The Seeds of Success: The Power of Tinkering

When I last left off, I had quit my job of 12 years and made the leap into entrepreneurship while losing my damn mind. I knew I had to do IT but had no clue what the hell I was going to do or how I was going to get there.

But let me back up a bit because I knew I had what it took because I had been “tinkering” for awhile.

In 2003, six years before I took the big leap, I decided to dive into real estate by buying a college rental property with tenants already in place. A friend of mine owned some college rentals, so when I saw an ad in the paper, I thought, why not?

I went to check it out, along with forty other eager buyers, because this place was a cash-flowing duplex. It was a madhouse.

So, like any impulsive twenty-something, I made an offer right there on the front lawn and overpaid for the place.

I really wish I’d known about the 20% down payment beforehand—or the penalties that come with draining your 401k—but hey, I got the house.

Back then, the internet was just coming to life, so the only way to fill the properties was by listing ads in the local newspaper. The problem? Most of our target tenants were out-of-state students who didn’t get the local paper.

So, I decided to teach myself HTML and put together a website with photos of the house. To drive traffic to the site, I hit up local bars and offered to promote their bars on my site in exchange for a backlink.

Those links turned out to be gold as the internet grew—Google loved them, and voilà, the duplex was always full. I didn’t realize it at the time, but I’d just stumbled into internet marketing by accident.

Those bar connections got louder, and soon enough, I launched a party website that advertised local bars in our college town. I had college kids armed with cameras snapping pics and handing out quirky business cards that pointed people to the site.

What started as a local gig eventually grew into a statewide site.

It was all going great until it wasn’t—turns out, wives aren’t too thrilled when their husbands spend all their time at bars.

Still, that experience gave me a ton of know-how in website development and search engine marketing.

I dragged that knowledge into my sales job, building websites to generate leads.

Eventually, I even launched an e-commerce store on the side, reselling training videos that were drop-shipped from the vendor.

To date that e-commerce store does multi millions in revenue per year and employs dozens of people. It’s how I survive.

And that’s how my “tinkering” turned into something real—something that not only saved my sanity but became the foundation of my entire livelihood.

What started as a series of impulsive decisions, late-night HTML sessions, and a whole lot of trial and error would eventually define my career and allow me to gain any successes I may have today.