Have Your Ever Lost It All?

We are headed for some wicked hard times. Some of us are already feeling the sting. Some of you are just getting out of college with a monster load of debt and are going to have a hard time finding a job. Some of you are going to lose your jobs and be out of work for quite a bit of time. Some of you are about to hit rock bottom. Some of you have hit it years ago. Some of you wont hit rock bottom for years to come.

I hit rock bottom about 8 years ago. I was fired from my job and lived on credit cards for months while trying find another job. After several months of no luck and not being able to make credit card payments, the credit card companies started to close my accounts and send me to debt collectors. I soon was evicted from my apartment after missing payment(s).

So there I was.. 25 years old, about 50k in debt with a lot of it being super high interest credit card debt spread among about 5 different cards, no job, no place to live and if that wasn?t bad enough I was also super fat.

Rock bottom. I will tell you its the best thing that ever happen to me. Its when you hit rock bottom that you find yourself and it gives you an amazing education that is priceless. At the time it happens its very painful but if you can fight through it and do the hardwork that needs to be done the rewards will be that much sweeter on the other side.

A lot of people ask me why I do not have super flashy cars or fly first class? or whatever super luxurious thing other cool people are doing? the answer is pretty simple. I have a hard time wasting money. I remember how much it sucked when I hit rock bottom and I never want to feel like that again. Some people might hear that then look at my h2 and think that is flashy?. guess what? Its a lease and it was practically free because we traded out work with the hummer dealership.

Hitting rock bottom taught me the value of money. It also taught me to hustle. Most of all it taught me what truly matters in life is family and friends. After all it was my friend George Schaeffer who volunteered his couch for me to sleep on in Des Moines IA. which got me back on my feet and also made me not settle for a 9-5 job. Its also where I met my wife.

A few years ago when we were killing it in the mobile space we were satisfied with success and not really challenging ourselves? then the mobile industry took a huge hit. We had to come up with something new. Because of the adversity AuctionAds was invented and in 4 short months we went from launch to selling the company.

This of course put a bunch of green in our pockets and made us pretty happy with our success but it also meant we needed to come up with new revenue streams (or retire). I am not ready to retire yet so we started fighters.com, busted ass on the elite retreat, and started other ventures also.

Some of the biggest success today came out of the worst dot com crash ever. (highly recommend you read that article). Google being the biggest example.

Every time I have been hit with adversity it has opened up some amazing oppourtunities. Hang in there.

http://www.shoemoney.com/2008/10/10/...r-lost-it-all/