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Ok, maybe not MADE IT, made it.
But, I thought I really thought I had "moved the needle" when in reality, I had only nudged beyond being completely poor.
Let me rewind a bit. I grew up with my grandparents, they both worked at a fancy hotel. They dressed up very nicely everyday and worked HARD. Most of the time, they worked different shifts - so when one was coming home from work, the other was leaving.
They both were up there in age(55+), worked full-time(and overtime), rarely saw each other and were ALWAYS broke. As far as my memory goes back, they've always struggled to keep up with bills and were never in a position to take time off without falling behind.
We lived in a "triplex" home. Neighbors occupied the first floor. I lived on the second floor along with my grandparents and their daughter and their son lived on the third floor. Their kids were in their 20's when I moved in and they lived there during my entire childhood. When I moved out at 18, they were still there.
Needless to say, I always had a motivation that I did NOT want to follow the same path as my family. My grandparents were old and still working tirelessly in the rat race. My aunt and uncle never moved out and always struggled to make and keep money.
No one ever talked to me about money. Ever. I just witnessed poverty and lack of freedom. I witnessed my family scraping by, barely keeping up with bills and never having enough. I rarely even laid my eyes on money/cash in my household.
I left at 18 and joined the U.S. Navy - in search for a better life. I lasted two years in the Slave-y, er. I mean Navy. This was in 2006 and for the next two years, I would make $1,200 per month, working 12+ hours/day and I hated every minute of it. I worked my a$$ off and quickly realized how poorly I was being paid.
After 2 years, I got out the Navy(honorably) and went on a hunt for a job related to my "Navy job", which was just office related stuff. I couldn't find anything and after a couple of months of bumming around and living with people... one day I Google searched, "how to make money online". My incredibly twisted journey began.
I continued being a bum for a full year - living off of unemployment from The Navy and living from place to place, couch to couch. During that year, I was trying ALL kinds of things to make money online. My noobish search of "how to make money online" lead me to a TON of scams and BS. I tried a ton of shit and wasted a lot of money(not really a lot, but it was a lot to me back then) until I finally found something that worked. CPA Marketing!!
I got my start promoting CPA offers. My first success came from simply posting flyers around college campuses. Seeing my first sale come in after a year of struggling and making ZERO seriously hooked me for life. I eventually worked out a deal with a local pizza place and they allowed me to attach my flyers to their pizza boxes! I honestly forget how I convinced them to let me slap a few CPA offers on their pizza boxes but they did! They paid me too! 3 free pizzas per month
Ultimately, everything I was doing got me to the point where I was making about $100/day online. I was freaking ecstatic! Here's where things really changed for me...
I eventually released an info-course teaching the CPA methods that had gotten me to $100/day. I released this PDF course and it actually started to sell like crazy! This hooked me to the info-course market and I continued testing CPA strategies and creating courses any time I would experience success, even if it was a small win.
My list began growing as I released a couple of low-ticket courses and before I knew it, I had saved up $10k in cash. WOOOOO!!!!!!!!
I FREAKING MADE IT!!!
Seriously, that's how I felt. I feel kind of embarrassed to admit that I thought that was a lot of money.
I went on and started consistently making around $5k - 6k per month between CPA and promoting offers to my list. This was, by far, the most money I had ever seen in my life. I was paying bills on time and I money leftover. I had $10k saved. "I'm doing waaay better than my family did my entire childhood!!", I remember always thinking to myself.
I literally got comfortable. I went on comfortably averaging $5k/mo in profit and I was GOODbored. I mean, look at me! I had more money than my friends and more than my grandparents ever had saved up! It was going on FOUR years since I last had a boss. My wife hadn't needed a job in over two years. I knew this would never end... SIKE!
It did end. After a couple years of coasting, the $10k I saved up quickly vanished after I had trouble with CPA for a while, which stopped me from releasing any courses on the subject and only left me with Affiliate marketing to my list as an income stream. This wasn't nearly enough to keep up w/ the "lavish" $5k/mo lifestyle I had gotten used to.
I kept pushing. Because I still had a list, I knew that I had an asset that could bring me back to life if I could provide them value. I eventually found success in the TEESPRING boom. I got into the space and quickly started seeing successful returns. After I secured a handful of successful campaigns under my belt, what did I do? Yep, I wrote a course on selling tees! In fact, I went on to write numerous courses on selling tees and they all did well!
I looked up and before I knew it, I had $20k saved! YESSS!!! I made it!!! Again!!!! (yes, that's how I felt - my scarcity/poverty mindset was very, very strong and I had no idea how broke I still was). In reality, I just continued being small minded. At the same time, I noticed a couple customers of my t-shirt courses going on and making six figures with my teachings!
For the next couple of years, my income would go up and down. I never exceeded more than $20k in cash saved and eventually I hit another dryspell. Before I knew it, my $20k was GONE... again.
