Chapter 14 - Guerilla Marketing, Real Estate & Big Visions

After a few great years working at the Irish Bank, I decided it was time for a change.  I didn’t know what I wanted to do next.  I just knew I wanted to make more money and not have to work nights for the rest of my life.  Late one night, I came home from work and put on the TV.  It was about 4am and there was an informercial on with some cheesy dude talking about how he made millions from buying real estate with “Zero Money Down.”  As cheesy as he was, I was blown away listening to what he had to say.  So I ended up buying his CD's (“Real Estate Riches”).

This was around 2004/2005 and everybody and their mother were talking about real estate.  So I decided to get my real estate licence and jump on the bandwagon.

I ended up getting a job through a craigslist posting as a “Loan Officer” for a Mortgage Brokerage.  The brokerage was called Specialty Funding  - it was run by three Jordanian brothers, George, Faris and Fadi.  These guys were super cool, extremely knowledgeable, very down to earth and very ambitious.  Real good people to be around.  My job as a Loan Officer was to find potential home buyers and people who wanted to refinance their existing mortgages and take advantage of the lower interest rates and home loan programs.

Even though I was working for a broker I was basically working for myself.  To say the least, it was a bit nerve racking at first.  I had to find all my own customers and it was 100% commission based.  This was completely new to me.  Like most folks in real estate, I was thrown in the deep end and after some mortgage finance training, I had to hit the streets on my own and find customers.

I started off the traditional route by calling all my friends and also going to networking event after networking event.  My goal was to become friends with CPA’s, Real Estate Agents, Real Estate Attorney’s and Financial Planners in hopes that they would refer business to me.  It was tough. Most events I went to were full of other mortgage brokers all on the same mission.  And I never felt that comfortable trying to befriend Real Estate Agents/CPA’s etc... who didn’t really have any interest in talking to me either.  They knew I was looking for business from them.  

The networking approach wasn’t working very well for me, so I decided to take the fight to the streets.  Proper guerilla marketing style.  I used to print up 3000 fliers per week and hit the streets with approx 500 flyers a day.  I put them on cars behind windshield wipers, in mail boxes,  anywhere and everywhere I could.  I used to wait outside the front door of large apartment complexes and when someone came out I’d walk in and start on the top floor and put flyers under every door from the the top floor to the bottom floor.  Sometimes I’d get chased out by property managers.  I also nailed 24” X 24” ugly yellow signs to lamp posts on all the major intersections around San Francisco with the words “3 Bed, 2 Bath House For Sale, $2500 per month, Zero Down Payment, Free Recorded Message”.  I had a free 1-800 number with a recorded message with me talking about how you could buy a house with no money down - the message lasted about two minutes long.  I could then see on a software program called “call capture” how long someone listened to my message.  If they listened for the whole duration and left me a message I knew they were somewhat serious.  I would then follow up with a call and then a meeting.  Yet again, it was a complete numbers game.  

I used to have all sorts of weirdos leaving me messages, especially over the weekend in the early hours of the morning.  Obviously people on the way back from the bar drunk.   Some were sincere and some would shout crazy abuse down the phone.  The ones who shouted abuse down the phone never expected me to call them back, and I would.  It used to really shock them when they would get a call at 11am on a Monday morning asking them what their issue was.  Even if you pressed *67 trying to hide your number before you called, call capture would still get your number.

By law, I had to put my Brokers License number on all my marketing material.  After a few months of me blanketing the city with ugly yellow signs and flyers, my broker called me into his office and told me that he had gotten quite a few complaints from the City & County of San Francisco and I had to stop with the flyers and signs.  

It worked for a while so I couldn’t complain, I’m still friends with quite a few people that I met through my ugly yellow signs and flyers.  I then teamed up with a Russian guy named Vlad who worked in the same office as me and had the same vision which was to to build a real estate empire.  Our only obstacle was, we didn’t have any money.  So, we put the the Zero Down thing to the test.  We bought two houses in San Francisco at the same time with no money down. We then rented them out and refinanced them after a few months after we did a new paint job and maybe some new flooring if needed.  Then we took out a line of credit on each of them and used that money to purchase some commercial properties in upstate New York through a lender called Greenpoint.  Greenpoint would allow you to buy commercial property with only putting 10% of the selling price down, then allow the seller to finance 10% and the bank would lend us the remaining 80%.  This was unheard of in commercial property.  This was 2006/2007, and the real estate market was very different back then.  Not long after, Greenpoint went bust with lots of other banks.

