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Okay…

Much of what you are about to read is very personal.

Some of it is even embarrassing to talk about.

And, until now, I have kept a lot of this a secret from almost everyone I know.

Yet all of it has been absolutely invaluable to me.

And maybe, just maybe, you’ll find value in it, too.

Anyway, first things first.

There are two “secrets” about me I want to share with you that most people don’t know—including some of my closest friends and family members:

1.) The first thing is I met my wife, Tanna, on the Internet via an online Bible study group in late 1999. We lived over 2,000 miles apart, and we saw each other only twice (in person) before we got married a year later. She sold everything she owned, hopped on a plane and left her friends, family and life behind to be with me.

2.) The second thing most people don’t know about me is that, just 9 months later,

We Were Homeless!

It’s true.

At least technically speaking.

Here’s what happened:

Way early on, before we got married, we decided Tanna would NOT get a regular “day job” when she came out here.

Instead, she needed to have her own business.

And since Tanna had a little “side business” cleaning offices before coming out here, it just seemed natural for her to start a business doing that.

And she did.

She got on the phone and, within a month, had a cleaning business making more money part time than I was at my full time job.

Only problem is, if you don’t know how to manage money, you will lose it.

Happens to people all the time.

And it happened to us, too.

In fact, we got so heavily in debt (mostly from buying phone leads, expensive training tools and products from the—now dissolved—MLM company we were in) we were forced out of our cozy apartment with a deck overlooking a golf course in the middle of Federally protected wet lands—complete with a pool, hot tub, sauna and weight room—into a small, cramped $300 per month…

Two Room Office!

Hey, it was either that or move in with my mother.

If you’re married, then you know how “catty” a wife and mother-in-law can get with each other.

To me, the choice was simple.

The office it was.

And of course, it was all just “temporary”, right?

We figured we’d stay there, get a LOT of work done building the ‘ol MLM biz we’d joined, make some money and then move out.

After all, what else is there to do when you live in an office besides work?

Well, like all pie-in-the-sky ideas, it worked out fine “on paper”, but not in reality.

First, let me tell you about this office.

It was two rooms with a bathroom.

No shower, no bed, not even enough room for a small dresser to put our clothes in.

Just a toilet, sink and two large desks.

Right next door was the landlord’s office—conjoined to our unit by a door with no lock.

Now, I don’t know if Mr. Donahue (the landlord) suspected we were actually living there (we told him we’d be “spending a lot of time” there), but he was at work early every day.

And, being a rather elderly man on multiple prescription drugs, he always had to use the bathroom first thing in the morning.

Which meant… if we didn’t want to be caught sleeping on the floor of the office when he walked in to “do his duty” (and maintain the illusion we were not living there) we had to get up around 6:30 a.m. every single day, 7 days a week, put the blankets and pillows away, and get out the door to the gym down the street… where we’d exercise, play basketball, shower and then get back to the office. That way, when we came back from the gym, it looked like we were just coming in for the day.

Can you imagine that?

I still feel like a dork when I think about it.

But that was our routine day in, and day out.

Except on Sundays, when the gym wasn’t open and we had to “make do” with a bar of soap and a small sink that shot out spurts of cloudy water clustered with little pieces of debris (the water filter people in the MLM company called the debris “floaties”—little pieces of used toilet paper, food and other neat stuff that made it past the water treatment plant).

As you can imagine, it was a bit depressing.

And, if there was ever a time I thought I’d be a complete and total failure—in both business and life in general—it was then.

Taking my wife, who left her family and home to be with me, and dumping her in a small, cramped, two room office—with no bed, no shower and no kitchen—and with an unlocked door the landlord would fly through whenever he needed to answer the call of nature.

Plus, we were going through a nasty lemon lawsuit, had 5 maxed-out credit cards we could barely pay, and I was spending a lot of time and energy desperately…

Trying To Keep It A Secret
From Everyone!

I wouldn’t even let my friends and family see the new “apartment” (or “unit” as I called it—not wanting to lie).

Not so much because I was embarrassed.

But because the last thing I wanted was for anyone to see me sweat.

It’s sad, but many times when you set a goal, it’s not your sworn enemies you have to watch out for.

It’s your closest friends and family.

They’ll try to kill your goals faster than all your worst enemies combined.

Usually because they don’t want to see you get hurt.

But another reason is, while they technically do want you to succeed, they just don’t want you to succeed…

That Much.

You can even see this phenomenon happen in nature.

Put a bunch of crabs in a bucket, and all the others will try like hell to pull back in any ones who try to get out.

Anyway, I think you get the point.

Things sucked.

And I know a lot of people reading this have gone through much worse.

So I’m not telling you this to gain sympathy.

No, there’s a reason I am telling you about this.

