The Slight Edge

Jeff Olson was born in Albuquerque, New Mexico. His father died young, leaving Jeff’s mother to raise him and his siblings on her own. Olson was already struggling at school before his father died, and his teachers often said that his IQ was lower than average. As the years went by, it became clear that Jeff did not have much of a future, because his grades were consistently low, and he had also developed a reputation as a troublemaker. At the age of eighteen, he dropped out of university and moved to Daytona Beach, where he made ends meet by working at the Orlando Country Club, cutting the grass on the golf courses. On what he defines as his ‘day of disgust’, the author looked around at all the rich people playing golf on the green, and asked himself what was so different about them, why they were so successful, and why he was stuck cutting the grass they left divots in.

Olson realised that something had to give, so he packed his bags and moved back to New Mexico, determined to make something of himself. He no longer wanted to be just average, to just scrape by, so he started focusing on the things that really interested him. He enrolled in college, graduated, got a job at Albuquerque airport, then joined Texas Instruments, and finally, founded his own company. Following a promising start, however, his business went under after just a few years and Jeff lost everything. He was devastated, but looking back, he tried hard to work out what had gone wrong and managed to make sense of everything.