Vlad and I had a big visions.  Our goal was to buy distressed commercial properties all over the US do some work on them, bring them up to scratch and positive cash flowing and eventually have one property manager run everything.  Things went great for a while.  We had some commercial property in upstate New York that paid us enough passive income each month to pay our living expenses and travel.  During my free time, I did some courses on how to trade the stock market and started day trading futures,  that was an eye opener.  

It actually seemed like our plan was working, until....  We cashed out some money from our buildings in New York and bought some more commercial property in Huntsville, Alabama.  Our goal was to fix it up, rent it out and then refinance again, pay our creditors back and still have enough money left to go again.  Naive and silly, we left the remodel of the Alabama property in the hands of a young property manager who talked a great game and didn’t deliver on his word.  And like many people all over the world, we got stuck in the middle of the credit crisis and couldn’t get the bank to refinance our new property in time.  We were left with a pretty big monthly holding cost that we couldn’t sustain for much longer unless we got the refinance sorted out.

Lessons I learned from this Chapter in my life.

1. Guerilla marketing really works :)

2. Don’t ever leave your business in the hands of someone else to look after.  Nobody will care for it as much as you do.

3. Yet again, sales is a total numbers game.

Till Next Time

Cheers

Gerry :)

Chapter 13 - The Irish Bank, War Pigs And Boat Parties

After hearing there was good money to be made working in Irish bars, I went on a mission to find a cool Irish Bar to work in. For about three weeks, I hit the streets with introduction letters and resumes showing all my bartending skills etc. I visited lots of different Irish bars in the city, but ended up narrowing the job search down to one bar in the financial district called “The Irish Bank.” It was a cool Irish bar that was super busy with young bankers and up and coming tech guys. With some persistence, I ended up getting a job there as a bar back (picking up glasses and making sure the bar was fully stocked at all times). I was prepared to do anything just to get my foot in the door.

When I came in for my first day of work, I got formally introduced to three bartenders, all from Ireland: Eamon from Kerry, Kevin from Donegal and a guy called Dahi from Armagh in the North of Ireland. That name sounded familiar so I asked Dahi where in Armagh he was from, not that I had ever been to Armagh. He said “Blackwater Town” and gave me a funny look, as if to say “What do you know about Armagh?” Suddenly a light bulb went off in my head and I heard that “twilight zone music.” Then I asked him, “do you know Dermy Finn?” This really threw him off. “How the fuck do you know Dermy Finn?” he said all serious. I then told him the story of how Dermy and I worked together on a building site in Australia and him telling me about San Francisco and the Burning Man etc... Here I was on the other side of the planet just by chance running into the guy my friend in Australia was telling me about. Pretty crazy to say the least!!!


I started working Friday and Saturday nights collecting glasses and within a few months I was working four to five nights a week bartending making decent money and at last saving a few dollars again. I loved it. Bartending in the U.S. is way different than bartending anywhere else. In the States, it’s all about being social, friendly and taking care of your customers and in turn, they tip you out well. In most other countries when working in a bar, it’s about dishing out as much drink as possible as quickly as possible. Customer service is not always the best -- in fact, it’s usually shit. But I guess when you’re relying on tips, you have no choice but to be personable, which I gotta admit came pretty natural to me.

