A Cubic Inch of Opportunity
“From time to time, life gives you a cubic inch of opportunity. Either grab it, or its gone forever.” — Unknown.
Almost twenty-five years ago, my wife Toni decided to move to the Northwest. I had a choice: preserve and promote my Hollywood career, or be a father to my daughter Nicki. That was no choice: I’m a Dad.
During my ten years up there I struggled to keep my career in play, even while unable to take pitch meetings or network. My marriage dissolved, I fell in love and married Tananarive, and we adopted our son Jason. The dream was that, as soon as Nicki graduated high school, we’d move back to California and take Hollywood by storm.
But when I got down, my agent Jonathan Westover had some very bad news for me:
- He was retiring, leaving me without a trusted ally.
- In the time I’d been gone, the model for writing television had changed: everything was written by staff and…
- They didn’t hire anyone for staff over forty. I was already over fifty.
Screwed. I had moved my family to the most expensive real estate in the country, without a clear plan on how to support them. Well…T and I kept our heads down, worked like crazy, and after six years I’d started making some progress: a few television credits, a new agent, and starting to make networked contacts again. By the skin of my teeth, I was putting my life back together.
Then…her beloved mother was diagnosed with cancer, and we had to move back to Atlanta. Again, I had a choice: either protect and nurture the career I’d dreamed of since childhood, or be a husband and father. Again, as painful as it was…I had no choice.
And it was as bad as I’d feared. Between New York Publishing’s confusion in the digital age and my increased distance from Hollywood, my career all but collapsed. I was distraught. Saw all my dreams going up in smoke, with no safety in sight.
I used the “Morning Ritual” to break my cycle of depression, and got enough clarity to realize I’d made a horrible mistake: all my adult life I’d been balanced between family, martial arts, and writing. I needed a fourth leg to that table: BUSINESS. Separating my art as self-expression from art as income. To look at the making, saving, managing of money as a separate thing. By not doing that, I’d been caught unawares, and life had just about broken my back.
I clawed my way into the light and asked what I could do other than writing to earn money, and thought that the “Life Coaching” arena might work: I had specialized knowledge about health, writing, and relationships that people had found valuable over the years. Could I monetize that?
The answer was yes. Creating a “coaching” business from scratch, I built that business up and in the first year earned an excellent income. But…it was taking too much of my energy and time. I wasn’t writing enough, and that caused me grief.
What I needed was to move away from one-on-one coaching, to creating products and services that could serve and help people automatically. I needed to sell my EXPERTISE, not my ENERGY.
And that triggered a search, a desperate search, for a simple question: HOW DO PEOPLE REALLY MAKE MONEY ON THE INTERNET? You see, there are a ton of people clamoring for your internet education dollars. And you want to know the big dirty secret?
MOST OF THE PEOPLE MAKING MONEY ON THE INTERNET MADE THEIR MONEY TEACHING PEOPLE HOW TO MAKE MONEY ON THE INTERNET.
Yeah, its like that. It’s just like the California Gold Rush…most of the money was made by people selling Levis and Shovels, not actually digging gold.
It’s largely a con game. So…I picked up a few very delicate threads, and started sorting through the b.s.
- Was it actually possible? Yes. I’d seen it.
- Could I identify people who had really done it? Yes.
- Were any of them close enough that I could ask them personally how they’d done it?
Remember: MODELING is the key. If you want to master a skill, find someone who can actually DO it. Not someone who teaches at the local college or Learning Tree Annex, or can write a book or article. Have they DONE it? And I found three men who really had, and they were wonderful enough to actually point me in the direction of real knowledge.
For the next four years I followed those threads, searching and learning as I built a wobbly fourth leg for my “table”. Trying to pick nothing but nuggets. And between mentors like Matt Furey, John La Tourette and Andy Duncan I found a path that actually worked, with integrity (the first principle was PASSION for instance…you have to actually care about the thing you are selling. I liked that.)
I found pieces here and there, and started teaching classes and selling products by hooking a dozen different technologies and services together, enough to make me dizzy, and hanging on by my fingernails. Because I’d made a critical decision: I DIDN’T WANT TO BE A PROFESSIONAL WRITER ANY MORE. I WANTED TO BE AN AMATEUR WRITER. In other words, to write for the sheer love of the craft, without the added pressure of needing to support my family with the fruits of that labor. It was a mental rope-a-dope of course…with no pressure, I was going to do the most personal, and thus the BEST writing of my life. With the potential for being the most successful.
But I had to replace ALL that considerable income, or it wouldn’t’ work. That meant I had to keep studying. Constantly. I began to nurture an entirely new part of my head, grasping that “the business you are in is not what you think. It is not the art, or craft, or service. It is the MARKETING of that art, or craft, or service.” That single shift of thought made all the difference. It was amazing.
