The author grew up in an impoverished family of seven children in a small rural town in Illinois. He didn't have much growing up, but he had a mother who encouraged him to excel. During his early childhood, his mother instilled in him a belief that he was extraordinarily gifted. After graduating high school and a successful stint in the U.S. Navy, he went on to earn a Bachelor of Science Degree in Business Administration with a Specialization in Marketing. He graduated in the top ten percent of his class and was on his college's Dean's List and the National Dean's List. After college, he went on to experience forty years of success in sales. During his career, he won more than a dozen production awards. At one point, he was one of the two top producers for an international company that employed several hundred independent contractors. Twelve of those forty years were spent working with a publisher of children's books. He attributes his success to a much higher authority, to his mother, who planted the seeds for his success early in life, to his drive to succeed, and to all the self-improvement books that he has faithfully read.