Category: Random

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Car Starter Repair

After finishing up my delicious roast beef sandwich with my daughter, we get up, go to the car to head back home. I slide and turn the key in the ignition and instead of hearing the flow of exhaust from a running engine it stops cold with a single click. Attempting to turn the key again, I am met with another click.

Someone else recognized my plight and politely attempted to assist me by jumping the car. However, I was already doubtful that this would even work since I had just replaced the battery last month. The guy who was helping me out hooked up the jumper cables to my battery terminals and asked me to crank the engine again. Still, I was met with just a click. By now I had accepted my fate that after 9 years of faithful service, the starter was dead and that my car was going home on the back of a flat bed tow truck.

There we were, my daughter and I rode shotgun in the front of Rodney’s truck being chased by my car which could be seen out of the back window of the truck. We arrived at my house, and my car was gently rolled off the back of the flat bed into my garage where she waited for me to get her back on the road.

In the morning, I woke up early and headed down to the discount auto parts store to pick up a new starter for the car. I came home, jacked up the car and replaced the old starter with the new. I slid the key into the ignition, to my delight I hear the car purring away like a kitten. My car started instantaneously with absolutely no delay! I returned the old part to auto parts store for my core charge and off to work I went. I pretty much had all this done before people get their first cup of coffee finished.

By doing this maintenance myself, I had saved at least in the neighborhood of $140+ in labor and the extra time of dealing with someone else to perform this labor while probing for a ride to get back to the shop once it was done to pick my car up. On top of that, shops like to put an extra charge on the part so a starter that cost me $130 probably would have ended up full retail at $250.

Once you buy a car, learn it well enough to be able to inspect the important items, change the oil and do minor repairs. The more stuff that you can fix on a car, the more you will save. Just about every car on the internet has a forum or enthusiast website dedicated to it that is stocked full of freely available information on how to work on your car. Rather it be changing out a headlight to doing an engine rebuild, someone has done it and put it on the internet. If you are lucky enough, you might even be able to find yourself a service manual freely available on these websites which enhance the definition of the scope of work you want to perform. I have had my car for almost 9 years now and have never had to take it in to get repaired. I have learned how to pretty much do anything I need to do on my car including engine rebuilds off of the wealth of resources on the internet. If you are not comfortable with using the internet, go take a course at your local community college.

The cars with less bells and whistles on it even add to the simplicity of the car repairs since it will have less points of failure. Some of the worst cars you can buy are luxury cars which tend to use bleeding edge technology and bunch of electronics. The more of a base model car that you can get, the better! The point of a car is to get you from point A to point B. For those who think that the car is the point, then they should be willing to invest the time to learn how to work on something they are so passionate about.

If you depend on a car, it is undoubtedly one of the most cost consuming item in your budget. Paying off a car is the greatest way to save money and the next would be maintaining the vehicle yourself. Although, I will add that no matter what even if you are paying the mechanic, it is still cheaper to maintain a car than it is to keep buying new ones. It is worth the investment of your time and patience to learn how to do so.

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Positive Attitude Equals Positive Results

With a UMP45 in my hand and a M9 by my side, I charge forward into combat head strong along side a virtual team of Marines by my side. When the count down ends, we push forward like a blast of fire licking the far reaches of the playing field shooting wildly into the air at the opposing front which greets us with equal might. Kill after kill we trade exchange barking machine gun fire until the virtual simulation comes to an end. We play this game over the internet every night fulfilling our inner manly desires for camaraderie and accomplishment.

Every so often, we will come to a point in a game where are down 5 points and there is a minute left on the clock. In that time, one of the team member’s communicates, “oh man we lost”. Immediately, it seems that now there is one true fate for the team, and that there is no use in pushing on to finish out strong within the game. Why continue to grip the controller ever so tightly to get in those last few sweet moments of mowing down the other team to score the final points of the game. This member of your team, “Negative Nancy” has sealed the fate for the rest of the team.

I must confess, there was a long period of my life where I was a Negative Nancy. I always though that I was seeing the world for what it really was, and that I was being a realist. In my mind, people who were positive were clueless and hopeless. I used to think that these people were out of touch and wanted to stuff their head in a hole and solely live through bliss by ignorance. However, that realm of thought was just immature on my part.

