My Road to Success

One of my earliest childhood memories that I’ll never forget was finding an old, discarded scientific textbook at the local dump. Well, it seemed scientific to me — it was filled with complex equations and diagrams. I had no idea what any of it meant, but I pretended I did.

I used to sit in my treehouse in suburban Victoria, flicking through the pages and wishing I understood it all. I was fascinated by it and was probably only around five or six years old at the time.

I was never academic at school and honestly had no idea what I wanted to be when I grew up. I was just interested in geeky stuff. At the age of 11, I moved to the mid-northern coast of New South Wales, a small beach village with a population of under 1,000. I was surrounded by national parks, a river, and the ocean. It was a great place to grow up: surfing, fishing, riding dirt bikes, exploring.

However, the entire town was full of pot smokers and drinkers. My future felt like it was already mapped out, and I was heading toward becoming just another local statistic.

After school ended, I moved to the Gold Coast and started working in manual labour in the construction industry. It was a brutal occupation. I specialised in high-rise construction, formwork, concrete, steel, and the company I worked for even owned cranes, so we built entire buildings from the ground up.

I was good at my job and quickly worked my way up to running a gang of 15 labourers. But the work took a serious toll on my body. My shoulder was packing it in from swinging a hammer like a madman all day, demolition work and stripping formwork, six days a week.

In my early 30s, I t-boned a pizza delivery driver on the way home from work when he ran a give-way sign. My shoulder was injured even further. I received a compensation payout and was off work for six months while doctors tried to rehabilitate it.

During that time, the geek inside me finally spoke up. I used some of the compensation money to buy a computer, something I’d always wanted. It cost me $5,000 back in 2001, with $2,000 of that just for two 16-gigabyte hard drives!

I took to computers like a duck to water. I was creating music, art, and experimenting constantly. My girlfriend at the time said, “You still have some money left, why don’t you go back to school, study IT, and change careers? You’re doing amazing things with that computer.”

So I did.

Two years later, at the age of 33, I graduated with distinction in every subject and started advertising for work. I won’t sugar-coat it — it was tough. I had a newborn child and a partner to support, bills to pay, and I was running on five to six hours of sleep a night for years. My computer was slow, I was earning around $10 an hour, and burnout was very real.

Then things started to shift.

I began landing better-paying jobs. My skill set grew rapidly. I was doing video editing for hair salons, branching into print design, building websites, and removing viruses from people’s computers. I was officially a geek, making half-decent money and, more importantly, working my own hours.

Fast-forward 23 years and I now run a professional web design and SEO company. I manage businesses with annual turnovers in the tens of millions of dollars and have helped hundreds of businesses from startups to well-established companies, through design, optimisation, and strategic consultation.

So what’s this story really about?

It’s about hope.

Where you are right now does not define where you’ll be in the future. Don’t give up on your dreams. Yes, it will be hard. Yes, there will be challenges. But if you stay committed, disciplined, and keep pushing forward, you can build the life you want.

If I did it, you can too 😉

About the Author

Ross Gardner is the founder of eMedia Studios, a Gold Coast based web design and SEO consultancy with over 20 years of industry experience. Ross specialises in high-performance websites, technical SEO, and long-term digital growth strategies for businesses ranging from startups to multi-million-dollar enterprises. His work is driven by a deep curiosity for technology, problem-solving, and helping businesses reach their full potential online.