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The Real Steve McKnight

The third year of my RMIT accounting degree (which was called a ‘co-op’ year) required that I find 12 months of relevant paid work experience. This was no easy task as back in 1991 the economy was in the grips of a recession and accounting jobs were pretty tough to land. Unlike some of my less fortunate peers, of the maximum 10 resumes that I was allowed to submit, I managed to secure three first-round interviews. One was at the massive accounting firm Price Waterhouse, another at The Herald and Weekly Times, and a third at a small accounting practice called Boyd Partners.

My job interview at Price Waterhouse was a disaster. First up, when they rang to arrange an interview I wasn’t home and my brother answered the phone. When the lady provided her return contact number it started with 666, to which my brother quipped, ‘You’re not the devil, are you?’ As you can imagine, I nearly died when he told me!

Still, despite my brother’s best intentions, I was granted an interview a couple of days later, and I turned up full of confidence dressed in a lovely new black suit, white shirt and pink, swirly floral tie. Sadly though, the interview didn’t last very long. I bombed out badly when asked, ‘So, what would be your dream job?’ Having no experience in interview politics, I answered truthfully when I said, ‘I really enjoy basketball coaching and I can see myself finishing my degree and going into sports management.’

Well, the interview basically ended there and then! Later my uni friends advised me of the ‘correct’ answer: ‘I’d really like to work long hours for you as I can’t imagine anything better than a long and fulfilling career here at <insert organisation name>’.

Oh well, one interview down and two more to go.

The Herald and Weekly Times interview went much better, and I believe I would have been in the running for the job had the organisation not needed to cut back staff. After the interview I received a letter. It began by thanking me for my interest (not what you want to read at the start of such a letter), and advising me that the company had decided to withdraw from the RMIT co-op program for cost-saving reasons.

Things were becoming desperate. I only had one shot left — Boyd Partners. Whilst this firm was offering two places, one of them had already been snapped up by a fellow student named Andrew. Later I would learn that Andrew did some clever extracurricular groundwork and had sewn up the position well before the interview process even began. Nevertheless, walking into the interview, I had my mum’s wise words ringing in my ears: ‘Just be yourself, and it’ll happen if it’s meant to be’.

I had the interview with Sue, one of the partners, and it was the best of the three. We seemed to click and I liked the sound of working in a small team. Later Sue told me that the last position was a two-horse race — a choice between myself and another. Luckily, I was offered (and subsequently accepted) the job, which came with the kingly starting salary of $20,000! It’s a little quirky, but to this day I’ll divide the profit I make from a property deal into $20,000 lots. I then equate each lot to a year of blood, sweat, tears and timesheets that I’ve saved myself.

SAD SUNDAY NIGHTS

Sue was merciful in granting me that job; my university marks certainly didn’t warrant the position. I was mainly a passes and credits student. I did manage to get a distinction for the first year subject ‘Generation and Distribution of Wealth’, but that didn’t count for much since the subject was completely assessed based on assignments and class participation, so all you had to do was turn up and you would at least score a credit!

It’s not that I wasn’t extremely grateful for the job, but within a few months of starting I began to feel like a fish out of water. It was a great place to work — everything that was promised and more. My problem was that I came to the conclusion that I didn’t want to be an accountant. Slowly over time my feelings of being unsettled turned into despair at having to work in a job that I didn’t like. I hated Sunday afternoons as I started to think about having to go to work the following day. Sunday nights were even worse, as I’d have to spend an hour of precious time ironing five shirts for the week ahead. While I may sound like a sook, sometimes I’d even cry!

Even now, from time to time on a Sunday afternoon I’ll look down at my watch and be gripped with a small glimpse of sudden dread. Should I be running a Sunday seminar, I’ll tell the audience about it and see knowing looks on a lot of faces. Looks that say, ‘I know what you mean! I have to go home after this seminar and iron shirts for the week ahead myself’.

As a child, what did you want to do when you were grown up? I wonder then, and particularly so if you’re unhappy, how did you end up where you are right now?

Something powerful that I’ve come to learn is that our life (and investment) positions are the direct results of the choices we make. If you want a different outcome, then you need to make different choices.

A SLOW LEARNER

My wife, Julie, will tell you that I’m a slow learner. Although I’d love to dispute this, it really must be true because I persisted as an accountant for 10 and a half years before finally turning my back on the profession once and for all.

Looking back, I was always conscious of being unhappy deep down, but what I lacked was the courage to take action that would address the situation. I failed to take control or ownership of my circumstances and to pursue a different direction rather than merely accepting what was dished up.

I challenge you to stop reading for a moment and to spend a minute or two thinking about times in your life when you’ve achieved substantial success — perhaps a sporting achievement, a time when you landed the job of your dreams, or a date with someone you liked. Go on — stop reading for a moment and think … 

Now, with one or two particularly happy moments in mind, did you get into these situations through random luck or did you plan for a certain outcome and then work hard to achieve it? Sustained success is no fluke — it’s a result. It’s the culmination of the expertise and planning invested into the process you employed to reach the outcome. This being the case, I just can’t understand why so many people live a minority of their lives (say 10%) in a zone or mindset they know (from previous results) will deliver an above-average outcome, and spend the rest of their time (say 90%) living in passive ignorance by allowing their lives to drift by around them.

Sure, life isn’t solely about achievement after achievement, but studies have been done and the conclusions are alarming. I’m told a research analyst once visited a series of aged care centres and surveyed a sample of residents. They were asked, ‘If you had your life over again, what would you do differently?’

The top two answers were:

Do you recognise these basic desires? Maybe they’re the same two points that you want to take action on in your life. Don’t be deaf to the wisdom of those who have gone before us, take action while you still have the time and inclination to do something about it!

ESTABLISHING A NEW DIRECTION

Having decided to prematurely retire from my accounting career, you might be surprised to learn that I didn’t have much of an idea of what I wanted to do next. No doubt some of you more sensible readers would regard this as crazy. You might believe it’s dangerous to leave a job with no certainty, and no new income arranged. Ordinarily, I’d agree with you, but you have to understand how unhappy I was and how desperate I’d become for a change in circumstances.

Irrespective of commonsense, once I opened myself up to a new opportunity it transpired that destiny found me, rather than the other way around. Don’t get me wrong though, I wasn’t expecting the opportunity of a lifetime to simply land in my lap. However, given that I’d achieved success before (both personally and in my career), I had the firm belief that provided I could identify what had worked well for me in the past, all I needed to do was to find a new context in which to apply those same skills, and success would not be far away.

In my case, I looked into the world of investing and wealth creation. In no particular order I spent time analysing the merits of share investing, share trading, options trading, futures trading, network marketing, franchises, negative gearing, time share investments, positive gearing, and many others. As you’d expect, each held the promise of massive riches and each had its share of success stories. I remember one in particular, which was the incredible tale of how someone had made a fortune trading the US market in the middle of the night, wearing only underwear!

One thing I noticed was that the higher the buy-in cost, the bigger the promise of instant and significant wealth. Hmmm. I...