I tried several different ways to begin this post, but it seemed only fitting to be as blunt in this announcement as I have been during my entire SEO and affiliate career, thus the title of this entry.

It's been an amazing ride

Real Money (TV Series) Peace Out (2018) Company Credits. It looks like we don't have any Company Credits for this title yet. Be the first to contribute! Just click the 'Edit page' button at the bottom of the page or learn more in the Company Credits submission guide. In 1931, the “real” price of Gasoline was $2.85 using the CPI, however, a gallon of gas took as much out of what the average consumer spent as $6.86 did in 2019. And as a share of GDP per capita, gas was even more expensive in those earlier days as it was over $17.89 in 1931 and as much as $6.74 in 1960.

In 1998, after my oldest son suffered a massive bilateral stroke, I founded the first international support group for parents of pediatric stroke survivors to ever register with the American Heart Association.

From there I fell into online marketing – affiliate marketing specifically. SEO was the vehicle of promotion I decided to learn to promote those efforts. A guy noticed me asking questions on a message board and contacted me via private messenger. His name was Mike Mackin, and he saw something in me – before I even did. Mackin introduced me to a guy named Rod B. who would become my mentor during my early days in this field. Both of these men changed my life and will forever have my gratitude for it.

I started out promoting telecom services and then moved into the phentermine space. I was a quick study on SEO, and before I knew it, I was ranking #1 for the phrase “buy phentermine” – among others. I'd played in various spaces in my early days – telecom, diet pills, satellite TV, insurance, bankruptcy, etc. – had amazing success with it and did everything “the right way.”

In 2004, many of my sites were wiped out in the Florida update despite “playing by the rules.” I was pretty sure I knew what strategies were working in the blackhat space and figured if I could get screwed either way in an algorithm update, I might as well start playing fast and loose. Which I then did successfully for the next two years.

But the writing was on the wall after a while concerning Google making strides in the war on spam. There was one particular up and coming industry I had been playing in via blackhat methods that seemed to be ignored by quality content affiliates – prepaid cell phone plans – and I decided to make another shift in late 2005 back to the “legit” side of the Google line. I took on a partner I'd met via a conference and had become friends with to be the development side. We launched what would eventually become one of – if not the – biggest review sites for prepaid cell phones on the net (when we sold it in 2013, it had over 30,000 legitimate consumer reviews across 25+ providers).

We worked well together and would go on to form MFE Interactive, which produced several more websites doing a combined 4 million+ page views a month in traffic at their height. I had so much fun with that company, and my partner in MFE – who had much more business experience than I did when we started – taught me so much. He took my raw hustle and gave it a business education. And for that, I'll always be grateful.

Confession: Publicly MFE stood for “Marked for Evolution.” We came up with that “explanation” on the fly when a Fortune company we were dealing with asked us what the MFE stood for. In reality, it had always stood for “My Fucking Empire.”

By 2009, I had been on the speaking circuit for about five years. I never had a “reason” for speaking; I didn't take on clients. I spoke to give back to the community that had given so much to me in those early days. Some of the connections I made at those conferences had made me a lot of money in one way or another, and so I continued to attend them.

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In 2009, I would partner up with two people I knew from those conferences – one well and one by association – and form an agency. It would be less than two years before I walked away from that agency. At the time I would have said “without much to show for it” because from a financial perspective that was the case.

In reality, I walked away with some hard-learned, but very valuable lessons. Never go into business with anyone without having everything – including an exit plan – in writing. Never ignore your gut – mine told me things probably weren't going to work out a few months in, and I could have saved myself some time, drama, money, and energy by listening to it. And never go into business with a friend you don't consider expendable in your personal life. Losing money, time, energy – they're all things that eventually fade into the past. Losing a human being you valued from your life sticks with you a bit more.

After walking away from that agency at the end of 2010, I took a bit of a break. MFE was generating plenty of income, and I was trying to figure out what was next. In 2012 I decided it was time to saddle back up, and I partnered with Sean and co-founded another agency – PushFire

PushFire saw immediate success, and I ended up selling off MFE's assets in 2013 to give it my full focus. PushFire has continued kicking ass for the last 5+ years. I'm very proud of the reputation and culture we've built and am excited to see it continue to grow.

Throughout all of this, I continued to produce, profit from, and sell independent affiliate sites I owned outside of all these ventures. Real ways to earn money on.

Sometimes life throws a curveball – that hits you right in the face

My oldest son, CJ, was severely multiply handicapped as a result of the stroke he suffered as an infant. Making sure he had the best quality of life possible had always been the biggest force driving me to obtain success in life. In 2012, he passed away after getting pneumonia. He was 15. We always knew that he wouldn't outlive us, but nothing truly prepares you for that moment.

Losing a child changes you. It calls everything you thought you knew about life into question. It makes you re-evaluate things and re-examine your choices. It also reminds you that life is short, you only get one, and you'd better fucking make the most of it.

As I began looking at things through this more critical lens over the next few years, I realized that being an SEO had become mundane for me. I was going through the very familiar motions and – frankly – I didn't have a passion for it anymore. But, I'd been doing SEO and affiliate marketing for almost half of my life, had built myself a killer brand in the space, and I'd had so much success with it. I'd be crazy to walk away from it because I find it a little boring now – right?

One. Fucking. Life.

Luckily, success gives you options, and I decided to choose not to do something I now found monotonous. I decided then that it was time for something new. And so I began the hunt to figure out what “that” might be.

It had to be something worth walking away from this industry – something that excited me. Something that made me want to eat, breathe and sleep it. Something that made me feel the way I did when I first got involved in the affiliate marketing and SEO industries almost two decades ago.

Finding what that new focus would be proved no easy task, and the search felt futile at times. In the end, I stumbled upon it accidentally the same way I did the online marketing industry. But we'll get to that in a minute.

Retiring from SEO consulting & affiliate marketing

It’s hard to write those words wrapped in H2 tags after almost two decades in the space, but there they are.

For the last few years, I’d been selling sites from my stable of affiliate sites in preparation for dedicating myself to something new. I’d brought the focus down to a handful of sites that were my favorites. Those sites will be dormant moving forward. I’ll continue cashing their commission checks until they stop coming. I won’t be selling them because I view

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