There was a real good group of us working in the Irish bank. I used to work with a crazy girl called Melissa. Melissa was so much fun to work with. She was stone mad. She had a husky voice and was a hardcore drinker and smoker. We used to work some day shifts together. She was waitressing and I was bartending. We’d usually both come in a bit hungover and we’d start the day off with a few shots. Melissa would set up her tables in the restaurant and then come back into the bar, grab a bottle of bud and another shot, and put the craziest heavy metal tunes on in the jukebox, like “War Pigs” by Black Sabbath. This was on a Tuesday afternoon at lunch time. We had people from all walks of life coming into the Irish Bank. That’s what was so cool about it. Every week like clockwork for about six months a lunatic called Kenneth (Crazy Kenny) used to come into the bar every week to visit us. He’d also put the craziest music in the jukebox and start dancing next to it as if it was last orders on a Saturday night. And Melissa would join him. It was hilarious. The business folks who came in for lunch didn’t know what to make of it. Some would laugh and some would frown. Kenneth used to tip me really well so, of course, I used to give him double shots. Then Jacques (The Manager) came in one day for some lunch on his day off and asked Kenneth to relax. Kenneth got all pissed off saying that he paid for the songs in the jukebox and was entitled to dance beside it. So Jacques fucked him out and barred him from the Bank (or as they say in the States, 86ed him).

Then, on the other side of the scale, we’d have some young executives from PayPal. I remember one guy in particular: Jack Selby. He used to tip really well. I asked him one night what he did for a living and he said he was out of work right now and wasn’t sure if he was going to go back. He was 29 and had the option of never working again. Now, that’s pretty fucken cool and inspirational.

Not only did I get a new job that I loved, I also got a new place to live. Dahi had a spare room in his house and offered it to me, Thank God. The hostel was getting a bit out of hand and it was time to move on. Dahi, his brother Mark and their friend Austy, all lived together in an apartment in the heart of Haight Ashbury. It was pretty wild to say the least. There was no shortage of people to go out on the town with. Sundays and Mondays were my weekend. So Austy and I would do a pub crawl every Monday day even though he was meant to be in working on the building site. He’d usually go back to work late on a Tuesday or Wednesday morning. We had some fun times on those Monday afternoon sessions in Haight Street. Through Dahi, I got introduced to a whole new group of friends -- a lot from the North of Ireland through his football team and a lot of people in the bar and nightclub scene. He was like an older brother to me and had no problem putting me straight when I got out of hand. 

The two of us would work Saturday nights together and instead of having me just collect glasses doing the bar back work (as my job was) he’d let me bartend and split the tips with me 50/50 which was pretty cool. A lot of bartenders and waiters from all the other bars and restaurants downtown used to drink in our bar. It was unreal. We used to look after the other industry folks pretty well -- these guys would tip the best. Because I worked in the Irish Bank, I could drink for free in nearly all the bars in the downtown area. Once you get into the bar scene and you treat other bar staff well, it can be pretty amazing. Some nights after work we’d make our way up to the StarLight Room a snazzy nightclub on the top floor of the St. Francis Drake Hotel for a lock in. The manager at the time “Billy” used to open up the whole bar and a few of us would sit there till early hours of the morning drinking and chatting while looking out over Union Square. 

Dahi was always talking about cool ideas and businesses he was going to start. He was a real go getter and was constantly working on something. When I first met him, he used to hold boat parties on a small boat called the “Angel Island Express.” He used to fill the boat up with booze and put a DJ booth in the corner and hold a rave on the boat for hours cruising around San Francisco Bay. In the beginning, it was all the Irish lads from the Gaelic football team and their friends that would come out to support him. Then slow but sure, he had clubbers from all over the Bay Area coming to party on much bigger boats. The word about his boat parties spread like wildfire. I remember in the beginning, a few of us would go out to Berkeley University with Dahi handing out flyers to students trying to hustle them onto the boat. And then a year later, tickets would sell out in a few days. It was so inspirational to see it grow.

One lesson that I took from this period in my life was, relationships (real relationships) are one of the most valuable things this world has to offer. Make sure to cherish them and appreciate the times together, as you just never know what the future holds.

Till Next Time

Cheers 

Gerry :)

"As long as i'm breathing i'll never quit" Gerry Kelly 2011

Chapter 8 - Living In London 1997/98 And The Rave Scene

After a quick six week stint in Ireland, I decided to move to London. I moved into a three story Victorian house in Earls Court (Aussie & Kiwi Backpacker Central) that housed approx 24 Aussies & Kiwi’s. These guys were all on a two year working Visa and were out to save some money, have some fun and travel the world.

