Life

‘You have potential.’

When I was going through school (wow, that feels so long ago) that was something I heard a lot. I might have done well in maths, written a good essay, given a talk that people liked. I used to love hearing people say it. I used to revel in my supposed ‘potential.’

I had potential all the way until the end of school, at which point I was failed potential. My marks were above average but far below my school’s expectations.

I went off to University, started an Arts degree and relied on my grand potential to push me through. Result? I flunked out. And when I say flunked out, I mean flunked out. My second semester marks would have been lucky to push double digits (I never bothered to find out what they were.)

When someone says you have potential, they’re merely telling you that there’s a gap between where you are and where you should be. And if someone says you have ‘huge’ potential, it means you have got a lot of work to do.

Potential is nice but it is meaningless. I’m sure there’s heaps of 40, 50, 60 year olds leading comfortable but crappy lives who once had potential. I don’t want to be that guy.

When  you’re starting out in business, often you’re dealing with suppliers you have never met. It’s a pretty touch-and-go process sometimes. It’s difficult to be 100% sure that the supplier is legit.

I had an experience in August last year with an Indonesian scammer called Itech Technology ’selling’ Plasma TVs

I was making enquiries about prices and also their identity. They told me that they would prove their honesty by beginning the shipping process and getting me a tracking number. Then I would pay the amount and the shipping would continue on its merry way.

I had not yet decided to order when I was told it had been processed and they gave me a tracking number with www.indo-express.com - their shipping company -  to look at.

I inserted my tracking # and yes, it did look like I had a big package sitting at Indo Express in Jakarta.

 However, the shipment, which they said had travelled from Bandung, was missing a free PS2 that they said came with every order of 5 tvs.

I then emailed Indo Express to ask I really did have a package from Itech sitting in Jakarta. At this point I really did believe that Itech had a shipment sitting in Jakarta. (Don’t worry, I wasn’t going to pay. I had decided on the day previous that I didn’t want to import Plasmas. But someone who was still looking for Plasmas could have been sucked in.)

While waiting for a response from Indo Express I emailed Itech and told them they had stuffed up the order, and not put the PS2 in. They apologised for the whoopsy and suddenly the PS2 showed up under the tracking number- despite the fact that the shipment was already supposed to be hundreds of kms away from Bandung.

Then a reply came in to my email to Indo Express. But it wasn’t from the Indo Express.com domain. It was from a domain called TearsGroup.com. I visited TearsGroup.com and it was a website selling TVs and other electronics - almost exactly the same as Itech.

A more thorough check of Indo Express reveals it is a fraud. Just look at the testimonials here and ask yourself whether a fluent English speaker would write like that!

I was happy to spot three fraudulent websites in one hit.

March last year.

Event #1: I’m in the toilet, just zipped up and ready to leave. Next memory: I’m on the floor, my body is thrashing about. My head is bashing against the toilet and then the wall, toilet, then wall. I put my hands up to stop my head bouncing around. Standing up… what the hell just happened?

Event #2: The phone call. “Hi Mat, your CT scan results are in.. we’re wondering if you could come in as soon as you are available to discuss your results?”

Event #3: “Matthew, we’ve found an anomaly in your brain. There’s four possibilities : It could be a tumour, Multiple Sclerosis, the remnants of a stroke.. or nothing.”

It’s not something you want to hear. My girlfriend of three weeks.. poor girl!..  held me as I cried. It’s a shock to the system, and before it happens you wonder how you’ll react.

 Looking back I can’t believe it, but within a day I had accepted it and was ready to hear anything. Death is a reality. There was only a small chance that the anomaly could mean this worst of news but I was forced to face it.

Fortunately, a few months later I was finally declared healthy.

I needed a wake-up call and I got one. Most people’s wake-up calls come through the death of someone close to them or a near-death experience.

That series of events can be thanked for the fact I launched my business recently(www.newtonclothiers.com).

If you’re unhappy in your current situation, do something about it. Don’t wait. For as they say, the wake-up call may never come.