HOW A POKER BOOK CHANGED MY LIFE

There was a weekly poker game on Wednesday nights where I used to work. After regularly losing for months, I bought The Theory of Poker by David Sklansky.

As expected, I got better at poker once I started studying it.  I eventually started winning my fair share from the work game.

What was unexpected was how that little book completely changed my life.

Because of our mutual interest in poker, I joined my best friend's part-time, money-making site promoting poker. We worked on it nights and weekends, and sold it after a couple of years. That experience taught me about web publishing and technologies, and gave me a taste for running my own business.

With that knowledge and experience, I went on to cofound Wise Bread with two of my closest friends. Shortly after, I quit my full-time job to work exclusively on Wise Bread, and haven’t looked back.  Wise Bread is now one of the most popular personal finance sites.

As I remember the last ten years of my life, I’m amazed at how off-script it has been. I was looking forward to a steady career in systems administration, but now find myself running my own business, working from home, and never having to walk into a cold machine room to reboot servers again.

And to think, this adventure started because of a book about poker.

Greg Go is the cofounder and CTO of Wise Bread, a top personal finance community that offers daily tips on how to live large on a small budget. You can follow his tweets from @GregoryGo and @WiseBread.