My start online wasn’t all sunshine and roses.
You’ve heard about the wiz kid that rolled out a product and banked 100K in days or the video game player that banked $7.4 million in 2014 from yes – playing video games.
Mine was completely contrary to those…
It was dirty.
It was grimy.
There was mistakes.
There was a lot of sweat and tears that went into building my online business.
No blood though. 🙂
And that’s a huge positive.
Which is why I love this business so much.
There’s no blood.
Seriously, the upside is huge.
Nothing compares to the profit margins you can see from online marketing no matter if your selling your own information products or selling them as an affiliate.
And it’s not hard work.
I’ll get back to that in a moment, but for now it’s story time!
Actually – a true story…
When I was 17 years old, I picked up a hot, summer job at a furniture plant here in Alabama.
In the dog days of summer, you’d see heat 90-100+.
My job was simply to clean up.
Sweep up sawdust, take out the trash, and stack the furniture parts on pallets to get ready for shipping.
Nothing to hard – just work.
The plant had this machine that would duplicate chair legs.
You could put a chair leg in and it would replicate 8 -10 legs just like it.
Underneath this massive machine, there was another machine with vents that sucked out the sawdust from the plant and into a big bin.
Every few weeks, a dumpster would arrive underneath the big bin and my job was to climb in the back of the truck, grab a big stick and jam the packed sawdust to loosen it so that it would fall into the truck.
Sawdust would fly everywhere.
It was in my nose.
In my hair.
And even in my socks and shoes.
The dust seemed like a big swarm of bees being dumped on you.
And you were already drenched so it stuck all over you.
Going home after that I’d blow these black chunks out of my nose.
But hey – I was making $2 more than minimum wage.
I’ll never forget one day in particular.
It was mid morning, just after a break and I was doing my normal cleanup routine.
I was talking to the bossman, Larry at the time.
He reeked of halitosis from all the cigarettes – and he always talked to you with one partially hanging from his lips while he looked over his coke bottle glasses over his nose.
Alvin (one of the older co-workers) was taking chair legs out of the duplicator machine.
All of a sudden, Alvin takes off running through the plant screaming in pain.
“What the hell just happened?”
I had no clue what was going on.
As I looked up, I saw Alvin holding his own hand with a bloody end.
“God Dammit – Alvin got caught in the saw. Call 911”, I heard my other boss yell.
Everyone started running to tend to him in panic mode and I shut off the sawdust sucking machine.
And then I was given strict instructions.
Larry, as he looked over his coke bottled glasses, still with the cigarette hanging on the tips of his lips –
“Derek, get under the machine and find Alvin’s finger!”
Uhhhh, Do what now?
“Oh and while your at it – clean up the trail of blood too!”
So, there I was.
Seventeen years old.
A virgin, bit of a dork who felt he’d been dropped in the middle of the lion’s den anyway.
It was my first real experience with the world away from loving, but overprotective parents and church every time the doors were opened.
And now, I was in charge of locating a man’s fingers that had just been hacked off by a saw.
I crawl under the machine and find the fingers to get them on ice.
While I was holding them in the palm of my hand I took a quick looksie at the man's severed fingers.
Even though, I was totally grossed out – that day left a big imprint on my life.
I made a commitment right then –
“I’ll never be in this position when I get older. “
I didn’t have a clue what I’d be doing – but I knew there had to be a better way.
So, when I say that no blood is a positive thing-
I really mean it.
Hold another man’s finger in the palm of your hand and then clean up the trail of blood.
Now, sitting at a computer – that ain’t so bad – eh?
But getting back to my start.
I really struggled.
My first money making venture was selling houses on ebay but that was only used to get out of properties I couldn’t give away here locally.
I’ll save that story for another time.
But that opened a door and created a burning desire to start making money online.
Only thing was – I had no experience with computers outside of gaming, and using Microsoft Excel.
I started by selling my ebooks that I had written, building a list, blogging, article submission, PPC, and even SEO.
The fact is I made some HUGE mistakes…
And it wasn’t until I made a huge shift that everything started to really click.
That’s what you’re going to hear me talk about over the next couple of weeks.
So, be sure you’re on the email list and look for the email I’ll be dropping tomorrow.
And be sure to watch your fingers – it helps when it comes to typing.
Now – type me some comments below…
Derek
