Dust on the Mountain: How a Lost Marble Taught Me to Read Balance-Sheets Before I Could Read Books

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1. The Marble That Didn’t Exist  

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I was eight, maybe nine, when I lost my only marble—literally.  

It rolled under a neighbour’s gate and vanished in a puff of dust.  

Most kids would cry; I felt the cold sweat of a start-up founder who just lost his seed round.  

Because in my head that single glass sphere was inventory, working capital and exit valuation rolled into one.  

I spent the afternoon belly-crawling through bougainvillaea thorns until I spotted the glint.  

When I finally held it up, sun-light fractured inside the swirl: I had recovered my entire balance-sheet.  

Lesson #1 (age 8):  

“Cash is a marble; lose it and you stop playing—find it and you can build a factory.”

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2. Weak Players Pay in Marbles  

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The next morning I drew a circle in the mud with a stick.  

Rule sheet: one marble entry fee, winner takes all.  

I targeted the kids who still shot with their thumbs—my first “blue-ocean segment”.  

Within a week I had a Nestlé jar full of marbles and a brand: “Never miss, pay the kiss.”  

(I didn’t know what positioning was, but rhyming felt right.)  

I learned you can extract surplus value from anyone who values the thrill more than the asset.  

Today I call it “enterprise-value arbitrage”; back then it was just lunch money.

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3. The Second-Mountain Rule  

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When the easy marks ran out, I practised the back-spin flick until my wrist popped.  

I entered the big-boy circle outside the school gate—and lost everything.  

Jar empty, ego bruised, I did what every scale-up must:  

- De-brief (why did my spin fail?)  

- Re-tool (practise at night with a candle)  

- Re-segment (start mid-tier circles, build cash again)  

- Re-attack  

I never lost twice in the same circle.  

That recursive loop—small → mid → summit → reset—became my default growth algorithm.  

It also wired a bug: I trusted only the algorithm, never partners.  

Solo fly-wheel feels heroic until you realise it produces no successor and no holiday.

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4. The Donkey and the Dust  

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Fast-forward two decades.  

I’m a one-man general-counsel shop, billing by the hour, proud of my 70-hour weeks.  

An older advisor—think Yoda with an Excel sheet—forced me to divert 10 % of every invoice into a mutual-fund SIP.  

I sulked: “That money could fund more marbles!”  

He smiled: “Let the mountain collect dust while the donkey climbs.”  

Ten years later the SIP was larger than my active income.  

I finally understood compound interest: the mountain grows whether the donkey sleeps or works.  

Most entrepreneurs die climbing; the wealthy ones buy the mountain first, then let gravity do the job.

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5. From Marbles to Management  

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Today I chair audit committees, negotiate nine-figure deals and still keep a single glass marble in my laptop sleeve.  

It reminds me that:

- Every big balance-sheet once rolled under a gate and disappeared in dust.  

- Weak competitors finance your first scale; strong competitors sharpen your edge.  

- The real risk is not losing marbles—it’s never learning to let the mountain collect dust.  

If you’re stuck at the “solo-practice, zero successors” stage, automate 10 % of cash-flow into something that compounds without you.  

Then build processes that survive your wrist-spin.  

Because business dynamics are playground dynamics: find the marble, own the circle, let the dust do the rest.