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Friday afternoon story time 🎉🍷🤔
One of the most pivotal stages of my early professional (and for the financial and other benefits, personal) life was writing my first maths “textbook”, Not a C Minus, at age 18, and establishing my first educational publishing business. It was an unplanned, somewhat chaotic, and wonderfully enjoyable learning experience.
In brief, the book became a runaway hit, sold around 6000 physical copies, and spawned my lifelong love of educational and entrepreneurial initiatives, that branched out into more books, online, edutainment, tech topics, for all age ranges from pre-school kids to older adults.
At the time it was an incredible, almost entirely on-the-fly learning and “flying by the seat of my pants” experience – including learning how to:
🖨️ Create print-ready complex technical manuscripts (in Microsoft Word, you LaTeX snobs 🤣)
📚 Work with and negotiate with commercial printers
🚢 Including eventually doing overseas print productions and learning things you’d never normally learn, like that you need to insure marine freight at 110%
📞 Cold calling and approaching vendors like bookstores, negotiating terms, and keeping them in stock
📝 Write press releases and later, copywrite for ads
💰 Budgeting, tax reporting, and later starting a Pty Ltd company
🌐 Early online sales and marketing: a website, sales fulfilment, optimising freight and parcel delivery
and so much more.
This whole experience profoundly shaped my life, and I thought I’d relate the story here and the key lessons I learned, trying very hard to not fall into the trap of only analysing it in hindsight, but remembering back to what was known, felt and thought at the time as an 18 year old!
I hope you find it interesting! And have a good weekend.
#sidegigs #entrepreneur #business #income #education #stem #math #mathematics #students #school #company #entrepreneurial
Full Video Notes
When I was in high school and then in undergraduate university, I had a fairly typical range of part-time jobs. I did a bit of handiwork and gardening, but my two main jobs were first working at a duty-free store, and then later at an electronics store. During the early years of university, I also did what many people do: tutored high school students in subjects like mathematics and physics.
In the second year of university, during one semester, I had finished my exams earlier than some of my classmates. I was twiddling my thumbs a bit, and an idea I had been playing with was to write a maths textbook that informally and conversationally laid out the explanations I had been refining while tutoring intermediate and senior high school maths. So I sat down and, over a relatively short amount of time, wrote a 130-page informal textbook.
Once I had written it, I thought, what do I do now? I considered turning it into a proper book, so I spoke to some local printers associated with universities and also approached professional publishing houses. I was laughed out of at least one of those. In the end, I worked with my university’s commercial press, who walked me through the basics of professional publishing. I scraped together some money and printed a small run of 40 books, which cost about $400 in total, or $10 per book.
Without really thinking too far ahead, I went into a local Dymocks bookstore and asked to speak with the manager. I may have called ahead, I can’t remember. The manager, Dean, came out and was surprisingly friendly. I was very nervous, I was 18 years old and had no idea what I was doing. He explained the consignment system, where you give the store your books and they only pay you if they sell, taking a percentage as their cut. At the time, this was about 45 or 50 percent, although I later negotiated it down to 30 percent in some cases.
They gave me a shot. In parallel, I wrote to the local provincial newspaper and told them about the book. They ran a small article on it. A few days later, I got an excited call from Dean saying they had sold out of the books. It was just before Christmas. My parents, who have always been incredibly supportive, were skeptical of the timing, but the book sold out. I scrambled to print more. I think the next run was 100 copies, and those sold too. We got more publicity and eventually moved to runs of 1,000 books at a time. In those handful of stores, we were outselling Harry Potter, which looking back was incredible.
To make all this happen, I had to learn a huge number of things on the fly. I had to figure out how to create professionally formatted books, understand CMYK color, create print-ready PDFs, and more. This was much harder back then, especially for someone with no idea what they were doing. I was grateful for the patient guidance from the printers. I also had to learn how to write press releases, contact journalists, write compelling ad copy, budget, and ship books across Australia. I built an online sales portal so people could place orders, and I figured out the most cost-effective ways to fulfill those orders. Eventually, for later books, I learned how to deal with international printers, marine freight, and insurance.
