I grew up on the Central Coast of California and joined the US Navy as a Hospital Corpsman in 2001. I did 8 years with a specialty as a Surgical Tech.
I worked in hospitals, clinics, a hospital ship, Camp Pendleton, and Iraq twice with the crazy Marines. What I learned is that I hate having a boss and blood and guts can wear you down!
I stumbled onto Blogging, SEO, and Internet Marketing in Jan '10 after being out of the military for a few months. I quickly fell in love with it. I am pretty good at investing, so I had some money saved and could live pretty well for a few years. I like to live economically.
After a lot of suffering and time, I am now a rehabilitated Gray/Black Hat type after struggling through tactics like autoblogging, spinning, wheels, and link networks. I'm not sorry I did that stuff because it taught me so much about this business and unsustainable techniques!
Now I help people learn about Blogging, SEO and Internet Technology. Building authority on my blog, shooting vids, and social media is so much more satisfying and I wish I had done it a while ago.
It's true that "the more I learn, the less I know" but I know I don't want to do anything else now. Not many people can ever say that truthfully to themselves.