With the number of websites growing at a dizzying rate, the gurus realized that the difference between success and failure could be the ability to specialize—to find (or create) a niche. 

Yet at least one guru chose his specialty almost purely on the basis of profit margins—a strategy that would send most people into the poorhouse, but that catapulted him from the outhouse to the penthouse and the highest tax bracket in just a few short months.

I knew I was about to interview a different sort of financial mind when my interview with Jeff Mills started out like this: “Back in 1977, I understood the concept of leverage for the first time when I was sitting in a tree house about thirty feet up in the air in my front yard.” He wasn’t talking about the pulley system/dumbwaiter, either. Mills and his neighborhood buddies used to get together in the tree house every week and do MadLibs and other kid-type things, then trek over to Mr. Toy to buy candy.

They learned early on that they could buy a lot more candy if they pooled their allowances all together. The mastermind concept was born. Continuity and Membership programs were birthed out from that tree house club!

Then came the cinnamon toothpick craze of the early 80’s and Jeff was in his kitchen cooking cinnamon toothpicks in cinnamon oil and selling baggies for $1 for 10 sticks (while other kids were selling “other mind altering stuff in other baggies). He experienced his first “slap” when the principle called him into the office and told him no more selling stuff on school grounds. School was for book learning, not selling stuff.

As a teenager, Mills may not have known the word leverage, but he understood the concept.

Amazingly, he didn’t start out on Wall Street.

Instead, in 1999 he was working as a youth pastor in Minneapolis, Minnesota, earning about $32,000 a year with not much hope of ever earning any more. Debt weighed heavily on him from seminary and Bible College tuition, and from making some unwise choices with his credit cards. Mills resigned himself to never again being debt-free unless he won the lottery or ”figured out some super-Jedi investment technique.”

His knew his best option would be to take on a second job, but the ministry took most of his energy and even more of his time. Times were so bad at one point, Mills got a paper route and delivered newspapers at 4:00 am to 8:00 am 14 days a month, just to put an extra $400 on the table.

Though he loved the work, the ministry also left his home life a little chaotic, too: his former wife went to one church and was the Children’s Pastor there, he belonged to and served at another church, and they shuttled their baby daughter between the two locations; he had his meetings, his wife had hers, and sometimes it seemed as though they saw each other only long enough to say good night and fall exhausted into bed.

He’d heard his friends and parishioners talking about the Internet, and people who were making money online, and thought it was at least worth a shot. Not knowing much about it, Mills signed up for the first thing that sounded promising, a program called AllAdvantage. The premise was simple: sign up for free, and AllAdvantage would put banners on your browser as you surf around the internet.

Every time you clicked on that banner, they paid you ten cents, seven cents, three cents, or a percentage of a penny. The first day Mills sat at the computer for sixteen hours, clicking the banner every chance he could. He made $1.87. Clearly that was not the way to pay off his debts. But it was the humble beginnings that lead him to co-produce $25 million dollars selling products online to date.

Mills grew up with a Commodore 64, and he enjoyed being on the computer, so he didn’t let himself get discouraged. He just dug deeper. Like many Internet Marketers, he quickly discovered the idea of selling other people’s products as an affiliate marketer. And, like many others, he had no list of his own.

He began with safe lists, which were very big at the time, and also emailed to the occasional message board or database. He knew it was just “hit or miss” marketing—throw it against the wall and see what sticks—but he didn’t know of any better way until 2003 when he went to his first internet marketing training event, called the “BigSeminar”, held that year in Orlando, Florida by Armand Morin.

Over the course of a year, he earned $80,000 just on that product alone. That let him devote more quality time—and less quantity—to his youth ministry. His exact thoughts were “Ok, I have the vehicle I need to step out of paid of ministry now, come home to unite my family, do this and work from home lifestyle design thing.” That was in 2003.