It was all very confronting at the time, but in hindsight, it was a fantastic learning experience. It really kickstarted my lifelong interest in combining education, outreach, and entrepreneurial activity. Since then, we have published a series of books under a company called Math Thrills, which focuses on technical education around topics like AI, robotics, and autonomous vehicles. I have continued to enjoy this type of work ever since.
There were many lessons learned along the way. Some were only clear in hindsight, others became apparent very quickly. First, I was in a privileged position. I did not have to work 40 hours a week after finishing university to support myself. I had the freedom to invest time in the project and could use some of my hard-earned savings to fund that first $400 print run. Even spending that much at the time was a big deal, and I was nervous about it.
Second, the success of the project depended heavily on the generosity and risk-taking of others. Bookstore owners took a chance on me. They saw my enthusiasm, understood my inexperience, and gave me guidance without taking advantage. They even shared in the excitement when sales took off. I also had help from parents of friends who had experience in journalism and marketing, and who gave me great advice. And of course, I had the support of my own family and friends.
Third, I came to appreciate the massive financial advantage of having a side hustle early in life. A dollar earned at 18 is often worth far more than a dollar earned at 28 or 38. It can help you avoid debt, reduce interest payments, and build long-term financial resilience. The compounding effect of earning early can be massive.
An added benefit was that the experience gave me fantastic material for job, scholarship, and prize interviews. It helped me stand out. I know it contributed to my success in securing internships and prestigious opportunities. While there was certainly some luck involved, the initiative showed something different compared to my peers, who were also academically strong but may not have had that kind of practical experience.
I also learned that, in most cases, your success is only as strong as your weakest link. There was no point in optimizing one part of the process, like writing the textbook, if I was neglecting others, such as marketing or logistics. I had to become at least competent in every area to make the whole thing work.
From a financial perspective, I learned that theoretical profit margins rarely hold up in practice. Unexpected costs and challenges erode your margins. I discovered that I needed to build in large buffers. One way I did this was by scaling up. By increasing my print volume, I reduced the per-unit cost from about $10 down to $3 or $4, which made a big difference in profitability.
Another pleasant surprise was how fulfilling the work was. Alongside the orders, I received hundreds of physical letters from people thanking me. They shared how much the book had helped them, and many told deeply personal stories. It was incredibly moving and reaffirmed the value of the work.
At the same time, after many months, I reached a point where I could not stand to look at the book anymore. Even though I was earning roughly $200 per hour of effort, maybe $500 in today’s terms, I just needed a break. That was when I learned the truth of the saying “do not kill what you love.” Turning your passion into a commercial venture can burn you out if you are not careful.
Another important lesson was the difference between creating a sensible, moderately profitable business and aiming for the kind of 1000-times scale-ups we see in tech startups. These are very different mindsets. A person who excels at one does not necessarily excel at the other. I have met many smart, capable colleagues who are natural in one space but struggle in the other, and I am still working to bridge that gap myself.
Finally, I want to reflect on how little I knew at the time. People who work with me now know that I try to plan carefully, assess risks, and weigh outcomes before taking on big initiatives. But back then, I did not think about any of that. I did not have a clear plan. I did not know how to get it published when I wrote it, and I did not know how to promote it when it was printed. I just took the next step, made it up as I went along, and somehow it worked.
It could easily have failed. I was lucky, and I had the support and freedom to keep going long enough for it to succeed. I come back to this memory often. It reminds me that while planning and risk mitigation are very sensible and often necessary, there is still a place for the occasional unplanned adventure or leap into the unknown. Thinking too hard about potential consequences is not always helpful, because some of those consequences are simply not predictable.
My parents at the time did not predict that I would have a bestselling maths textbook at Christmas. I partly agreed with their skepticism. But I went ahead anyway, and unexpected outcomes followed. Planning and risk mitigation are important, but so is curiosity and a little bit of boldness.