> When I Grow Up, I want to Be "Astronaut
> and Gold Miner & Acrobat & Singer
> & cartoonist"

Personally, Dien, I preferred the combination of "astronaut and basketball star and president."

:)

I just found something I wrote when I was under 10...

One of many things I liked to do as a child was to draw. I have an aunt who is actually an artist, but that's not where I developed it. I just liked to draw. My parents encouraged me. I went to one of those preschools where you drew a picture of something every day. (and fought over the "good" toys)

So here I was at age 10 let's say. I like to draw. And I need some money to buy basketball cards. (Hey, Sarunas Marciulionis was my hero, I'm Lithuanian... but Michael Jordan was ok too.)

I created a letter to my aunt Indre.

Every time I read it, I beam with pride in myself.

It went as follows. I don’t think I ever actually gave it to her. It was lost for a while, I think.

(Printed in what was pretty neat handwriting for a kid, but still not completely straight in a cute way)

“Dear Indre,

Us here at Lukas Ink would like to have you as one of our customers. We make high quality paintings and drawings of whatever you want. I can draw lots of things. We can make postcards, paintings, or surprise you.

How we figure out the prices is by time. It’s $1 for half an hour of working on a drawing. And it’s $2 for half an hour of painting. I can make large and small pictures.

We look forward to having you as a customer.

Thank you,

Erik Lukas
CEO Lukas Ink”

Yes, for any of you who want to reverse engineer my post that makes me 20 years old. Whoops, bag of worms.

I hope you don't view that in a negative light. I'm going to just include the whole story copied and pasted from an email to my friend Anthony, no editing:

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Anthony,

I’ll make this short and sweet. As much as I can.

I’m 20 years old. I’m a sophomore in college.

Shocked, yet?

I just wanted to level with you in case you thought I was a little older (which I’m sure you did). I’ll shoot straight.

Yes, if I’m 20 now, I must have been, hmmm, let’s see, 15 years old when I wrote my book. Yes, that’s right. 14 or so when I joined the Internet Marketing Warriors when they were just starting up.

Prior to that, I’d been studying direct marketing for around 4 years.

I started applying concepts from direct marketing to my first internet biz. If you’ll recall, and you might not, I was one of those search engine positioning cowboys who tried to lasso good spots for myself and my clients. I picked up a few clients. Made a few dollars all the while trying to help other people market their internet biz ideas. I found that was a strong area for me. I could write well and not only that, my marketing ideas also worked.

I knew who was making money and how they were doing it. Back then, the markets were smaller and one person could know a lot of the competition almost personally.

I started writing little daily posts for the warriors while continuing my own study.

Pretty soon I realized that the information I had gathered in my quest for knowledge would be worth a lot to others by saving them time.

So I naively started selling my little ebook for $19.95. Picked up a few sales here and there and then found I was converting a good % of visitors.

I posted this on Bill Myers board when it was free and open to the public. He basically bashed me thinking my 9%+ claim was an outright lie. I don’t blame him for being skeptical. But luckily, I had everything perfectly in place to prove him wrong.

I replied with a link to my counter stats as well as a saved copy of my clickbank orders.

Proof. And Bill was man enough to leave it up. The next day when I checked my email I had around $900 in orders. I remember actually jumping up and down pumping my fist in the air. It was a great feeling and a great day.

Over the next year (not sure which one, I lose track), I made around $10,000 in pretax income. I was happier than a pig in ****.

For a while, my enthusiasm increased. But soon I grew tired of the daily battle that was search engine positioning.

I found other teenage hyjinks to distract me. True even without those “mistakes” I would’ve been another person in another place now, but I still can’t say I’m super fond of them.

Soon I found myself with a driver’s license. Soon after that, the foolish person that was me found himself in front of a judge with his brother on a charge of criminal mischief. Probation for a year. Luckily, I got past that rough part of my life and became a better person because of it.

Another year later found my internet income steady around $5000 for the year.

That’s when I started looking for a car.

I met new friends that year and picked up a ’72 Oldsmobile Cutlass, which ate up a chunk of money that year, and every year after. I grew socially and had fun during this time, but not financially.

I was still voraciously reading business books and articles. That was a steady habit, hard to kick, still haven’t managed to… There’ve been periods where I devoted in excess of 4-5 hours to it per day for months on end. Always at least 2 hours per day.

I wasn’t the most normal 14 year old. And I’m not the most normal 20 year old.

Right now, my internet income levels will barely manage $1,500 this year. Tuition at IU is a little pricey.

That’s where the deck work came in…

I made a pretty good amount of money for a summer’s worth of work, not sacrificing time with my family. I think I probably pocketed around $5,000 total. And a good amount of that has slipped through my fingers into expenses of one kind or another.

Like my internet venture, I know my deck biz could’ve been much more successful.

With the internet biz, it was a matter of waning enthusiasm.

With the decks, it’s a matter of how much time I’m willing to give up. And my answer is, what would amount to surprisingly little in other people’s eyes.

I am madly in love (what teenager isn’t?) and I love my family too. I enjoy my summer’s more than anything else. I have ever since I first splashed around in the water.

If you want to know what the future holds for me now, Anthony, I’ll tell you.

I plan to continue with more deck work in the spring in order to raise capital. I’ll save a little more this time. Until that time, I will be papertrading stocks until I am confident in my abilities. After that, I will put the money to work for me.

Yes, I know, a dreamer I remain.

But I will make it happen.

So, here we are, Anthony, my friend.

I stand before you, naked, as it were.

You’ve been more than kind to me and helped offer me ideas and I’d be more than willing to do the same for you.

So I guess it comes down to, do you still want my help or not?

Success,

Erik Lukas

P.S. If you think you must warn the world of my age liability, feel free to do so (although I think if I had really thought about it I could’ve turned it into a positive by making it simply an item of interest that I was so young).

--------------------------------------------------

The projects I’ve currently got running through my head:

- Stock trading (no, don’t bother warning me, I’m beyond hope.)
- Joint Ventures (thanks to some pushing from a friend of mine)
- Menu desk (still interested, mostly from curiosity)
- Deck work (I actually enjoy it, but there is snow on the ground)
- Real estate (fixer ups, I’ve actually built a rather large house before with my family so it’s not completely foreign to me)

I’m not looking for responses. If you want to search your inventory of memories for something that makes me a flake or a phony, feel free to. But I haven’t misled anyone. I’ve always tried to give value for value, from where I am, from what I know.

But I have omitted details of my life and I feel like you don’t know me as well as you should, so that’s why I’ve finally posted this doodad. I feel like a member of a very close knit group of entrepreneurs, and it’s been hard for me to hold back things about myself that would date me (as one of the diaper wearing corps).

So, there, cat’s out the bag. He’ll probably claw me once or twice.

Success,

Erik Lukas

P.S. Think back to all the direct selling posts I’ve participated in in the past. I think my viewing of my age as a liability has been one of the things which held me back from trying a number of ventures that could be a success. I’m working on changing that by doing. And dealing with all of you from who I really am is my first step.