My Primary Aim

Life started out rough for me. My parents whipped me regularly from at least the time I was six until I could finally take-on my dad at 14. This happened whether I had done something wrong, or not. Those beatings led to PTSD and a cycle of drug abuse that retarded my development for years. In spite of all that I still managed to change the world.

A couple formative experiences helped keep me on a path that eventually led to success. When I was eight, a friend of my parents took me to his private observatory in the Santa Cruz mountains and showed me the rings of Saturn. Then, at 14, I went on a class field trip to the Exploratorium in San Francisco. I purchased a book in the gift shop: Einstein's Universe, by Nigel Calder. It was in that book that I learned that gravity slows down time. That blew my mind, and as a sci-fi fan the implications were enormous. At that point, I knew I wanted to make a mark on the scientific world.

In the early 1980's I was working in a machine shop, and while on a break one day I noticed a large plume of black smoke over the mountains to the east. I later read about a fire at a place called Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, (LLNL) where they conducted “big science.” I made it my goal to get a job there. A few years later, after putting myself through college, I applied for a technical job with a staffing agency. After the initial interview, I found out it was a job at LLNL. I began working there in 1985 and continued my career at LLNL and its sister lab Sandia National Laboratories for almost two decades.

From 1985 until late 1989 I worked on the atomic vapor laser isotope separation program called AVLIS. We were studying how to purify special nuclear materials with lasers. After the cold war ended, the AVLIS program was shut down and I began working at Sandia on supercritical water oxidation. We eventually turned supercritical water oxidation into a process for destroying chemical munitions. I also spent some time at Sandia working on nuclear stockpile stewardship, from environmental testing, to determining how fast the high explosives in nuclear weapons degrade.

Then in 1997, I discovered a relationship among every possible physical measurement. From that relationship, I developed a periodic table of dimensions. I took an early retirement incentive from the labs and funded a sabbatical to develop this periodic table of dimensions. Once that was fully developed, I faced two questions. How would I popularize it? And what would I do with the rest of my life? I knew I wanted to help people. I made that a centerpiece of my thoughts on a new career.

I remembered back to a time when I worked at the labs and my washing machine had broken. I went to a laundromat and while I was there, I noticed a young Mexican boy asking his mother for help with his homework. She couldn't. That was when I realized the American, and in general, all educational systems had a huge flaw: if we depend on the parents to help the kids with their homework, we were dooming them to the same level of education, or less, that their parents had achieved. “The Great Equalizer,” education, had failed!

As my sabbatical drew to a close. My cousin asked me to tutor her home-schooled children. And from the study groups in my college days, I knew I had a knack for teaching. I invested $3,000 in a radio advertising campaign, and over the next 12 years that provided me a job, well over half a million dollars in income, and a wealth of knowledge and relationships helping teens succeed in high school, college, and their careers.

Then in 2018, I was diagnosed with a brain tumor. It turned out to be an egg sized benign tumor caused by a barefoot water skiing accident some 25 years earlier. The tumor was squeezing my jugular vein shut, displacing my inner ear bones, and impacting my auditory nerve: this caused high blood pressure, massive vertigo, auditory hallucinations, and poor impulse control. After two brain surgeries, I was free of its influences. That close call with both a physical-health disaster and a financial disaster inspired me to pursue my greatest dreams: there would be no more compromise.

I began learning about marketing and business. In September of 2019, I had a coaching call with Steve Tobak. He inspired me to focus on STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) and direct response marketing. In February of 2020, I went to my first Dan Kennedy event, a Magnetic Marketing bootcamp. After that, my life was never the same. I began building business systems, marketing systems, and studying copywriting and business development. I hired my first professional copywriter the week COVID destroyed our economy. I spent $3,000 on a direct mail campaign, hired two extra tutors to support it, and got zero leads.

I began hiring coaches and was turned on to The Genius Network by Parthiv Shah, of eLaunchers and Magnetic Marketing. Although I didn't qualify, the folks at I Love Marketing and The Genius Network were the most supportive mentors I've ever found. They invited me to join their E.L.F. coaching group to groom me for The Genius Network (E.L.F. stands for Easy, Lucrative and Fun business). I also learned about Dan Sullivan and Strategic Coach through that connection.

The Present

With Timothy Paulson as my mentor, and Joe Polish of Genius Network and Dan Sullivan of Strategic Coach as my gold standard, I began building my business. I listened to their I Love Marketing and 10x Talk podcasts for an hour every morning. I attended my E.L.F. coaching sessions every other Tuesday, religiously. I read every book they and their guests recommended.

Some of the most influential books I read were Michael Gerber's the E-Myth; Dan Sullivan's, Who not How, The Four Cs, and The Gap and The Gain; and every one of Dan Kennedy's No BS series. These are paradigm shifting texts, which reminds me, don't forget Stephen Covey's The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. Then there were the books on copywriting, Claude Hopkins' Scientific Advertising, Robert Collier's the Robert Collier Letter Book, and Gary Halbert's The Boron Letters. These are formative books every entrepreneur should be familiar with to understand their business and marketing. I recommend you read every one of them.

Putting all of this together, I laid out my plan. Being a mathematician, and having a few data points, I was able to determine that a small increase of 80% in my gross revenues every year was all it would take to turn a $55,000 a year business into a $900 million a year business in just sixteen and a half years. I began hiring tutors to help increase the number of people we could reach. Following Dan Sullivan's Who not How advice, I hired a personal assistant and an administrative assistant. Learning the skill of hiring a team was all it took for me to take off.

The Future: (Fill in your future aspirations and goals here.)