Category: Business

Hi everybody my name is Mark and i live in Las Vegas and i have resided here since 1995 i am from Dallas originally.

I follow mrlifeadvise since a Japanese supplier of mine recommended it as a good read for smaller and medium sized business owners.

I know the site is less than a year old, and i was impressed once i saw the references of the people running this site.

Really impressive that business people with a global presence takes the time to write some blog posts and also offer a very low cost business consulting service.

So it is so refreshing to see these kind of articles on a very important topic like gambling addiction suffering small and medium sized business owners.

My own story is that i started to going to Las Vegas in my early 20s with my 10 year older brother.

And i started to gamble more and more for each year that went by.

But because i never wanted to place illegal bets, i was able to control this until i made the decision to move to Las Vegas in 1995.

I come from money, and that has helped me not to be forced to commit crimes to support my addiction.

But i have lost 2 companies over the past 20 years time due to my gambling addiction.

I work as a general contractor and i also sell air cooling systems for offices and private homes.

I lost two business for going in to so much debt, that i had to sell them both to get debt free and start over again.

Probably i would have had a 20+ million dollar company by now if i could have kept i first business going.

Instead i do only close to a million dollars in turnover these days.

I spend a lot of my time at the sports-book at the casinos and i play so much that i eat for free every day, everywhere.

If i could go back 30 years in time, i would never ever have started to gamble.

And as a business owner this has been the biggest poison in my life, and it has affected me i every possible way negatively speaking.

I am 52 years old and after living in Las Vegas for 25 years time i am now moving back to my home town Dallas and i am starting over.

I never created a family or got married, because i have been working and gambling full time for over 25 years time!.

I still have time, but this is it for me i am trowing in the towel so to speak after 30+ years of hardcore gambling.

I have lost 8-10 million dollars over this period of 25 years time.

And on top of that two companies.

I wish that somebody would have come for me 20 years ago and dragged me to rehab and back to Texas.

I am 100% responsible for my own actions, but it is also a sickness/illness an addiction that i dont have any control over.

And i have meet so many sad people during my 25 years here in Las Vegas.

And i am seriously worried when i see the young people that are starting out now gambling and all the online gambling plattforms that are widely available for people to play at from the comforts of their own homes!.

I have seen people lose it all here in Las Vegas and i know of more than 100 people who have committed suicide because they have lost it all, and they can see no way forward.

As a gambler you really dont have friends you have regulars that you know at the different gambling spots and you can do and eat together and then you go back to the casino or the sports-book.

So i have had always two rescue cats at once, that has been my family here in Vegas because a family would have taken up to much time from my gambling.

I have had winning months but never winning years.

If you win 200.000 dollars as a gambler on the sports-book then you raise the stakes and you just need 5-6 bad bets in a row and the money you won is gone!.

And then the cycle starts over again!.

I can honestly say that i am one of the truly lucky ones that have a family with some means.

This means that i can go back to Texas and still live a good life,thanks to my family.

I have donated to animal shelters over the past 25 years time, and the one thing i am proud of in all this is that, every morning before work, if i had a winning day i went and donated money to different privately run animal shelters in the Vegas region.

And i stuck to always donating at least 20% of my winnings after taxes.

So i have donated quite a bit of money over the past 25 years.

So this is the only good thing i take away with me from Vegas after 25 years time together with my rescue cats back to Texas.

So let my story be a warning that please you young people and young business owners out there, never start to gamble period!.

It it does not matter if you play poker, it is still gambling and i can not tell you how many poker players i have meet in my life that has won a lot of money and then ended up broke and alone after a few years.

And you will never be able to beat the sport-book they will have the lines in the right place enough times to make there vig and also make money on you.

And the casinos and slot machines are just a dream that you can win big over time!.

One of the more sad things that i have seen here in Vegas over the past 25 years time , is how much the crimes have gone up and committed by gambling addicts, i could tell you horror stories here, but i wont.

I will spare you these stories, but i have seen such good hearth ed people turn ice cold because of there addiction to gambling , that it is just sad and demoralizing the whole ting.

So from the bottom of my hearth i wish that you young folks never have to experience what it is like being a gambling addict.

The cortisol levels are always true the roof in your body and you only crash after work and after a long evening at the casinos.

I have been fortunate enough that i have been able to hold down a job/ my own companies and be able to work 8 hours a day and then sleep 8 hours and then gamble pretty much the rest of my time.

I dont want this anymore and i already knew 15 years ago that i am not gonna be able to win back my losses, but still i kept trying and dag myself even deeper into debt and destruction.

Do yourself a favor if you have started to gamble, quit immediately and let the money you lost me a lesson and please understand that less than 0.1% will win their money back over time, and you are not one of those 1 in a 1000 that will win your losses back.

So even if my guest blog post here only saves one young business owner to walk down my path i am more that pleased to write my story here.

A big thank you to mrlifeadvise that allowed me to share my story and my deep knowledge of the gambling issue here.

Best wishes.

Mark/Vegas.

So we are now done with how we will offer our business consulting services online.

And it will be true a monthly subscription plan.

We are gonna start with a 299 USD dollar plan per month, which will allow one email per week from a business owner, with different questions, we will try and limit that to maximum one A4 page with questions.

Our expertise is from the production industry globally, this means that we have produced many different items globally, in many companies from scratch.

We have hired people from the first employee, we have built the business from scratch and we understand all the different dilemmas that all business owners comes across.

So we have created around 10000+ jobs globally that are still there, and for every business owner that will opt for our consulting subscription, you will get a full refund if you dont like our references on what we have done and created over the past 55 years time globally.

In most cities and towns in the world we can say to you, get in your car, and drive around and we will tell you where you can find a product that we have developed and is accessible in your town or city.