When I began looking at life through the lens of positive and uplifting thought. A whole new world of opportunities began to unfold. Whatever direction you want to head to, no matter how impossible the odds by going into it with a positive attitude totally changes outcome. I’m not saying that a positive attitude alone will always equal success, but it will get you much further than self defeating negative thoughts.

The most common time this happens, is when you break from the norm of popular thoughts. For example,if you want to leave your high paying job to seek out self employment, you are immediately met with negativity. “How stupid can you be for leaving that nice job to go paint pictures?!”.  Another example, someone writes a story from the heart but is met with ridicule from spelling and grammar mistakes instead of focusing on the story itself. Further yet, when your accomplishments are met with negativity because they just were not good enough. In all cases, you must hold a positive attitude and emancipate yourself from other people’s concerns. People that are still in this state are simply no healthy and not good for nurturing your spirit to push forward in life.

Simply put, most people do not want to see you succeed. It is evident in society, that doing the right thing and being successful makes you evil. If you are financially successful, you are in the cross-hairs of other people that want what you have. Which is odd, instead of approaching you to see how you became successful so they can learn, they would rather ostracize you and dismiss you with a random generalization.

The solution, is to surround yourself with other healthy people that are interested in lifting you up just as you are there to lift them up. Every one of us has different dreams or goals that we may not necessarily agree with, but we should be right behind each other providing a support system. We need to be cheerleaders for each other, especially when your chips are down so you can pull out strong and maybe even end up winning the the game when there was 5 points down and less than a minute left on the clock.

There was a time when writing this blog would have been impossible for me. I would have been defeated off the bat with negative thoughts. I tend to be very critical and hard on myself. As a testament to my faith in positive attitude, I have been publishing my photography and my thoughts here even though I am admittedly very intimated by what some people might think. At the end of the day, I am pushing to do something where the Negative Nancy’s will comfortably stay on the side lines in a prison, paralyzed by their own negative thoughts.

In the great words of Yogi Berra, “It ain’t over till it’s over”, stay positive and keep focused on what you are doing until the game is complete. Seek out the positive light in others, lead by example to spread a positive attitude with others.

About the photo:

I took this picture before the sun even began to peek over the horizon in Mount Dora. The myriad of cloud patterns behind the iconic Florida palm just hit me. I experimented with some different shutter speeds to get different effects with the clouds, however this was my favorite.

Nikon D90, nikkor 18 200 vr

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Tempting A Path Less Traveled

Waking from a dream by the screaming buzzing of the alarm, I look over and see that my dog is sleeping right through it and the day has already begun with out me. The house is empty and I am ready to do something productive for the day. I get out of bed push the sleep mucus out of my eyes then stand up to stretch. I look down at the clock, and realize that this day has played itself out before. It is time for me to leave my life to go devote my time to an institution that continually reminds me that I am just there to work for a paycheck. Does this sound like a similar rut that you wake to every morning?

It is like I am living the life of Bill Murry in the movie “Groundhog Day”, but like a machine, I am doing what I’m programmed to do. In this day in age, we continue to keep doing this until we are worn out and can no longer keep pushing forward.

When I first took the job, I was excited that I was going to have a very secure place to work to insure the integrity of my family through retirement if I wanted. This excitement comes from the fact that I have a difficult time holding a job for one reason or another for extended periods of time. I do not believe that it is in my DNA to work for other people or be assimilated into the belief that I should depend on just one group to control my fate throughout life. A few years into working this job, I felt that I was due for a promotion, so I opened Tearstone Performance reselling automotive parts to fill in the gap where I was not getting a promotion. I was aggressively going after an increase of pay without having to beg or plead the institution I was working for.

I have learned that with money comes problems and that there may be something to living a simpler life. Most people grow up with dreams of having a nice car someday or having a big house or even being rich. The bigger house you have, the more money it is going to cost to heat that space, repair things when they go wrong and taxes you are going to have to pay on that property. The more expensive car you buy, the higher your insurance, repair costs and in most cases fuel will be also. On top of this, usually it is done by getting even deeper in debt slaving yourself away at lining the pockets of banks with extra money from the interest accrued which could have gone to buy twice to three times as much of what originally paid for to begin with.

The original reason why I was struggling to become more successful and build a better paycheck is to accommodate for all this extra stuff I have been accumulating. I was in debt so bad at one time, I was praying everyday that nothing would ever happen to me while I was working this job. I opened up Tearstone Performance for the soul purpose to help bail us out of the debt we were continually accumulating. I was a slave to work to pay for all my stuff.

