Thread: I Did This On Accident & Became A Multi-Millionaire

If you've been reading my post you know that I'm the owner of 5 businesses. 3 Offline and 2 online.

I started my first successful business at the age of 21 and I've been on my own for the last 22 years. I love to read books on business and motivation and over the last year I've been reading the "Law of Success" by Napoleon Hill.

This is the big Bible like book its over 1,000 pages. This is probably the 3rd time reading this material and every time I read it I learn that I'm more open to seeing some things differently.

The last chapter of this book talks about the "Universal Law of Cosmic Habit Force." Most of us that are trying to improve ourselves financially are already practicing most of this law, but on accident.

Here's a part of that chapter that I believe if you do this on purpose you're guaranteed to become RICH!
"Once you have placed yourself under the influence of the proper associates, you must adopt some definite plan by which at attain the object of the alliance and proceed to put that plan into action.

The plan may be a composite plan created by the joint efforts of all the members of the Master Mind Group. If one plan proves to be unsound or inadequate, it must be revised or replaced by others until a plan is found that will work. But there must be no change in the purpose of the alliance.

Then you must remove yourself from the range of influence of every person and every circumstances that has even a slight tendency to cause you to feel inferior or incapable of attaining the object of you purpose."

This is exactly what my wife and I didn't back in 1990/91. We moved to Wisconsin from Texas to get away from friends that were not going anywhere with their lives. We didn't know what we were going to do for money but we knew that we had to get away from that environment.

When we decided started our advertising publication with NO Experience in publishing, No Computer, No Fax, No Software, No Contacts and No Money our friends laughed at us and our extended families thought we were crazy.

But on accident we did exactly what Napoleon Hill advised above.

My wife and I was our own Master Mind Group, BUT as we moved forward other people that we didn't know came into our lives and became a part of our Master Mind Group. The funny thing about that was they seemed to come into our lives when we needed an answer for something and they would sometime just disappear soon after. NO JOKE!

But the major key to our success was that we accidentally insulated ourselves from negative friends and family.

Be prepared for jealously and major attitudes from your friends and family after you become successful.

My wife and I don't talk to any of our friends or neighbors that knew us back when we started our business in 1990/91 but they do see us around town.

A funny thing happened a few years ago...we hired a cleaning lady to do major cleaning of house once per week. She happens to be a nurse at one of our hospitals also. Well one day she ask my wife and I questions about if we know a person that she worked with. After some deep thought we said yes.

This happened to be our neighbors across the hall in our 1 bedroom studio apartment that use to get a big kick out of watching us put our publication together on the hall floor between our apartments. (we needed a hard surface and our kitchen was too small and we couldn't afford a light table.)

Long story short they got divorced and she's working as a nurse also at the hospital. Not a bad job! But my wife and I raised all 3 of our children, my wife home school our children. My wife is a late sleeper and she wakes up at 11am everyday unless we are on vacation.

After my housekeeper told her co-worker that we were that couple, the ex-neighbor never called us!

So read that statement from Napoleon Hill over and over and over and over again! Because your family and friends and some people you don't know will sometimes hurt your chances of succeeding.

I'm also going to expand on what Napoleon Hill taught - criticism from your clients and people on forums like this one should not be considered "Negative Influence's". So don't get upset and take it personal.

Thanks! I've owned Get Great Advertising Results Online and Offline since 1991 its an offline advertising magazine I have over 350 repeat customers per week and we have over 700 repeat customers that advertise with in each month.

My wife and I started that business with $500. I was also thinking about how hard it was to start a business back then. Some of you reading this were babies or very young in 1991.

FYI - a 286 computer back then was $2,500, we didn't have email, faxing was "KING" and the new thing, cell phones were for rich people.

I couldn't tell people to go to my website to read about my company, I was scared to make cold calls, I was scared of walking into businesses to get them to place ads...BUT I had to do it! So I faced my fears and just did it. Me and my wife as a team did it. 50-50 credit to both of us!


Since 1994 we've been in several businesses: (we still own 100% of our publishing business today)

*Arabian Horse breeding and Showing - very successful closed it after 911 attack people stop spending money of high ticket extras.

*Dollar Store - somewhat successful didn't like opening and closing a store everyday - sold the business at a loss.

*Real estate investing - 1st time around...MAJOR FAILURE!

*Business Opp. Informercial - did very good until DirecTV bought out all the cheap airtime

*1998 - start dabbling with the internet - did very good spamming selling 1-900 numbers until FTC put an end to it.

*2001/02 Semi Retired - age 32- worked my publishing company 2 days a week.

*Late '02 good friend of mine invited me to Excel Communication presentation. My wife loved it and we joined within 1 year we were Regional Directors and on the verge of Executive Directors - Earning $8K to $12K per month Bonuses - It was a bunch of BS with the Residuals from phone customers. My wife ran the operation like a company, even though people signed up as individual reps she made them come to our office and work hours on getting customers and new reps. 2004 Excel pulled the rug out from under us and fired all the reps and filed bankruptcy. They skipped out on our last check of $15K

*'05 I started The Real Debt Solution – How to Get Out Of Debt to help my business clients get out of debt. I saw that they were over financed with real estate, credit cards, etc. from talking with them. From their I started helping families get out of debt. I offer a 100% FREE program and if they are too lazy or busy I offer a program that they can pay me to help them.

This is also from my own personal experience from 1991 to 94 after having success and making more money we found ourselves over $300K in debt. From Christmas of '94 to '99 we used a strategy which I teach in my program. Pay it Off - Give It Back - Settle at a Discount. By '99 we were 100% DEBT FREE and we've been Debt Free since then.

