School was holding me back

School was holding me back. The system was against me. My parents were so poor they couldn’t afford to feed us.

I made no excuses, I did what was needed.

Started a business that I could run as a child.

But almost no adults wanted to work for a child.

What would I do?

I went down to the prison and started hiring released convicts.

Desperate men, dangerous men.

Picked up a new guy one day and he was limping. Someone shanked him 2 days before.

But I was used to dealing with this type as a full time minister to street people.

I built up a team, 2 coordinators, 48 delivery people.

Hired my father to drive teams to locations.

We would deliver to the city or suburbs. Bulk items, product samples & marketing material.

It was a logistical nightmare.

Hundreds of thousands of deliveries weekly.

Working with violent, burned out, drug addled ex convicts was like herding cats on crack.

Every day was something different.

Would one of my guys get arrested the night before? Should I bail him out or not?

Never ending string of problems to solve.

After 2 years of hard work I had paid off my parents many debts and most of their mortgage.

We could keep my childhood home!

I kept only $10k for me.

But I was burnt out from 80 hour work weeks + 20 hours/week on church duties.

A clash with organized crime came next.

They threatened my workforce.

Then they beat up my workers.

Within 2 weeks everyone was either in the hospital or scared off.

In desperation I hired some recent Serbian immigrants fleeing the chaos of the latest balkan conflict.

They claimed to be farmers, they were not.

The wives spoke some english, they had been in Canada learning for the last 6 months. The men spoke very little.

These men were clearly NOT simple farmers.

They had military bearing and tats.

One was in charge.

They entered a room like trained men.

With eyes like wolves.

2 weeks after hiring them everything was going well.

By now I had found out that someone was beating up all my old guys. They were too afraid to come back.

But I had new, fit, fast, smart guys who handled logistics themselves.

Things got easier, until the men with guns came.

They showed up at my wearhouse looking like two Sopranos extras but with a French Canadian flavour.

Poutine instead of pasta.

They threatened me to give them my business (or a cut).

I said no. Then he pulled out a gun. Just a small revolver, but deadly nonetheless.

They threatened to kill me.

I said “go ahead, shoot me in front of all these witnesses, see how your boss likes that.”

The Serbian women were in the warehouse with me, packing things to ship out.

“We will kill your family.”

“Go ahead, I dont like them anyway.”

Show no fear.

The gangsters looked puzzled.

Who was this stupid kid?

The Serbian women were making phone calls, as I had figured they would.

But they didn’t call the cops.

They called some much more dangerous people.

Their husbands.

About 15 minutes after the guys had left the Serbian men arrived like a tornado.

They were PISSED.

After a quick conference with their wives they left.

The women were MORE worried than before.

“Noah, our husbands are going to kill those men, you have to stop them”

“Those guys are French mafia, not normal street thugs. You have to warn your husbands.” I replied.

“Noah, you dont understand. Our husband are not farmers. They are an urban assassination team. Their mission was to kill high ranking enemy officers behind enemy lines and escape.”

Great, I’m about to be in the middle of a war between Serbian assassins and the mafia.

Apparently the Serbians had already ran into and handled the mafia guys during the two weeks before.

They didn’t tell me what they were doing so I would have plausible deniability.

Over the next few days I sold the business to the Serbians for a good amount of cash.

They came to some understanding with the organized criminal guys.

I was burned out. I “retired” for 18 months while I did a highschool crash course, graduating with honors.

At the beginning I promised lessons so here they are.

A lot of crazy stuff happens in this world. Be happy if your life is boring, that’s probably a good thing.

Being unafraid of death is a super power, until they kill you.

Keep more of your profits.

Hire Serbian assassins!