Rob Bell's Notes from a Yorkshire Internet Megalomaniac

10 years ago I was a very successful Marketing Manager, after studying Business Management at University then getting my Postgraduate Diploma in Marketing – I’d discovered the joys of marketing in my first year at Uni, and I knew it was something I wanted to pursue as a career – I had a very clear vision at this stage. After graduating I went on to work for some of the world’s top companies, marketing mainly technology products. I loved my work, and loved my play too – I was keen on sports, playing rugby league, rugby union and field hockey. I also found great pleasure in extreme sports – and could often be found performing aerial craziness.

Then, my life took a very unexpected turn when I destroyed 78% of my T8 vertebra in a fall on a BMX track. During the course of treatment I also discovered I had osteoporosis – quite unusual in a 29 year old male! As if this wasn’t enough, some time after I’d rehabilitated from the injury I took another bad fall – breaking my back again, also damaging my hip, rupturing my sacro-iliac joint and subsequently suffering sciatica, chronic back pain and a loss of mobility.

In probably the worst month of my life, I broke my back, got made redundant, lost my company car, my wife left me to go live back in New Zealand, I got evicted by my landlord from my cottage on the edge of a lake as her daughter wanted to move in, I had to give my beloved Old English, Mogul, away and I soon got into debt after losing my rather good salary. And oh, I had to move into a bedroom in my parents’ flat – not having lived them for some 12 years.

Losing my mobility was a very tough, bitter pill to swallow. Suddenly I could no longer play sports, and even simple walking became a struggle. I could get relief laid on my back, or sometimes that could be the most painful thing. For 3 years or so I became a virtual recluse, hardly leaving my flat at all, and eschewing any form of social life. I couldn’t sit in a chair for long periods of time, meaning I couldn’t work in an office, and manual work was not a realistic alternative due to my disability.

About 12 months ago, my obsession with computers branched out in a new direction – that of Internet Marketing, via a personal development programme that enabled me to finally break free of the shackles of depression.

As a Marketer, to discover I could earn a living from the comfort of my home with my existing skills, no matter how my physical handicap might restrict the things I can do was a true revelation – although I still to this day don’t understand why it took me so long to discover it, having been a computer addict since the age of 8 (my computer was a Sinclair ZX80, that’s all you could get back in 1980!). I could set my own hours, even work from bed if I needed to.

Even with my years of experience in Marketing, my beginning with IM was a very steep learning curve – there’s a world of difference between marketing with corporation budgets and marketing with virtually no finances at all, as I soon found out.

I took a 6 month hiatus earlier this year after the death of my Father, but am now back with a plan and a glint in my eye, keen to develop my online businesses to a whole new level. How I ended up doing the $100 Million Challenge is because of a well-timed call from one of Russell Brunson’s staff – although at the time I wasn’t ready to get back to the computer, it set the wheels in motion for my return – now I’m back, more determined than ever, and ready to excel – it’s about time, to be honest!

Best of luck to everyone else taking the $100 Million Challenge

Rob

Well, it had to happen eventually – After a long lie in this morning to catch up on the lack of sleep yesterday, this evening I got my first experience of Wii Rock Band, – the game where you either sing, play guitar/bass, or drum to a number of well-known and some not so well-known songs. It’s serious fun – especially when there’s a group of you. 5 of us took it in turns to sing badly, ‘strum’ tunelessly, and mostly miss the beat through artists like Black Sabbath, Weezer, Faith No More, The Beastie Boys and even Die Toten Hosen – a german punk band I first encountered last year in Ibiza courtesy of mein host at a bar I often visited, Tom – a former East German punk.

One of my friends used to drum in bands so he put us to shame once he’s stopped drumming twice as many notes as were on screen, but I discovered my left hand to right foot (kick pedal foot) co-ordination was severely lacking – it soon improved though. Funny how throughout my teens we were told how computer games were making us all unfit, then the advent of the Wii has meant that games can be quite a physical challenge – Wii Boxing is exhausting, one round and I’m drenched with sweat! Heck if Wii’s had been around when we were kids, you might have had more chance of seeing me in the Olympics – the ZX Spectrum was hardly a workout, although typing in the games out of computer magazines certainly improved my typing – anyone else remember spending hours typing in line after line of Hexadecimal code only to discover on completing it that it didn’t work because somewhere in the machine code you’d made a mistake? The only way of solving it was to go through it digit by digit comparing your input to the magazine – many was the time the Spectrum got switched off in disgust after this happening! Ah to have games on tape that took 20 minutes to load, and a thermal printer with shiny silver paper again!

I’ve been busying myself today getting into the $100 Million Challenge – starting the video courses and getting on to my first assignment. So far, I’m really impressed at how well the course is delivered – it’s very easy to get into, and Russell Brunson appears to be way ahead of the curve when it comes to presenting his product – the whole package is very polished.

Although I’ve studied and worked in Marketing since I was 18, I love learning and adding to my knowledge at any opportunity – you never know when one of those things may subsequently skyrocket your achievements and earnings.

Online learning was a lifesaver for me when I was immobilised with a broken back – it helped me get over what was a very difficult time in my life – going from being very sporty to being completely immobile was a sudden and very frustrating change I wouldn’t want anyone to have to go through. Still, I had a fantastic time doing the sports that eventually crippled me and I wouldn’t change anything – except for the 2 specific landings that did the most damage – one in 1999, the latter in 2004!

Just done some Traffic Exchange surfing for the first time in ages, it’s a great way of seeing what people are promoting at the moment, and 10 seconds is a very short time to make someone interested in your product/service so you have to be good to do it well – there are lots of great people in the TE community who are always prepared to help people make money for themselves. I often attend Saturday training at Affiliate Funnel where I’ve learned so much about list building, developing splash pages, landing pages and the world of traffic exchanges from fantastic teachers like Jon Olson, Mike Paetzold and Paul Kinder.

Rob

Technorati Profile

It’s been a while since I’ve pulled an all-nighter working, but I got caught up in a computer-driven time black hole last night – ended up going to bed at 7am, then had to get up at 9.30am to go to the dentist so didn’t even get any sleep for fear of not waking up in time to have my gnashers tormented! Ended up watching US sitcoms on Channel 4 – Everybody Loves Raymond, Just Shoot Me, and Frasier – only the latter managed to raise a chuckle, I wish I could have slept through the first two! I enjoy Everybody Loves Raymond usually, I’m sure I’m not the only one whose mother might possess one or two Marie-like qualities!

After being tortured in the name of hygiene at the dentist my mouth’s sore so no sleep this afternoon so far! It’s great that I can pick and choose my own working hours, but it really does my head in when my sleep pattern is the complete opposite to what it should be – even though there are also advantages to do with being up at the same time as people in other time zones, I often attend web seminars that can start at 9pm in the US (Eastern) which means 2am here… if it’s still going at 4am my brain sponge gets less absorbant, heck I’ve even fallen asleep at the computer on one occasion!

Fortunately, today I mostly have jobs to do that involve installing and ftping, so I don’t need to be running at 110% just to watch progress bars march across my screen. I’ve got a Webinar (web seminar) at 9pm EST tonight though, so best get a few hours of Zzzzs this evening. It’s a Russell Brunson seminar if you’re interested!

Note at 1.50am – I didn’t get any Zzzzs after all – tinkering with one of my sites caused some random script errors to appear, and I just spent 3 hours fixing it – Aaaagh! Still, only 10 minutes to the Webinar Now… zombie must stay awake. TGIF (Thank God it’s Friday!)

Note at 2.13am – after 10 mins in the webinar, my Skype credit ran out so I lost the audio, ah sweet Irony… bed beckons!

Rob