Four years ago today, February 25, 2008,  I left my last JOB as the IT manager for one of the largest furniture stores in the USA. Since then I’ve been running my own business mainly doing online business consulting, building websites for local businesses and working as a consultant and affiliate manager for a few primary clients. God has been good to us during these four years and we have been able to do things that we never would have working for “the man.” But… I was still working for linear income because I had to do the work for each client to keep the money coming in.

My wife Leslie and I have dreams of travel, ministry and mission trips in our future after raising 5 kids, our last one just turned 18 last month. I know I want to continue working because the lie of “retirement” is not in my life’s game plan. But I don’t want to continue trading my time for dollars… not even large dollars.

That is why late last October I decided to move my business in a new direction. It was time to start getting some of that exponential income that I’ve seen others like Demarr Zimmerman, Dave Smith, Eric Worre and David Frey pull in. The best solution for me was to start sharing the referral and prospecting system that I had used successfully for the past 4 years to build my consulting business… SendOutCards.

With SendOutCards I am building a team of distributors as well as customers who love using our greeting card and gift sending business. It is so easy to share with others who, once they see how easy it is to use, want to join and start sending cards and gifts themselves. Now I’m building exponential income, small to start with but over the next several months and years it will grow to be much larger than I could ever earn working for someone else building their dream.

Businessman Harvey Mackay, along with many others, has given his endorsement to SendOutCards.

Bottom line; Business is all about building relationships. If you want to make more money and enjoy more lifestyle, you have to build better relationships than the next person. SendOutCards helps to do that both personally and professionally. It’s the first company I have ever endorsed because it fits perfectly with my philosophy. You would have to be crazy no to use it.

You can learn about SendOutCards as a business building system from my SendOutCards website, www.HometownMarketingCards.com

If you want to learn more about how you can earn an exponential income like thousands of us in SendOutCards are doing now, visit my website: www.BeachHomeOffice.com.

I love this business and would love to share it with you. Contact me if you have any questions. My contact info is on the top right of each of the websites above.

February 25, 2008 was a Monday that set me free from the JOB as an IT Manager helping to make someone else rich. I would love to say that I’m now rich myself but, while that is not true financially, I do have all our needs and more taken care of. Also, I have time to enjoy my family doing what I want and not what I have to do everyday.

Last week my wife, son and I had a wonderful time escaping the snow and cold of Minnesota for the warm sunshine of Orlando, Florida. We had a working vacation together and still had time to play and do fun stuff. The three of us helped my friend and client Jeff Mills present his Clickbank Masters USA conference there in Orlando.

I am blessed to be able to change my work and lifestyle by making use of the Internet as a communication tool and a medium for building virtual businesses online. Sometimes online marketers make it sound soooo easy and talk about how anyone can build an online business. Well, that is not true anymore than anyone can open a successful business in your city.

My primary focus for 2011 is helping local business owners who need help to understand and utilize online tools and technology to get customers in the door or sell their products or services online. I will always be open to helping anyone who wants to start an online only business but that takes skills in business and administration that most folks don’t have.

If you don’t currently own and operate a business in your community but would like to find a way to build a part-time or even full-time business and, you have at least some basic computer skills, I would recommend you look into starting your own Greeting Card Business. My wife and I have done this and enjoy working this together. You can Watch a Short Video Here and learn more about it. You can try Sending a Couple Cards yourself and see how cool it is.

If you have questions about using the Internet for an existing or new business I would be glad to answer them. Just use my Contact Form to get in touch with me.

As I finish up a few tasks in my home office today and get ready to welcome in the New Year of 2011 with family and friends I’ve been reflecting on my online journey.

I started my current consulting business, Mission Springs LLC, in December 2005 just five years ago. For nearly three years I have been running my business full-time after leaving my J.O.B. at Becker Furniture World as their I.T. Manager.

But, my journey to learn how to make money on the Internet or from doing work involving using the Internet started way back in 1994 and 1995 when I was first exposed to the WWW (World Wide Web). Back in September of 1994 I started to use Netscape Navigator while taking a business management program at a local college.