*08 after doing some research on why some potential customers wouldn't make their appointments that were scheduled I figured out that most people are too embarrassed about their debt. So I started working on a software program to help them figure out everything using my software as if they were in front of me. nomoredebt2011.com
It's a monthly membership of $29.99 and a $99.99 sign-up fee.

*08 after sitting down with my stock broker and evaluating the market my wife and I decided to take all of our money out of the stock market. We didn't care about the tax hit.

*09-10 we started flipping houses - this was really my wife's project I just agreed to spend the money. 2nd time around with real estate - 1st house $20K profit - 2nd house $65K profit - 3nd house $119K profit. We've stepped back from real estate now because the market if fit for those who want to be landlords not flippers.

*'11 - I'm working very hard on my 2 online companies The Real Debt Solution – How to Get Out Of Debt, No More Debt 2011 and The Credit Repair Shop.com | Credit Repair Services Help Improve Your Credit Score these are all under the same corporation.
my wife is working with Vera Wang on making her own closing line
*my advertising magazine is still growing we will be at over 100 pages of advertisers by Jan for tax season. I just sold 2 distributorships 1 to Dallas and 1 to Atlanta. For each publication I get $40K + $1K to $2K per week royalty.

In between all of that I play golf every weekend, my wife and I travel every 3 months and my youngest daughter started her own business Home - My Animix which my wife helps her.

You know when I type this out its more than words this is what I call really living life. When I was 18 and joined the Army I couldn't imagine that type of life. Hell yes I wanted it but I didn't really believe it could happen to me.

Someone asked me how do we manage all of these businesses? I have a staff of 15 people that work for me and aside from all of my accomplishments I'm mostly proud that I made businesses that can help other people take care of their families!

I'll admit I appreciate my life more when I have the chances to write down what I've been able to do. If you are getting started I want you to realize that some of the most rewarding aspects of success is the road that you travel not the money you'll make.

But I'm not going to pretend like money isn't a big deal. Imagine going to your bank and withdrawing $100K! They take you to a "Special Room" and they treat you a lot different than regular customers. At each of my branches everyone knows who I am, everyone!

Originally Posted by Steven Williams

This is the big Bible like book its over 1,000 pages. This is probably the 3rd time reading this material and every time I read it I learn that I'm more open to seeing some things differently.

I have two books from NH. The first one is TaGR. The second one is Laws of Success. My only question is that my book is about 250 - 300 pages tops, not 1000. What version do you have?

We did have to learn everything and we were overwhelmed but we kept pushing. Our 1st publication was a disaster. We thought that what we gave the printer would somehow look better after it was printed.

But soon after we learned that camera ready meant what you turn in is what you get back! My wife was in tears!!!!! For the first 7 years of my publication my wife and I did the typesetting, dropped off the layouts (this was before digital ftp started) and we delivered the books every Friday and went back the next week and collected the money in person, got ad changes and sold new ads all.

We did that over and over again. We learned on the fly, things were not perfect and we made huge mistakes, but we didn't quit!

We perfected our system over time and this is what allow us to venture out to other opportunities.

Originally Posted by theBiz

No More Debt 2011

that is awesome, your good for sure too, very non threatening and you speak well, no reason to hire an spokesperson there.

I have a question for you. Most people who were running a publication, once the internet came around they would have run and hide from it. How did you not get overwhelmed and say i dont know how to do this, i do publications.

Do you feel because you started a business that did not require you to PHYSICALLY have to do everything it gave you the time to venture out and learn computers/internet to continue growing?

I say this because i know very wealthy people who ran away from the internet and are lucky they made it big because their businesses have all died/are dying.

It's "Law Of Success" The 21st Century Edition. It's actually the class book that he use to teach.

The only Chapter that most people haven't been exposed to is "The Universal Law of Cosmic Habit Force"

This was left out intentionally from all his new books and revised books. I believe it was because our country at that time was moving towards a more corporate, unionized type environment.

The people with money understood that to keep workers you only need to pay them enough to stay and you have to actually give them a false sense of insecurity about themselves and a false sense of security about their employment.

In other words you can't control people that totally believe in themselves to the core, but a person can only get to that point if they surround themselves with people that are willing to support them. BUT if you have too many of those type of people working for you, you'll soon find yourself needing new workers because these individuals will eventually leave.

Not every employer is this way but most are. I don't practice it!

I enjoyed reading your story; thanks for all the details. It just goes to show you that persistence pays.

My story (so far) is not that exciting, but I am continuously learning from everything I do.

1. Bought into an stock IPO from a company that I worked for at the time. -- Market tanked in 2001 and ended up selling for a loss.
2. Bought a high price piece of land in North Scottsdale in 2007; plan was to build a house then sell it for profit. -- Market tanked in 2008 and ended up selling for a loss.
3. Imported some product from China to sell on-line. -- Quality of the product was not so good; decided not to move forward with this idea.
4. Currently kicking around a couple internet business ideas.

I have learned from my mistakes, learned from TMF book and I am very optimistic about my chances to develop some type of business that provides value to many people.

Thanks,
PAKoch

Thanks for the great motivating post Steve.. .I was losing my motivation somewhat and needed this today.

Hi Steven, Well done.

Based on the numbers above, how does it stack up to several $M? Was this made mostly through publishing?
Did you sell any companies or is this from the result of accumulated profit?

Great attitude and example of how to play this endurance sport.

Originally Posted by 911Carrera

Thanks for the great motivating post Steve.. .I was losing my motivation somewhat and needed this today.

Ditto on that one.

Great story, truely inspirational.
Did you sell the dollar store at a lose based on what you paid for it but still made money while opporating or was it a lemon all around. Do you think at the price you sold it for the new owner got a good deal.

The buyer got a great deal we just wanted out!

Thats good to hear. I am always on the lookout for a good deal and it's comforting to know that honest ones are out there.

Thanks again