My Story & This Blog

Welcome!

Hello! My name is Sam Priestley and this is my blog. I’m 31 years old and have spent the last ten years working for myself and on myself. Trying my hand at as many different things as possible.

The Short Version 

 Short attention span eh? Me too.

I started out as a professional gambler and got pretty darn good at it, making enough money to retire. Eventually I got tired and bored to do something more fulfilling, so took my winnings and went off and spent the next few years travelling and trying starting businesses.

I’ve had some successes. A table tennis business. A tech startup that went from idea to sale in under a year. A coffee shop that won best new coffee shop in London 2014. A viral YouTube video with over 12 million views.. And most recently a craft gin brand that is winning awards for its unique flavoured gins. I got married, became a part-time policeman, got a purple belt in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu and spent almost three years travelling.

And had plenty more failures. I lost a bunch of money trying to become a property developer. That coffee shop never made any money. I had a car dealership that went nowhere. 

In March 2020 I got really interested in cryptocurrency and have been focusing on it full-time ever since. 

I write about what I’m up to on this website. 

 

Selfie on the beach

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The Long Version

How It All Started

That is me on my honeymoon in 2017. 10 years after it all began…

I remember the exact moment when I decided not to get a job. I was sitting at my laptop with a graduate scheme application form open in front of me. I had just gotten to a question asking me to explain in 200 words why I wanted to work at that specific bank rather than any other. I couldn’t face it.

I was in my second year of university and started to work my ass off looking for alternative ways to earn a living. The first thing to work was matched betting. A way to earn money from online bookies and casinos by taking advantage of the free bets they offer to new customers. 

It led me deep into the rabbit hole of professional gambling and not only did I get out of my overdraft but by the time I graduated I was earning enough to justify not getting a job.

I got better and better at gambling and it turned into a big business. But I was always worried of regulation and didn’t think of it as a ‘real business’.

Seeing The Light

In 2012 I decided to get into the big leagues. I wanted to be rich and the best way to do that would be to launch a technology startup. For the next year I put everything else on the back burner and worked solidly on it. We hired employees, got a fancy office and pumped money into the business.  

And it was horrendous. I became an entrepreneur in order to avoid having to get a job, and now I had done the opposite. Created myself a job where I had to arrive earlier and stay later than everyone else. I had all the stress of entrepreneurship and all the inconvenience of employership. 

We eventually sold the business. I won’t ruin the story for you, read about it here. But the experience had a big impact on me. It made me realise that I didn’t want to be rich, rather I wanted my time to be own. To be able to choose what I do. So I changed my focus and decided to build only scalable outsourceable businesses.

The experience with my tech startup made me view professional gambling with new eyes. I had returned to it because the money was good and I had commitments to my business partners, but I had no passion for it. I had made enough money to last me a few years, so I quit. 

Some more #tbt. My old ET Advisor office. I miss these guys but definitely do not miss the stress of that business.

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Self-Improvement & Retirement

Over the next few years I tried my hand at everything and anything. 

For a year I spent every day training table tennis in an attempt to become one of the best in the country. We called project Expert in a Year, I spectacularly failed. But despite that, the video of my year went viral (it now has over 8 million views) and my love of self-improvement and continuous learning was kindled.

To help give me more confidence and improve my soft-skills I became a volunteer policeman. Working weekends on what was called the rowdy bus. We were sent to any fights or gang trouble where they thought a bus full of amateur bobbies would help. If I could deal with that then no confrontation in a boardroom would ever be an issue again.

I devoured podcasts and books and was inspired to launch this blog. In my mind I had retired and my time would be spent on whatever interested me the most rather than what earned me the most. 

I wrote a couple of books, started training Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu and started a table tennis brands heavily with the help of Amazon FBA (the warehouse and fulfilment network run by Amazon). I even launched a coffee shop which went on to win best new coffee shop in London. 

I’m officially a #millionaire! Shame it’s only in YouTube views… #startup #tabletennis #expertinayear

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Hitting The Road & Digital Nomading

All this time I had been living in central London, but in 2016 I got itchy feet. I gave up my flat, sold 90% of my stuff and armed with just a suitcase headed off to South America to live the life as a ‘digital nomad’. Someone who can live anywhere because they can earn an income through their computer and the internet.

I had convinced my girlfriend to quit her job and come with me. She left the UK with just her savings and while travelling managed to build a profitable business doing freelance marketing.

For the next 18 months, I didn’t do much work. There was too much to experience as we travelled from country to country living in AirBnBs. In 2016 the only new business I started was a consultancy, A very simple business built off the back of this blog, which by then had got really popular.

Instead, I focused on growing my table tennis businesses. Which by the end of 2016 had grown to be bigger and more profitable than gambling ever was.

In July 2017 I got married and shortly after launched Pipehouse Gin with my new wife Emma. In 2018 we launched a podcast. The next few years chugged along happily. Lots of travelling and enjoying life. Until the pandemic came.

Hard at work in the office #digitalnomad #sorrynotsorry #croatia #korcula

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The Pandemic & Crypto

In 2020 the pandemic hit which brought to a halt a lot of things in my life. We returned to the UK and in March things were looking pretty bleak. My businesses ground to a halt and the stock market started tanking taking a lot of my investments with it.

I did a big reassessment which is summed up in my coronavirus series of blog posts. The end result being that I started to look for opportunities to start earning money again, which got me in cryptocurrency. 

Since March I have been focusing on crypto full-time. It took me a few months to find my feet, but in June I got into Ethereum and decentralised finance.

I learned solidity (the Ethereum programming language) and made a good living in the ‘dark forest‘ doing arbitrage.

In October I started working with Yearn.finance helping them write strategies and increase their security. Which bring us up to today. 

 

Some more wedding dancing 💃🕺#semmawedding

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Keen To Dive Into The Blog?

Check out some of my favourite posts.

Amazon FBA

Amazon FBA is an awesome service provided by Amazon that allows one man band brand owners like myself run multi-national physical product businesses. It is the building blocks that I use for my most profitable businesses. Here are some of the best articles about it:

Matched Betting

How to make some easy money by taking advantage of the sign up offers that bookies give to new customers. It won’t make you rich but it is low-risk and will earn you a few thousand pounds to help start something else. Matched betting is what gave me the initial funding to not get a job and become an entrepreneur.

Blogging

Craft Gin

In late 2017 I started a new business. A craft gin brand! And I am documenting exactly what I’m up to in real time:

The Rest

Want To Get In Touch?

I get hundreds of emails a week (literally) so if you have something urgent you need my help for then I recommend hiring me as a consulting. I charge $200 an hour and you can book a call with me here.

Or if it is less urgent you can send me an email for free and I will try and read it!

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