Fast forward to today, after working intently from my very good friend, that debt is dumb. She coached me through pulling myself up by my bootstraps and charging head first into paying off this debt to get my head over water. Today, I have no credit cards and no car payments. I only owe money on my house which using the same principles as before.

So now, being debt free I am evaluating the need to work for someone else at all. The American dream is to focus your life at learning a marketable trade to eventually seek employment for someone else to make them rich so you can buy a bunch of meaningless junk that emotionally degrades your quality of life. I cannot help to feel that if I walked away from this career how many people would scratch their head to say “wow he walked away from a killer job, working at a killer company”. When I am lying on my death bed, I doubt I am going to say “only if I would have worked more”.

Sitting here at this company watching other employees fight tooth and nail to gain the admiration of the management in hopes they will move up in the company. These same people make this company their life by working late and taking time from their family and kids. They are caught in this rat race to pull out the stops to make more money to support a life that they continually grasping for constantly sacrificing time with their growing children they cannot get back. I am punished with reprimand because other people make these sacrifices and I do not. As I get older and begin to understand the big picture, that it is time to truly sacrifice things such as a big house or a new fancy sports car in exchange for focusing on being home and watching my children grow up. It is time to start working on getting out of this rat race and into a place where I can be in the driver’s seat of my own destiny.

I am sure there are many people that may feel guilty about the course their life has taken or may just be unaware of what they are giving up. Perhaps the greed of amassing a bigger income to have nicer things forces both parents to work while the kids fend for themselves at home. Even those who do not have kids, sacrifice their relationships to focus on their own careers instead of each other. This country in general has it’s priorities screwed up and admittedly I am no exception for falling in the trap.

The path less traveled would constitute securing a means of self employment which would give the flexibility of time without having someone manage my time for me. It would be nice to be able to go to my daughter’s open house at school or to a doctors appointment without having to be chastised by management about creating a pattern or taking too much time out of work on taking care of personal matters.

After the long day is done, it is time to go home. Within that time, the family is preparing for tomorrow to do it all over again.

Live simple, live happy.

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Board of Directors

Group of VulturesI have been working for the same company for nearly 10 years. I came in this morning to find that someone who has put over 18 years at this company is leaving to follow his passion to become a professor and to get out of this city. Keep in mind that this company pretty much hires people for life. In my 10 years here, I’ve seen people work here for 30 years and die before they even hit retirement. One of my co-workers calls this place the “Hotel California”, you check in but you do not check out. So undoubtedly, this individual who is making the move to leave after such a long tenure was brave.

With the state of the economy, the constant trend for companies is to lay off people to cut costs until recently the tide has turned much to the surprise of companies. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the number of voluntary resignations has surpassed the number of layoffs in February of 2010 for the first time since October 2008.  One such cause is that with the cost cutting that companies do, they are no filling in where people have left or cut thereby stressing those that are staying in the job. Companies have been taking advantage at increasing the load on their workforce because people were too afraid to let go of what they already have. Personally, I have a great paying job, with great benefits. The greatness of the job has degraded since one of the people on our 4 person team left, and they did not refill the position. They did not promote me into his position and I am left to do all the work he was paid to do.

Another big reason why people are leaving their jobs is also attributed to career advancement. With the job shortage, people were too gun shy to leave their jobs and it has created a backlog of workers looking to aggressively promote themselves into new positions in other companies. The days of devoting yourself to one company and rising through the ranks through hard work is in the rear view mirror. The companies that you can actually do that at are far and few between. Even the company I am employed with has a trend to hire outside this office.

We have been staring that these same cube walls for years. We spend most of our days watching our kids grow up through pictures on our cube walls at the expense of making someone else rich. Through that time, we have been a slave to our debtors, buying things we cannot afford and now chained to a desk working off our illusions of fancy lifestyles and conspicuous consumption to live the American dream. This is a voluntary life release program, you can go home every day to live your life, but you better be back.

About the photo

I took this photo in Mount Dora on a photo walk one morning. Those vultures were all hanging out on the chimney, and my buddy said “Look it’s the board of directors”. Vultures are a sign of death and bad luck. Working for someone else, you are sacrificing your life so they can squeeze all the good qualities out of you for their gain.

Nikon D90, Nikkor 18-200mm VR2

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10 Mistakes To Avoid In A Small Business

I want to focus on some pitfalls to avoid in your journey to running a successful business. Undoubtedly, I’ve made plenty of mistakes in my continuing efforts to run a successful small business. If you play it safe and do not take risks you will never know what its like to succeed in anything other than playing it safe.

