There's no shortage of people online telling you how to get rich. So here’s where I've come from.
Sh*t happens. It's what you do with it that decides your future.
The day after my 14th birthday I was hit by a car. My heart stopped three times on the way to hospital. When I came round after ten days in a coma, I was blind in my left eye, my right arm was paralysed, and I was told I might never walk again.
Bugger that, I thought.
I started doing press-ups and bicep curls. Lots of them. My grandad had given me a violin, so I played it every day to retrain the nerves and muscles in my arm. Seven months later I was leader of the school orchestra. Four years later I passed the tests to join the British Army.
None of that came from one heroic moment. It came from doing small things, over and over again. I call it the Cumulative Effect, and it's the thread that runs through everything I teach.
And long before any of that, as a young financial adviser starting out in 1988, just after the financial crash, I sat in front of a ruthless bank manager, being lectured on my £5,000 overdraft. He looked at me and said, "Mr O'Connor, we'd like to remind you, you bank with us, we don't bank with you." I walked outside and cried. So,I took action and started doing five jobs, DJ’ing, working the door and selling roses in nightclubs among them, paid every penny back, and promised myself no bank manager would ever speak to me like that again.
I served 15 years in the Army, including the specialist bomb disposal unit. On 30 October 1999, on SAS selection in the Brecon Beacons, the wind picked me up and threw me off a mountain ridge. I fell 400 feet and broke my neck. C5 shattered, C6 broken. For the second time in my life I was told I might never walk again.
My military career was over. Then came the divorce. I was left financially, emotionally and physically broken. So, I rebuilt. My body, my business, my finances and my life.
Years later I was clearing out the loft and found two boxes. One was full of my old Army lesson plans and command procedures. The other held everything I'd collected in business and financial services. As I went through them I realised I'd been using the same principles in both careers / businesses all along. Military planning worked in business. Business thinking worked in personal achievement. And both explained how I'd got myself back on my feet, twice. And just when I thought I’d used up almost all my 9 lives, I broke my neck again in 2025 (that’s a story for another time)
So, I brought it all together. And this became the foundation for my ‘Pathfinder Ultimate Success System’, and it's the same thinking behind ‘JoeTeams.Com’
So when I talk to you about resilience, about money, about getting back up, I'm not reading it from a book. I've lived it.
Joe O'Connor DipPFS AMC FRSA
- 38 years in business and 15 years in the British Army
- UK's Top Rated Financial Adviser for eight years running
- Accredited Master Coach, qualified provocative coach and Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts
- A multi-million pound property portfolio
- Investments that have doubled in value in five years
- Several businesses, every one of which struggled at some point, and every one of which I turned round
- Genuine financial freedom. When I was off for six months last year, I didn't have to worry about money once
I'm straight talking. I'll tell you what you need to hear, not what you want to hear. I know when to give you an arm round the shoulder and when you need a size 10 boot up the backside. And I'll never make you a false promise. No "millionaire by Friday". There's enough of that out there already.
First month free. Then £10 + VAT a month for the first 100 members. Not tied in.