I Run a $1,000,000+ a Year, One-Man, Online Business

For me, I've found it's best to find people who have already done something I want to know how to do and learn it from them. This is a good way to rapidly put yourself ahead of everyone else trying to figure it out on their own. In other words, find a mentor and absorb their knowledge. If you're not self educating and learning from people who have succeeded before you, the road ahead will be a difficult and frustrating one, trust me.

I've spent $1,000s on self education. I've read over 700 books, traveled to over 50 countries and spent $1,000,000s building my online businesses that gross me over $1-million-dollars per year. I live a very financially comfortable, no-stress, location free lifestyle meaning I can literally be anywhere in the world, whenever I want and I take advantage of this freedom often.

Ever since my Forbes Article came out in 2018 a ton of people have asked me many questions about how I did it.

How did I build this business, totally online, no office, growing it to 40+ employees all over the world who work when/where they want and me running it from anywhere in the world when/where I want. How did I do it?

To me, it's easy. I just did it. But to most people it sounds impossible to go from average 9-5 guy to a global travelling entrepreneur (aka Digital Nomad) in a few years.

Before all of this, I was a regular 9-5 guy. I went to college for 2 years for a Mechanical Engineering Design program in London, Ontario, Canada. After college I had great jobs at some of the largest engineering firms in the world, including Hatch Ltd., SNC Lavalin Inc., & Siemens.

I learned a lot working at these places and I'm grateful that I had the opportunity to work at them for about 10 years combined. As good as they were I never really liked the trapped feeling I felt working a 9-5 job.

Working for someone else is not a way to freedom or wealth. How much money you make is decided and fixed by someone else, how many hours you need to work and how much free time you have to yourself is up to someone else, how many holidays you're allowed to take every year is fixed to 2 weeks and again, decided by someone else. This 9-5 world doesn't give you much choice in life and that didn't sit well with me. Another 30-40 years of that? No thanks!

I'm not saying these corporations were evil. That's just how the 9-5 world works and I didn't like it so I decided to do something about it. The thing that always bothered me the most was having to wake up before I wanted to, before I felt fully rested, commuting through morning rush hour traffic to spend 8 hours somewhere I don’t really want to be, with people I don’t really want to be around and do things how someone else wants them done. Then I'd spend more time commuting home in more traffic, get home and feel too exhausted to do anything else, day in, day out.

I was willing to do whatever it it took to escape it. There were other people that had done it, other people who built successful online businesses, travelling the world and enjoying the life I dreamed of but what was different about them? Why could they do it and I couldn't? Were they special super humans?

I started talking about what I wanted to do with my life and how I wanted to live it to some colleagues at work and they'd say "you can't start your own business, you don't even have an MBA! You can't travel the world and work anywhere you want! Good luck! You can't make more money than you're getting paid here!" And many other limiting beliefs they had about life that kept them from doing what I went ahead and did!

These comments were music to my ears! Like you perhaps, I love when someone tells me something can't be done. "Everything is impossible until someone goes and does it" - Steve Jobs

I started reading books about other people that have done what I wanted to do hoping maybe I'll figure out what the secret is. What that did was really open my mind up to the fact that if they can do it, why can't I? I just need to know what they know and apply it to my life so I started seeking out mentors who would help teach me what I can do to get out of this 9-5 situation.

Based on what I was reading and learning I decided to start a side business while working my full time job and boom! J – CAD Inc. was born. All it was, was offering my engineering skills to local machine shops, manufacturing facilities and welders in Toronto making blueprints for them. I did this for years while working a full time job so it definitely wasn’t an overnight success, I did this from 2006 – 2013 in fact.

Then it finally started to pick up, or more specifically my business skills and knowledge started to pick up. I'd learn something and apply it to my business and make more money on the side. Rinse & repeat, rinse & repeat until I was making enough money on the side to quit my job.

Sound easy enough? Is there something you can do that's similar, offer your skill on the side, water it and wait for it to grow into a full time business? I'm sure there's something!

I'm not a braggy type of guy, I don't like too many flashy material things but what a lot of people say is inspirational to them is when they see my daily revenue. Below are screen shots of average days for me.

When I started in business most days were $0. Then I started having $100 days. Now $3,000 - $5,000 is pretty normal. Sometimes I get $10,000+ days here and there too!