Over the years I have always known that I was different, I could not even think of getting a job, I had to be my own boss. I have always seen ways to do things better, ways to make more money and systems that could be done to make it all work better. For most of my life that has worked out very well for me. But recently I have lost my way. One big reason, I believe, is because of the people I am around. They try to talk me out of the ideas I have. I don’t have many friends that are successful the way I want to be, and when I have found successful people I get some information from them but mostly they don’t see me as a peer. So a few months ago I started blogging, I used wordpress. I was able to find many other people who thought about success the way I did and some of them even had achieved it. I quickly found google reader and added the top blogs I liked to read to my reader.

I was now finding a ton of useful information. But I knew I needed more, I needed to find successful people that I could hang out with, bounce ideas off of. I needed a mastermind group, I found a few local ones, they were very expensive to join, and the people in there were great at running their business but not really what I was looking for. I also went to seminars, I found a few really good people there, one guy who I sat next to, was cynical about the content and did not stick around, we talked a bit so we traded cards. I told him I would call him later with a summary of what he missed. So I did just that, and when we talked he told me that he was a large commercial real estate investor, (Something I always wanted to do). I knew of many of his projects, most of which are worth tens of millions. A few weeks later we met for lunch and we talked for about 2 hours. I got great encouragement from him but he was way out of my league, he did tell me that if I ever found some good deals that I should call him up.

Around this time, AJC, the author of one of the blogs that I read regularly, 7million7years, decided to have a contest. This was a contest for this multi millionaire to personally mentor and help 7 people. This guy was the real deal, and even better he was a techie like me, he made his money in business and also in investing in real estate, everything that I wanted. This was what I was looking for. So I signed up. I was hoping to finally find the key that had been missing, to find the wherewithal to finally go out there and get what is mine. He first asked for an application that I quickly filled out, next he asked for a 100 word bio, I also quickly sent in. Next he posted that bio and tested the finalists on how to drive traffic to it. I did a popunder and a 120 second refresh metatag from my most popular site, I also mentioned it here and here in my blog. I also sent a few emails to friends to go look at it. I made the top 30, now I doing the next test, a 600 word essay, so that I can make the top 15.