8 March
2011
Written by Brian Martin
I remember as a young man of 18 years old, who arrived in New Zealand with an aspiration and a dream about a better quality of life than I would be able to have in London and arriving with US$20 in my pocket, I set out on my path for a better quality of life.
My first job was digging the foundations on a government building and I doubled my financial stake in life. At age 20, I bought my first business, at 21 years old my first apartment house and rented beds and by the time I was 24, I had three houses and two businesses.
When I bought my first business, by the time I paid my two staff from my day job in a large fashion house, there was nothing left for the luxuries of sugar or butter, so I took a job washing dishes on the weekend in one of the city’s finest restaurants. New Zealand was pretty undeveloped and certainly not sophisticated in those days. However, with a cheerful disposition and my attitude of having fun and loving what I do, I set out to be the best dishwasher that I could be. In those days, there were no washing machines, you did it by hand with heavy rubber gloves in 180 degree water. It was a great job. I had a lovely dinner each night, I was able to put all of the scraps in a bag for my German Sheppard ‘Barbara’ and the ladies who worked in the restaurant were beautiful part-time models, so I had a date with a pretty girl most weekends! I thought it was a wonderful job.
I could have course had a ‘have to’ kind of attitude, instead I chose to have a ‘want to’ type of attitude. I knew that doing this job would support me in my purpose and aspiration to achieve my dream and it did.
As I have looked back over my life, those early years were in many ways my greatest achievement, they set me up for my journey and path through life. I have searched for what is the key that passionately drove me on to start work at 4am every morning and then go to my regular day job at 8.45am, finish at 4.45pm and go to my workshop and work from 5 to 10.30pm. The thing that runs through my thinking, above all else, was that I was fearless, I never held it once in my mind that I would fail.
Of course, there were plenty of challenges (and then some!), but I always had a cheerful disposition with an ability to look on the bright side - and of course, my passionate belief that I would be able to achieve a better quality of life than I could have back in London Town. Whether that is true or not I will never know, but I do know this: because I believed it, I could achieve it.