Back in 2007 I had just recently left my job working as a construction worker for a friends company. I had put in two and a half years with them. Previous to that I’d spent a year and a half in south east Asia travelling around and teaching English in the poorer countries in the region because I didn’t have a BA. For anyone who knows the teaching racket in Asia, you can buy a diploma from any Canadian University along Khao San Road in Bangkok and use that as an entry to work in one of the more lucrative paying jobs, Korea, Japan or Taiwan. It seemed too easy and I’d heard people were getting tossed in the can for false documents. When you’re taking money from someone to teach them I felt that it was wrong to con them so hard. So I taught in Cambodia for a while and didn’t feel like a fraud, I was just an average teacher who fortunately had a mother who was a grammar hound, which gave me some confidence and what I didn’t know I’d figure out. When it came time to either stay or go I decided to leave, home is home and Cambodia wasn’t going to be my home at least as an English teacher.

On my return to Toronto I found myself right back where I’d left off, just with less contacts in the city now. I was pushing mid 30′s and was scared, the only work I was qualified for was minimum paying work which I’d picked up here and there. And I was fortunate to be offered cash jobs by friends but they were short term. All the while I had grand scheme’s that would be worn away as road blocks were placed in front of me either from lack of experience, education or connections. The problem was them not me, noone realized how brilliant I was and I didn’t need to go the sucker’s route(hard work) I could skip steps and get where I needed to go faster.

That was when I asked my friend Jim Patullo who’d helped me out of many jam’s throughout my life if he could set me up with some work.