This time, I started to realize how incredibly stupid I was to ever think $10k or $20k was a lot of money. It wasn't. But my mind at the time thought it was because I NEVER saw ANY money growing up. No one ever talked to me about money growing up. In return, I thought NOT being dirt poor meant I "made it".
I eventually(recently) bounced back from the $20k loss. I spent a long time depressed that I lost it again and feeling like a complete idiot and loser. I have a family - a wife and 3 children, so I knew I had to do something but I felt so defeated. I was able to survive thanks to my list for a few months while I attempted to bounce back from going broke again.
I then got into Offline marketing about a year ago. I realized how much skill I had developed with FB ads over the years promoting CPA and T-shirts so I figured I would take my talents to the small biz world. The potential for a large, RECURRING income really intrigued me.
Fast forward to TODAY. I am building my way back and far beyond. I've spent a large portion of the last year working on my INNER self. My mindset was POOR. I had a lot of scarcity and poverty based beliefs I had to let go of. I got REALLY deep into self-help books and the improvement in my mindset has been the single best thing that has happened to me.
Today, I feel RICHER than I have ever felt before. Today, I know that I once I reach and pass $20k that I will NOT lose it, ever again. I've learned SOOOO much about mindset and finance and after BINGE reading TMF and Unscripted , the fire I have lit under my a$$ is as HOT AS EVER!!!!! My mind is now on abundance. I now KNOW to not celebrate hitting $10k, $20k, even $100k. I spent a number of years celebrating going from being completely POOR to being ... BROKE($20k).
As far as my current financial place? I'm still BROKE. But, I have two businesses right now(w/ fastlane potential) that make decent money. My FB ads agency and a music promotion company. Collectively, I'm back at around $4k - $5k/mo profit. My wife is also working on her business(coaching sufferers of anxiety) and I'm helping with that as well. I'm also driving UBER on the side while building my two businesses. Some days, I can't help but feel like MJ during his night in the snowstorm but I know I'm working toward a monumental dream and Uber, as much as it sucks, helps me fund it.
@MJ DeMarco I personally want to thank you SOOOOO much for releasing TMF and Unscripted . They're by far the best books I've ever read on the subject. They motivated the hell out of me to get off my half-assin' a$$, stop feeling inferior and really go for my dreams. I've been the epitome of an action-faker, thanks for calling me out, you made me realize how much time I've been wasting and how low I've been aiming. Now, I've got a couple million dollar companies to build.
But, I thought I really thought I had "moved the needle" when in reality, I had only nudged beyond being completely poor.
Let me rewind a bit. I grew up with my grandparents, they both worked at a fancy hotel. They dressed up very nicely everyday and worked HARD. Most of the time, they worked different shifts - so when one was coming home from work, the other was leaving.
They both were up there in age(55+), worked full-time(and overtime), rarely saw each other and were ALWAYS broke. As far as my memory goes back, they've always struggled to keep up with bills and were never in a position to take time off without falling behind.
We lived in a "triplex" home. Neighbors occupied the first floor. I lived on the second floor along with my grandparents and their daughter and their son lived on the third floor. Their kids were in their 20's when I moved in and they lived there during my entire childhood. When I moved out at 18, they were still there.
Needless to say, I always had a motivation that I did NOT want to follow the same path as my family. My grandparents were old and still working tirelessly in the rat race. My aunt and uncle never moved out and always struggled to make and keep money.
No one ever talked to me about money. Ever. I just witnessed poverty and lack of freedom. I witnessed my family scraping by, barely keeping up with bills and never having enough. I rarely even laid my eyes on money/cash in my household.
I left at 18 and joined the U.S. Navy - in search for a better life. I lasted two years in the Slave-y, er. I mean Navy. This was in 2006 and for the next two years, I would make $1,200 per month, working 12+ hours/day and I hated every minute of it. I worked my a$$ off and quickly realized how poorly I was being paid.
After 2 years, I got out the Navy(honorably) and went on a hunt for a job related to my "Navy job", which was just office related stuff. I couldn't find anything and after a couple of months of bumming around and living with people... one day I Google searched, "how to make money online". My incredibly twisted journey began.
I continued being a bum for a full year - living off of unemployment from The Navy and living from place to place, couch to couch. During that year, I was trying ALL kinds of things to make money online. My noobish search of "how to make money online" lead me to a TON of scams and BS. I tried a ton of shit and wasted a lot of money(not really a lot, but it was a lot to me back then) until I finally found something that worked. CPA Marketing!!
I got my start promoting CPA offers. My first success came from simply posting flyers around college campuses. Seeing my first sale come in after a year of struggling and making ZERO seriously hooked me for life. I eventually worked out a deal with a local pizza place and they allowed me to attach my flyers to their pizza boxes! I honestly forget how I convinced them to let me slap a few CPA offers on their pizza boxes but they did! They paid me too! 3 free pizzas per month
Ultimately, everything I was doing got me to the point where I was making about $100/day online. I was freaking ecstatic! Here's where things really changed for me...
