My back story...

I don't normally talk about my past or growing up.  However, I see too many people using their past as an excuse to not be successful.  Maybe my story will give some motivation or inspiration to others out there to take life by the reigns and make your own way.  So, here we go...

I grew up in a family of 5 kids.  My parents divorced when I was about 4 years old.  I don't have many young memories of my dad.  I was probably 7 or 8 when I really remember him.  The relationship between him and my mom were strained at best.  I was lucky if I got to see him an hour a week.  There were times I would go a month or more without seeing him.  When I was 8, my mom remarried.  At first we thought this was great.  We would have a dad around.  But that was short lived.  He ended up being a little abusive.

Moving forward, we were not well off my any means.  In fact, we were fairly poor.  Most of my youth I got new clothes once a year, and that was a couple pairs of pants and a few shirts.  Most everything else was given to us by members of the church.  It wasn't until I was a teenager that I was finally able to buy new clothes.  We knew we were poor, but we made the best of it.  I remember one winter when we got a blizzard.  We were stuck in the house and all we had to eat was tea and crackers.  That is about the only time I really remember being hungry.

I also grew up with a mother who was raised in a very religious home.  As a consequence, we were in a very strict environment.  Rock music was the devil's music, as was dancing.  I remember not being allowed to attend an assembly at school because it was a magician, and that was evil.  Being raised in that environment but also being a part of normal public interactions, it created the perfect rebellious environment for me.  I longed to be a normal kid and be able to do the things other kids got to do.  Of course this brought down the wrath of my step-father.  By the time I was 17 I had had enough.

In January of 1981, I dropped out of school and enlisted in the US Navy.  I spent 3 years on a destroyer.  It was ok, but being newly released from my religious prison, I pretty much indulged in everything that was available to me.  How I stayed out of trouble is beyond me.  But I finished my enlistment and was honorably discharged in 1984.  What a time that was to be without a job!  There was no work, and because of what I had worked with in the Navy, I could not find a job.  I was overqualified for most anything out there, including McDonald's!

I spent the next 7 years floating from one job to the next.  But sprinkled in there were spurts of businesses I tried to start.  I tried silk screening t-shirts.  I tried flea market selling.  I even tried selling vacuum cleaners door to door.  I found myself homeless on more than one occasion.  But I always knew that I was going to find my way.  I knew there had to be more to life than this.  I settled on doing HVAC work.  It was something that came naturally to me and I could see the possibilities of business ownership in this field.

By the time I was 28, I was ready to settle down.  I met my wife and 7 months later we were married.  We moved back to her hometown where I started my HVAC business.  3 years later we were the second largest HVAC contractor in the area.  I was grossing $500k a year.  Life was good.  My wife convinced me to get my GED, which I did.  I was a respected business leader in the community, even getting elected as the president of our downtown business association.  But in the back of my mind I knew that I did not want to be installing HVAC equipment when I was 50.

Things changed in 1995.  I saw my first PC.  I was fascinated with it.  Then one day my business manager brought his computer from home in and was getting online.  I had no idea what that meant, and he showed me the future.  The Internet!  I was hooked!  I set out to start my own internet company.  In late 1995 I started setting up a dialup ISP.  By Early 1997 I was grossing $16k a month.  It was going well.

But, the area where my business was located was 50 miles form home.  Normally not a big deal.  However, it was also located in the snow belt of the northeast.  In the winter of 1996, we had a snow storm where we got 4 feet of snow in one day.  My son was 18 months old and I remember driving home in bumper deep snow for 50 miles and thinking this was crazy.  My wife and I had a long discussion about the business, and we decided to sell it and move south to north Carolina.

By February, 1997 we were in north Carolina.  We had sold the ISP and were looking to start a fresh new life.  Over the next 14 years, I worked many tech jobs, got my degree and also owned several businesses.  Three were tech businesses and one restaurant.  I had also been selling on ebay part time.  I sold anything that I thought would make money.  From industrial equipment to dollhouse miniatures and lingerie, I sold it all.  I now had two sons, and the oldest was a couple years from graduating.  He hated the heat (so did we) and we knew that after he graduated he would be heading north.  We decided to move north, back to PA.

Shortly after we moved, my son began dating a girl whose parents sold full time on ebay.  I had never met anyone who sold full time, so I was quite intrigued.  We finally met the parents, and we hit it off pretty good.  We used to go on thrifting trips together on the weekends.  This was the point that I realized the trick to ebay was volume.  You had to list a lot to get a lot of sales.  I spent the next year really honing my ebay skills.  I studied successful sellers, and took bits and pieces of information from each of them to develop my strategy.

I still work a full time job, but ebay has given me the ability to not be dependent on my job.  Last September my company was bought out.  I learned that I would be losing my job at some point in the future.  I ramped up my inventory so I could get as much cash banked as I could prior to losing my job.  This will be my operating capital.  I will transition into a full time seller once my pink slip is delivered.

So don't feel sorry for my life growing up.  It has helped mold me into the person I am today.  There were so many times I should have either died or been in prison.  I guess I just got lucky, or I just figured things out in time to correct the path I was on.  Either way I was able to pull myself up and move on.  People now days want to fall back on some past injustice to justify not being successful.  I'm here as proof that you can rise above everything and achieve success.  You just have to want it bad enough.

So, what's holding you back from being successful?  Is it fear you will fail?  I have failed more than I have succeeded.  But I never let failure stop me.  I am in control of my destiny.  I will succeed, and each success is always better than the last.  I do not fear the unknown.  I dive in and go for it.  I came into this world with nothing, and I lived most of my life with nothing.  To go out with nothing would be to leave as I entered.

Life is not about who has the most toys.  Life is about fulfillment.  Life is about experiences.  Life is about making the most of every day and celebrating everything we have, no matter how small we may think it is.  Enjoy life and celebrate.  You only get one, so make sure it is a good one!