I will spare the details of the experiences I had back then but I will say that by the winter of 1994-1995 I made my first income by teaching others how to use the Internet for business. As a matter of fact, one of my most interesting students was the CIO for a local small business called Cargill. He came to my class to learn how to use the Internet to build the company’s first website. You can see one of their first designs here at Archive.org from 1996.

http://web.archive.org/web/19961223102940/http://www.cargill.com

Later in 1995 I started to talk with my local banker, telling them that they needed a website for the bank. After a couple months of me “pestering” them they said that I should go ahead and build the first website for them. So, along with Larry Hill (who worked for the bank) we set out to do that working on an old PC with a dial-up modem. You can see an early version of our design also at Archive.org.

http://web.archive.org/web/19970117011500/http://www.the-bank-er.com

Between 1995 and 2008 I worked at three different companies in their Information Technology departments and at each one I had a hand in website design or Internet systems. While working for my first IT company I built the first website for the City of Chanhassen, MN. Here is one of the early designs I did for the city… really lame looking I know. But hey, the paid me to do this.

http://web.archive.org/web/19961031160637/http://www.ci.chanhassen.mn.us

I did my own consulting and website work back then under my first business name, G.T.A. Business Solutions. Again, not a really great looking website but it got me business.

http://web.archive.org/web/19961103225347/www.elknet.com/gta/hpgta.html

In the mid to late 1990’s while working full-time at IT jobs for others I helped several local businesses in Elk River with their first online ventures. And now, I’m getting back to where I started.

I’ve tried to help other people who wanted to learn how to build online businesses. I build websites for their various “make money on the Internet” ventures but most of them never became successful for lack of money, skills or time to see success happen.

Last year I joined the Elk River Chamber of Commerce and started attending the weekly Tuesday morning Chamber Connections networking meeting. This step, along with some other key steps, has now brought me full circle back to working with local businesses and organizations.

Over the last several years I’ve made tens of thousands of dollars by using and from using the Internet and helping others to use it to make money. My goal for 2011 is to do more teaching and consulting with businesses in the Greater Elk River Area, to help them maximize their ROI of advertising dollars by using the tools available online.

In the past several months I have positioned myself with some of the top resources and people who I can call on to provide the tools and services local business owners need to gain the competitive advantage in their organizations.

If you are a business owner or know a business owner who needs a better plan for utilizing the Internet in 2011… please contact me. I can help you to leverage your good business to make it a Great Business and draw clients and customers to you that you don’t have now. Also, I can help you earn more repeat sales from existing clients and customers using the technology of online business.

Have a wonderful New Year of 2011… I plan to.

About six months back my I had a major change with my business plans so I’ve been working more on other websites and projects and not doing much with this blog. Now that I’m further along with those projects we are working on doing the updates and theme changes that I want to make here on WhoIsHenry.com

It will probably take a week or two until I get things the way I want them so please pardon the mess while we work. I’ll give you a full update to the new things that are going on here after the site remodeling is done.

If you all looking for a great website host and great support please give me a call or visit my website for more information. Check out Mission Springs WordPress Hosting today… well maybe wait until the New Years Party is done and you are recovered.

Wishing you all The Best in 2010!

Today is Christmas Day, December 25, 2008. Besides being Christmas, the day we celebrate the birth of my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, this is also the day that I celebrate 10 months of being without a JOB. Wow, what a thing to celebrate you might think.

As I was sitting, looking at our Christmas tree early this morning before the family woke up and praying I had a thought. I remembered that it was just 10 months ago that I left my full-time job as the I.T. Manager at the big furniture store. Was that my idea? Well, yes and no…

I had been planning to leave my job there since starting my own part-time business three years ago. Like many of you I was spending hours and hours on the Internet and spending lots and lots of money buying and trying lots and lots of things to find something that would work for me so that I could quit my job and have my own home based online business.

The last half of 2007 I was working hard to help transition into my own business without leaving my employer, and especially the owner of the company who had been very good to me, in the “lurch” without my help. Not that I thought myself irreplaceable but, I did not want them to experience problems when I left. No one at the company was doing what I had been doing in several areas so I felt that I needed to make sure that things were taken care of before I left.

A year ago my friend Jeff Mills asked me to consider joining him to work on building his business and help to take it to the next level. We discussed what that would look like and when it would happen. We decided that I would begin to work with him beginning March 1^st of this year and that I would give my notice by mid month so as to not have a lapse of income between leaving the IT job and starting my pay from Jeff.

