My Story and How I Got Here

I grew up in a suburb of Chicago with my parents and triplet brothers and sister. At the age of 8 my parents divorced due to some major drug and other issues. My Mom remarried 3 months later to my Stepdad. They had my baby sister two years later and moved us to Wisconsin.

By the age of 13 I was gang banging. I know, gang banging and Wisconsin don’t match well, but Chicago was 1.5 hours away. I ran with a nasty crowd up until the age of 16 when my parents forced me out of that life.

At 17 I started DJing at a night club. Once I graduated high school (barely) I moved in with my boss at the club and started managing the place. I learned a ton from my time with them. This was the first job I was ever able to hold for more than 2 weeks.

At 18 my old gang buddies decided to start going after my brothers. I found no other option to get back involved with gangs. I truly didn’t know how else to protect my family from the punks that were causing problems.

At almost 19 I decided to move to Florida with my father. I was at a dead end and needed to make some major changes in my life. Within a week of moving to Florida, I had a full time job doing phone sales. I picked up a job on the weekends managing a teen club. I also started going to college part time.

In one year, I decided to move home. Shortly after I joined the army reserves. Within 2 weeks of hitting training, I ruined my ankles. Multiple sprains with no time to heal caused quite a bit of pain (I was not meant to run 3 miles a day. I was the kid in high school that smoked a cigarette while walking the 1 mile run). In the second stage of my training, my injuries got worse. I had to get physical therapy to try to heal the wounds. I scraped through training by getting an alternate event for my fitness test. The problem is that they left my medical records at the fort I was trained at.

When I got home I tried to get treatment for the injuries, but without my medical records it was impossible. I got pissed off and stopped going to my reserve weekends.

At this point, I became the big bad gang leader. I was 21 years old and had been involved with gangs for a majority of my life. I did horrible things and hurt a lot of people.

I got a job at a Blockbuster as an assistant manager based on my previous management experience. I stayed there for almost three years.

At 22 I went back to serve the rest of my term with the Army. They still couldn’t do anything for my problems, but my loyalty made me do it… I met and married my wife the next year. We had our first child 6 months after we got married (she had one from prior to our relationship).

I slowly moved up the ranks with the Army and learned a lot through the administrative work I did. I had trouble doing my actual job (ammunition specialist) due to my injuries.

I quit Blockbuster due to working with psychos and jumped around from job to job for a bit. I could never hold one for more than a few months. I was in a lot of pain and nobody could figure out why. I was diagnosed with Fibromyalgia at the age of 24 after over a year of questions.

At 25 the war in Iraq started. My medical records were still gone and my unit was being prepped for war. The Army was required to show that I had been vaccinated if they wanted to send me overseas. This meant that they had to shoot me up until my record finally stayed put. It took 4 times until that finally happened. I also had my little boy at this point (baby #3).

The Department of Veterans affairs decided that I was disabled enough to be put through school. They paid me $1000 per month to attend the University in my home town. The problem was that by then I had a wife and 3 kids and that was not enough money to live on.

I decided to make an attempt at working online. I found an inexpensive memory foam mattress supplier that I could get products from and opened an Ebay store.

Two weeks later I went into a coma. I awoke 10 days after that paralyzed from the waist down.

I rehabilitated quickly and went home roughly 1 month after going into the hospital. I was still in a wheelchair, but felt enough to walk with a walker. I’m still, to this day, mostly paralyzed from my chest down (it moved up).

My wife and brother figured out how to fill orders and customers were pretty understanding considering my situation. Once I got home, I began rabidly studying how to make a living online. It took 2 or 3 hours to work on the Ebay biz and I spent another 12 or more studying SEO, HTML, and anything else I thought I needed to know.

Exactly 1 year after we opened our doors, a vendor took off with $4,000 of our money. Two customers realized something was going on and tried to get a refund without returning their mattresses. We ended up losing $12,000 and had to close the business.

My wife suggested that we open an SEO company, I had been able to get great results for our website and she figured I could do it for others. It was a great idea and we did very well with it, but it was frustrating. People would want results in days when we told them it would take months. 3 months later we decided to close down.

That is when I wrote my first Ebook. It’s been a bumpy ride, but the bottom line is that it led me here.

I owe a huge thanks to anyone that reads this, because if you aren’t my friend, you may be my customer, or you may have helped me in other ways.

My point is this:

Business online is possible for anyone. With all of the crap I’ve dealt with and succeeded, you can do it for sure. Apply yourself to this and make it your passion. Focus and study. There are many people here that you can learn from.