By focusing on the marketing, rather than thinking “if I’m good enough, I’ll make money!” I finally had the bull by the horns. And when I went deeper and deeper, through dozens of different “experts”, I finally came to someone rather amazing. I checked with my mentors, and yes, this guy was for real.
- He had made millions on the internet with a variety of products and services.
- He was an expert at TEACHING what he knew as well.
- He seemed a good and decent family man, with a deep faith in things larger than himself
- And by the most bizarre coincidence, he was a martial artist, a national champion wrestler who now studies MMA.
- And…a man of boundless enthusiasm, a living cheerleader section for any entrepreneur trying to make the world a better place.
His name is RUSSELL BRUNSON, and I’ve been studying his stuff intensely for the last year, more and more impressed all the time. And five months ago, he announced a “30 Day Bootcamp” for people wanting to get started, or accelerate their growth. I signed up instantly, and was totally blown away. Having searched the internet, I knew for certain that the quality and quantity of information he was giving away dirt cheap was more valuable than stuff I’d seen sold for thousands of dollars. No exaggeration.
Why? BECAUSE HE WANTS YOU TO USE HIS “FUNNEL” WEBSITE SOFTWARE. Its great stuff, but the truth is that his information works even if you don’t have a website at all. He gathered 30 of his students, people who had made over a MILLION DOLLARS on a single website, and asked them: “If you lost everything: your money, reputation, Rolodex, product line…EVERYTHING, what would you do in the first thirty days to get it back?”
A stupendous, staggering question. And the book that contains the answers is worth its weight in gold. Copies of “Thirty Days by Russell Brunson”, simply interviews with these thirty people, were reportedly selling on Ebay for FIVE HUNDRED DOLLARS.
Yeah. It’s like that. But the book is the least of it. There were thirty days of interviews, lectures, behind-the-scenes videos, roadmaps to selling any kind of product or service imaginable (yep, including books!) So much, so well laid out, so incrementally presented that if I’d had nothing but this, I could have thrown the rest away.
And YES. If you have a skill, and a younger “you” would have paid for the knowledge supporting that skill, and I mean a skill of ANY kind that anyone finds of value…you can do this. Using totally free services like Facebook, Paypal, Wordpress and Youtube…you can do this.
I have a friend who is in ill health, who used these principles (he got them elsewhere, but truth is truth) to create a business earning A HUNDRED AND TWENTY-FIVE THOUSAND DOLLARS A YEAR working only two hours a day on his computer.
No kidding.
Now, this person has serious skills, and already had a teaching business, but I tell you that because there are teachers, coaches, people who have succeeded in some arena or another, people who have hobbies, have overcome obstacles, raised children, lost weight…who have expressed that they would like to learn how to leverage that to make extra money.
Let me be blunt: if you have any skill that can help someone earn money, improve their health, or find love…you have a potential business. Help them raise or teach children? You have a potential business. All you have to do is be better at something than you were ten or twenty years ago, and people like you WERE would pay you money for what you know.
Its about the marketing.
And I want to be honest: I was so blown away that every one of those thirty days I was shaking my head and almost babbling to my wife: “I can’t believe what he’s teaching!” And still can’t.
Wow. What a month.
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Yesterday, I got an email from Brunson’s company Clickfunnels saying that they were repeating the program. And I INSTANTLY signed up, and immediately made a list of the friends and students I wanted to turn on to it. They HAD to do this. And then…decided that I would go ahead and tell everyone. ANYONE who wants to make extra money, or share and teach valuable knowledge needs to have this. And if you don’t think you have that knowledge?
FIND SOMEONE WHO DOES, AND HELP THEM GET THEIR MESSAGE OUT. Partner with them. A teacher, a chiropractor, a gardener. Someone excellent training pets. Someone who has raised a special needs child. ANYTHING where there are people interested. Any valuable knowledge.
Because if you know how to market, you actually have a skill MORE VALUABLE than the person who “just” knows how to “do” the thing. And when you wake up to that, you’ll change your life.
IN about two weeks, Brunson will teach this class again. I swear that it is worth at least ten times what he is charging for it. That is the truth, and I’d recommend it to my own friends and family with zero hesitation. He is the real deal, and if you need to make extra money, or want to get out of a bad job or career, or want to share your ideas with the world THIS IS AN AMAZING OPPORTUNITY.
Please. Do yourself a favor and at least look at this. I’m going back through the course myself, and signed up INSTANTLY when I saw it would be available. No kidding. No bluffing.
From time to time life gives us a cubic inch of opportunity.. You either grab it…or its gone forever. I’ve had about a dozen of those over the course of my years. One came when I realized my life path had been obliterated by family needs. And stumbled around until I found something that worked.
That was mine. This is one of yours. If you want to learn more, go to WWW.LIFEWRITINGINTERNETSECRETS.COM and see if your instinct says “yes.”
Namaste
Steve