This Guy Went From Flat Broke to Making Close to a Million a Year

From Men's Health

In 2008, I was running a successful viral video agency, but, I never did any marketing, didn't save anything, or put much effort into it.

I had people doing most of the work and I would make a 90 percent profit margin. Instead of marketing myself and my business for all those years, I played a lot of Xbox.

I thought that I'd made it.

The Setback

Then the recession hit and everything flipped. I found myself in 2009 with no clients, no money, and no direction. I was flat out broke and it was my fault.

How broke was broke? My net worth was -$25,000. Negative, because it included my credit card debt.

I hit an especially low point when I had to tell my assistant, Karen Glass, that I couldn’t pay her anymore, and she needed to start looking for other work.

The Turning Point

Sometimes it takes someone else believing in us before we can believe in ourselves, and that’s what happened to me.

Karen refused to leave and said she believed in me and wasn't going anywhere. She worked for over a year for no pay, simply on the belief that I could turn things around. That's when I started focusing.

In January of 2009, I decided to turn to Twitter to re-build my business. I wanted to focus on building a greater sense of community. Being an entrepreneur is an isolating thing, and I needed to find my "water cooler." I wanted to find my people without the constraint of geography and it was starting to happen more and more online.

I decided I was going to give it my all and live on Twitter that month and if it worked, I'd stay, and if it didn't, I would know I at least tried. I tweeted 7,000 times that month.

It worked. I went from 1,200 followers to 10,000—an especially impressive feat, because this was before celebrities and politicians were really on Twitter.

The Newfound Success

That’s when everything skyrocketed. My following kept getting bigger and bigger, and then requests to consult came. There were speaking invitations. And then the book deal with Wiley & Sons for UnMarketing: Stop Marketing, Start Engaging.

The book deal lead to speaking tour. I travelled to 30 cities in 10 weeks. I was still flat broke, but I had a belief it would work. My goal my entire life had been to be a keynote speaker.

That 30-city tour was a testament to the community I'd built through Twitter. Half the events that were put on, were by people who had never created an event before. They just knew they wanted to support the book.

Deciding to bet on myself has continued to work, and I've now done hundreds of keynotes across the country.

But my best decision? The best ROI in the history of social media was meeting Alison, my now wife, biz partner, show co-host, and co-author.

In 2009, Alison was one of the people I'd tweet with. We quickly became best friends, dated, and later married in December 2013.

We feel like they’re a perfect complement of skills. We connected when I was finishing up a train wreck of a first draft of UnMarketing and she redid it into the best-selling book that still sells today.

We do everything together. Our show/podcast has been going for over 6 years, 300+ episodes—and it's just her and I. Without her, UnMarketing would no longer exist.

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