Hi, it’s Derek Armson here. I’ve been working Online since 2006, not always successfully, and I want to tell you my story as to how I came to be here and to finally get success. Finally get to live that “laptop lifestyle” everyone talks about.
I’m doing The One Funnel Away Challenge at the moment (February 2020) and part of the challenge is to tell our full story. The idea being that out story provides the stories we need to help sell our products. This is my FULL story, in both video and written formats.
That’s me back in the day, when I had hair!
For twenty-five years I’d been recruiting top IT staff to the Investment Banks. That’s me early in my recruitment career, and when I had lots of hair!
I used to recruit the “Rocket Scientists” who programmed the trading systems that got us all into so much financial trouble.
These Guys helped the Banks make hundreds of millions by trading a nano second quicker than the competition and taking advantage of price arbitrage. They wrote complex mathematical programs that “out traded” the competition.
They were worth their weight in gold to the Banks…and they knew it! Until, of course, it all unraveled in the sub-prime crisis.
Specialising in trading systems specialists, I was the ”go to” Guy in the City for these programmers.
I used to hob knob with IT Directors from many of the major banks and I could always be found “socializing” in London’s top bars and restaurants.
I was used to eating at places like Langans, Vong, The Oxo Tower, Quaglino’s, Club Gascon (the “tasting” menu here was incredible by the way), many of the maitre d’s knew me by name.
Hell, I’d even been to stay with one of the top Guys at Credit Suisse at his “pad” in the Florida Keys (it was amazing).
We spent the day at Lords in the Exec Boxes watching cricket and quaffing champagne, eating prawn sandwiches at Old Trafford and days out at the Grand Prix.
Deep Niche
I guess I did learn about the benefits of getting deeply into niches even back then! Niche marketing made me a fortune back then. I was totally motivated by the money and everything it brought (and bought).
I was totally immersed in what I was doing to the exclusion of everything and everyone else. In true Gordon Gekko style I was totally money focused. I loved the sharp suits, the cuff links and the bright silk ties. Although I stopped short of the red braces which were the norm in the City in those days.
It was hard, but paid well and I saw myself staying in the game for my entire career, after all, I’d never want for anything. I was secure!
Corporate Failure
I got started in recruitment the 80’s as a way out of a failed corporate career. I was down and out after 10 years working for big blue-chip companies who paid nothing and deliberately kept you down at your level.
They used to have a saying in the oil company I worked for “you get promoted to your level of incompetence”. As far as they were concerned, I was already above my level of incompetence!
Regardless, you were always kept as a wage slave with too much month at the end of the money.
It’s still the same today!
I’d got hold of a copy of “The Lazy Mans Way To Riches” and I started reading positive attitude stuff. I th9ought I was bullet proof! So, decided to start my own business selling pictures. I had seen the other side. I’d read about what is possible and I knew that I could go out and earn my fortune.
The picture business seemed like a good idea at the time. There was no logical basis for it, just a flawed decision and I had no idea what I was doing. I learned a life lesson fast because within 6 months I was broke, heavily in debt and had lost my house!
It’s a big bad world out there and it will eat you up if you get it wrong.
Advertising Sales
However, I wasn’t for giving up, I kept reading the positive stuff and got a job in advertising sales. I was full of young go get ‘em, gung-ho attitude and I was going to win no matter what! I did well and started to claw myself back. But I didn’t like the atmosphere in advertising sales. It wasn’t me even though it was paying the bills and earning some play money by now.
Oh, the naivety of youth 😊 I looked around and decided that recruitment would be a good move. Again, with no logical thought as to why. I’d heard you could earn a lot of money and that was my sole motivation. Money and lots of it.
James Caan
My first job in recruitment was working for James Caan, the Dragon’s Den Guy. It was a fledgling business for him back then and I was one of the first dozen people working for him.
He had a great system for training people and I was a good learner!
I did really well, and after just three months was offered a job that doubled my basic salary working for one of my clients. James hated that I was leaving to go into the temporary market and told me rather brutally, “you’ll never succeed in contracts”.