1. Charging Your Customer Until A Product Ships or Services Are Rendered – Do not run a customer’s credit card or receive monies for a product that you are not ready to ship that day or a service you have finished at that moment.

For example, in my Tearstone.com business, since the vehicles we specialize in are not popular, most items are special order items that sometimes take 2-3 weeks to actually get in from our suppliers to ship out to the customer. As fickle and impatient as customers tend to be, they will end up canceling the order early for a variety of reasons. Up front, we do run an authorize transaction to insure that their credit card is good for the payment when they initially place their order, but do not actually charge it until it ships to them.

If you were to run a service and take the money up front, I guarantee that if push comes to shove you would end up slacking a bit since you already have reaped the reward for an effort you have not completed yet. This is not a good way of doing business for you or a customer. Even auto body shops invest their own money into a car to pay their employees and materials before they collect a dime from an insurance company or client before the car is returned. If nothing else, this puts you on a time line with the client and a heightened sense of concern of customer satisfaction before the hand over their hard earned dollars for your endeavors.

2. Handing Over Money To Your Vendors Before Products Are Shipped – This sort of goes along with the last mistake and that keep in mind that you are a customer to your suppliers. If you have any supplier that asks you for money up front then save yourself the grief and take your business elsewhere.

Initially when Tearstone Performance started, I had started with the primary focus of selling aftermarket turbo kits for cars that did not come with them from the factory. These kits cost anywhere from $3,500-$5,000 a pop. Admittedly, I made this very stupid mistake of giving money to a crooked supplier to build these kits for me prior to ever receiving any product. Essentially to make a long story short, they literally financed their meals on all the money that we were giving them and depended on us to drum up more sales to supply them with more money they needed to finish off old orders that were not fulfilled. They even ran this way with customers that would stop by their shop and drop off their cars as well. They thrived on the “Rob Peter to Pay Paul” concept and continued on until I finally put a grinding halt on the sales of turbo kits.

We were in a position where we had 12 orders of turbo kits in from customers to these crooks and all the money was in their hands. We lost an estimated total of around $25,000k worth of orders we scraped up to refund in some way shape or fashion.

As a business owner, this really did kill my spirit of being personable with customers because you really see the true colors of people when you are stuck in a predicament and they don’t care about you anywhere near as much as you thought they did when the transaction started. It was just a stark reminder that although you should endeavor to build relationships with your customers but don’t get attached. In the end, you are still just a random business in your market out to make a buck.

3. Spending More Than You Can Afford – To most this seems like a pretty simple concept. Don’t spend more money than you are bringing in. Furthermore, do not even think about financing your business on a credit card as you are setting yourself up for failure. It’s extremely important that you only budget for those things you absolutely need to keep your business moving forward and save or invest the rest.

When we first started Tearstone Performance, we only invested enough money to get the LLC paperwork submitted and a bank account open. We found a supplier that did not require a buy-in and started selling product through our website which I built with my own time and free software on a friend’s web server. We continually repeat a cycle of making a sale, paying for the product through our supplier, delivering that product and working with the difference. Remember, that the difference between what the product sold for on your website and what you bought it from your supplier for is just a net amount. You still have to put money aside for bank fees and other expenses that you incur in your business every month.

I find this particular business model extremely successful and very low risk. I’m not spending any money I don’t have and won’t be put into a position where I owe anyone anything as long as I stick this this plan. Ideally, if you are working a full time job during the day, and running a website on the side this is probably the best way to do it.

4. Being Too Stuffy – Even though you are running a business, you are still a human being with real problems and a real life. In your small business, you will start off with people that want to deal with small businesses specifically mainly for the human interaction. They want to build a relationship with you and not some faceless conglomerate. Being a small business, use this to your advantage. Think about anytime you get a long winded email with excessive amounts of HTML formatting pressuring you to buy something? I delete it with out a second thought.

When I first started Tearstone Performance, I was overwhelmed with the amount of phone calls and Instant Messages I would get from people that just wanted someone to talk to and chat. I felt as a business owner I shouldn’t have to be bogged down with all of this personal interaction as it just eats my day away. So I started being more stern about the conversations I was having and ending them abruptly and I quickly recognized that I was starting to kill off one of my biggest value adds. People liked the fact that they could build a relationship with me without having any sort of barrier there and preferred to continue to do business with me.

