An Exciting Introduction To The School Of Knowledge

Hey, I’m Karl from Manchester, England and I run The School of Knowledge newsletter here on Substack. I published my 50th Substack post last week whilst away in Crete and I feel the time has come time to take off the mask and share with you who the person behind The School of Knowledge is. I hope you enjoy it.

I decided to start this newsletter almost 1 year ago, in Crete where I am now incidentally when I was trying to come to terms with my seemingly erratic mindset and inability to settle on any one thing. Back in 2009, I joined the Royal Marines and for 6 years I was part of a community that embodied professionalism, discipline and standards only few could achieve and maintain. I learnt a lot about my capabilities as they were often shattered and moulded into something greater than I could ever imagine for myself. It brought with it a mindset I could never have dreamed of as a kid. It’s truly amazing and humbling to realise what you’re capable of.

I left, mid-twenties happy with an urge to travel the world with my friend and then-girlfriend. A decision that after 6 months of travelling South East Asia and Australia, I may have regretted when, earning more money than I have ever earned in Australia, and still to this day 10 years on, she said she wanted to go home. She never asked what I wanted to do, just that she was going to be home for her little sister’s 18th birthday and that she was homesick. I decided to come back with her. The pull to earn a load of money was strong but I loved her more. That decision was the best decision I ever made. I married her and now co-run a construction company with her dad, one of my best mates after he decided to hand over the reins to me and another lad in our company.

The 8 years from leaving Australia to being in Crete wasn’t easy. I went from having a job I was proud of to earning a lot of money to working for minimum wage and being miserable. I had very average education grades and approaching my thirties I realised that I needed to get a better one to better my chances in life. I always have had an appetite for bettering myself so I decided to pay for myself to go through night college whilst also working 50 hours a week cleaning ovens around the U.K. Not the best time of my life I must admit. I was at college for 5 months when we bought our first house and was standing celebrating in our living room when my soon-to-be father-in-law handed me an envelope with a contract to start working at his construction company. Within a week I went from feeling like I was a bum to feeling like I was moving in the right direction again after years of pain.

In between travelling and that moment I tried so many things, mostly failing and bouncing from one thing to the next. I’d been a DJ, ran nights that lost money, become a barber, tried matched betting, sold books on Amazon KDP, collected and sold scarce books, built instruments etc, the list is exhausting. I’d finally got back on track in life but still, I was hunting, almost aimlessly for something more.

Then something happened that explained a lot. 2 years ago my wife and best friend, after years of requesting advised me to get tested for Autism and/or ADHD. Reluctantly I did and the results were as expected. I only tested for ADHD but passed with flying colours so to speak. On the face of it, you might not notice as I’m not the hyper type although I scored very close to it and my Doctor advised that if I don’t keep an eye on things I may be subject to burnout.

It didn’t and doesn’t bother me and it’s not something I (usually) tell people. I don’t like being defined by things. Up until that point at 32, I’d joined the Marines, travelled the world, been to war, travelled some more, earned money, lost money and earned next to nothing, got myself an education and was on the verge of co-owning a multiple million pound a year construction company.

I felt comfortable in my skin and capabilities and wasn’t interested in some label defining the next phase of my life.

But, I was burnt out going into that holiday and I don’t know where writing a newsletter came from but I decided that I needed to have somewhere for all my thoughts and interests and it is up there with the best decisions ever I’ve made. Of course, you get sucked into the dark side of such things, subscriber count etc, but they pale in comparison to the messy alternative.

Deciding to get back into a reading routine was a game-changer for me. It offered the comfort of routine which I craved and missed from the Marines and also offered me relaxation and allowed me to fixate on something.

But I quickly realised that reading alone needed another part to it. It was only one part of a whole and that’s where writing came into it. I couldn’t concentrate to save my life in school and there’s a famous quote between me and my friends that my Math teacher said to my mate’s mum and dad “If you want your son to do well in Math, don’t let him sit next to Karl”. So to start a newsletter would have made my younger self chuckle but writing shows me if I’ve been paying attention when reading. If I truly understand something. Can I take something complex and reduce it down to layman’s terms? Better still can I get people to understand what it is I’m saying and, can what I’ve written about be made so simple that I can package it up into something tangible for others to use in their lives?

That was the aim of this newsletter a year ago and it’s still the aim today.

I enjoy reading stories about people especially when they were underdogs or when people think of them as having some leg up in life. I enjoy reading philosophy and see it as a subject of equal importance to the hard sciences, if not more so. I also enjoy reading about businesses and their stories and how their founders got to where they are and the decisions they had to make all in the hope of finding something useful and actionable in some way. As Seneca says:

"My advice is really this: what we hear the philosophers saying and what we find in their writings should be applied in our pursuit of the happy life. We should hunt out the helpful pieces of teaching, and the spirited and noble-minded sayings which are capable of immediate practical application - not far-fetched or archaic expressions or extravagant metaphors and figures of speech and learn them so well that words become works."

- Seneca, Letters From a Stoic

An investment in reading this newsletter is an investment in yourself. Cliche I know but I’m not saying anything new here. I’m just reading, writing, commenting and sharing from history’s greatest thinkers and doers in the hope that each week you can add another tool to your mental toolkit, a quote that makes you think or smile or offers you a different perspective.

It took me 4 months to get 1 subscriber and I’ve had nearly 250 in the last 2 months. I’ve found my groove and I’m excited. Over the next few weeks, there’ll be some information about where I’d like to take this newsletter. For those of you who have supported me so far, I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart.

Until next time, The School of Knowledge (Karl).

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