That was all the motivation I needed! I also loved to prove someone wrong in those days.
I took great joy in sending him a copy of my first years’ P46 (final salary slip) that showed £106k earnings. In fairness to him, he did send a note back saying well done and did buy me a bottle of fizz a few months later.
The blue-chip sales techniques I’d been taught in corporate world coupled with the hard-edged telephone stuff from advertising made a perfect storm of sales skills for recruitment, I was tearing it up.
Into Recruitment
I became a sponge and learned everything I could about recruitment, sales and my market.
I worked for a couple of agencies that were really wild. In one, if you hadn’t hit your target at the end of the week, you had to stand on your chair and justify to the whole company why you shouldn’t be fired there and then – crazy!
I’m all for targets and goals, but management by fear? Who needs that but it’s something I know goes on in a lot of recruitment and sales organisations.
Do you really want your life ruled by fear?
I was headhunted by one of the top City agencies and I achieved take off in a big way. Soon I was managing teams, divisions and then I got talking to a company who offered me my own division as MD. I was the rising star in City recruitment, my train was unstoppable.
Unstoppable
They negotiated hard, but they put a dream in front of me that was just so enticing I had to go for it. I joined as the MD of their IT operation.
Our motto was “fire, ready, aim”, our version of Nike’s “Just Do It”. And, after a bit of a shaky start, I was tearing it up.
Within 17 months of start up we were billing nearly 10 million and I was taking home 200k. I had it all, a big house, the shiney kids, an Audi Quattro 2.8 injection with cream leather interior and a Bose stereo, the exotic holidays – the lot. I was living the dream!
My children were loving it…when they saw me.
I took the Quattro out for a spin one night, to see how fast it would go! I bottled it at 140 mph on the M40 – there was plenty left in her!
So, why would I want to change all that? From the outside I was the epitome of success.
The truth was, I was working myself in to the ground. The kids were growing up fast and I hardly saw them. Holidays were the only time we got quality time together and even then, I often ended up spending a few hours each day on the ‘phone.
Burnt Out
Although I hadn’t realized it… I was burning out – fast.
I’d split from my wife, she never saw me so not really surprising, and I was living away from the children. For the first time in my life I was staring at a crisis. Everything had just been in the flow up until that time. Or at least I thought it had, looking back now, I know that is not the case.
Then, one day, I just hit the buffers. I was going into London for a meeting and I collapsed waiting for the train. I woke up in hospital the next day under heavy sedation.
I had almost worked myself into the ground, literally!
I was totally exhausted and had to have a two-month recuperation before I could even think of picking up a ‘phone or going to see a client again.
This is what the JOB can do to you. They expect every ounce you have to give, but will just drop you as soon as things go wrong.
Three months later I went back, but do you know what? The trust with those clients had been broken. Other agencies had stepped into my place and I wasn’t flavour of the month anymore. After all the business we had done, I was cast aside like an oily rag! That’s the Banking industry for you, totally ruthless.
I tried to put the business back together and I had sporadic success, but in truth, my heart just wasn’t in it. In terms of recruitment, I was broken, although again, I didn’t realise at the time.
So, I sold the business and went to Australia for three months for some proper R & R. After all it was winter in the U.K, so what better than three months’ sunshine, beaches and cold beer while everyone at home shivered.
Internet Marketing!
When I got back to the U.K, I started to look at other business models, and in 2000, I first looked at “Internet Marketing”. Hey, this is great, I can build a business online, build a residual income and have the lifestyle I want.
It sounded great, and it’s what I wanted! Residual income, minimal effort and lots of time with my children. This was now my main focus, to gain that missed time with my kids.
Except that’s not what I did!
No, not me, I learned how to build websites (with very primitive tools that took ages to learn) and built a client base of local website customers! Derrr – stupid!
Don’t ask me why I did this, I just don’t know. Maybe it was this in-built corporate side of me telling me I had to have a “proper” business. How stupid does that seem now?