So we can help you as a business owner to grow where ever you are sitting in the world, with good advise on what to look for when you want to grow your business and hopefully help you avoid some of the mistakes that we did in the past.

That can save you a lot of hearth ache and pain!.

So we have also a global network if you are a producer and you produce something.

So the reason why we are a bit cryptic with our references is that we want to keep this between you as the client and us a service provider.

ALSO IMPORTANT TO KNOW!.

We will never sell your email adress or contact info, and all information that you provide us is only between us, unless you as the client specify it otherwise to us!.

So look for our subscription package to come up very soon!.

The major benefit for you as a business owner is that, where can you get low cost business advise on a monthly basis, from people who have been in your shoes.

We have built companies , large ones, we have lost companies large ones, we have built new ones, and so on.

And this is why we are in a great place to help you and your company out on a monthly basis with business advise.

Later on we will also offer a management subscription that is intended for people in a management position at a smaller or medium sized company.

Here we will offer a daily email, possibility.

Welcome as a client to mrlifeadvise business consulting.

Hi,Guys, we have had a very hectic 12 week period at mrlifeadvise.

In late June we got an emergency call from a former owner of a 200+ person company that 5 years after the man had left his company to his two children the company was going under.

And he called us in to see if we could use some of our magic to see what was going on.

The company works in manufacturing of industrial parts both as a subcontractor and with their own production line in a very advanced industrial facility.

When the man left the company two his son age 43 and his daughter age 40 today, 5 years ago the company was doing 30m Usd annually in revenue, had a profit of around 3 million Usd.

And they had some reserves of around 4 m Us DOLLARS, which by all accounts should make this a very stable company also for the future.

The workers had been alarming him for a 2 years period, but he had taken those alarms lightly and thought that it was just about the different management style that his very well educated children had.

Compered to his more rough around the edges, a pupil of the so called school of hard knocks, a man that was born dirt poor and who worked 6 days a week for 40 years to build his own business, and by all accounts did a really good job, doing so.

So 5 years after he retired at the age of 70, now 75 years of age, his company has 9 million Usd in debt and the turnover has gone down to 18 million Usd on an annual basis.

So when we where called in to consult in June, we could clearly see that something more sinister that just bad business was going on behind the scenes here.

The son worked as the CEO and the daughter worked as the CFO.

Both had attended ivy league schools starting from Prep all the way to the university.

And because they controlled now the company/ it was theirs so to speak to run but the father still had 51% of the control, but was no longer active at all in the business.

He was mostly travelling around the world, enjoying his retirement.

So a very long story in a bit shorter format is that both the CEO and CFO so brother and sister had become gambling addicts over the past 15 years time, but now with access to big money it has escalated to an unheard of level.

So basically the brother has lost 7 million dollars betting on sports, mainly NBA,NFL and Soccer.

The daughter had been playing high stake slot machines and lost about 3 million dollars during this time period of 5 years.

So what they had been doing was gambling instead of taking care of the company that was left to them, they had a stake of 24.5% each now and was gonna inherit another 25.5% each when the father had passed away.

And they had borrowed money at a very high interest against their stakes in the company.

This was one thing we found out, when we did a forensic accounting expedition.

But what was even more troubling was that they where both spending up to 10 h a day gambling instead of running the company.

In the first 3 years the other workers and mid level management was able to cover their end to keep the business going but after losing two large client over the past 24 months period it all came crashing down on them.

We got both the brother and sister into a separate rehab for gambling addicts where their is a 5 year plan to get them both healthy again.

But the sad part of this story is that it looks like the company will go up for sale to a foreign buyer who will then move all the production and 200+ people will be left without a job to go to in this fairly small town.

If this would have been known 2-3 years ago then maybe the company could have been saved as is!.

But with a 75 year old CEO now, back in his own seat, but with 49% of the company in lenders hands, he do not believe that he can solve the 10 million dollar debt to the lenders by by keeping the company.

We are still always amazed that it is legal to offer an interest rate up to 40% each year as a finance company.

So even if the interest rate on these loans are 24% it is still to high to cover with the current situation.

So the punchline we are coming to is that never ever start gambling when you are a business owner.

It can go very quick , and suddenly you are hocked and you are losing everything you worked so hard to build, in the first place.

We have seen over the years that there are two types of gambling business owners, the one that we saw here in the example above that lost it all, and then there are those who gamble just to the tip of the edge, but never goes over he edge.

But even those who never goes over the edge, create tremendous stress on to their business.

So we know a guy called Brian, who has had a business for over 20+ years and he does the same turnover give or take 15% each year, at around 2 million dollars a year.

We strongly believe that he should do 20+ millions each years with his company.

But the problem is that he gambles to the edge, which means that he takes out so much money that could have been used for investments in new products , R/D, and machinery.

But because he can not stop with the sports betting this is how his life is today and has been for the past 20 years time.

So the lesson is this today!, never ever start to gamble if you are a business owner, and if you are starting a business and you are gambling STOP IMMEDIATELY!, WITH WHAT YOU ARE DOING!.

If there was a way to become a winning bettor on sports-books dont you think that there would be sitting smart people emptying the sport-book companies accounts.

There is studies that shows that in the United states of America their is less than 500 people who be on sports, that makes more than 75.000 dollars a year in net profit.

So that tells you that even if there are a few Billy Walters out there, the chance of you getting struck by lightning is far greater than the chance of you being a successful sports gambler or slot machine gambler.

So do yourself and your employees and your family a huge favor and stop if you are currently gambling and if you are not, then never ever try it!.

Thank you for reading.

Sincerely.

Mrlifeadvise.