I’ve learned if you come off like you are too important to talk to everyone, they’ll just go find another small business to buddy up with and go spread the good word about them instead of you. Eventually your business will just turn back into another random website floating out there on the internet. Your customers are your most valuable marketing and sales tool, treat them well.

Don’t forget the 80/20 philosophy. 80% of your business comes from 20% of your client base. It costs twice as much for new customers as it does to keep your existing customers.

5. Failure to Research – I want to assume that everyone would determine that there was enough demand to warrant opening up a business or product line based on what they want to sell but this can be a costly mistake. It is a mistake that I find a lot of new business owners jump into too quickly.

Many businesses fail because there is not enough demand or market for the products and services they want to provide. Let’s say that you want to develop an after market widget for an existing product. Your fabricator states that you must build 100 widgets at a time. If your demand only consists of a handful of people saying they want this widget made, chances are that’s not a smart business to get into. No matter how much you perceive a need is out there, you may end up fueling the dream of a few paying customers then paying out the nose for widgets attached to many hopeful sales. I have a shelf full of inventory we are still working on trying to move because of this very reason right here. It’s good to make investments, but be smart on how many items you want to buy to product at a time. If nothing else, you may have to go to another fabricator, get quoted for a higher price and see if those customers are okay with that. Don’t get into a predicament where you cut your profits too slim or it may end up costing you more than it is worth.

6. Selecting the Wrong Tools For the Job – For an online business, most of those tools come in the form of software. I’ve been extremely lucky in finding most of the tools to accommodate our business ventures have come in the way of GNU or GPL or commonly known as free ware. This site you are viewing right now, was built with free software, my Tearstone.com site was built with free software including the shopping cart and SEO engine. This is one way I was able to drastically cut expenses and time invested in building a website.

Sometimes it’s better to buy software, especially for the books. In the spirit of saving money, we started off by using Access to do our books. This turned into a nightmare as our database needed to be started from scratch and it was never actually completed properly. We were not in the software development business, so needless to say we had to move on. There was a sale on Microsoft Small Business Accounting, which was definitely a step up from using Access. But due to how unbelievably complicated it was to use, and that no accountant liked to deal with it we discarded that tool as well. Eventually we finally had enough money to invest in Intuit QuickBooks. We bought two licenses so we could share a database and open it up from two locations. This made all the difference in the world and your options are open a lot wider with the amount of accounts that would rather receive your book data in this format.

7. Taking On The Wrong Customers – This world is filled with billions of people from all walks of life and various levels of maturity. Just because someone is interested in doing business with you does not mean that you should accept. In the event that you are moving product, there are customers that you don’t necessarily ever have to sell to anymore either if you know that they are going to be a problem.

Friends and family probably make the worst customers possible. They usually want everything for nothing, potentially lack the maturity to draw the professional line of business and friendship or simply will just waste your time. I tend to run into this mistake from time to time because normally when a customer would not bother with a request like returning an item they didn’t need, usually friends and family have no problems with you taking it back even when you have cut them a deal. Where does that leave you? Holding the bag on potentially a special order item that you now have to spend the extra effort to market it out to another customer.

Also, in my experience we sell products to a lot of pubescent teens that sometimes get a hold of Mommy & Daddy’s credit card. This is a good time to make sure you have your terms and conditions handy. At least once a month, we run into an issue where some kid bought something, then their parents find out and attempt to halt the transaction. This comes in the form of refusing shipment or doing a charge back. Luckily, charge backs can be fought when you have proof that you shipped the item. Usually that leaves the problem back on them. Also you may want to include a term about returned stock that is returned that you won’t give them a refund for. You can turn around and resell this stock because after all you are not there to warehouse their mistakes.

Even though you want to try to build good reputations with people, sometimes they will use and abuse you. For instance, we had a gentleman that used to spend time with us on the phone getting recommendations from us on products to buy. Then he would turn around and buy it from a competitor that was selling it cheaper. Then, he had the audacity to come back to us for assistance on the installation or usage of the product. I have absolutely no tolerance for customers like this and we just politely told him to check with the vendor he bought it from for assistance. From that point on, we avoided picking up his calls when coming through on the caller ID.

Some customers are just not worth your time, let the competition be wrapped up in that mess and continue to just take care of the customers that take care of you.