What I ended up with was horrible! A demanding client base of small businesses who paid me next to nothing, never paid on time and always wanted something for nothing. I’d created a “full time job” and was getting paid about 15% of what I was getting in the City.
Now, this is where truly flawed thinking enters the fray!
I thought, “this isn’t working, what shall I do?”
Funnily enough I’d had a call from one of my recruitment buddies a couple of days before, and we’d talked and laughed, and I thought…
Recruitment Again
“I know – I’ll start another agency”.
I didn’t stop to think I just did it. I hired three staff, bought the most expensive systems, got a big office and lo and behold I was back on the treadmill. But, this time it was different.
I had always majored on contract (temp) business, but there wasn’t much about in spring 2001. So, we started trying to do permanent hires. The business took a lot longer to build, but by September 2001 we had nearly half a million ££ worth of business in process. Yes, this was looking good.
Then on the 11th September I was sitting in the office chatting to Cantor Fitzgerald when the line manager said…
“I’ve got to go, there’s a fire on the trading floor in New York”.
The T.V room was just around the corner, next thing I heard screams coming from the TV room. I ran around just in time to see the second plane hit the World Trade Center.
Like most people, I simply could not comprehend what I was seeing.
I also failed (completely) to comprehend what it meant for my fledgling business. You see, over the following two weeks, all but £8k of that half a million just melted away from our business board.
All of a sudden, I was in deep shit. More shit than the early settlers if truth be told!
I Lost Everything…Plus Some
I had “invested” every penny I had to get the business to where it was, and now my business disappeared faster than a flush of the toilet, which is exactly where my business now was!
Before I could blink any money, I did have in the bank had all been eaten up in wages and office costs, systems support, but there was a glimmer of light.
Cantor Fitzgerald needed to replace their team, and they had to site in London because New York was totally destroyed. They lost all of their U.S staff in those dreadful attacks.
So, I lowered my trousers and dropped my pants to ridiculous levels to get the business for the recruitment of that team on an exclusive basis.
I got a faxed confirmation from them and I took it to my personal banker who agreed to an overdraft to keep me trading until that money started to flow. I went home on the Friday night a relieved man.
You Can’t Rely On Your Bank
On Monday morning, I was greeted by an extremely upset supplier who told me a cheque had bounced.
This couldn’t be right, so I rang the Bank again. I asked for me personal account manager and was told “he left on Friday”. I was put through to someone new and very different. Instead of an accommodating friendly Bank manager, this was different.
He was very cold, business like and informed me, very matter of factly, my facilities had been withdrawn, my personal manager had been “relieved” of his job and that I had 48 hours to pay back the £10,000 overd
raft I had run up.
The bank had agreed a £50,000 facility on the Friday morning.
Within a month, the debt with the Bank had ballooned to over £25,000 and wasn’t frozen by the Bank until it reached £56,000, all but £10,000 of which was charges and interest.
I had no way of paying it off. I had to get a job and give ALL of the Cantor business to my employer and I got just 15% commission.
I was down and out – no money, lost my house, lost my wife, hardly saw my children and had nowhere to go apart from back to Mum’s. At 43 years old I was on the scrapeheap of life. The recruitment business had sucked me dry and spat me out.
I was mentally and physically shot. What on earth was I going to do now?
But…in all honesty it was a poor decision by me to go back into recruitment without proper thought. I just went back into something I just wasn’t motivated to do any more.
Bumping Along
I did a number of recruitment contracts over the next 5 years, they just about kept the wolf from the door as a vicious and destructive court case with my Bankers built to a crescendo that looked very likely to send me into bankruptcy.
Indeed, after numerous pre-trial conference calls with their lawyers and the judge it looked like I was going to have to pay the lot, plus costs which would have sent me into financial meltdown.
A Stroke Of Luck
Then I had a stroke of luck. I found one of my old employees and he agreed to swear an affidavit that the Bank had definitely agreed and then withdrawn the overdraft facility.
