My Life: A Case Study

On August 15-18, 2008, I attended Andrew and Daryl Grant’s “Look Inside the Grants’ Internet Business” workshop in Sydney. Andrew and Daryl are a couple of technophobes who made $250k in their first year online.

I was put onto this seminar by a friend who went to it last year. He said it was one of the best he’d ever been to, and I was just looking for an excise to visit friends down south so jumped at the chance.

I didn’t expect to learn a whole lot because this is the kind of thing I’ve done for nearly a decade. What I did expect was to be hit with the hard sell, and was pleasantly surprised that I wasn’t. All in all, it was an interesting four days.

Sure enough, it was a four day sell, but they certainly packed it out with plenty of free information.

One thing I should clarify is that I’m not a seminar junkie. I’ve only ever been to a couple of free evening sessions; one was by a local guy Barnaby de Palma who has discovered a way to get a brand new website onto the first page of Google in only 24 hours; the other is a big name American guy, Stephen Pierce, who most seminar junkies would know. Cool guy, Stephen - he and I will be friends one day.

If you’re interested, what Andrew and Daryl were selling was access to the new internet secrets website. For just $600 a month (for 12 months) you get access to them, their resources, and their panel of experts. That probably sounds expensive, but for what you’re getting (if you didn’t already know it) its actually a bargain.

One thing that I was exposed to that I’d never seen before was “coaching”. I’ve never done any kind of personal development before and it was a real eye opener. Each morning, we spent an hour or so working with a coach called Paul Blackburn - it was his job to teach us about mental blocks that might be holding us back from reaching our full potential.

This struct a chord with me; I possess all this expertise, all this knowledge and experience, and yet I haven’t seemed to make it to where I want to be. More about coaching later.

I left Sydney with a new focus. If these technophobes could do it, I sure as hell could! And I will.

I grew up with computers in my life. My parents bought our first computer in 1980 when I was just four years old. I could type instructions and load programs before I could spell! Thanks to the old Apple II, I got the word “catalogue” wrong in a school spelling bee; the operating system command on the Apple is spelled catalog.

I guess I was always going to end up working with computers. I went to university to study Information Technology and Electronic Engineering but didn’t finish either degree - there was too much to do in the real world!

I left university to start work for a tourism company where I cut my teeth as the sole programmer and systems administrator. I then got headhunted into an .. *ahem* adult entertainment company where I learned all about search engine optimization. I like to refer to this period - around 2001 - as the wild west of the internet; anything went and there was a lot of money to be made. Unfortunately I was making it for someone else.

After a few years, I set out on my own, building sites and generating traffic. I met with some success, but I wasted a lot of time building applications that never went anywhere. The last few years I’ve been developing a website that generates and distributes sales leads which has kept me gainfully employed, but at the expense of my time.

What I want to do now is build websites that generate a passive income. To stimulate and motivate, I’m selling my leads website, the only site that is making me any significant income. I’ve got until about November to start making some cashola or I’m going to have to get a job!

I know I’ve got the skills to do this, but what I’ve never had is the motivation. I’m going to document every step and every result so anyone who’s interested can come along on my journey. I don’t expect I’ll be making the same kind of wage I’m on now by November, but I expect to be well on my way.

If you’re trying to start your home internet business, make sure you subscribe to my blog - I’m certain you’ll learn something and I hope I can inspire great things from you to!

Hey everyone! My name is Andrew and I’d like to welcome you to my new blog, egomaniacally entitled My Life: A Case Study. So who am I and why would anyone want to read about me? Well, I’m a 32 year old internet entrepreneur on the verge of a changing my life.

I’ve spent the last decade plugging away at various online projects, with varying degrees of success. And whilst I’d like to have thought I was focused and had a plan, to be honest I could just see myself doing the same thing for the next decade - basically, lots of work with relatively little payoff.

Then something happened to change my whole perspective. I went to an online marketing seminar that was recommended to me by a friend. I spent four days in a room with 500 other people listening to a number of strategies for making money online. On the last day, in the cab to the airport, I came to a troubling realization. I thought to myself, “I knew all of that!”

I had spent four days listening to industry experts - highly successful people who deeply immersed in online marketing and making an absolute fortune - and they couldn’t teach me a single thing. I knew everything that they had told me!

So why aren’t I making a fortune?

This question puzzled me and I sought answers. And something amazing happened. I found answers!

I’ve never been one to read self-help books and go to feel-good seminars and the like; I’ve always just figured that I’d know what I needed to do and I’d go off and do it. But as everyone knows, it’s never quite that simple.

So this blog is going to be an insight into my journey. Things are afoot, and if you are in a similar situation, or perhaps looking to make a change in your life, I hope my story will inspire you to do great things.

Everything I learn and everything I achieve will be posted here. So strap yourself in - this is going to be one hell of a ride!