I had only ever been to London twice before this and that was when I was just passing through on route to Greece. Holy shit London was big and very impersonal, a crazy melting pot of people from all over the world. I was a bit intimidated to say the least. I ended up sharing a room with four other guys and girls from Australia. Rent worked out at 20 pound a week each. Mind you, the house only warranted 20 pound a week. There were holes in the stairs, walls and bathrooms, and the kitchen reminded me of something out of an old Stephen King movie. To top it all off, the house was overrun with bed bugs! We used to joke and say that "the rats wore overalls" in the house.

It was low overhead, and now I had a base, and address and could get a job. Also, I knew it was only temporary, “Thank God.”

I got some crappy office clerk job through a labor hire agency for a few days a week. I gotta admit it was a bit depressing at first. I only knew a few people in London, who were all doing their own thing. I didn't even want to contact anyone till I at least had some money in my pocket and felt comfortable having a night out.

After a few months of crappy work, I got another job with an Irish Woman selling computer training courses over the phone. I was now an "Account Manager." After about two weeks of training, I was a pro. I still didn't know crap all about computers, but I talked like I did. I loved it, most of the time I was speaking to HR girls who were booking training courses for their employees. They loved my accent and wanted to talk all day and our courses were actually pretty good (so I was told) so it was an easy sell. I was on salary plus commission, which was great. We always blew through our targets. I also got a job in a local bar in Hammersmith, bar backing and bar tending and did the same trick as I did in Greece. Instead of picking up all the empties, I’d pick up a few full beers as well and drink them in the bathroom at high speed. I'd even pick up some drinks and give them to the girls I worked with. They loved it, and thought I was crazy. The bar manager was a major Coke head from the Isle of White and was always up for a few beers and a laugh after work. He used to come out of the bathroom with bits of coke hanging out of his nose and talk some crap. He was always trying it on the girls we worked with. I used to get a good laugh listening to his nonsense while having a few beers at the end of the night.

Finally, I was making some decent money at my new job and felt good. I must admit, I had thought about leaving London quite a few times in the beginning, especially when I was broke and felt a bit out of place. 

I moved into a two bed semi luxury apartment in Hammersmith with Scott, a good friend of mine that I had met in Greece, and both of our girlfriends at the time. My buddy and I were partying quite a bit which didn't go down too well with our girlfriends. Also, my friend had been charged with allegedly transporting ecstasy pills from Holland to England and was looking at a years in prison if convicted. So to say the least, there was some tension around the apartment.

We both ended up splitting up with our girlfriends at the same time (which worked out perfect) and moved into a three bedroom house in east London. Within a week, I knew it was the best decision ever and I had a new family. My good friend Liam from Dublin (not “The Liamo” who had been to Greece with me in 1995, but a different Liam ) moved in also. Liam had moved to London not long after I got there and moved in with his brother in North London. He was looking for a house closer to the city, so the timing was perfect. Liam was up for anything, the crazier the better. Also, a New Zealand couple (friends of friends) moved in, Tony & Ben (Ben was short for Rebecca). They ended up hanging out with us all the time. They were an amazing fun couple. It was a real fun family, the five of us. 

The party was in full swing. I gave up my bar job and now my weekends were free. I lived for Fridays. Every Friday was dress down day in the office I worked in. So I would come to work in my jeans and trainers ready to party. I used to bring a small backpack with a change of clothes and a tooth brush. I'd usually meet Liam & Scott in the Punch & Judy Bar in Covent Garden and we'd start the session there with some other friends and then make our way to some club or party. Most weekends, I'd stay out all weekend at some club or party and/or friends' house. We used to hit up places like Bagleys in Kings Cross (see video - www.youtube.com/watch?v=VjZjbQEDsJ0 and The Cross, also the Aquarium on Old Street and sometimes Sunny Side Up and of course the Fridge in Brixton. I loved the music, but I was more into socializing. I used to spend half the night in the chill out rooms drinking beers, smoking and chatting with other ravers. We always ended our weekend drinking in Camden Town on Sunday afternoons with a good group of friends reminiscing over what happened on Friday & Saturday. Times were good. 