8. Trusting Your Suppliers – Even though you may think that guys that have risen to a higher level of success or had enough capital to become a wholesaler has their stuff together, that’s not always the case. You have to stay on top of your suppliers since ultimately they represent you in your quality of service.

We’ve learned over the years that not all suppliers are on top of the game as we would like them to be. We have a few suppliers that even though sometimes they are really great or very efficient they have screwed up on some orders in the past. We have a few suppliers that drop ship products directly from their warehouse to our customers. We always double check their work when we get a receipt for our Purchase Orders and tracking numbers for when product is shipped. It’s not unusual that products get sent to the wrong address or you get charged the wrong amount for your purchases. It’s very important to stay on top of this! If you run a small business that specializes in drop shipping this must stay on the top of your priority list!

This is not to say all suppliers are always bad, but a supplier that has not been in business over 10 years, expect to run into some issues.

9. Forget To Pay Your Taxes – This is pretty self explanatory. If you live in a country where a percentage of your sales must go back to your government, then this is something you definitely want to stay on top of.

We are lucky to have an automated system here in Florida that alerts us every time our taxes are due. In most places your taxes are due every quarter, but if your sales volume is high enough your taxes are due every month. Also if you hire an accountant, they will insure your taxes are paid as well.

The United States IRS (Internal Revenue Service) has changed their policies of a kinder, gentler IRS and won’t think twice to audit your books. Keep everything up to date and stay legit.

Do not turn the business account into your personal spending account! To get paid out of your business, you are supposed to cut yourself a check from out of the business while contributing a portion of it to Social Security and figuring out how much goes to your income taxes at the end of the year. Keep your business finances and your personal finances separate at all costs.

10. In It To Only Make Money – Your business should not only be something you truely enjoy doing, but it needs to have a purpose. If that purpose is to just make money, then chances are you are not going to do anything worth while.

Originally, when we started Tearstone Performance, our purpose was to sell Turbo kits. To be honest, since it was a side gig, I was not that concerned with making too much money on the deal. At that time, I was fine with making a $100 off of each kit, whereas in hind sight I should have been making $1,000-$1,500 a kit! The company at that time did really well, because I was truly doing it to help other car enthusiasts enjoy the success I had made with my own vehicle endeavors.

I still love selling car parts, but complications with suppliers and a niche market drying up is forcing me to change the way I do business. As with most facets of life, it is a good trait to have to embrace change and growth. Even if I closed my parts business tomorrow, I would not trade the experience I’ve had running a business for anything in the world. As a result, I have the knowledge, experience and confidence to start up a business selling just about anything and be successful.

When starting a business, take what you are passionate about and run with it. That’s what keeps you motivated through the years. Also consider that most likely you are one person that has to take on a million tasks for the company to be successful. You have to be motivated enough to learn about all aspects of running a company to be a smart and educated business person. Rather you are putting in a 40 hour full time job with another 40-60 hours of side business in every week or putting in 80 hours devoted to your business you absolutely have to love what you are doing to truly add value to whatever market you decide to excel in.

Running your own business takes a great deal of responsibility and if played correctly will yield the same in rewards. There is nothing like the satisfaction of guiding your own destiny instead of having an employer cut you one day as a result of insuring their own bottom line. Take control of your destiny and pursue your dreams.

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Starting Over

This is where it begins for me again. The last site that I developed using the WordPress blogging software to put my thoughts out on the internet for others to me seemed to have a narrow mission. So now, I’ve registered my own name so I can blog about more subjects than just running online businesses.

If you are a first time visitor, welcome! My mission is to help put good concise information about a variety of topics in which you could benefit from.

My name is Russ Sanderlin. I live in Orlando, Florida (home of the infamous mouse) and currently I work as a Senior Network Systems Analyst for a prominent company in Heathrow, Florida. My goal is to eventually leave the rat race and run my own ventures with enough money to supply my needs.

In 2005, I started to run my own niche e-business distributing automotive performance parts called Tearstone Performance. I’m quite proud of how well that business has been running for serving a small market of Mitsubishi enthusiasts as we grossed over $250k our first year in business on a part time effort.

I own and operate 3 vBulletin web forums. Two of which represent the Florida and Mid-Atlantic regions of the US for the Mitsubishi Owners Association. Finally a website dedicated to the 2006+ Mitsubishi Eclipse called “Club4G.org“.

I started this blog because I’m a big fan of personal development.