Then I had a second stroke of luck. Now they say you make your own luck, maybe you do, because my dogged determination not to let the Bank win, may well have just kept me “in the game”. I knew they were morally wrong in what they did to me (and also in putting my employees out of work).
So, I kept fighting with my severely restricted resources (I couldn’t afford a solicitor and legal aid was refused). And, the fact I just hung in there worked in my favour.
There had been a bit of a seachange in attitudes towards the Banks, and they were now starting to be taken to task for this sort of sharp practice.
And, the nasty judge was taken ill!
To my surprise the new judge allocated had obviously been reading about what the Banks had been “up to” and he came down heavily on my side.
I had offered the Bank £6,500 which I said was all I originally borrowed. I had produced some figures (slightly skewed to be fair) which I said proved the point.
To cut a long story short, the judge suggested to the Bank that they should, if they didn’t want to incur lots of nasty costs and fines, accept my “generous offer”.
After the briefest of protests, they accepted, and we settled out of court.
Good Old PPI
Now, every cloud has a silver lining, I did them on PPI and got £8,478 back!
Once the dust had
settled, I decided I’d had it with recruitment…for good this time.
I had to do something different from now on. I didn’t know what, but I knew I had to get back up and get out there and fight again.
By chance a mail piece from Andrew Reynolds, promoting his Profitmaker seminar, landed on the doormat, so I begged a ticket from him.
Sometimes you just have to go in to “bootstrap” mode, so that’s what I did. I begged everything I could to get myself back up and running. At that seminar I saw the great Bill Myers, wow he was cool. He showed how the Internet was going to grow and develop and this is where the future lay.
Online Again
So, once more I started online.
My first attempt was a disaster!
I started online by “working” with a complete charlatan who charged me £2,000 to give me some all but useless PLR products, bundle them up into a so-called “product” (Instant Online Riches – yeah, right) and set me up with a useless website to (try to) sell this crap!
He then gave me the most awful Adwords training. That cost me another £1,376 in ads for just three sales – one of which refunded. Mind you, if I’d bought it, I would probably have refunded too!
This is the world of Internet Marketing I found back then! And that sort of BS is still around, in bucket loads.
It was a hard lesson to learn.
Shiney Object Syndrome
I bumbled around for 2-3 years, trying this and that. I got relieved of what little money I had buy shiney objects, quick fix products that just didn’t work.
I struggled to find the way through the smoke and mirrors.
Why was this happening to me? I was used to almost instant success in Recruitment. This online marketing lark was tough… and I just couldn’t see a way through.
I had failed and failed, and failed again. I was going nowhere and not earning any money, in fact I was losing money every month. I was used to just starting a business and generating instant success. Online marketing came as a massive shock to the system.
The Hardest Truth
My new partner was, quite rightly, getting on my case.
We’d been together about 4 or 5 years at this stage and we’d just moved to Hertfordshire. She still had to go to Surrey to work (50 miles away) and had just about had enough of being the breadwinner.
This particular cold, frosty morning, I heard her go out to scrape the car. I noticed it was starting to snow. A few minutes later the front door slammed, the house shook! I heard her thumping upstairs.
I was sat at the computer and she burst into the room.
“Why don’t you get a proper f***ing job”, she screamed in desperation, “I can’t do this anymore, earn some f**cking money you complete loser”.
It took someone I totally loved to make me realise what I was doing.
How could I put the person dearest to me in such a position?
Unimaginable Pain
I felt empty inside. The pain I felt was unimaginable. I had betrayed both her and myself.
I’d just let myself slip into wimpy nothingness. I was like a wet lettuce, useless.
It was the hardest of realisations.
I’d spent six years failing and it had become a habit.
I sat there watching the snow getting heavier and worrying that I had sent my partner out in that weather to earn the money for our food and heat while I had wasted all that time doing, essentially nothing other than try to get rich quick without any effort.
The sky was now that white / grey colour when you know heavy snow is imminent.
So Scared
I felt pathetic. I was scared.
Scared she would leave me, scared I’d not done anything to change the festering situation. But worst of all scared I wouldn’t be able to turn it around.