We never knew when and what exactly was going to happen to our good friend and roommate as his Court case was dragging on for so long (well over a year). So, we had a going away party nearly every weekend. His friends used to come up from Hampshire and our friends used to fly over from Dublin on Ryanair flights and join us for a party. 

And then the inevitable happened, he got convicted and sentenced to a few years in prison. Suddenly everything changed. It just wasn't the same without him. Tony & Ben moved out and Liam and I had decided to leave London and go travelling around the world. Tim from Stoke, Doug from Wolverhampton and Dave (a school friend of mine from Dublin) decided to join us on our trip. We decided to leave on March 3rd 1999 and make our way to Australia with a few stops on the way. 

Chapter 7 - Respect The Weed

I arrived in Amsterdam on our way back from Egypt in late November 1996. I was with two friends, Linda from Sweden & Joyce a stoner from Australia who we had met in Turkey. A lot of the other guys that were travelling with us had now gone their separate ways. Some had gone home and some went straight to London to find work. Amsterdam was cold, wet and we were broke after all our travelling. We had planned to meet our friend Doug there a few days later. He had to get a different flight as he was over 30 and couldn't use the dodgy student cards to get the cheap flights we got.

We stayed in a hostel in the center of Amsterdam. It was full of young Canadians and Americans who were over for the Cannabis Cup. The hostel smelt like 20 skunks had just sprayed the place down. There were clouds of smoke bellowing around every corner. It was stoner central.

We had some breakfast (scrambled eggs and bread, not toasted) in the smoke filled communal dining area. Breakfast was included in the price of the hostel. The scrambled egg was dished out of a huge pot by some strange looking African dude with one eye and his buddy next to him was handing out two slices of dry bread to everyone in the line. It was like a scene out of a World War II movie.


We then took a stroll around Amsterdam, checked out a few museums etc...and then hit a bar for a few drinks. After that, we decided to check out the Bob Marley Cafe, after hearing some great reports about it from some of the stoners in the hostel. 

I quite fancied myself as a hardcore smoker after smoking some crappy weed in Greece, Turkey, Israel & Egypt. O Boy, was I in for a rude awakening.

The three of us huddled into a corner seat in the packed out Smokey Bob Marley Cafe. I asked Joyce what was the strongest weed she had ever smoked. “Northern Lights,” she said.

So I ordered three juices and a gram of Northern Lights and some rolling papers. I rolled up a pure weed joint and gave it to Joyce to light up. She lit it up and took one toke and passed it to Linda who did the same. Then it came to me and I puffed on it like it was the last joint on earth. We continued to pass the joint around the table and I continued to smoke it like a man possessed.

When the joint was finished, we sat there talking about our plans for getting to London. We decided to make our way to Calais in France and get a ferry to Dover.

Suddenly, I felt a bead of sweat drip down the left side of my face. Then, about a minute later, a waterfall of sweat came gushing down my forehead. And then, a severe dose of paranoia came over me. To put it mildly, I was f#^@*d. I made some crappy excuse and told the girls I had to get a bit of air. “I was a bit warm,” I said. It was below zero and everyone around us was in their duffel coats and scarves.

I made my way out the front door of the cafe thinking everyone was looking at me and sat against the wall outside on the sidewalk. My head was spinning in all angles. Then, I was approached by some Algerian guys trying to sell me drugs. “O God leave me alone.” I said. They didn't know what to make of me. To say the least I was mangled. It took me a good two hours to come back to planet earth. I can safely say that I had a lot more respect for the holy herb after that experience.

I didn't smoke another joint in Holland after that. Doug arrived two days later and we hung about another few days in the bars and then made our way to France by train and took the ferry to Dover in England. We then made our way to London and stayed with some of our Aussie friends we knew from Greece.
I got a job in a kitchen of a restaurant that my good friend Butcher got a head chef job at. It was another easy, mundane job to raise a few dollars before I went back to Ireland for Xmas.

I arrived back in Ireland a week before Xmas. It was great to see my family and friends, but I gotta admit, I was a bit depressed as I didn't want my vacation to end. 

Something I learned from these adventures traveling throughout is that, if you are open to the world, then the world will open doors for you. I never worried about how, I just needed to decide where. Once a goal was picked, I knew I would get there and I enjoyed the journey along the way. It’s a lesson I carry with me today.


