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Chapter 3 – The Dumb Idea

If you've missed one of the first chapters, you can catch up here

Chapter 1
Chapter 2

I've never really told any of this stuff publicly because it's extremely humiliating…

The missus was not happy about me putting more on the credit card.

And I felt so beat up – like a total failure chasing nothing more than a pipe dream..

I clearly remember the day I put up the auction – it was a duplex that needed a lot of work.

I was doing something pretty unique – I had set the price of the house, and was letting the people actually bid on the down payment.

The opening bid was $1.

The reason I did this was to attract as many people as possible and hoping it would result in a bidding war.

I kept refreshing the page to see the amount of hits and to see if we had any bids…

Within a couple of hours I had a bidder for the buck… (Woo Hoo)

Of course I still wasn't sold because – it was only a buck and the auction was a week from being over and I knew I couldn't celebrate until I had money in hand..

Before the end of the day – the bid had jumped to over $300

Every day that week I would wake up checking the auction and go to bed checking the auction.

I'd check it out multiple times a day –

All because I was struggling to make ends meet and just hoping and praying that this would all pan out.

Finally the last day of the auction was here – I was more excited than a kid on Christmas Eve…

The bid had skyrocketed to over $3K dollars and had over 7,000 hits with over 150 people following the auction.

The Dumb I Idea wasn't feeling so dumb at this point.

My wife sat in my lap at the computer – while continuously refreshing the page the last hour 30 seconds, 10 seconds, 5,4,3,2,1

I gazed at the computer in complete disbelief –

the auction was finally over and I had just seen the price go from $1K to $3K to over $7,000  when the auction finally closed!

The price doubled in the final hour.

So here's how it would play out.

The buyer now owed me the $7K and some change due within 7 days and they had to pay the remaining $45K in payments which would be enough to cover our monthly mortgage payment.

My wife hugged me and I couldn't stop smiling – I had that feeling of victory all over again.

I collected the $7K just before my payment to the mortgage company was late (literally it arrived 5 days before it was default.)

Once that deal was done, I started putting these houses up one by one, selling them off.

Each time, I was pulling in $3K or more as down payments.

This “dumb idea” literally kept me from going bankrupt and put me back in the game…

This proved 2 things to me..

1. What I thought was a dumb idea – turned out to be the best idea yet, one that was about to open so many doors. Now I'm less to judge before I test.

2. I knew if I could sell a bunch of dumpy house on ebay from Florence, Alabama, then I had to shift gears into the online world and focus more on my blog and books.

But somewhere along the way of buying and selling houses like a madman, I ran across a deal that seemed just to good to pass on – it was a failing local business.

And since I knew nothing about the business, I thought I could turn it all around.

And luckily we did.  

Within 120 days that business was running, bringing in a nice cash flow every month that was paying for itself plus putting a little cash flow in our pocket.

Even though the cash flow was fair at the time – it still needed investments in inventory,  paying off old debts, and regular maintenance because it was full of more drama than TNT had to offer.

And I hated every minute I spent there.

In the meantime, my blog had also started getting some love from the “Big G” aka Google.

There's a big problem though – I'm now staring at…

over $100,000 in credit card debt alone

It was from having to keep the 10 houses afloat, ordering inventory for the new business, and all the fixup costs from the real estate.

Plus, I was going through some of the biggest family chaos that would literally shake us to the core!

Watch for tomorrow's email / blog post titled – The Stare Down.

In the meantime – what's the most credit card debt you've personally had?

About the Author Derek Pierce

Derek Pierce is an online marketer specializing in Search Engine Optimization. He used his SEO to escape over $100,000 in credit card debt building a 6 figure business from a spare bedroom.

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Leave a Comment:

5 comments
Angie says February 18, 2013

# 3 very informative but before the real estate crash. How much were the places ?. Did you clean & how long to turover. Software to put on line or classifieds. Attorneys?

Reply
    derek pierce says February 19, 2013

    It varied in price – I had some as low as $20K and some as high as $250K – it’s just when you have 10 at one time – it makes it extremely difficult to pay.

    On the turnover – I couldn’t sell them – I literally tried everything – I listed them, tried to rent them – even hoped someone would burn them down. lol

    The fact was that houses were not selling. This all happened before the rest of the country was considered to be in a recession – and it seemed nothing was happening.

    Reply
David says February 18, 2013

Hello Derek,
I have been reading your emails about your debt situation. I don’t usually even bother reading most of my emails because I must have 20 inboxes and I just don’t have time anymore. I have been working so hard to get something going online. I have purchased several products that you either made or you and someone else are partners on it. Like Lead Rocket, and I could be wrong about some of the others? I am seriously trying to deal with some massive information overload.
I have bought so many products and programs that I am quite literally lost!
Anyway I have been reading just to give me a break in between some of this other stuff I am hammering away at.
I have so many keyword tools that I haven’t had time to learn how to use them yet and I just open up Google’s keyword tool when I’m in a hurry to get something done.
Things happen and change so fast online that I always feel this sense of urgency to get everything done. When the truth is it isn’t that urgent and rushing just gives you hald assed results.
You take care buddy, and I will be watching for the next issue! You know Derek, I also just purchased Unique Article Wizard, and since I hace been reading about writing, I have seen that story telling is very captivating.
I say that because I couldn’t help but notice that I felt drawn into your story, and compelled to continue reading it.
You may want to continue your blog writing since you seem to have a nak for writing?
Blogs as you well know can be a big draw, and a good source of advertising as well as branding.
Given the name you have already begun building in the Internet Marketing community you would probably get a good stream of traffic? Give it a whirl Derek, multiple streams of income and all that good stuff. 🙂

Thanks,
David

Reply
    derek pierce says February 19, 2013

    Thanks David

    Yes – I’ve done several plugins – and yes Lead Rocket was one of those.
    I actually enjoy writing- but these emails have been really tough to write because it’s like I’m revealing more than I ever have.

    I’ve never publicly told that I was $100K in credit card debt or any of the other stuff- so it’s pretty humiliating.

    Reply
Anonymous says February 19, 2013

The truth of the matter is that I was about $20K in credit card debt and I’m still there. I haven’t had a bank acct in 2 years and I’ve moved so much during that time that I don’t even know where I live anymore. However, there is light at the end of the tunnel.

I started building a list and although it’s only 197 subscribers right now, I can clearly see that this is what I should be doing. I started buying domains and found quite a few good ones. At first I was just gonna put them up on Flippa but then I ran into a guy who said that he would develop them for me so I could make more money. He’s in the process of developing the first one now. He honestly thinks the site could go for as much as $5K on Flippa and all he wants is his fee for building it which is only $400.

He’s willing to do that because I have several other projects that I already talked to him about and he’s eager to build them out. He also knows that if we can clear $5K on this first one that this will be a great business relationship for the both of us.

And to think, he’s not even charging me for this first one. I’m just gonna pay him outta the proceeds of the auction. This must have been some kind of act of God because I ran into him almost by mistake. I’ve been trying for a long time to make this work. But now that I can clearly see something from my marketing and from this project, I feel a lot better about it.

Thanks for sharing your story and for reading this LONG comment. I really appreciate it.

Reply
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