I was also embarrassed that I’d let the situation get to where it was. That I’d just let my partner provide for me while I went off on this wild goose chase for unlimited riches.
On the surface I was the tough ex Recruiter turned Internet Marketer who never failed. I can do anything!
But the sad truth was at that moment I simply wasn’t worthy of everything she was giving me. She was right, I’d let her down, badly and that realization was the worst thing in the world to have to face.
I cobbled together a few pounds took my notepad and walked to the local Costa, the snow was crisp under foot.
I had to work out what to do and how to start earning money quickly.
Quality Decision
The first thing I did was make the quality decision that I had to focus on one area. In my haste to try and make money quickly with no effort, I’d become an extremely bad learner! Firstly, I had to re-learn how to learn.
Secondly, I had to refocus on my goals and dreams. I’d just totally defaulted on these and was just bumbling along.
Thirdly, I had to apply some logic to the situation.
I knew traffic was the life-blood of every web business needed. Having messed around with every traffic technique (other than doing the sensible thing and paying for quality traffic) I knew I simply had to get traffic to my websites.
Without traffic, you simply do not have an online business. I’d worked that out! As I had very little money, the only thing I could trade to get traffic was time.
So, logically, the only techniques open were social media or Search Engine Optimisation. My feeling was Social media was more for visibility and viability, so I decided SEO was the route to go.
I made my first true quality decision for a long time.
Search Engine Optimisation
I had to learn SEO from the ground up. In detail, not to try and find short cuts, but to do it methodically and strategically.
It makes a huge difference when you make a quality decision like that.
It took about 6 weeks to learn enough and to invest in enough online infrastructure to get started.
And, that’s not an awful lot of time in the great scheme of things, a 6 week investment! By now I was totally out of money and dropping into debt. I was now totally relying on my partner to keep me afloat.
I was getting it daily at this stage “why should I work 40 hours every week in a job I hate so you can sit there and piss about online all day?” It was a hugely valid question and I couldn’t answer it. I was hurting the person I loved most in the world.
So, I had to make her proud again and regain my own self-esteem. So, I got serious, really serious. I offered to do a friend’s site for free, and guess what, I had her ranked No.1 within a few days. SEO was much easier back then!
Referral
She told a couple of her friends and a week later, I had my first two paying clients. I charged peanuts because I still didn’t know if it would work in every case.
But…because I had learned properly, got the right information and invested time in making sure I did have it right, I had my second and third major success.
I doubled the price for the next client, and success No.4 quickly followed.
Within 9 months I got my first four figure per month client, and a further twelve months down the line I had a five figure per month SEO business. My partner was now semi-retired and working in the business – at last she was happy.
It was the least I owed her.
Laptop Lifestyle (At Last)
By 2012, we were living the Internet or Laptop lifestyle. We were spending time in Vancouver with her family, and we realised a long-held dream of buying a place in Spain.
We boug
ht an apartment in an exclusive cliff-top development on the Costa Del Sol (Eastern end, the nice side) and spent a shed load of money doing it up to luxury standards.
I’d made it! I had a thriving Internet business. I was working on my own terms, earning very well and I had everything I wanted.
On mid summer’s day in 2014 we married. We had a perfect wedding in the sunshine with our closest friends. We hired my squash club lounge, had a 70’s theme wedding and drank the best champagne and ate the finest food. The tables looked a picture as we walked in hand-in-hand as our friends clapped and cheered amongst the confetti and balloons and streamers.
What made me happiest of all was that I had a wife who thought I was wonderful as I had finally justified her faith in me.
This meant the world to me.
Isn’t this what we all want? To make our loved ones happy and secure?
Unimaginable Pain Again – But Worse
And, just when we were at our happiest and enjoying life to the max – the shit hit the fan in the worst possible way.
It was June 2016, we had some friends staying in Spain. We’d had an amazing day at one of the beach cafes watching paella being prepared from fresh over an open fire. We’d laughed and joked and then went to a local bar for the evening.