Cheers 

Gerry :)

Chapter 4 - A Trip To Greece that Changed My Life Forever

After hearing all the crazy travel stories from the Aussie & Kiwi guys at Cafe en Seine and from my good friends older brother I had no choice but to rally the troops and book our first holiday to Greece, there were four of us.

Obviously we wanted to get there for as cheap as possible, so we booked a return flight off the teletext (an advertisement on the TV, no internet or Expedia back then) from Gatwick Airport in London to Athens Greece. We got an amazing price, the only challenge was, we had to make our own way to Gatwich Airport, which was just outside London. So we booked a Ferry from Dublin, Ireland to Hollyhead in Wales and got a train from Wales to London. Fuck - we must have been nuts, we got a 6am Ferry and within a half an hour of departure we were in Duty Free buying the cheapest bottles of whisky and Vodka we could find. 
After a brutal 4 hour ferry crossing from Ireland to Wales, and an 8 hour train ride from Wales to London, we arrived in Victoria Street Station London wasted on cheap whisky and Vodka. We had no idea how busy London was. It was nuts! People running in all angles. There were blacks, whites, Indians and Asian's... This was completely new for us. In Ireland in 1994, it was hard to find a Black, Asian or Indian guy. I remember one time walking down Grafton Street (one of the busiest Streets in Ireland) in Dublin with my mum and she pointing out a group of Indian guys to me. "Gerard quick, look over there." (To be honest, I think it was half novelty and she was half afraid.) 

By the time we arrived in Gatwick Airport, we were even more wasted. My good friend Jeff thought it was a good idea to mix our travel sickness tablets with the Whisky & Vodka from the Duty Free, and I agreed with him. (He was right, it worked).
We still had a 6 hour wait in Gatwick Airport, which we spent in the departure lounge drinking, then a 4 hour flight to Athens, Greece, and then finally a 7 hour ferry to the Island of Paros. After our insane journey to Paros, we arrived extremely hungover, hot & sweaty. It was the hottest weather all of us had ever experienced... about 90 degrees. We were greeted by about 100 locals all trying to get our business and stay in their rooms, after some weak negotiating we got a room in some old guys apartment, 4 of us in one small room. He had clearly seen that we were newbies and ripped us off. I guess it's all part of the journey, to be honest we were so tired and hungover we didn't care all we wanted was a bed and a shower. 

We spent the next two weeks partying it up with guys and girls from all over the world. We met some really interesting people, I sat spell bound listening to other travelers talk about their amazing adventures. I got to meet some cool guys who were selling t-shirts and jewelry on the beaches, it blew me away, these guys were travelling the world and funding it through selling merchandise on the beach, how amazing was that. Suddenly, a light bulb went off, I had a vision. That was my ticket to travel the world. 

After that 2 weeks in Greece, I came back to Ireland with a new perspective on life. I got my old job back in Cafe en Seine and had one goal in mind "to save as much money as possible so I could go back to Greece and spend the whole Summer there. One thing that I learned from this early experience, is that if you have a goal and you're hell bent on seeing it through, you can achieve it. It just takes a bit of creativity and a certain knowledge of where you want to go and a lot of action.

Cheers 
Gerry :)

Chapter 3 - My Early Years of Work and Still More School

So the road to building my own company and beginning to realize I needed to be my own boss, like many others, came to fruition while working for someone else. From these early experiences, I learned a bit of what I wanted to do, but more importantly, what I didn't want to do in my own business.

After leaving "Rathmines Tech" and now armed with my "Certificate in Business & Computer Studies," I got a commission-only sales job selling advertisement space for some under rated education magazine over the phone. We worked out of a small office on the second floor of some dingy building on Rathmines Road in Dublin and I was assigned to a small cubicle which felt like a prison cell.
The owner of the magazine would lock the main office door when we were onsite to protect us from all the unhappy customers. I only found this out when some guy came banging on the door looking for his money back and the boss wouldn't let him in. It was crazy. I looked out the spy hole and some big country lad was standing behind the door shouting in a thick country Irish accent "Ya Dirty Scamming Bitch gimme me money back .....". After about 20 minutes of shouting back and forth, he left the building and we went back to work.... Thank God for that. This was my first interaction with a very unsatisfied customer. (Note to self: Not what I want.)