You see, it’s when you’re at your lowest when you’re forced to look at yourself and find out who you really are—the good, the bad and especially…

The Ugly!

When this happens, and one of your core beliefs are shattered, it’s not an easy thing to deal with.

Some people turn to drinking.

Some people turn to drugs.

Some cheat on their spouses or do other “self medicating” (i.e. self destructive) activities that only make things worse.

There are also a few (very few) who stick it out, face up to the truth, and fight the good fight—plowing forward with “hell-bent” determination.

Me?

Well, I couldn’t afford the booze or drugs.

And having an affair was simply out of the question (and a bit too “adult” for tastes anyway).

And I was way too stubborn (and foolish) to admit the truth.

So what I did was simple:

I bent over, put my head right smack dab in the sand and continued…

Living In Denial!

I just couldn’t handle the fact all my “grand” plans and ideas were failing.

That the MLM thing wasn’t working—and that I had wasted the past few years and thousands of dollars (all on credit, racking up interest) on an MLM deal that wasn’t working.

It was much easier to simply deny all that and “keep on keepin’ on.”

And then something interesting happened.

Something I like to call our “hit bottom” experience.

I don’t know about you, but I believe that, in order for many of us to get on track and figure out what God really wants us to do in life, we have to hit some kind of “bottom”—where everything just kind of goes to hell.

Where our beliefs are challenged, our will power stretched, and our courage tested. Where we realize we’re so far “off the mark”, and buried so deep in lies and mistakes, we’re all but forced to look at ourselves and the world, and figure out our place in it.

The Proverbs say, “Before honor comes humility.”

And like most “hit bottom” experiences—mine was both humiliating and a blessing, too.

Here’s what happened:

If you study a lot of marketing “masters”, you know many of them started out selling ‘door-to-door.”

In fact, Dan Kennedy once said you’re much better off skipping the next marketing seminar or buying the next new marketing product and, instead, get a part time job selling something door-to-door. That it would be a lot more educational (not to mention cheaper).

Well, how’s this for door-to-door, “wrestle-’em-to-the-ground” selling:

Towards the third month of “office living”, we took the advice of some grizzled old MLM guy, and literally went door-to-door passing out MLM recruitment tapes to local businesses.

As you can guess, this was not fun.

The first day alone we were laughed at, sneered at, and (in some cases) even yelled at.

I don’t know if you’ve ever done anything as stupid as selling MLM door-to-door.

But take my word for it—the constant, relentless rejection is enough to drive you insane.

And after just a few days of pounding the pavement… it became obvious that, not only did nobody want to sign up in our business, but…

Nobody Even Wanted
The Tapes!

It’s one thing to get rejected after someone hears your pitch.

It’s quite another when they tell you to hit the road before even hearing it.

Just thinking about it makes my brain shiver.

Anyway, after a couple weeks of this torture… when it became obvious the whole MLM thing wasn’t working—when it became obvious we were dead broke and in debt up to our eyeballs—when it became obvious our marriage was slipping down the toilet at “breakneck” speed—when we had finally “hit bottom”… everything finally changed…

Literally Overnight!

In fact, I can still remember waking up at 3 a.m.—plagued with insomnia, indigestion boiling in my stomach—laying there and praying, “God, there’s gotta be a better way. What do I do?”

At this point I knew if something didn’t change—something didn’t happen to break this ruthless cycle—then something would give and things would get drastically worse real fast.

Not only were Tanna and I constantly arguing (with Mr. Donahue’s ear to the door, I’m sure)… but we were running out of money, running out of energy and running out of time.

If there was ever a time when we “hit bottom” this was it.

Lucky for us, God was listening and I ran into the concept of direct response copywriting and marketing that exact same night.

It was like my entire life went from black and white… to full color.

What happened was I picked up a book written by Joe Vitale called “The 7 Lost Secrets Of Success” and read it all the way through—cover to cover—in one sitting.

I can even remember the exact part of the book that got me.

It was a story of how during the great depression Bruce Barton (the legendary ad man the book is about) told a struggling, out-of-work and down-on-his-luck salesman, who had a talent for writing sales letters, to look out the window at all the office buildings, and come up with a sales letter that would “sell” one of those businesses on hiring him.

It was like I’d been living in a cave and someone dragged me out into the light.

Reading that one simple story turned my brain on fire.

And I knew, right then and there, I’d be a copywriter.

But how was I to get started?

How was I to find my first client?

How was I going to get paid doing this?

It took a while, but I figured out a simple little “game plan” that got me started and allowed me to skip (for the most part) having to “beg” for clients or jump through hoops of fire to get them to hire me.

And you know what?

Anyone can do the same thing—as long as you have some basic copywriting skills and the guts to temporarily work without a net.

(click here to continue…)