Lie after lie after lie!
A contribution from Beck’s father.
Christian was really bad at school work – he’d even been made to repeat one of his early school years. And it’s said that at the boarding school where he did his final years of schooling, I don’t know how many, he was so nearly expelled so often for sneaking out at night and going to the pub, presumably when he should have been studying – his best man at his wedding told me this! He got his HSC, but would have got a really low mark – perhaps he’ll tell us how low one day.
It was against this background that he claimed he’d taught himself programming??? – one of his many lies!
But going back a bit, I’d had virtually no contact with him from when he was 2 or 3, as he’d been living 130 miles away, with his mother and her second husband. But when he’d finished school, having just turned 19, he’d come to where I was living and I’d paid rent for accomodation for him, and provided him with a car and so on.
In his first two years out of school he had 6 jobs, one of which he’d got the sack from after 3 weeks! I was getting really concerned! – he seemed a hopeless case.
He’d never shown the slightest interest in computers and computing, just a few games and so on, even though, since the age of 11, he’d been living with a brother 13 months his senior, who’d been working on computers day night and who obviously had a great career in front of him – as it’s turned out.
But, his 6th job was for a hydraulics company and he’d become interested in computers as a means of keeping track of all the bits and pieces that hydraulics companies have. So I started sending him to weekend computer seminars and other out-of-hours seminars, and he seemed to be becoming more and more interested. I was so excited – was this the light at the end of the tunnel?
Another of his outrageous lies was that I’d got him to come and work on improving some computer systems I’d developed myself for use in my legal practice, (I’d learnt a lot from his brother,) – it couldn’t be further from the truth! Although I did eventually suggest he come and work in one of the rooms in my office, at the time his only knowledge was a few smatterings from the conferences and seminars I’d been sending him to – he never actually worked on any of my systems.
What actually happened was that I set him up in one of the rooms in my practice, with a mate who was a computer expert, both on good wages, with computers and so on, in the hope that he’d might have a career in computers and computing, like his brother, and graduate from having 6 different jobs every 2 years!
Initially they did programming for a grocery chain – but eventually Christian started working on systems for legal practices, using the systems I’d developed as a starting point. Of course, he deserves full credit for how he took things from there. But he had the enormous advantages of having the systems I’d developed as a starting point, having a computer mate to advise him 24/7, of having ready access to the people in a medium sized legal practice to show him how legal businesses operated, and to a father who was a solicitor and businessman from who he could seek advice – I even gave him his first employee, a qualified legal secretary, whose wages I paid for a few months.
Another of the lies he and others have told is that “nothing fell into his lap.” One would have thought from the above that that’s exactly what happened – “everything fell into his lap.”
It’s claimed that he “saw a problem that needed to be fixed,” as though he deserves credit for having some unique insight. But it was obvious that there were going to be people who applied the new technology that was being developed to improving systems being used in legal practices, and making a quid out of it, an he was given an almost unique springboard from which to do it, from which everything developed relatively naturally.
But the biggest lie of all? – that he was “self made.” You’d think that this term wasn’t quite appropriate after he’d had 3 or 4 years of intensive schooling, mentoring and tutoring from highly qualified others.
Of course, he used all these lies to convince Ernst & Young to grant him their 2017 Entrepreneur of the Year Award – about more later
He’s a great example of how far you can go in this world by telling lie after lie after lie!