Mapping Out Your Future With Mike
Personal Background – William Michael Anderson
Here is my personal history.I grew up in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, that is on Lake Ontario between Toronto and Niagara Falls. I graduated from Princeton University in chemical engineering in 1972. I have been married 39 years to DJ, ‘she who must be obeyed’ and we have three children. Erin 35 married with three children, Geoffrey 33, and Liam 14. We have lived in Roswell Georgia since 1985 choosing too hot over too cold during a particularly sane moment.
Beyond my wife and family I have enjoyed a number of passions over my 59 years and expect to enjoy many more.
At about 10, I was passionate about sports: baseball and hockey. My Little League Baseball coach told me that I was too small to be a pitcher. That was the wrong thing to say to me. A bucket was installed on our back fence and I threw baseballs at that bucket everyday until I could hit the bucket almost every time. By the time I was 12, I could hit specific parts of the bucket almost every time. My position was catcher, still not allowed to pitch, no one would even give me a look. I was really small and skinny. Those were the good old days. Anyway, to make a long story short, when our pitcher got wild then I began throwing the ball back to him harder and harder with each poor pitch he delivered. The coach made the mistake of chewing me out early in my 12 year old season saying if you can do better, go ahead. So I did. It got us the local championship and well into the yearly play down to Williamsburg. I was the starting All Star pitcher.
The curious part of the sports story is that baseball was my second choice. Hockey was my life. Hockey is a religion in Canada at least it was when I was growing up. My passion was so complete that I got up at 4:30am most weekdays so that I could be at practice an hour early. This happened during those teenage years when most kids are rooted in their bed at 5am.
I would disappear for all the daylight hours available during winter. Often I shoveled off our local marsh so we could skate. During the non hockey half of the year we played ball hockey on the street. At 16 I was still that tiny skinny kid at 5 foot one inch and 105 pounds soaking wet. My passion refused to accept the fact that I might have a minor disadvantage when playing against ‘peers’ who were 6 foot and 180 pounds. Suffice it to say I learned how to be quick and elusive. Even though my skill level soared, I saw more than my fair share of emergency rooms and dentist offices.
After high school, Princeton University graciously allowed me to study and eventually graduate with a degree in Chemical Engineering. The next 15 years of my professional life I spent in a three piece suit. The first two with Exxon in technical sales which was an education in itself. My father asked me to help out at Anderson Water Treatment Limited and I did. I bought out his partners and eventually started a separate corporate in Atlanta in the early 80’s. Our products were high tech, high dollar industrial water treatment systems. I loved the work and the people both in the industry and our firm.
In the seventies my love of numbers reflected itself as I developed a casual interest in real estate, gambling at casinos, gambling at racetracks and the stock market. We won, we lost and a bunch got rained out. Somewhere in there a small fortune was made and lost in real estate. What came out of it, was a passion for standardbred racehorses. What started as part time shared ownership in a single racehorse, quickly became a serious enterprise with a 50 acre working horse farm complete, with barns, paddocks, hay and oat fields, a year round half mile banked racetrack, grooms as employees, 20 racehorses…the whole nine yards. When I was not traveling North America on water treatment business I would be at the farm or a racetrack.
Moving on to the middle 80’s, as a family we moved to Georgia. The employees in Canada took over the operation of the Canadian company. I operated and owned wholly the Atlanta company. During the 1980’s the industrial water treatment market started to change. A change I did not like and could not prevent despite my efforts. Money became the prime issue as opposed to quality and service. I have noticed this in many other industries but it truly crushed my passion when greed and questionable business practices started to soil my personal playground.
By the late 80’s, the luster was completely gone from the industrial water treatment market. I folded up the Atlanta company and moved on.
Now you must understand some of the background here. My wife and I are opposites in some ways. The prime issue is risk. She is a kindergarten teacher and except for a sidebar into horse training, she has always taught school. She is not a risk taker especially when significant money is involved. As the trainer she would KNOW a horse was going to win and MIGHT put $2 on to win at the track. On the other hand, risk and risk analysis, putting the numbers in your favor, analyzing numbers to obtain guidance for your next move…that’s me. It has made for a very interesting partnership for over 39 years. You can imagine there have been a few heated discussions…
When we moved to Georgia in 1985, we sold the farm and the horses so that chapter of our lives closed. After I closed the water treatment company in the late 80’s, I looked around Atlanta for an opportunity. Atlanta was just starting to explode then. I began working in the residential new home construction business. It was just me working with my hands to start. I looked around and saw that the builders wanted turnkey reliability from their subcontractors. A major issue was Workman’s Compensation Insurance and General Liability Insurance. Another issue was payroll taxes. Finally, there seem to be very little professional reliability in the custom home construction industry. I looked at the margins for various trades. I quickly mastered a simple one: installation of roofing felt on new roof decking, one which required accurate scheduling. I made myself different than other subcontractors by -Getting my own WCI -Getting my own GLI -Presenting a bill for services from a true corporation thereby eliminating the builder’s responsibility for taxes etc.
What I did was make myself different from everyone else in the marketplace. The operation grew pretty quickly and was successful until 2000. At that time, the home market in Atlanta turned…greed and quality issues again, also minor supply/demand issues with Latino labor and radical new home supply swings – glut to scarcity. I started to look around again. I began investigating network marketing.
My goal was to generate a full time income from a home based business. Unfortunately, my experience with networking companies proved to be less than satisfactory. I joined several affiliate programs and MLM companies. I experienced some minor successes. But there was something missing. I did not have a significant warm market, but more importantly, the idea of family and friends as business partners always made me uncomfortable. I knew I needed to separate myself from the crowd. I could not see how to accomplish this in a timely manner following the training and marketing strategies taught by my networking businesses. I was ready to give up the ghost on network marketing and return to chemical engineering. It was at that time that I received a phone call from a gentleman who asked me: “If I could show you how to put 20-30 people a week into your business, week in, week out without fail, would that be worth 45 minutes of your time to see how to get that done?” Sounded impossible to me, but I was curious so I went to an overview call.
Money was tight, my check book was going through the network blues, all outgo, very little inflow. Furthermore, I had reviewed a large amount of training information from books, tapes, CD’s, you name it. I was flat out skeptical. But what pushed me to action was risk analysis. The same type of thinking that had brought me success many times in my life. Really what was the worst thing that could happen, what was the worst case scenerio – well the training would not help me and I could fall back on the money back guarantee. I might pick up some tidbits and spend some time trying several techniques. But risk analysis has two sides. What was the best case – well the training would work. I would finally get my hands on the pieces of the puzzle that make network marketing tick. I jumped in the deep end with both feet.
Once I started taking the training, I knew I had found a home. All my life I have been one of those people to whom many others often turn when times are rough or they need advice. Suddenly, I was in the middle of millions of people who desperately wanted to succeed at a home based business.
I had what they needed and wanted:
-Hands on interactive training.
-Group and individual support and mentoring.
I was part of a group of people who shared my passion for helping people. I attended the training classes and the special calls. The pieces started to come together. I was fortunate in that I was in the right place at the right time, meaning I was there in the late summer when Gino Niccoli and Terry Duff started the Dream Team. I closed the construction company at the end of 2003. Three and a half years later, the Dream Team and I went separate ways, but inside the Dream Team I developed an appetite. I knew that I wanted to experience daily that fantastic feeling one gets when you help someone start on that road to success.