We got in around 11pm still laughing and joking.
Alison said she was getting ready for bed, I said I’d join her as soon as she’d finished getting ready.
Ten minutes later, after thinking she was very quiet, I walked around to the en suite bathroom. To my horror I found my wife collapsed on the bathroom floor.
I didn’t know right then, but she’d suffered a massive brain haemorrhage. Four hours later, without regaining consciousness, she passed away at the Hospital D’Axarquia in the next town along.
She was so much more than my wife. Friend, lover, confidente and business partner. She’d helped me grow, develop and build the business.
All of sudden, everything she was to me had been cruelly and horribly ripped away.
I was numb. I’d talked to her family in Vancouver, but the hospital basically kicked me out and sent me home with no support at 4am. I got in at 5am and sat there staring into space for goodness knows how long.
The image of her laying on the bathroom floor playing over and over again in my head.
I really don’t remember much of the next few days, thankfully our friends helped ease the burden.
The only thing I really remember is signing off Alison’s organ donations (read the story here) and the doctor hugging me. Even in death she was so giving, her organs saved five people’s lives in Andalucia.
As I’m sure you can imagine her death stopped me in my tracks.
Business To Run
But, I had a business to run, clients I couldn’t let down! I also now had two people’s work to do. So, for two months I buried myself in work, probably in total denial. If I’m honest, I really don’t remember much about those awful two months.
Then, one day, all the emotion poured out of me – without warning.
I was sitting there, back in the U.K, working away, and I just stopped.
I Lost It
I just sat there looking blankly at the wall in my office. First the tears came. Slowly at first, then a deluge. They flowed for what seemed like hours. I just sat there and cried and cried.
Then came the anger, why was my wife taken? Why was life so cruel?
I banged on the desk repeatedly. The webcam fell off the screen, pens went flying, things fell off the wall, it was like the room was possessed as inanimate objects flew in every direction. I ran downstairs in a rage, as I ran into the kitchen a mug fell off the mug tree, skidded over the counter and smashed on the floor.
This merely increased my anger! I pawed at the mug tree until I had a mug in hand. I threw it at the wall with all my might. It smashed into a thousand pieces with a deep shattering sound, leaving a huge dent in the wall.
It was quickly followed by an empty bottle. This time the shattering sound was sharp followed by the tinkling of shards of glass as they showered down all over the kitchen.
I have no idea where the strength came from, because it’s a big kitchen and shards of glass blew back all over me!
Goodness knows what the neighbours thought!
But, being showered by fine shards of glass made me stop, there, dead in my tracks.
Calm started to descend.
I surveyed the devastation in my kitchen and the tears flowed again. I stood there shaking, crying uncontrollably. After I don’t know how long, I calmed down. It was starting to get dark, so I must have stood there for a good few hours. Just staring at the wall in numbed shock.
Finally, I put the light on and walked to the cleaning cupboard under the stairs and got out the dustpan and brush and started to clear up.
Weird Stuff
There was obviously still some anger left in me, although this is a bit weird.
I was, by now, very thirsty, so I opened the fridge to get out a bottle of water. Don’t ask me how this happened but a bottle of my wife’s favourite pink wine fell out of the fridge door.
It all seemed to happen in slow motion.
I tried to catch it as it fell, but…juggling, the cold, wet slippery bottle it I just couldn’t quite grasp it and it fell to the tiled floor and smashed.
I felt the anger rising again, this time slowly, like a volcano that is slowly building to a massive eruption. As it erupted and all of my emotions burst out of me…all I could do was to throw the dustpan at the same wall I hurled the mug and bottle at.
To my astonishment, the dustpan hit the wall, smashed into tiny pieces and the handle flew back at me and I caught it with the hand I’d thrown it from! I don’t think I moved an inch, but it stuck!
Everything left me, I was totally drained. Emotionally and physically.
Sleep
By now it was late, I went to bed and slept for 12 hours.
In the morning, I cleared up and started to make plans for recovery.
