Last Monday one of my friends and business partners that teaches entrepreneurship at UW Whitewater invited me to speak and share my success strategies with his students.  It was my FIRST time inside the four walls of a college classroom.  I was a horrible class room student in high school, and had very little ambition to study for four more years.  I did attend a local tech school for a semester…but I don’t think it would really qualify as a semester.

Al (my professor friend) wanted me to share my entrepreneurship story with his class and then some of my systems for getting things done with his class.  Even though I was a horrible student in the class room I consider my self an avid learner.  I just took a speed reading course to help me increase the amount of information I am able to sift through to find useful information to help me grow my own businesses and also my clients businesses.

I shared with the class my entire story starting by picking up trash in the parking lot of our family bowling center for quarters to play video games, my DJ business that was started with a set of home speakers and a bunch of borrowed CD’s, my rise from bartender to partner in a 60 lane bowling center and now my explosive growth in my online marketing businesses.  All done with no formal education, but probably a HELL of alot more real life experiences, a real passion for business, my personal search for information that helps me grow each of my businesses and a system for managing myself to get things done.

In every new venture I am constantly making mistakes by moving forward FAST.  Never getting disturbed or sidetracked with small fires.  In fact I look to start fires to move my businesses forward.  So many business owners are waiting to get everything perfect…I’ve got news for them…It should never be perfect.  It’s a constant battle to make improvements, challenge your self to get your product to the next level.  However most business owners are paralyzed trying to make small decisions because they might offend someone, they might upset their staff, etc.  My philosophy is to disturb some everyday including my employees.  Challenging them to say yes we’ll figure out how to do it instead of coming up with excuses as to why we can’t do it.  I encourage my team to push the envelope and challenge me too.

The class had a whole bunch of questions.  I’ll share just a few with you.

#1 – What are your 3 favorite books.

• The New Psycho-Cyberntics (Dr. Maxwell Maltz / Dan Kennedy)
• NO BS Time Management (Dan Kennedy)
• Think & Grow Rich (Napoleon Hill)

I have quite a few more but these have probably been the most influential and life changing.

#2 – How do you get so much done and do you ever have fun?

This was a bit of a loaded question as they probed me looking for the excuse for success.   Geez look he’s working all the time and never has any fun.  Actually I do work ALOT.  But I work pretty smart.  My entire day is scripted.  I take no incoming telephone calls from prospects.  All calls are scheduled.  Client phone calls are taken at specific times of the day, and most by appointment.  I also do alot of group selling instead of 1 on 1.

I do manage to have some fun over the last year: A trip to Disney World for my daughter’s birthday, two trips to Miami Beach, a number of Milwaukee Brewer games, Las Vegas, Tucson, and a few others.  So yes I work ALOT, but still have FUN too!

Here are a few comments from the students:

Darin’s Story of Hard Work and Dedication

Darin Spindler is very insightful, knows what he is talking about. Real life stories made me motivated to go get work done so I can become successful. He shows that it isn’t the amount of time but the quality of time you put into the business.

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