EARLY YEARS
Born in Communist Poland…. We escaped to the US when I was 11 in the early 90’s.
Here are some adventures from those days that shaped me:
When I was 7.. I was laying on the back seat of a car that was smuggling liquor back into the country (was supposed to cry and scream if the immigration wanted to check).
At 9 I was helping pops push product at soccer stadiums in Eastern Europe… was hustled a few times by Russians in the other stands and learned my lessons.
I learned how to sell and how not to be hustled.
The only games I played around the house had to do with money changing hands (don’t ask as I’d have a hard time explaining this one).
The medical field was terrible and all my teeth back then were fixed without any numbing.
My first computer was a Commodore 64. It took over 10 minutes to load a game from a tape deck. If it did not… I had to use a screwdriver to adjust the magnets in the tape deck and try again.
We were still a generation that ran around for hours without any supervision.
FIRST BUSINESS VENTURES
While in high school I wanted some money. My parents never got into a habit of giving me an allowance.
I ran a record store with two older friends of mine.
Became a DJ and played at colleges, bars, radio stations, clubs, and raves in the local area. My biggest crowd was 4,000+ as I opened for DJ Scribble (he used to be famous on MTV).
FORMAL EDUCATION
Three degrees. Two associates and one bachelor.
Marketing – Business to business & Sound engineer.
MUSIC STUDIO
Straight out of college I moved to New York and got an internship at Unique Recording Studios. Eventually I moved on to Assistant Engineer and then Engineer before all the studios started shutting down. Getting a paycheck was like ripping teeth out from that crowd.
Some of the artists I was able to work with:
REAL WORLD EXPERIENCE
I did not want to leave the music industry as I had some bigger dreams but also did not want to be a broke musician so I came up with a plan.
Get sales jobs at various corporations and let them train me. That I did. I learned, sold and once I started hitting my goals or got close to I quit and moved on to the next one.
Here are the ones I still remember:
MUSIC SUCCESS
Since New York had a huge polish population I made it my goal to dominate it and I did.
I created a group, rapped and engineered the music.
We had two albums.
Played concerts..
Had 3 hits in the top 10 on the local polish radio… one was #1 for almost a year.
Major TV station from Poland came to do a documentary on us.
FEELING LOST
I accomplished what I wanted in music and the offers I had on the table from the labels were not something I wanted to pursue.
After working in sales for all of these corporations I realized that they were the ones making residual income from my hard work and I always started from zero each month.
Read the 4 Hour Workweek and couldn’t get the idea of being location independent out of my head.
BACK TO BUSINESS
Moved to Atlanta and bought a coffee shop in the suburbs. Ran that for almost a year but since I do not drink coffee realized it wasn’t for me.
Back to square one again.
FIRST INTERNET VENTURE
I was browsing the web and heard about Adsense Niche sites. Created a couple… made a few dollars and started pumping out around 50 every month. Six months later I made my first $1,000 and after that had months where I hit close to $10,000..
Used my SEO skills to talk to local business and landed my initial clients. Before I knew I had an agency with workers and made more than I ever did in my corporate jobs.
PUBLISHING
One of the blog networks that I used for SEO became to popular and Google shut it down. That left me with 1,500+ blog posts and a team of writers with nothing to do.
I told them to start writing books and left them alone. That became profitable and we went on to writing 5,000+ books and making $250,000+
Lesson learned for my SEO biz… DO NOT USE PRIVATE BLOG NETWORKS FOR MYSELF OR CLIENTS.
DIGITAL NOMAD YEARS
I started to slow travel the world and see how my biz would handle it.
I had to create better systems and tighter constraints for what I would pursue but it turned out ok.
Some of the countries I lived in: Japan, Thailand, Germany, Portugal, Poland, Vietnam, Spain, Taiwan, Czech Republic and more
FILMED A MOVIE
My businesses were running well and I became bored. Got a great team together and we made a documentary about the realities of building/running businesses when on the road.
More info at yourownwayout.com
PODCASTING
After a decade or so running businesses I got into podcasting.
Smart Brand Marketing
We Create Online Courses
Crypto Moon Radio (deleted)
I also helped out some friends to get their podcasts off the ground:
You might recognize this one:
Peter Shankman – creator of HARO (Help a Reporter Out)
FIRST EXPOSURE TO AN ONLINE COURSE BUSINESS
One of my SEO clients was Chike Lindsay (Muay Thai Champion). He liked the results I was getting for his gym plus we became friends.
One day he asked for my help creating his own course and marketing it.
It was one of the hardest projects (as most people to to the gym to train martial arts and don’t want to do it online).
After 10 months of struggling we made it work.
Read the case study here
NEW COURSE VENTURES
Around 2013/2014 I combined my experience of online courses and marketing skills to test out two new offerings.
The first one to help experts monetize their expertise.
Service #1: We can create an online course for you in 14 hours of your time.
I quickly realized that the bigger pain point was getting students to enroll.
and so came..
Service #2: We help you market your online course.
It worked fast, used my skills better and is what we have done for over 12 years now.
As of 2025 we now marketed over 400+ courses and developed a solid strategy (version 187+ by now).
For new courses it typically turns $5,000 into $30,000 for our clients (average figure).
Others we scaled past 7 figures.
Work with small creators, influencers, private equity, VCs etc…
As you can see the road to success is not a straight one and I’m not even halfway done yet.
If you’re feeling stuck or think I could help you reach out to me.