The Journey For Success - Life Long Schooling.

[NCMedia]

I'll start this section with a quick look into my past success/failure/back to success.

(going back 10 years).
I'm 18, i'm in my second year of college as a graphic design and advertising student starting my own freelance business. Due to my highschool overqualifying me for college, and thanks to the skills/talents I mastered, I got to skip my first year of this 3 year course. Though by the time I was almost done the course, I had already attracted some heavy hitter clients that demanded my time more than my schooling... I complied, school isn't going anywhere, and if I'm already gaining exposure and making money from the little they taught me, I'm willing to risk failing college to retain these new customers (after all, they are paying my rent/food/life, school is draining it)...

Just before I finish, I get retained by a finance/production/distribution arm of CanWest Global called Fireworks ent. as their Creative and Media Directer with a lucrative salary! Passed school by the skim of my pants, wrapped up a huge contract, and jumped on board with Fireworks proudly!! Here's where it gets interesting - By the time I turn 20 I bought a huge corner lot executive home, my first BMW, all the toys/parties/lifestyle I thought I wanted, money in the bank, and quietly lost all my independant customers for my freelance business. I didn't mind, after all I've got a cushy secure 'job' right?

Another year went by, and due to circumstance the company downsized heavily, and cut many exec's first, then worked their way down with over 80% of the rest of the staff, I was one of the first to go...

Within a few months I had to either land another lucrative salary quickly and re-establish myself or sell my home and explore other avenues. I chase the latter and took some time to myself - THIS 'TIME TO MYSELF' lasted 5 years. A part of my is glad, I got to rebel against the system and just live MY life, and live off the NET I had created from buying/flipping a phase 1 new home within a few years while real estate was hot plus my inuitive talents being utilized to the fullest... Anyway so I didn't care much about bills or finding new work or getting my old clients back OR searching for new ones, I figured I'd always have this talent and this money! Boy was I wrong.

I went from making well over 10K a month to almost ZERO within a few months, and I still feel the effects to this day. Why? Because shortly after my new revalation that I 'still got it', my hunt for work started to become more and more difficult as our economy and business owners started to utilize offshore/ourstourced companies in foreign countries to look after contracts remotely - what I would charge 10K for, can be done by these market undercutters for less than 15%!! So now I find myself in a spiraling loop of more and more small clients with longer and longer maintenance per cusotmer, also utilizing myself as a company to 'outsource to' for remote work. I felt cheated, I'm bidding against offshore companies realllllllly underselling myself to make less than half of what I use to, something HAD to change. One word came to mind - diversify -.

I started thinking of the most creative and out of the box solutions I could offer my clients and attract new ones with, that could NOT be outsourced. I started thinking of my own products and leveraging all my skills into different baskets of business offerings, I finally started attracting local big brands again as they saw more and more servicing options that made spending the extra buck more attractive instead of outsourcing and hurting our economy.

Now - 10 years later, what started out as a small freelance design firm with a college logo, is one of Canada's most reputable and respected media agencies known as NCMedia.ca. The success is back, the hunger and hunt of my initial cycle is back, and it shows through my work and relationship building strategies on all levels (including the bank statements ).

Moral is, no matter how big you go, and how fast you grow, you can lose it all instantly and without remorce. This crazy thing we call life is full of never ending challenges, spikes upwards and downwards, the secret is to never let yourself flatline. If you need change, then CHANGE, if you need commitment to yourself or your objectives, GET A MOTIVATIONAL COACH, GET INSPIRED, never tell yourself that your success will last forever, because when you least expect failure it will bite you in the ***.

To everyones success, when you fail - analyze your defeat, analyze yourself, your true goals and passions for real success, you will come back 10 times stronger and reach new spikes after each downfall in life both on and offline.

Norb.

[Twi$ted]

Great success story Norb! It was pretty inspiring reading the whole thing. I hope that I can be half as profitable as you and hopefully be able to post my own success story on here one day.

[Chanetsa]

While I was reading this I realised just how many parallels there are to my own life! Last December I took redundancy from a job paying well over $100k. I have started a new business and have been making slow progress but must confess to looking at the job classifieds from time-to-time.

Due to my small client base, I find time for planning how to grow my business. This is where affiliate marketing comes in. I have had a dabble and found it to be quite rewarding, so I am going for more. The biggest challenge I now face is selecting the next value proposition. There is a lot of competition out there and I don't want to be wasting time selling things that are not in demand or competing where I am not likely to win.

I hope this forum can help me answer these questions.

[hornetss]

Great Post Norb