I don’t know about you – but I always read the About pages of sites that interest me.
There is just something comforting about getting to know the person or the people behind the site and especially to be able to tell that they are in fact real people.
So with that in mind – and in case we haven’t met yet – my name is L.D. Sewell and I am the founder, owner, and principal author of this site Wealthy Affiliate Solutions and many other sites too.
Currently, I have 12 websites that I consider to be my core sites, each one focused on a specific niche, and several more that I consider being primary support sites and others that support my online businesses in various ways.
How did I build all those sites?
With what I learned from Wealthy Affiliate – and you will learn the same things if you decide to join me there.
By the way, you do NOT have to build that many sites either – nor should you when you are just starting out. All you really need to start getting some traction and to start building your own business is ONE good site.
But here is the beauty of learning how to build your own site and blog, and all about affiliate marketing – once you know HOW to do these things it is relatively simple and easy to replicate it and build more if and when you are ready, and if you choose to do so.
If you are interested in learning more – we will be getting deep into that in future posts – so be sure to come back here often!
So Who Am I and Why Should You Care?
I am an author, instructor, publisher, and entrepreneur – and my passion is creating specialized information products that add value and help other people do better in their work, business, and life.
To help me do that I own and operate multiple sites and blogs, YouTube channels, a podcast, Facebook pages, and groups and use many other platforms to get my information out where people who want it can find it. I am always working on my sites and other platforms, adding content and resources.
My books and eBooks are primarily published on Amazon – and I have a few there now I am working on more.
I teach online courses on Udemy, and other platforms (mostly on Udemy) and as of now have 19 active courses there and a few other courses on other platforms.
In addition to all that I am heavily involved in trucking and have been for well over two decades and counting and I still drive a truck on a regular basis – and call me crazy if you like – but I still love it too! So long as I do I will keep driving as long as I live, at least in some capacity.
That’s the short answer I suppose – though the long answer is much more involved and may take a while.
Keep reading if you like – or if you are more interested in affiliate marketing and Wealthy Affiliate just click HERE.
That link takes you to WA and you can sign up for FREE, to begin with so you can take a look around and decide if you want to join as a Premium member or not.
OK, now on with the story…
My background includes growing up on a farm, hunting, fishing, boating, camping, and all related things. I learned to drive when I was 8, how to operate tractors and farm equipment before I was 10, how to ride a motorcycle when I was 11, and I have had a motorcycle license from the age of 14 to the present.
For as long as I can remember I have always loved to drive, ride, and operate equipment of all kinds. I love boats and airplanes of all kinds – though sadly never have had nearly as much time with either as I would have liked.
My first paying job was as a brick masons apprentice when I was in my early teens – and I think I could probably have snatched the bark off a tree back then as tough as my hands were from that work. After that, I worked a very brief time in a table factory on an assembly line putting tables together – and talking with people who had several generations of their family working in that same plant. No thanks! I decided very quickly that I wanted more adventure than that – and I wanted to see the world or at least as much of it as I could.
I spent a couple of years or so of my youth raising hell, racing cars on the street, getting in fights, and all kinds of trouble before I calmed down just enough to go into the military.
So at 17, I joined the US Navy and to sea, I went. The funny thing is I originally intended to join the marine corps – but the marine recruiter was at lunch when I showed up, and the old Navy chief came out in the lobby and started talking to me. By the time the marine recruiter came back from lunch, I was already signed up with the Navy!
Times have changed – but back in those days fleet sailors were expected to be a bit on the wild side – but even so, I pushed the boundaries to the breaking point and then some, and it took a few more years for me to begin to behave. I thoroughly enjoyed my time on active duty for over a decade before moving on.
I also learned many valuable lessons about leadership and other topics that continue to serve me well. Another particularly useful thing I learned was how to conduct training and train other people. Though the navy didn’t exactly ask me whether I wanted to learn such things or not – as it turned out I discovered that I really enjoyed being an instructor and training and mentoring other people!
My next career was in real estate. In fact, it had already started years earlier, in my early twenties, I completed training – got my real estate license, and started selling real estate and investing in real estate part-time while still on active duty. When I left active duty I went into real estate full time and eventually earned my real estate brokers license in my early 30’s and became heavily involved in property management.
While I loved real estate – I hated office politics and bull shit – and was becoming burned out with what I was doing and I needed a break. So I started looking at classified ads – for anything at all that would just be something new. I came across an ad for a field collections position for a local cable company. I thought that sounded interesting – so before you know it I was knocking on 20+ doors a day and saying ” Hello, I need to collect $233.32 today or I am required to disconnect your cable..”
I collected a lot of money – and I disconnected a lot of cable TV too… usually only to go back the next day or so and hook it back up after the bill was paid. To this day I am happy I took that job – because along with my time in the military, in real estate, and in doing that job I got to deal with thousands of people and learn more than a little about how people think and act, and about human behavior in general.
