A friend of mine and myself got access to a half an acre of land, where we decided to grow potatoes. Due to lack of rain that year, the whole project ended up as a loss. When fall came and it was time to harvest what we had planted, we found out that ended up with the same amount of potatoes as we had planted 4 months earlier. We did however manage to sell the potatoes to our parents at a price which enabled us to cover all our project related expense.

My next job was to pick strawberries. This was no more successful than the potato project as I lost the job after 2 days. The farmer than had employed me did not appreciate that I ate more strawberries than I handed over to him.

The following summer I became a teenager, but it was still difficult to find a real job. I had a few temporary jobs during the next 4 years, but did not work too much. I got money from my parents and was engaged fulltime by being a teenager. One summer I got a few friends of mine to join me with a boat building venture. We build a few boats called With 300, which was a 13 ft boat. We also made a few canoes. The whole venture was fun and interesting, but we did not make much money from it. We did however all end up with our own boats, which brought us a great deal of fun for years.

When I became 17 years old I got a got a part time job as a cleaner with ISS. In this job I could work almost as much as I wanted, and it was the first time I made some real money. Later I was offered a job with a company called IPA distribution, where I was to go from house to house trying to make people buy some books. This was the first job that I really disliked. This job was a fulltime job, and even though I made good money, it soon became more and more difficult to manage this job beside my high school studies. After 4 months I gave up, realizing that I had to concentrate on my studies.

A few months later, there was summer break from school and this time I got myself a job on the production line of Raufoss AS.

Later I started working for Manpower in Oslo. Manpower provided me with temporary work with a number of companies. I worked for Manpower in Oslo in my vacations during the following 3 years. During this time I had temporary work with 15 different companies.

During this time I also completed my compulsory military service. I was first at Jorstamoen for my basic training, and later I want to the NATO Headquarter at Kolsaas where I worked with NATO Intelligence. Beside my fulltime employment with the military, I also had an evening job as a cleaner with SAS Service partner and 3 nights a week I worked as a night receptionist at a hotel by the name Hotel Norge. This kept me a bit too busy, but by the time I finished my compulsory military training, I had saved up enough money to travel around the world for a year.
When I got back from my years as a backpacking globetrotter, it was time to start my studies. Beside my studies I worked part time as a substitute teacher at Raufoss junior high school and with Manpower in Oslo in the summer. After 2 years I started on my first real fulltime job. I then got a job as a teacher with Rauma High School, where I was teaching subjects such as Math, Marketing, Accounting, Economics and other business related subjects.

After a year as a teacher, it was time to go back to my studies. I then continued to work as a cleaner beside my studies. This time I worked as a carpet cleaner for ISS in Oslo. This is the physically most challenging job I have ever had, but the pay was very good, and it was a perfect part time job beside my studies.

During this time I also worked as a bartender at Original Pilsen. This is one of the roughest bars in Oslo and among the customers there was many prostitutes, pimps, drug dealers and others which is often considered the losers of today’s society. I did however enjoy the job and got to know a lot of people which I would otherwise not have had a chance go know. I learned more from this job than from any studies or job that I have had since.

Beside these two jobs and my studies I also started to work as a private investor. Together with a friend we started to invest in stocks and in real estate. We bought apartments in Oslo at auctions when people defaulted on their loans. We bought 4 apartments, but chose to return 2 of them to their previous owners to their previous owners when these managed to sort out their problems with their banks. We did not have to return these apartments back to their former owners, but did not want to make money on the back of those with financial problems, even though we knew that we gave away more than a million NOK in profit by doing so.

After a while I managed to save up enough money to go to the US for further studies. I then decided to take my MBA at Monterey Institute of International Studies. Beside my MBA studies I worked as a Teaching Assistant in Statistics and in Decision science. This was very easy work as I mainly helped fellow students and grading their papers and tests.

When I returned from the States, my plan was to start work for the Norwegian Trade Council (No changed name to Innovation Norway), but as this job was not immediately available I accepted a 4 month engagement for a management consultant company called IMPAC. The project which I was assigned to was Mack Brewery in Tromsø. My task was to reduce their expenses by streamlining their distribution channels.

When the position as trainee with the Norwegian Trade council became available, I moved to Beijing to start working at their office at the Norwegian Embassy in Beijing. My official title was second secretary at the commercial section of the embassy. Life in Beijing was exciting and enjoyable and I got a chance to learn about a number of different industries and worked with all the biggest Norwegian companies.

I stayed in Beijing for 2 years. When I returned to Norway I worked as a consultant for a consortium of Norwegian seafood exporters which wanted me to prepare a business plan for how to enter the Chinese market. I believe that I made a great plan and secured extensive governmental financial support for the business plan, but the plan was never implemented as the companies in the consortium simply did not have the willing to cooperate.

As soon as I had finished the job for the seafood companies, I started with another job. By fall of 1998 I started to work for Ericsson telecom in Norway as a “Product Marketing Manager”. I stayed with this job for 18 months, before the whole product unit was merged with another product unit, and I was asked to help the new product unit to expand their business in Asia. I then moved to Malaysia where I stayed for another 18 months. My formal title was Regional Marketing Manager, and I was responsible for sales of Test Equipment for Mobile Systems (TEMS) in China and Indonesia. I boosted the sales in both of these markets while at the same time building up local sales organizations. After 18 months this job was completed, and I was asked to move to the head quarter of Ericsson in Sweden, where I was given the title “Solution Manager”, with the strategically most important business unit within Ericsson telecom.

After 6 months in Sweden, my work got drastically changed due to reorganization and I no longer found my job interesting. I then decided to do something else with my life, and resigned from Ericsson and bought a sailing yacht with a friend of mine.

I lived on my sailboat for 12 months. I loved this life, but I soon felt restless and wanted to get back to the professional world. In 2003 I moved back to Norway and started to look for new professional challenges. I first worked as a management consultant for Norcontrol IT, helping them with their international expansion plans and to overcome some minor cross-cultural challenges which they had encounter with their Singaporean partner. After 4 months this job was done and I was offered a new and exciting job from a new company, which I simply could not refuse.

In October 2003 I moved to China to establish and run a JV between the Chinese Blue Star Group and the Aker Kvaerner Cool Sorption. I was the General Manager of the company which I established in Beijing. The company was engaged in providing Gasoline Vapour Recovery solutions to the Chinese oil industry. A great product that would save lives, reduce oil consumption, reduce local pollution and global warming. At the same time the equipment was a money maker which could have a payback time as little as 3 – 4 years. Unfortunately the JV partnership did not work very well and the market did not develop as we had expected due to constantly changing policies and regulations from the government which forced our potential customers to take a “wait and see” position. After 3 years with the JV which was called Blue Star Cool Sorption my patience ran out and I wanted to implement a new business idea which I had been developing over some time.

In 1996 I finally decided to present the business plan for Statoil and to my pleasant surprise they immediately said that it was a good plan and that they wanted me to go ahead and implement it. This was said within 30 minutes from I started to outline my new business idea. I came to an agreement that I should start working with them immediately and that I could start working as a consultant and that we should consider permanent employment at a later stage. I then started to make a business plans for how Statoil could use the business potential in the Clean Development Mechanism of the Kyoto Protocol to make profitable business in China which at the same time would support their core business.