Last time I told you that, “I’m going to tell you something I’ve never told anyone before… not even to students in my online training course.”

First, let me tell you a true story.

My very first successful business, was doing odd jobs for people around my community in Upstate New York.

I was 14 years old at the time.

I advertised in the local paper. If I recall correctly the classified ad said, “I do anything you need around the house. Clean, pick-up trash. Anything. Call 7XX-XXXX”

I got calls right away and lots of jobs. Mostly jobs no one wanted like cleaning out un-kept rental apartments or backyards full of trash. I charged by the job and made some pretty good money that summer.

When I needed help on a bigger job, I’d enlist the help of some of my friends and we’d split the money.

Then I got busy with something else and stopped doing it.

My next business was a publication my brother and I put together called “Cars”.

We took pictures of cars people wanted to sell and put them in the publication with 3 lines of text under each picture.

Most of the advertisiers were local car dealers.

My brother sold the ads and I designed the pages, took the pictures and ‘pasted up’ the publication for printing.

We got a small newspaper in a near-by community to print the 10,000 copies we distributed. Believe it or not it cost us just $175 for 10,000 copies of our publication, with color!

The publication was a great successs. The car dealers loved it - so it was an easy sell. It was another way for them to promote their cars.

My next ‘business’ was a graphics biz. I has some artistic talent and had painted a larger-than-life picture of BigBird, from the Sesame Street character, on my nieces’ bedroom wall.

It looked great! And she loved it!

My brother said, “Why don’t you make some money doing this?”

So I placed another classified ad in our local paper that said something like, “I paint cartoon characters on walls. Great for kid’s bedrooms. Call WallGraphics 7XX-XXXX”

I got calls and lots of people wanted me to do other things besides kids bedrooms - I got jobs doing ‘wall graphic’ designs in kitchens, living rooms and recreation rooms.

I had a problem with one customer and decided to stop the business and moved on to something else.

The next business I started was the one I told you about a couple of emails ago- the ‘walking duck’ manufacturing business.

What I didn’t tell you was that after a year of making ‘ducks’ I started focusing on other things and let the business die a slow death until there was no more business.

One of the things I learned over the years is that you can have a great idea and actually start making money in some little hobby or small business then, for whatever reason, it just dies because you give up on it or you get rejected a few times and suddenly it’s not ‘fun’ anymore - so you quit.

Of course, the businesses I described above were all started before I was 20… so maybe it was just inexperience on my part.

But there were two very, very important reasons I never took these businesses as far as I could have and these are the two things I never shared with anyone until now …

These two reasons may save you from a huge mistake in your own business.

#1 Reason I Quit Before I Had A Chance To Succeed:

= I never had anyone I could turn to for business advice. Except for my father, who was not a businessman, I had no one to ask if I ran into a problem. I had no encouragement at all. In fact, when I was successful in some business my parents thought it was nice, but treated it as a hobby and as something to do until I graduated from college.

No one really sat me down to encourage me to continue it, expand it or make it successsful in anyway.

My life would have been much, much different today if I had someone to turn to for real-life business advice. I didn’t need anyone to hold my hand, but meeting with someone once a month who knew what business was all about would have really helped me.

#2 Reason I Quit Before I Had A Chance To Succeed:

= I got un-focused and distracted. I found some success, took it for granted and went on to do something else before I fully realized the potential of the business I started.

Each of the businesses I started, made money… some I liked some I didn’t like (like the cleaning jobs). But I could have easily hired someone to do the jobs I didn’t want and I could have grown them into substantial enterprises.

I was totally un-focused and it cost me a lot.

Then, life happened… I went to school, got a job, a career, got married, had kids - 4 at last count
Obligations, responsibilities put my entrepreneurial instincts on hold… until the Internet came along 20 years after my last business was started.

I knew it was an opportunity I could not ignore- so I dived in head first in 1999. I actually started selling stuff online in 1996, but didn’t get serious until 1999.

Then for 2 1/2 years after starting ’seriously’ I struggled… almost to the point of bankruptcy.

I was “-”that close”-” to total ruin and disaster. I got myself into debt to the tune of almost $60,000 while I tried everything I could think of to make money online. But I pulled out of it, paid all my bills, paid off my house and started putting some serious cash away… finally, after I learned about all the stuff I’ve been talking about in these letters to you.

What I’ve written about in the last few letters I hope will keep you from ruin… and if you’re on the brink of it right now (as so many subscribers have told me they are) then take what I am about to share with you in the next letter to ‘heart’.

In the next letter, I’m going to share with you the absolute truth, like you’ve never heard it before, about succeeding online based on my own personal experience.