My friend Matthew promised to guide me so I was ready to rock. He said, "Anthony, I can show you the tools and give you some direction but you have to work this all out yourself. There is no magic bullet, you need to test and try everything yourself." Work began at 12 am because Australia was 14 hours ahead of the US. It was a very difficult time as I entered a business with no experience in printing and had to do night shift and for anyone who has tried it they will tell you, it is painful. Your body never adjusts. So here I was ready to start my first business on my own. I didn't know what a PDF was, didn't know what CMYK was, didn't even know what excel was, didn't know what web hosting was, a webmaster, website template, a server, copy writing autoresponders? Too bad, I am motivated. Lets just run with it I thought. No more 80 hours a week, this was my destiny. So, to say that I had a steep learning curve in front of me was the understatement of the year.

What I liked about online marketing was the following. This is the criteria I wanted to follow, not what my professor at University taught me.

Can the business run without me one day? Yes
Can it be systemized? Yes
Are the start-up costs low? Yes
Is there massive potential? Yes

These are the questions I ask everyone when they have an idea. There is no right or wrong answer to those questions but if you want to have a lifestyle, you really do need other people to manage it for you while you are away from your business.

After 3 years the business was in auto pilot and I never answered an e-mail or phone call ever again. I truly was the boss and had brilliant staff working for me. I was living the dream. Great income, solid growth, unbelievable lifestyle and I was WORKING less than 10 hours a week. I would go to work, check my banking and e-mails, then leave. That was it. I had it all worked out. The term entrepreneur was now ingrained in my head and I wanted to have as many businesses as I could.

I started two more businesses after this from the scratch and used the same principles. I sold the sticker business in 2010 as the Australian dollar got too strong so exporting was useless now. My next challenge was now ahead of me.