My thanks to Mary Brand, a fellow marketer from the Entrepreneur Forums who got me reminiscing about successful entrepreneurs who inspired me.© GT Bulmer
Web Biz Opportunities - StarrBizz.comMary posted a question in the
Entrepreneur Forums at
EvanCarmichael.com asking forum members who or what inspired them to get into sales and marketing. I posted a response there, then decided I would post it here, too, with
additional notes and information. Why not? It's all part of my personal story.
It seems I have always been interested in sales and marketing, although I didn't start seriously developing my skills until I was in my 30s.
It all started when I was about 12 or 13 and a friend and I set up a Kool-Aid stand one summer. We made some good sales, but I'm sure we probably ended up being our own best customers!
After that, I began noticing all those advertisements in comic books enticing kids with visions of making easy money selling
garden seeds. I was interested, but since I was Canadian and the ads all had United States addresses, I never followed through. Today, distance and the international border mean nothing, but "way back then," the U.S.of A was a faraway, foreign land. It seemed that way to a kid, anyway.
In my early 20s, I became intrigued by all the mail-order business ads in magazines. The first training book I ever bought was called
Plan For Mail Order Profits (revised edition), by David G. Baron, copyright 1975,
Executive Business Institute. I seldom look at it now (except when writing about it in blogs and forums), but I still have it sitting handy on my business bookshelf.
Another notable entrepreneur who inspired me was self-made millionaire
E. Joseph Cossman. Although I did later pick up one of his marketing manuals (
How to Make More Money in Your Own Business), I first learned of him from his marketing infomercials on television in the 80s.
In those infomercials, one of Cossman's most notable students was
Bob Hall of Ontario, Canada, who had become known as the
Wheelbarrow King of North America. Bob acquired the domestic marketing rights to a line of wheelbarrows from a foreign supplier and achieved great success.
Eventually, I met Bob in person. We worked together in the mid-90s promoting
JewelWay International, a popular network marketing company of the day. We enjoyed success for a few years until JewelWay went the way that so many networking companies seem to go.
By that time, I had become an avid student of
personal development books and audio programs. After reading
Napoleon Hill and
Dale Carnegie in the 80s, I was introduced to the inspirational and motivational works of
Earl Nightingale,
Anthony Robbins,
Stephen R. Covey and
Brian Tracy.
As a
leading authority on personal and professional development, Brian Tracy remains the source I most often turn to first for entrepreneurial inspiration and motivation.
It was no surprise that when the opportunity presented itself in March, I became an affiliate for
Brian Tracy products and started promoting them on my
StarrBizz.com website.
More recently, I became an
iLearningGlobal affiliate at the invitation of fellow entrepreneur
Evan Carmichael, of
EvanCarmichael.com.
Brian Tracy is the Chief Learning Officer with
iLearningGlobal. The company offers an incredible selection of
personal development products in a variety of formats. Evan and I feature
iLearningGlobal products in the
Entrepreneur University section of his
EvanCarmichael.com website.
There have been
numerous entrepreneurs who inspired me over the years. The short list presented in this
web biz blog post simply highlights a few of them.
Sincerely, GT Bulmer
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