So I was very much ready but at the same time surprised to walk into work on Monday, February 25^th and have my supervisor and the HR department manager intercept me on the way to my office. Within less than an hour I was on my way home… the dream of being on my own and running my own online business was already starting.

After some brief surprise reactions from my wife we were both thanking God for His hand in all of this. As the Bible teaches, man makes plans and the Lord directs our steps.

So this morning as I reflected on the past 10 months and the past three years, I was finding answers to my questions and prayers for what is ahead for us. I know that I am to continue to make my plans and trust in God to direct my steps. I know that leaving my job last February was a gift from God.

With so many people including friends that I know who have lost their jobs in the past few months, and more to come as the US and world economies continue to seemingly spine out of control, I want to pass along to you a word of encouragement as my Christmas gift to you.

You may be a Christian or you may not, either way I want to tell you that I know that God is a loving father and He does indeed care for you. He wants only the best for you and your family but His viewpoint is usually different than ours. He can and will take care of us if we put our trust in Him.

Trying to figure out how to start an online business can be really confusing and the truth is only a few people are going to succeed in making a living online. So how to you know if you are going to be one of those who will make it? I wish I had a 10 point test that I could give you that would help you to see the future on that question.

I do have some ideas about what it takes to succeed in business online. I have looked at things that successful people in this Internet Marketing world do that I think can give us clues to what it takes. If you wish do know what they are I would love to share them with you.

If you would like to discuss your ideas for business, questions about getting started or technical “how-to” things that you are struggling with, get in touch with me and we can schedule some time to talk. You can contact me by clicking on the About Henry link at the top of this blog page and then select Contact Henry in the drop down menu.

I hope your Christmas was a Blessed one and pray that next year’s will be even better. Perhaps next year you can say that you, like me, are blessed to be without a JOB.

Todays’ anniversary is my Anniversary of Freedom… freedom from my J.O.B. which I happily left on February 25th this year.

Today I celebrate not only the end of my first 6 months of being self-employed as an Internet Marketing Technology Consultant and online marketer, I celebrate the transformation that God has done in me and in my life to prepare me for this time.

As I walked around our neighborhood I thought about how many people that I have meet in the past couple years who also wanted this kind of freedom. Some had attained this freedom while others had not. I thought about what the difference is between them.

Why is it that some people start out to build their home based business using online marketing and the spend hundreds of dollars and hundreds of hours working at it and never even make their first $100?

Do people fail because the technical stuff is too hard to learn?

Do people fail because they can’t figure out what niche to be in or what product(s) to sell?

Do people fail because they just go from one “Newest and Best’ thing to the next without really working fully at any of them?

Do people fail because they just don’t have the money to run their businesses?

Or, do people fail because their character is lacking in some area?

Here is a definition of character from The Free Dictionary:

1. The combination of qualities or features that distinguishes one person, group, or thing from another. See Synonyms at disposition.

2. A distinguishing feature or attribute, as of an individual, group, or category. See Synonyms at quality.

3. Genetics A structure, function, or attribute determined by a gene or group of genes.

4. Moral or ethical strength.

5. A description of a person’s attributes, traits, or abilities.

Read the full definition Here.

I believe that failure to succeed in any area of life and specifically in building a business online or off-line is tied to all of the above but most importantly, success is dependent on a persons character. This is perhaps why people that come into a large sum of money from an inheritance or perhaps by winning the lottery often spend the money quickly and soon find themselves in the same place, or even worse off, then they were before the money came to them.

One of the very first books that I read back in 2005 that started me on my road to self employment and building my online business was, ” The Power of Focus” by Jack Canfield.

If you are trying to build your own online business and are not achieving the level of success that you wish for, you should get a copy of Jack’s book. I pull it out often to review and re-focus myself.

If you need help to overcome the technical aspects of online marketing, please use the Contact Henry link at the top of this page to get in touch with me.

I would be happy to schedule a free 20 minute review session with you to see what needs you have and if I can be of service to you.

Many have already viewed this on YouTube but if you missed it, here is the amazing video from 1969 of Christian the Hugging Lion and his two friends John Rendall and Ace Bourke as they are reunited with Christian in Africa in 1969.
John Rendall and Ace Bourke were interviewed this morning (July 30, 2008) on the Today Show. Watch this interview with John and Ace for an update on this story of their hugging lion Christian. </p>