Law of Attraction Story

On Wednesday afternoon I was interviewed by a Legend.

His name is Bill Glazer, and he helped grow Glazer-Kennedy into the BIGGEST and BEST Direct Marketing Info company in the world.

The interview is going out to members of Info-Marketing.org in a future monthly newsletter, but today, in place of our regular Q&A session, I’m going to give you a few excerpts and highlights from the interview that focused onbout working with EarlyToRise.com.

And yes, it even features what you might consider to be ‘proof’ of the Law of Attraction in action. Seriously.

Bill Glazer: What is Early to Rise, how did this opportunity to take control of the business come about?

Craig: ETR was a business started by Michael Masterson, who you know was a speaker at your 2011 SuperConference. ETR was also part of Agora, Inc., a large publishing company based in Baltimore, Maryland.

My business parter, Matt Smith, had many connections in Agora, and it was through his network that we were given the opportunity to take control of ETR.

But truly, the real story started almost 10 years ago when both Matt and I – separately – first stumbled across the impressive ETR daily emails from Michael Masterson.

In 2005 I noticed that a fitness colleague, Matt Furey, was contributing health briefs to the daily ETR newsletter, and so I contacted ETR and earned an opportunity to do the same.

Having my fitness tips published a couple of times each month gave a little boost to my slow-growing Turbulence Training business and climb over the 6-figure per year mark.

But in 2006 is where the ETR connection with the Law of Attraction takes place.

In the spring of that year I hired my first business coach, and his first question on our first call was:

“What do you want your business to look like?”

And I replied, “I want to have something like EarlytoRise.com.” That was March of 2006. I put it out there to the Universe.

Feelin’ the goosebumps yet?

Two more years passed, during which my TT business grew exponentially, in part thanks to Yanik Silver. I had joined his Mastermind Group and that’s where I first met Matt Smith in 2008.

Matt and I kept in touch after he moved to Argentina and dropped out of the Mastermind, and then in 2010, while I was still running TT full-time and he was involved in many other projects, we both ended up on one of Yanik’s crazy Maverick Business Adventure trips in Tucson, Arizona.

After a weekend of smashing cars, shooting guns, and hanging out with Tim Ferriss, Matt and I found ourselves in the Tucson airport with an hour to chat before our flight back to Denver.

We eventually got around to my future plans. Although over 4 years had passed since I told my first coach that I wanted to run something like EarlytoRise.com, the dream hadn’t died, and I told Matt that was still my goal.

And that was that.

Finally, a few months later my progress towards this goal began to accelerate. Matt and I spent several hours on the phone in December, 2010. He invited me to invest in one of his businesses, and I did that on agreement that we would work together on a crazy new project I had planned…

…called www.InternetIndependence.com.

The first half of 2011 was spent working on this site and  delivering high-quality free content to subscribers five days per week. We sold nothing. We just wanted to deliver the best info we could to help people get started online…

…moving towards their financial independence.

All was going well, and I had started working on a manual and webinar program to release in the summer.

Then one day in May of 2011, while visiting my family farm (where I’m writing you from today), I received a strange text message from Matt.

It read: “If you could run EarlytoRise.com starting today, would you still want to do it?”

Was this a trick question, I thought to myself. After all, despite knowing Matt for over three years now, I still wasn’t 100% convinced his real name is Matt Smith.

“Yeah, sure,” was my reply.

An hour later we were on the phone and he revealed to me how this strange but true opportunity had come about.

Matt had been spending the week at a conference of Agora, Inc. newsletter publishers (like the one Matt and I are attending next week in Nicaragua) and he had been talking
with Michael Masterson, the star of ETR.

As it turns out, Masterson was ready to move on from ETR, and frankly, they didn’t know what to do with the business.

All the employees and products were being reallocated to other divisions within Agora.

So what was to become of ETR? That was the million dollar question (actually, to be accurate, it wasn’t that expensive).

Matt said, “Why don’t you let me and my friend Craig have a try and taking it over?”

Masterson said he’d think about it.

(Small moral of the story: Just ASK! What’s the worst that could possibly happen…and what’s the best that could happen – oh, you know, just achieving the biggest business goal you’ve ever had, right?)

Matt knew that we had to act fast on this offer. We were scheduled to meet in New York on the first weekend of June, and Matt insisted we extend our travel to include a trip to Florida to meet with Masterson in person and hammer out a deal. After a bunch of my patented non-committal responses, Matt finally convinced me to hop a plane with him on Monday.

We met with Masterson on Tuesday, and by Wednesday had a deal in place.

Five years, two months, and seventeen days to the exact day in 2006 when I first announced to my business coach – and the “Universe” – that I wanted to run something like ETR.

Forget something, how’s about the REAL ETR?

Not bad for a farm boy from Canada.

A few lessons from this story:

1) Don’t hesitate to tell the (right) people – and the  ‘universe’ – about what you want to accomplish. Helpful people can dramatically speed up the process. You can’t do it all on your own.

2) Work like heck and keep taking action towards your ultimate goal EVERY day.

3) Never give up. Pardon me, Never, ever, EVER give up.

4) Strike while the iron is hot. Never waste an opportunity.

5) Network with other smart people…and you can’t do that by sitting at home and watching television.

6) Go to Yanik Silver’s events for the ultimate in Internet Marketing networking.

7) Get to know Matt Smith.

You can meet – and learn from – Matt here

Talking business with Matt Smith (if that is his real name) is the highlight of my work week.

See you soon,

Craig Ballantyne

“And now you know the rest of the story.” – Paul Harvey

Actually, wait, you don’t…there’s lots more on this story next  week when I share what we did with ETR once we acquired it.

Stay tuned.