11th
I’m a big fan of Jeremy Shoemaker. His blog has been a guiding force in understanding entrepreunerial spirit and marketing for me for quite some time. Furthermore, he is a guy that tells it from his heart which is a belief I have been working hard to internalize.
I got the opportunity to meet Jeremy earlier this year at an affiliate marketing conference here in Denver - and to say the least, he is an extremely grounded individual. After reading this recent blog post of his, I wanted to give a response from my experience.
It seems the market and economy will be a scary place for the next couple of years, but I think it will give us all a chance to see what we’re made of.
I had a great dinner with my business partner, Steve Thiel, last night and during our conversation, an old client story came up about a guy that owned a mortgage brokerage. I believe he dealt heavily in the subprime arena and had a certain sense of sleeziness about him: he wanted to hussle everyone. He didn’t care what your income stability was, it was all about credit score and what you wanted to report as your income. It seemed he was purely in business to make money.
A lot of people will respond to that line and say - “shouldn’t all businesses be all about making money?”
No.
I want to create something that is beyond myself, that provides a secure living for those involved, and is on the cutting edge of human creativity and innovation.
We were actually in our conference room delivering design proofs for his website when he went into full hustle mode and was practically going to offer me a house right there because I had strong credit. I have been very hesitant to even consider such a commitment so far in my life as owning and operating HotPress Web has been very consuming and at times my income has been volotile - from making good money all the way down to zero for months at a time.
Our client was a guy that seemed to have it all figured out, he made a lot of money, had a great wife, a couple houses, nice cars - seemed like the works. However, there was something not authentic about him, his company, how he was acquiring his wealth - it just seemed too easy.
Long story short, I decided to pass on the offer and chances had it that he was out of business within weeks anyhow. His shop crashed alongside many others around January of 2007 when the real-estate market took its first dive.
Those around me know that I have committed long hours, risk, and sacrifice to my company. We have constantly pushed ourselves to be a better company, better experts in our field, and better members of our community. This, at times, has really bit us in the ass. We try a lot of ideas and sometimes they take us down a bad path - but we push on.
My point here is that money should not be easy to make. Making money comes from hard work, innovation, and taking risks. I hope that in these hard times - we all bunker down and show the world how great it is to live in the United States.
