What Hap­pened Dur­ing And Af­ter My First Time

From Willie Craw­ford.

I was on­line for SIX YEARS be­fore I at­tended my first in­ter­net mar­ket­ing sem­i­nar (in De­cem­ber 2002), yet at­tend­ing that first sem­i­nar was the cat­a­lyst that started my al­ready suc­cess­ful busi­ness grow­ing exponentially.

I prob­a­bly would not have even at­tended that first sem­i­nar had I not been in­vited to speak, so „luck” played a part in my dis­cov­er­ing one of the most-pow­er­­ful on­line suc­cess secrets.

My cir­cum­stances were dif­fer­ent than many of my con­tem­po­raries though in that I still have an­other year to serve in the U.S. Air Force at the time. At­tend­ing sem­i­nars meant sched­ul­ing live events, and in­deed build­ing an in­ter­net busi­ness, in a way where it did­n’t in­ter­fere with my be­ing a full-time soldier.

What hap­pened was that at that sem­i­nar I was ex­posed to some re­ally amaz­ing peo­ple who were do­ing what I even­tu­ally wanted to do, and do­ing it at a much big­ger level than I had pre­vi­ously al­lowed my­self to even imag­ine possible.

At that sem­i­nar I dis­cov­ered that some of the best learn­ing hap­pened af­ter-hours. I dis­cov­ered this when I was walk­ing down the hall­way with Ra­mon Williamson (one of the speak­ers) and he asked John Reese (one of the at­ten­dees) if he had time for a lit­tle „brain­storm­ing.”

John said yes, and Ra­mon sug­gested we could hang out in his suite. Ra­mon or­ders a few snacks from room ser­vice, and from around 9pm that night un­til 4am the next morn­ing, Ra­mon and John bounced ideas off of each other, and I sat lis­ten­ing in amazement. 

I won’t re­peat what they said, only that they had in­come goals at least 10 times as big as mine… and they clearly ex­plained HOW it was possible.

That sem­i­nar was where I also dis­cov­ered „the joint ven­ture” and the back end. Prior to that event I viewed EVERYONE as my competitor.

At the sem­i­nar, I dis­cov­ered about 20 peo­ple who were gen­uinely NOT afraid to share with me what was work­ing as long as I was will­ing to do the same for them.

They taught me to drop the poverty men­tal­ity, and that to­gether we could make the pie big­ger for every­one. Over the next few years I did projects with most of the speak­ers and sev­eral of the attendees!

Af­ter I spoke, they all openly cri­tiqued my busi­ness model, know­ing that it would help the other at­ten­dees. I ba­si­cally had one prod­uct that rep­re­sented 90% of my in­come and I had no real back­end prod­uct to of­fer af­ter that first sale. They FIXED that.

I left that sem­i­nar so pumped up that I was ready to ex­plode. I had dri­ven the dozen hours from Eglin AFB, Florida to Hawk’s Cay down in the Florida Keys. All dur­ing the 12-hour re­turn drive, I planned my next step.

Within a month of at­tend­ing my first sem­i­nar, I boldly de­cided that I was go­ing to host my own sem­i­nar, and be­gan putting it together.

Four months af­ter at­tend­ing my first ever live event, I hosted a sem­i­nar in Pen­sacola, Florida (in April 2003). It was­n’t huge but it was a HUGE step for me.. one of many that I would take in rel­a­tively rapid succession.

Speak­ers at the first sem­i­nar in­cluded Dr. Bob Sil­ber, Ra­mon Williamson, Fred Gleeck, Ar­mand Morin, Tony Blake, Stephen Pierce, Gary Knuck­les, and my­self. Stephen was the first speaker, and I can still tell you to this day ex­actly what he said. In fact, I can tell you to this day what ALL of my speak­ers said.

I could go on for­ever with how at­tend­ing my first sem­i­nar sur­rounded me with movers-and-shak­ers, and to­tally en­er­gized me. I hon­estly be­came close friends with MOST of the speak­ers at that first sem­i­nar. Jonathan Mizel even called me the day be­fore I hosted my first sem­i­nar to both wish me luck and to give me a few tips.

My first sem­i­nar set in mo­tion a chain of events that made all of the re­ally BIG things that I’ve done since then pos­si­ble. It en­abled me to start de­vel­op­ing the re­la­tion­ships that would have never hap­pened had I not got­ten out and ac­tu­ally at­tended a live event.

My con­cep­tion of what IS pos­si­ble would prob­a­bly be rel­a­tively con­strained had I not been around men­tors who taught me to think bigger.

If you want to meet men­tors and friends you are in­vited to join my friends and I in my In­ter­net­Mar­ketingIn­ncer­cir­cle.

To help you suc­ceed Willie has cre­ated The In­ter­net Mar­ket­ing In­ner Cir­cle, a mem­ber­ship site where he fre­quently brain­storms so­lu­tions to prob­lems such as those dis­cussed in this ar­ti­cle. Join that dis­cus­sion for your suc­cess at TheIn­ter­net­Mar­ketingIn­ner­cir­cle.