Welcome
I’m Sam Priestley and this is my blog where I share my experiences and insights gathered from the last 15 years working for myself. I wrote regularly from 2014 but rarely post these last few years due to my current work being too technical for a casual blog. Still I hope you find the articles useful.
Latest Posts:
Investing Made Easy
Ever since launching this blog quite a few old friends have got in touch to ask for advice. You'd think they'd want to know about table tennis, coffee, gambling, or anything really that I claim to be a bit of an expert at. But nope, the most common thing I get asked...
What Happens When Your YouTube Video Goes Viral?
In the last week over a million people have watched me prancing around in short shorts playing table tennis... How on earth did that happen?! Bzzzzzzt. Bzzzzzt. Bzzzzt. As I slowly gained consciousness, I blinked bleary eyed at my phone. 3am, the phone said. You have...
5 Biggest Business Mistakes I Have Made
I'm not your standard business or money blogger. I don’t have any spectacular stories of successes. I don’t have any profound lessons I've learned from massive failures. I haven’t started a billion dollar company and I haven’t lost it all, gone bankrupt and ended up...
Retail Arbitrage – Flipping Products With Amazon FBA
Have you ever heard a about any of the legendary eBay millionaires? One of a select group of people who would cram their houses full of bits and bobs that they bought cheaply and are selling for a profit on Ebay. Turning junk into cold hard cash. Well, Amazon is...
Hobby Arbitrage – Learn Skills, Make Money, Become Happier
Hobbies? Who has time for hobbies these days! Well, we should all make time. Having a hobby is one of the best ways to increase your happiness, the evidence is pretty convincing on that. But hobby’s are expensive and time consuming. So how do you choose which one to...
Should I Try and Spend Less or Earn More?
Which do you think is better worth your time: spending less or earning more? It’s actually a harder question than I initially thought. There are some important pros and cons to both, and they’re not immediately obvious. A pound saved is worth more than a pound earned...
Spectacularly Failing to Become an Expert in a Year
In December 2013, my friend Ben talked me into taking up what he called the Expert in a Year challenge: "Do you fancy playing table tennis every day for a year? I think that if you do the right training you can get into the top 250 players in the UK - a level that...
How and Why to Start a Coffee Shop – The Wren
“What did you do this Sunday?” “Well, I went to church” “Oh... cool.” Well, churches aren't cool. He doesn't think they’re cool. That’s the end of that conversation. In November 2012, after a little over a year of on and off preparation we met with the senior...
Rising House Prices are Bad for Homeowners
Warning. This post is a bit of a rant. It really bugs me when we read about the households “enjoying house price rises”. Really who apart from landlords enjoy rising house prices? Well people like me who would like to buy a home at some point certainly don’t, everyone...
Funding Circle – Get a Higher Return
This article was written in 2014 and quite a lot has changed! A lot about this article is still relevant, but you may be more interested in my most recent post on peer-to-peer lending and why I am moving my money from Funding Circle to Ratesetter. Out of all the...
High Stakes Entrepreneurship
It’s 6am in December 2012 and I'm sitting in our office waiting for a prospective angel investor to arrive. Normally I hate getting up early in the morning but I'm currently so stressed out and not sleeping I would be awake anyway. I'm on my second coffee, because...
Matched Betting – Risk Free, Tax Free Profit
On the Summer break of my second year at university I made myself a promise, if I could earn £250 a week from matched betting then I wouldn't get a job and would spend the next few years building my own business. I succeeded and never looked back. At the time I had...
