One of the advantages of being a “Pioneer” in any field is growing up as the topic does. It means that as you learn new things, new things are developed. So you can keep learning, but aren’t overwhelmed.

That’s exactly what happened as I was “growing up” in Internet Marketing.

For example, when I started the only shopping carts that were available were heavy duty, lots of custom programming required, use at your own peril types of carts. I tried one or two – but they were WAY beyond my capabilities. And I was a “techie!”

Then in the early 2000s a new user-friendly cart was introduced – 1ShoppingCart. I missed the Superconference where they sold private label licenses (darn!) but I signed up with the Cart in May, 2001.

As I mentioned in Pioneer Days, I interviewed the original founder of the cart, George Tran, in 2002. And I was friends with  Rob Bell, who purchased it from George. Cliff VanDyke was in charge of customer service and we saw each other at least twice a year at Big Seminar.

So it was that I had direct access to the team at 1ShoppingCart. I made recommendations about what worked and didn’t. I was asked to beta test new products before their release. In short, I got to use the cart and all of its tools as they were created.

That type of “growing up together” not only makes it easy to learn a new capability, but it also gives you the feeling of mastery and “ownership” of the technology.

So it was no surprise when I created the One Hour Shopping Cart training program – designed specifically to help people use the cart more easily. Based on my more than 10 years of experience with the cart and lots of use of it for my own business, it was a natural extension of teaching others how to create their own Online Success.

I went one step further when I found that although they were paying for it, many people were not using the affiliate program capabilities of 1ShoppingCart. I can understand that. It is NOT intuitive. So I created One Hour Affiliate Program – to walk them through how to set it up in the cart, create specific toolbox pages for each product, then put together a training program for their affiliates. Pretty much soup to nuts.

Stu McLaren & Tracy Childers, Founders of Wishlist Member

The concept of Growing Up Together wasn’t restricted to just 1ShoppingCart. Since the co-founders of Wishlist Member are in my mastermind group, I was one of the original beta testers of the software. I had been using aMember for several years at that point for my membership sites, but was open to trying something new.

And within a few months, they had won me over! They matched and surpassed every capability I enjoyed about the other software. So naturally, by the time I had set up 30 different membership sites for my own business, not to mention those I did for clients – it seemed only logical that I create One Hour Membership Site!

Again I showed people how to use a tool that I grew up with. What was easy for me was difficult for others. So by putting it into a logical step-by-step program, based on my own experience, it was suddenly a more valuable tool to the students.

Growing up as an only child in a military family, I spent a lot of time alone. As we moved from one place to another, there was always a period when I didn’t know anyone. So I learned to enjoy my own company.

As a work-at-home entrepreneur I also spend a lot of time alone. So it takes a lot for me to decide to take on a partner. Recognize that my definition of “partner” is not one in a legal sense. Rather, it’s someone with whom I work for a while – then we part ways. While we are together we create some products and share revenue in those items. But we each maintain our own business.

My first partner was in the educational technology training business that I started in 1997. Dana Irby and I had worked together in a prior company. So we knew we worked together well. Our skills didn’t overlap.

Dana and I worked together off and on until I left educational technology in 2001.

Shortly after that I met Jason Potash and we started talking about the need for a calendar of events in the Internet marketing space. We each had our own ideas, but we merged them into SeminarAnnouncer – the first centralized calendar. Event promoters submitted their events on the site and we would promote them.

Unfortunately we had software problems more than once, lost the entire list of subscribers and just never got back on track. We each went different directions.

Alex Mandossian and I partnered on the Womens Power Summit in 2005. We had known each other for four years and he wanted to do something in the womens’ marketing space, so he approached me to see if I was interested. Naturally I was!

In the first year we offered WPS, Alex took the lead on organizing interviews, speakers, writing autoresponders and generally running things. Then in the second year I did nearly all of it. So it was a great learning experience.

After the second year, we decided to go separate directions and he gave me the conference. Thank you Alex! But I never ran it again, as I felt we no longer needed women-only events.

I worked alone for many years until Connie Ragen Green and I had lunch at Chicago O’Hare in 2008. I said “we should do something together” as we parted – and she took me seriously! Within weeks we offered our first course together.

We went on to teach that course a couple more times, then in January, 2010 we have our first live Online Revenue Workshop in Las Vegas. We recorded that workshop and built a group of Online Revenue Builders from it. In fact, we did such a good job on the instructional content in that seminar, dedicated to helping people get started online, that we still sell the recordings and the member site that goes with them.

Online Revenue Workshop January 2010

We changed the format of the Workshop in July, 2010 to a hands-on workshop with a small group and ran it that way for the next few times.

Connie and I worked together on multiple projects for over two years, making it fun and profitable for both of us. We met at a lot of events. Introduced each other to our marketing friends and clients and promoted each others’ products. We had a great time working together!

Jeanette Cates, Cathy Goodwin and Connie Ragen Green at Ali Brown's Shine, 2010

We chronicled how to put together a successful relationship in Joint Ventures Made Simple – I strongly recommend you get it if you are considering working with someone else. It will save you a lot of time and headaches!

Powerful partners are just one of the secrets to creating a long-term business that is both powerful and fun. The secret is having the flexibility to continue to do your own thing, while still working and playing nicely with others.