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One of the internet millionaires which I interviewed for my book, eMillions, was Jeremy Schoemaker aka Shoemoney. It was basically more about his story as opposed to tips and tricks on internet marketing. However, you’re still going to get a lot out of it. BTW, it was a great pleasure talking to you Jeremy

I just thought I wanted to give away some “snippets” to keep you guys excited for my book launch. The interview was pretty long so I decided to break it into three parts (click here for part 2 and part 3). Here is part 1:

–start of interview—

Stanley: Tell us a bit about your background and where you came from.

Jeremy: Sure. I was born in Moline, Illinois, which is about 150 miles west of Chicago, as the crow flies. The area is very middle class and rundown. It’s a big industrial labor area that really thrived with factories like International Harvester. It’s the home of John Deere.

Since the late ‘80s, most of that labor was outsourced. And about the time I graduated high school, that area went through a massive depression. So, as far as jobs were, the market was flooded, and there were a lot of unemployment in the area. And I had a really tough time getting work. That would have been around the early ’90s. I went away to college in 1994 to Western Illinois University.

I studied computer science, but I don’t think I ever went to a class. I really liked political science classes and stuff like that. The computer classes really drove me crazy because they were talking about things that were 10 years old and stuff like that. It was really, really boring.

I was really an electronics nut, and I loved car audio and home audio. So I would build these crazy things inside my car, with speakers, and compete in competitions and stuff like that. I was just always a kid who really liked technology and stuff like that, and the Internet just kind of came into play with that.

I worked for three different startup Internet providers. In fact, I was selling washers and dryers at Sears, when a lady came in and offered me a job at an Internet provider because I was good with the Mac computers. I had no idea what the Internet was or what they were going to do. I was immediately just thrown into it and loved it from day one.

Stanley: What did you do in your early days online with the Internet providers?

Jeremy: I just did technical support. People would call in and I would walk them through setting up their point-to-point software from there. Mostly, I handled the Mac calls, but that was a very small portion of the customers, so I had to dive into everything – Windows, Linux   and get to know those operating systems.

Then about three months later, I actually taught classes on using the Internet to mostly people that were middle-aged and older. It was a really big thing because the Internet was so new. We were teaching really simple things, like how to use email, what are bookmarks etc, but we would sell out every class.

What basically happened was, one night, the instructor called in sick, so I filled in teaching the class. They thought I did a really good job, so they had me do it from then on. It was good money because the instructor got half of the money for the class. I’ve always been good at communicating with people in-person, so I think that was a good fit for me back then.

For years, I continued teaching classes at night and worked during the day with the customer support, until I just needed more money. I had gone through three different providers in a couple years and I went back to school during that time as well.

When I came back, I basically wanted to work for more money. I got a job with a bank and was handling all their I.T. stuff. They really didn’t have an I.T. staff. It was a small, regional bank in the Quad Cities in Illinois. There were around six or seven banks under my control. So basically, I just managed I.T. for all those banks and did everything from purchasing new computers, to servicing current computers, to going around networking, and all kinds of various stuff with that.

But that was a very interesting time because right then was when they had all this GBLA acts, which was basically like the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. It had all these compliance things and classifications of documents. So I had to go and get all this training. It was very high-level training on how to classify documents as protected, all these different classifications, and then write actual security policies. So, I found this little niche in the banking I.T. industry with security.

Then I switched from that job – I actually got fired. It’s kind of an interesting way. I get all involved in my job and then I kind of lose interest after a while. But immediately when I was terminated from that job, I was scooped up by Wells Fargo at their headquarters because of my training and my pay rate doubled. So, it was like a win-win. Also, they moved me out of the depressed area that I was in.

I worked for them for years. Probably 90 percent of the security polices used within Wells Fargo were written by me. Basically, I trained employees and I did everything with security in computers. You named it. I was in the security division and was the lead for the UNIX systems and stuff like that.

I left there and moved to another bank in Nebraska and worked there for a couple of years. That’s when I actually started doing business for myself on the side, and then finally made the transition fully to my own business.

Stanley: Can you tell us about the transition? When was the breakthrough from your corporate life?

Jeremy: Like I said, I had worked for all these Internet providers previously, so I still had a computer set up at their place where they gave me free hosting on my own server. I had years and years of experience with UNIX and server-sides stuff, so I knew how to do a lot of programming. I wouldn’t say I was a really good programmer, but I can hack and slash quite a bit.

I just started making websites that I thought were cool services that people wanted to use. My first one was a site called MacQuake.com. There’s a popular game called Quake that was made by I.D. Software but it was only for the Windows computers. Well, a bunch of hackers got together and they made a version for the Mac, which was a hack-off of the Linux version.

Of course, there was no support whatsoever from I.D. Software because it was a hacked version. So, I registered MacQuake.com, like the Macintosh Quake. I filed for an exception to their trademark policy and it was granted, so I could use the Quake trademark on my site. And it was great. We were doing good revenues in advertising and we were off and running.

That was kind of my first side business. Then I went from there and discovered that there was all this money in advertising and building quality sites. Shortly after that, I just started trying to make other sites. I got involved with a lot of mobile things, and tried to build mobile ringtones and wallpapers, and a big forum around that whole thing.

Eventually, I started to lose interest in my day job. Then finally, the last transition was just that the company I was working for got purchased. At that time, I actually went on unemployment for about two months while I was working on my own company, and I was able to finally draw a salary and establish that company.

Stanley: What initial obstacles did you face?

Jeremy: Well, the biggest thing was a lack of social interaction because I was now working from home. I’m a very social person; I’m not a typical nerd that likes to just sit at home all day in the dark; I love hanging out with people. A lot of people who have ever met me at a conference will see that.

Getting used to not have people to interact with throughout the day was very difficult at first. Like I said, I’m usually used to talking with people and working with people. So, that was a hard thing.

Also, managing time was difficult at first. It took me a while too. Because you’re your own boss, therefore, if you want to sleep until noon, you can, as long as you’re making money.

The financial burden is obviously a huge obstacle. At the time, when I started my company, my wife was still getting medical training. She was done with medical school but had just started her anesthesia residency. So, she was hardly making any money, if any at all. My income was supporting the both of us. So, that was a huge burden to be put on.

That was about six or seven years ago. That was a huge transition and those were some huge obstacles.

—end of part 1—

Hope you enjoyed it. Subscribe and watch out for part 2 in the coming days (edit: click here for part 2). Remember go check out his blog over at http://www.shoemoney.com

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