My wife and I met each other when she was 19 and I was twenty – and we have been together ever since (now in our mid 50’s) which is funny as hell since all our friends said it would never last – and yet here we are while they are all divorced!
We have one son who grew up to be a full-grown state trooper – and we are more than proud of him. He lives to help other people and to protect everyone to the best of his ability. He married a city police officer – and they together have a daughter (our granddaughter!) and we are very proud of them all.
Trucking Career Here I Come
The collections job was fun and interesting for a while – but soon enough, I grew restless and wanted something else. I came across an ad in the paper as best as I can remember about a trucking company hiring event and a FREE seminar on trucking careers. It was in the next city over, but I called in and registered and went to it.
I had always loved big trucks and admired them on the highway and the thought of becoming a trucker had crossed my mind before – though I had never acted on it. But after listening to the presentation and watching a slide show and a film or two I signed up with one of the mega carriers who at that time had their own internal truck driving school – and off I went to become a truck driver.
After a few weeks of initial training, school was over and I had my CDL (Commercial Drivers License) and was starting my road training. That’s where you go out with a driver trainer who is actually delivering freight and doing the job to get some real-world experience. So I did that for a couple of weeks and graduated the road training portion, and decided to team up with a friend I met in training. We thought we would get better pay and a better truck by teaming – so we tried that and ran coast to coast non stop for just long enough for me to figure out I didn’t like teaming at all!
By the way, teaming doesn’t make any damn sense unless you are married to your teammate and all the money is staying in the same household either – of course, that’s my humble opinion and you do as you wish, but as far as I am concerned solo is the way to go.
Anyway, I got my own truck (after I almost quit) and started running Over The Road (OTR) on my own. I ran all over most of the US and parts of Canada. I even took my wife out with me on several trips relatively often and then later as my son got older he was able to make a few trips with me too.
Eventually being away from home and family began to get old – so I took a dedicated account and ran loads pulling doubles to a large store chain out of northern VA. I ran all over PA and NJ, VA and parts of other states – but not so far as I couldn’t get back home every night. I loved that job – while it lasted… but sadly all things come to an end as did that account. The company started making changes – not any good ones either – so most of the drivers including me exited stage right, and the company lost the account.
That took me into working with a much smaller company as a dispatcher. From there I moved into recruiting, safety, and driver training and remained there for the next decade or so. We set up a separate company as a truck driver training school which I ran all aspects of the training for, including developing all curriculum, selecting and training other licensed instructors, and personally training many students myself.
I also continued to be the safety director and recruiter for the motor carrier – and run an internal Independent Contractor Associate (ICA) program which I designed and developed. That was a lease-purchase program that allowed company drivers a way to become owner operators.
During this time I wrote my very first book “Introduction to Professional Truck Driving Careers” and launched it on Amazon. That book made me my first dollar online and is what I consider to be semi-passive income, and it has continued to make me money over the years. So I wrote more books. I also founded Transport Resource Solutions LLC as my own consulting and training company – which I continue to own and operate to this day. TRS is my actual company and all else I do is part of it in one way or another – the focus is specialized information, training, and publications.
What I Learned and Why I Do What I Do
Over all those years I always worked my ass off. I made good money, and of course, that term is relative – but compared to average wages for the US I always made far more than that. And I was ALWAYS working more than one job or business at a time. I always had multiple streams of income. On top of that my wife worked – she was a medical practice administrator for years and she ran her own side businesses. First, she did medical billing/claims processing and consulting and later she started her own candle and soap making company, and she did graphic design for various clients.
My first actual business was a part-time home-based business I started while I was still on active duty in the military and selling real estate too. It was a company that made, packaged, and sold wooden crafts (bears, cats, tulips, and other things – two of which sit over our door in our den now well over 30+ years later!).
I drove trucks, then worked in management and at the same time continued to make wooden crafts including crates and other things which we sold, and I helped her make soap and candles and host an annual gathering.
Eventually, I was working 80 plus hours a week. I was a safety director and driver trainer by day and a recruiter by night and every other second I could find. When I wasn’t doing all that I was either in my shop covered in sawdust from making hundreds of crates to fill orders – or I was pouring candles or making soap with my wife.
Yet despite all that and earning almost six figures – it was never enough…
The more we made the more we spent – and that my friend is a losing game you nor I can ever win. That I know now – but at the time had not learned that lesson fully yet.
So like so many other people the more we made the more we spent and the worse it all got.
To top it all off the company I worked at – that I once loved – was going in a direction that I did not want to go, and that was causing conflict and making life miserable. I began to hate that job and I resented most of the people (not all – some were like family and I cared a great deal for including most of the drivers all of whom I had recruited and most of whom I had trained) I worked with, and as I drove away from the office every evening I could literally feel my muscles uncoiling and relaxing with each mile further away from it I got.