The business model of her company was for us to cold call existing customers from the Yellow Pages and talk them back into buying more ad space in our publication. Then we'd repeat their own very same advertisement back to them, as if we had just made it up and attempt to resell it to them. This was pre internet days. I did my time & sold a few ad spaces, but not enough to keep me in drinking money and the boss was a pain in the arse and very dodgy, so I left.

Then my good friend Chris got me a job working with him in the kitchen of a pretty cool/fancy bar & restaurant in Dublin called 'Cafe en Seine'. It was a very successful, up & coming trendy bar in downtown Dublin. I recall speaking to one of the owners about how he got to own the place and he advised me of his favorite motto which was "Keep It Simple & Start Small." He told me he just did what he knew: "stick to the knitting...stick to what you know..."

This was the Summer of 1993. Dublin was entering the Celtic Tiger and kids had money. It's always about the timing! Cafe en Seine ended up being the trendiest bar in Dublin. At that time, it was the place to be and to be seen.

The staff were amazing and lots of fun. There were girls and guys from all over Ireland and lots of students and even some travelers from Australia & New Zealand. They were all in their early 20's, using the place as a stepping stone onto something else. At the time, none of us knew where the next steps where, but I loved it. It suited me perfect. I was washing dishes with my buddy, getting drunk and talking smack with guys & girls in the kitchen and bar. I got 4 pounds ($7) an hour, which was pretty amazing for a kitchen porter job back then. Plus, I got free food and drink of course.

At the same time, I enrolled as a mature student in an evening course in another college, the Dublin Institute of Technology: "DIT Aungier Street." I would graduate with a two year diploma in Legal Studies, another course to keep my mum happy. 

Something I learned from these early experiences were, although you might have a successful business financially in the short term, you want to do it by making customers happy. Your legacy will live on and people will remember. Also, doing what you enjoy is always best and it usually involves other happy people, always start small but have a big vision.

Until next time........

Gerry, Christine, G Pup

Sonas Denim

Chapter 1 - Where I Came From

I grew up in a suburb in Dublin called Templeogue.  Our family is your typical Irish family.  My mum's from the country and my dad's from Dublin.  I have two sisters who I get on with very well, and who have great families.  When we were growing up, my mum worked as a nurse and my dad worked two jobs: one as a taxi driver and one as a school teacher in a prison. My dad also studied law at the same time, and when he passed his exams, he became a full time lawyer.  He told me that he found it very sad that he would meet lots of young guys in the prison who wouldn't have been there if they had proper representation.  That inspired him to study law and become a lawyer. 

Some nights when we were very young and my mum was working the night shift in the hospital, my dad would drive my two sisters and I around in the passenger seat of his taxi while collecting fares.  To say the least, my dad's the hardest working man that I have ever met and the only person that I have ever met that never got sick. 

I must say that I think my parents had a huge role in shaping my personality to know I could do whatever I wanted.  They were living examples of being hard working, do it yourself, make-what-you-want type of people.  Without their example, I wouldn't have the underlying belief in myself that I have today.

To get back to my youth, I had a thing for jeans and  my mum would tell me that I always had great fashion sense.  When we went shopping together when I was a kid, I always picked my own clothing and was complimented by the sales assistants on my picks.  Growing up in the 80's in Dublin, Levis 501's were huge.  In fact they were so big that sometimes people would steal the jeans off your washing line, seriously.

 I had a great childhood and still have lots of amazing friends with whom I went to school and grew up with.  I must admit I never liked school,  I always seemed to get in trouble for day dreaming and having too much fun.  Crazy when you think about it.

My first job was a milk round when I was 14 with my friend Keith.  We collected the milk money every Thursday and Friday for years and also stole  Xmas trees and sold them outside our local church at Xmas time.  My teenage years were spent 1) drinking cheap vodka, cider and beer, 2) going to local disco's 30 terrorizing our neighborhood,  4) dreaming about travelling the world.