horses, you name it. The turnover was around 1 300 000 to 1 400 000 Euros, in US dollars around 1 600 000 to 1 700 000 dollars. Even it was a commission based business, we did quite well.
1999 we started to build our own house and a stable for 4 horses. We did most of the job ourselves to keep costs down. That was tough time, and 2000 I had a burnout.
At the end of 2004 we broke up and finally got the property sold in 2006.
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Horses have been in my life since 1979.
1979 my father bought his first horse. He paid for the horse, in Euros, around 150 by trading some stuff, and the horse earned from the track totally almost 34 000 Euros on the 80’s. The equivalent amounts of money could be today around €525 and €119 000, so he was a nice hobby horse. As a young guy, I drove few races, and even won few, but the driving was not my thing, so my father drove his horse and the professional catch drivers drove my horses. I have had few horses during these years, mostly trained by myself, but from time to time used professional trainers. The training part was my passion. You could see the progress of the horse and have a close relationship with a good vet helped the work a lot, not by using drugs, but pay attention to the possible health issues in an early stage – like a preventive treatment – and train the horses to strengthen their weaknesses.
I bought my first computer 1995 to get the bills paid through the Internet bank. I had no clue about computers, because when I was at school, there were no computers(yes, I’m that old:)), and never had heard about Internet before. But, I think my country was among the first ones to provide access to your bank accounts via Internet.
I think it was on 2000 I started to surf on Internet, not much, just every now and then. The business and horses took too much time:). On late 2006 I joined a coaching program, but for a total newbie who never had heard a word “HTML”, the course was simply overwhelming. From my point of view the course was concentrating too much to the tech part. In a way I understand that, because on that time there were not so much different kind of tools to help that part. In the middle of the course I quit. My neck and back problems was in a way “helping” that decision.
After that I kept myself away of any kind of Internet marketing stuff. Few years ago I started to look around, what was happening in Internet Marketing world, but not seriously, because other things in the offline world took my time. But the hunger started to grow slowly, I bought more stuff, but I just couldn’t get things done to the end, to monetize my knowledge. On the other hand, I’ve learned some basics, and maybe more than basics from the products I bought. I didn’t always buy them because of the shiny object syndrome:), but also to learn something about the strategy behind the product itself.
Today I’m very motivated, mostly thanks to John Thornhill and Steven Alvey. If things goes as planned, I’m gonna launch my first product(a software) in few months. That product idea gave me another product idea as well, so the future is quite interesting.
Best Regards,
Hannu Polvi