It was time to leave and I knew it.
But I had stupidly buried myself and my family under a mountain of debts and obligations. So I felt trapped, exhausted, angry, and just mad as hell and I desperately wanted a better life.
That’s When a Lightbulb Came On
Our son had just graduated from college and was about to head off to the state police academy for training and then to start his own life as an adult. One night we were sitting in our back yard next to a fire I had going and talking. He asked me what I and his mother would do now that he was leaving home – and as the sun went down I looked across the yard at the house and all the other crap we owned and half-jokingly said ” I don’t know, maybe we will sell all this crap and move onto a boat…”
He laughed and said something like ” Yeah right dad…” and then we said goodnight and he went into the house. As I sat there by the fire and thought a little more I decided that was exactly what we were going to do!
Sell all our crap, get rid of the house and damn near everything else in it – and all the debt and expenses it all cost – and start over in or aboard something tiny and simple that we could actually afford to own!
As I broke the news to my wife she was not as enthusiastic as I was – to put it mildly. But eventually, she did warm up to the idea enough for us to proceed – though she put her foot down about the boat (we actually lived on 39-foot Pacemaker Sportfishing boat for a year as a family – me, her, our son, and a dog!) and she said she had been there and done that and wasn’t willing to do that again.
So we compromised on the “what” and we bought a 35′ long Keystone travel trailer we named “Nora” and fixed her up. That was one of the happiest and most enjoyable years of our entire lives together!
During that time I took a local job driving a dump truck – and though I made a fraction of what I had previously earned – our total expenses were almost nothing compared to what they had been before – so we were doing BETTER financially and I had a stress free simple job that was fun more often than not.
After a year or so, some family members had some age-related issues that made it impossible for them to care for themselves. And since everyone else had kids, crazy debts and expenses and other problems and challenges that made it difficult or impossible for them to help – my wife and I found our selves becoming caregivers to her father and then her grandmother.
So you might say we took an unexpected detour in life and one that was both one of the most challenging and most rewarding things we have ever done at the same time.
Anyway – fast forward a few more years to today.
Today we live a relatively simple life, and we have a little two-acre (almost!) homestead just far enough out in the country to have the privacy and the space we need and want yet still be close enough to get to anything we want within a relatively short drive.
Now my focus is on teaching and sharing all the lessons I have learned and everything else I continue to learn too. That includes how to make money online, and how to slowly and continuously build multiple streams of income – including affiliate marketing income.
I still drive a truck and run a few loads a week and I work to build and maintain our little homestead, all while doing my best to enjoy the journey too. I don’t claim to be a know it all and do not consider myself to be a “Guru”. I am certainly not rich – but I do make money online each and every single month right now and I am incrementally and consistently increasing it too.
What I do know for an absolute fact is that you can do the exact same thing – if you are willing to do the same work I do to make it so. I do NOT know how you can get rich quick, or create massive amounts of income while doing no work at all. In truth – I do not believe that is realistically possible or attainable for most people – and if it is I have never been able to figure it out.
What I have figured out though, is that some things DO WORK if you are willing to put in the time and the work to make it happen.
These things are replicable and can be learned and done by anyone at all with at least average intelligence, time, and consistent work. That is what affiliate marketing and all of the other things I teach require.
If you want to learn what I know – and more importantly than that – what WEALTHY AFFILIATE can teach you, then this site is where you can do two very important things.
The first is sign up and become a member of Wealthy Affiliate – and you can even get started with a FREE membership too.
Interested? Click HERE now and go ahead and sign up!
The second is you can get MY PERSONAL HELP.
When you sign up using MY LINK as a WA member I will become your personal coach and mentor for as long as you want my help. If you decide to become a Premium member you will get even more direct help and support from Wealthy Affiliate and from me too.
But remember you can start for nothing at all and start learning and getting help today!
So why do I do this?
I really enjoy teaching and helping other people – and I know what it is like to struggle and feel helpless and hopeless too. Sometimes we all need a little bit of help and encouragement.
And yes, of course, I do earn money from my business – and when you decide to become a premium member I will receive a portion of your payments at no additional cost to you as a commission each month so long as you remain a member. So I have a vested interest in making sure I do all that I can to help you achieve success yourself so that you stay a member for as long as possible – ideally for life!
No smoke, no mirrors, and no bull shit. Just reality.
I really do believe that Wealthy Affiliate is one of the absolute best opportunities available anywhere – and I believe that so strongly that I want to you join even if you don’t use my link.
That’s right… it is really that good and that important.
But do remember, it’s even better when you have a dedicated and highly motivated personal coach and mentor like me!
I hope you decide to join me, but regardless of whether you do or not – I wish you all the best in all you do in your work, in your business, and in life – and do please come back here and read my future posts either way.
There will be some good information that can help you do better as you build your own business.
Best regards,
L.D. Sewell