I knew I couldn’t continue to work as I had been doing. I knew I needed space and time for me.
I Had To Put Myself Back Together
I peeled the SEO business back to two clients just to keep me ticking over while I put myself back together.
My amazing children decided that, four months after Alison passed away, they should take me back to our apartment. I was scared to go, but deep down I knew it was what she wanted, I simply had to face it.
As I walked through the door I was shaking, and my emotions were all over the place. However, with their support, I got through it and actually laughed for the first time since on that visit.
I made the quality decision to have a year just supporting the two SEO clients and nothing else.
I visited regularly over the following 18 months and came to love the place again. The clean lines of the modern apartment, the beautiful view out over the pool and Mediterranean Sea. The amazing Stained Glass mirror that she loved so much, we’d picked it together after finding a little shop tucked away in the side streets.
Back To Business
And it was there, back in our beautiful apartment, that I decided I had to build a business again.
This time it HAD to be on my terms and of my design.
It had to provide a lifestyle for me, a lifestyle that allowed me to be where I wanted when I wanted. And…I had to be able to that in a certain style.
And, finally, and this is the kicker, I had to actually help people achieve their goals in order for me to achieve mine this time.
In the past I have always focused either on myself or my immediate family. There is not really anything wrong with that, I guess. And…I think you have to be secure in yourself before you can go on to help others.
Help Others To Their Dreams
However, they say, that you only truly find yourself and true wealth when you can help others achieve their goals as well. I think it was Zig Ziglar who said “You will get all you want in life, if you help enough other people get what they want”.
And, it was my moment to realise that, sitting on the terrace of my apartment on a Thursday afternoon with a glass of beautiful deep red wine. Sitting there watching some young children play in the pool, hearing their innocent laughter and the splash of the cooling swimming pool water as they played. Looking out over the deep blue Mediterranean Sea with the crystal clear blue sky above, in the warm afternoon sunshine and ever so slightly cooling breeze of a Southern Spanish late September afternoon.
And, as I thought about my life and where it had taken me…I just knew, deep in my heart of hearts, that I simply had to help people escape from corporate world and job prison.
To help recruiters and sales people escape the target driven Hell of the sales environment. To help people start online businesses using their skills and to reduce the stress in their lives. For both them and their loved ones.
I knew from experience that corporate world is no life. The boss won’t care if you keel over from over work. They’ll just get rid of you and hire someone else to bleed dry. I know I’ve been there.
Corproate World Lie
Success in the corporate world is a lie, unless you get right to the very top. Otherwise, you might as well be in the Matrix. You see that film was a metaphor for real life. The job plugs into you like the pods in the Matrix. It bleeds you dry of every bit of life and energy and then you are just cast aside, spat out because you’re not of use anymore – or you die first!
My pensions were destroyed in the crash of 2008. I was supposed to get a £65k / year pension. I get less than £1,200!
The biggest fear of all Americans is that they will not have enough money to retire on. Unless you have significant savings, neither will you! The corporate ladder of success is leaning against the wrong wall my friends.
I had to secure myself and my family and my new partner. No-one else was going to look after me, no-one will look after you. You see, once I’d made that quality decision that I had to start another business and I had to help other people follow my success. It was easy.
The path just opened up in front of me.
I knew I had to find a mentor who had done what I now wanted to do. So, I went through a defined process to find him.
When I found him, I voraciously consumed everything he taught and then, and this is key, I took massive action!! I learned how to start an online business using skills I already had in my locker. I started and built and I made it happen.
I’ve trodden the path and that’s why I want to show you how to do exactly the same….hopefully without some of the intense drama I’ve had to go through.
But, Jan and I now spend our time between Spain and the London leafy suburbs. Our Monday morning is spent playing Boule in the sun, I love Mondays now.
When all is said and done, I was able to build that “laptop lifestyle” and “work” on my own terms and only when I want.
The best bit?
Helping others do the same. I’ve seen the top and the bottom of the bottom
Let me lead you out of job prison to a new stress free laptop life on your terms!
