yesterday i felt the most hated, I thought I couldn't take it

And today I'm feelin' brand new. If you have had doubts about IM, maybe my true story will help inspire you.

About two years ago, with about 3 years of [emulsified] SEO experience under my belt, I was asked to start up a [doomed] SEO company with a group of successful business men. More correctly, multi-millionaires, who once upon a time owned a large phone book company which they since had sold.

Being the first true employee and working like a mad man, within 6 months we had ~150 accounts and several SEO, link builders, article writers working alongside me. It was fun, and a huge challenge, but I was compensated "ok" for a down economy.

Right as Google caffeine algo changes rolled out, the challenge became an uphill battle, with the ex-phone book guys trying to run the SEO company on the antiquated phone book populous model. Simply doesn't work... as competition varies by search term, not city population! To make matters worse, our sales reps (against my adamant advice) started selling multiple clients in the same location and industries. In short we we're competing with ourselves and as far as I'm concerned, being unethical.

After four months of grappling to gain some control over the situation, and getting the info to sink through their thick skulls, it became apparent that this was a moot battle. Realizing that our visions were not the same, I said good-bye to my profit share, 200 clients, 500+ first page search terms (aka my credibility) and a generous salary... to venture out on my own.

I was on the brink of walking away from SEO and web design all together, and go back into whatever else would've put money on our table. My soon-to-be wife and I already had several thousand in debt for the wedding, and the bills we're stacking up.

To make matters worse, a new neighbor that moved in behind us what literally a crack head, and after a series of attempted break-ins, we decided to move in with a friend for a little bit (until we could get first + last + security... which is at minimum $3500!)

Having only a few tools (CS4 web premium, market samurai, the best spinner) and a now ancient 2.4ghz dual core... I setup my office on the dining room table of our friends house, breaking it down between meals to be polite.

Realizing that I still had plenty of talent and ability and that I did everything I could to make the old SEO company successful, I set my sights on building my own empire.

My wife was gracious enough to open up a credit card to fill up our "worn-in" car (Ok who am I kidding... it had almost 250k miles and was leaking AND burning oil) and set course for a 2400 mile round-trip road trip, stopping in 6 cities.

It took a lot of firm NOs, and even more "no soliciting" signs, but we kept our hopes high and we're able to meet with ~20 decision makers over the two week trip. We had a lot of fun meeting with various business owners from all sorts of industries, and learned a lot about how many SEO and web snakes there is out there.

Out of the 20 bids we put out, we we're able to pick-up 4 clients -- clients that are far away from the saturated city of Seattle! In all fairness, I think that the total annual value of these four accounts was 1/5 that of my prior salary. We still had a LONG ways to go to be back where we we're at.

Fast forward another 6 months to today... refining our business and risk model, I found a formula that took my average account from $299/mo to $2,800/mo! We traded in the old hoopty, upgraded our hardware, and I'm even rocking CS5 now. As far as work load goes, I'm probably working too much. 60-70 hours per week, BUT we've finally surpassed where we were at $ wise from the old SEO company.

It was a long, scary ride... and we're not out of the mix yet! The point of this story is, hopefully, that sometimes you have to take risks. And sometimes those risks will pay off -- but you better be damn ready to work your ass off for it!