I eventually released an info-course teaching the CPA methods that had gotten me to $100/day. I released this PDF course and it actually started to sell like crazy! This hooked me to the info-course market and I continued testing CPA strategies and creating courses any time I would experience success, even if it was a small win.
My list began growing as I released a couple of low-ticket courses and before I knew it, I had saved up $10k in cash. WOOOOO!!!!!!!!
I FREAKING MADE IT!!!
Seriously, that's how I felt. I feel kind of embarrassed to admit that I thought that was a lot of money.
I went on and started consistently making around $5k - 6k per month between CPA and promoting offers to my list. This was, by far, the most money I had ever seen in my life. I was paying bills on time and I money leftover. I had $10k saved. "I'm doing waaay better than my family did my entire childhood!!", I remember always thinking to myself.
I literally got comfortable. I went on comfortably averaging $5k/mo in profit and I was GOOD
bored. I mean, look at me! I had more money than my friends and more than my grandparents ever had saved up! It was going on FOUR years since I last had a boss. My wife hadn't needed a job in over two years. I knew this would never end... SIKE!It did end. After a couple years of coasting, the $10k I saved up quickly vanished after I had trouble with CPA for a while, which stopped me from releasing any courses on the subject and only left me with Affiliate marketing to my list as an income stream. This wasn't nearly enough to keep up w/ the "lavish" $5k/mo lifestyle I had gotten used to.
I kept pushing. Because I still had a list, I knew that I had an asset that could bring me back to life if I could provide them value. I eventually found success in the TEESPRING boom. I got into the space and quickly started seeing successful returns. After I secured a handful of successful campaigns under my belt, what did I do? Yep, I wrote a course on selling tees! In fact, I went on to write numerous courses on selling tees and they all did well!
I looked up and before I knew it, I had $20k saved! YESSS!!! I made it!!! Again!!!! (yes, that's how I felt - my scarcity/poverty mindset was very, very strong and I had no idea how broke I still was). In reality, I just continued being small minded. At the same time, I noticed a couple customers of my t-shirt courses going on and making six figures with my teachings!
For the next couple of years, my income would go up and down. I never exceeded more than $20k in cash saved and eventually I hit another dryspell. Before I knew it, my $20k was GONE... again.
This time, I started to realize how incredibly stupid I was to ever think $10k or $20k was a lot of money. It wasn't. But my mind at the time thought it was because I NEVER saw ANY money growing up. No one ever talked to me about money growing up. In return, I thought NOT being dirt poor meant I "made it".
I eventually(recently) bounced back from the $20k loss. I spent a long time depressed that I lost it again and feeling like a complete idiot and loser. I have a family - a wife and 3 children, so I knew I had to do something but I felt so defeated. I was able to survive thanks to my list for a few months while I attempted to bounce back from going broke again.
I then got into Offline marketing about a year ago. I realized how much skill I had developed with FB ads over the years promoting CPA and T-shirts so I figured I would take my talents to the small biz world. The potential for a large, RECURRING income really intrigued me.
Fast forward to TODAY. I am building my way back and far beyond. I've spent a large portion of the last year working on my INNER self. My mindset was POOR. I had a lot of scarcity and poverty based beliefs I had to let go of. I got REALLY deep into self-help books and the improvement in my mindset has been the single best thing that has happened to me.
Today, I feel RICHER than I have ever felt before. Today, I know that I once I reach and pass $20k that I will NOT lose it, ever again. I've learned SOOOO much about mindset and finance and after BINGE reading TMF and Unscripted , the fire I have lit under my a$$ is as HOT AS EVER!!!!! My mind is now on abundance. I now KNOW to not celebrate hitting $10k, $20k, even $100k. I spent a number of years celebrating going from being completely POOR to being ... BROKE($20k).
As far as my current financial place? I'm still BROKE. But, I have two businesses right now(w/ fastlane potential) that make decent money. My FB ads agency and a music promotion company. Collectively, I'm back at around $4k - $5k/mo profit. My wife is also working on her business(coaching sufferers of anxiety) and I'm helping with that as well. I'm also driving UBER on the side while building my two businesses. Some days, I can't help but feel like MJ during his night in the snowstorm but I know I'm working toward a monumental dream and Uber, as much as it sucks, helps me fund it.
@MJ DeMarco I personally want to thank you SOOOOO much for releasing TMF and Unscripted . They're by far the best books I've ever read on the subject. They motivated the hell out of me to get off my half-assin' a$$, stop feeling inferior and really go for my dreams. I've been the epitome of an action-faker, thanks for calling me out, you made me realize how much time I've been wasting and how low I've been aiming. Now, I've got a couple million dollar companies to build.
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