Thread: My introduction and background

Hey all. I am excited because I can finally post in this section. This is honestly why I signed up for L4p. It has taken me a while to get to 100 posts and I am happy that along the way I was able to meet/talk to some of you. I wanted to introduce myself before I really started posting in this section. I didn't want to come out of nowhere and start posting.

So here goes. My name is Dennis. I am 24 and I live in Southern California. My family ran from Romania in the 80's because of communist to start a better life for themselves. They arrived in america with very little but big hopes. They worked small jobs for people who also escaped communist. After couple years some of my family member started their own company. Some in construction, furniture making, and making speakers/sirens for emergency vehicles. They took what they knew and turned it into their business.

In early 2000's the siren company was bought out by a company we call JBL. My family/friends started a fire hose company in Romania. They sell fire hoses through-out Europe. The company now is run by a good family friend who also runs a bakery adjacent to the factory.

This is where I come in. Growing up during the internet boom/being a nerd I helped my family in the transition over to the computer age. I was helping them learn how to use a computer. I did photography for their site, I help create ads, flyer, and their websites and helped with day to day work. This allowed me to save up money so when I was 16 I bought my first car.

I was the only member in my family to graduate high school. My grandfather only finished 8th grade, my mom/dad did some high school so my mom was happy because I graduated high school and I finished in the top of my class. I got rear ended a few months prior to my graduation so my mom went out and bought me the BMW.

Instead of going to college. I stayed and worked for my families companies allowing me to make enough money to purchase the lambo. At that time I thought I was secure. I met who I thought was the perfect woman and I asked her to marry me. I packed up my bags and moved to AZ in hopes to live happily ever after. That never happened. I moved back to CA. Now, not only was I out of a job(I gave my position up) I was out of money. Had to move back in with my family. I had to sell the lambo to pay off some debt.

I went back to school to get my real estate license and did school for becoming a loan officer. I was working off my debts and then 2008 came along and I lost my job again. So I needed to find something to do.

While this was going on I was maintaining a few websites/blogs I did for fun. I was in high school I blogged about cars and girls. I wasn't getting paid for it I was just getting in events and I was loving it. I continued to take photos because I loved taking photos. I started using photography to my advantage. I was able to score girls with it because I was using them as my "models". Few years pass and my friends started to get married. Now, they started asking me to shoot their weddings. I agreed and that was the start of my wedding photography career.I was a wedding photographer for 6 years. This was my last wedding season for a while. After I lost my job I did weddings full time and was able to make a living doing that. During the off season I was doing photoshots for models and families to make some extra money.

Youtube came into the picture when I was using it to post videos on my site. A few months after using youtube I received an email from youtube asking me if I wanted to monetize my videos. Which I did. I started doing alot more videos and photos which then my blogs started to grow. I was able to network with people and my blogs grew to the point where I started to hire people to post. I then started creating more blogs to the point I had a network of blogs.

After some time I noticed we had alot of photos and videos that we were throwing away(we only needed 10) and the rest sat on hard drives. My friend and I came up with a perfect idea. We started a photo agency we used to sell off some of the images we didn't use. It was anything big we sold images for 10-25 dollars depending on size and we did pretty well. At the end of last year/start of this year we did some spring cleaning and sold off alot of our sites. We are currently restructuring everything to make room for a few new things coming next year.

One thing I did miss and if any of the photographers out there are looking at expanding into other areas of photography do medical photography. A few ago I met a guy who was a photographer. He was working for a doctors office and the dr was trying to show off his offices. What me and this guy planned was to do video tours/photo tours of the offices. We did the work for this doctor and before you know it other doctors were calling us to do these videos. The guy just quit his job and started doing this full time. Here some examples:
Health Scan Imaging Temecula Video Tour
Lake Elsinore NEW
Omega Imaging NEW

Sorry to all I know that was a bit long and I hope it wasn't boring. This was my past and what I currently do. I hope it inspires people. If you have any questions please let me know. I will do my best to answer them.

BTW I tried to sum up everything. This is between 1980's to 2012. Things didn't just progress a week after something happened. It took time.

Great read. Congrats on your success and I hope everything works out for you.

I do have a question though; do you regret buying a Lambo that early on instead of just saving and investing?

That's cool. Good read.

My sister in law also fled Romania in the 80s.

I'm almost afraid to open these intro threads lately ....but this is a good one, nice story. Congratulations on your persistence.

Nice story thus far, and at this point in your life, that's only the introduction to your life. Keep at it and post a follow up one day, once you hit your 30's

Welcome to the 4. Enjoy your stay here.

Looks like you had a combination of being in the right place at the right time to help out your family and also the persistence needed to maintain multiple businesses at the same time. Welcome and I look forward to hearing what you have in store in the future.

Good first post, welcome to the 4

Great first post! These are the type of people we need here on L4P! Welcome man!

Originally Posted by Scott D

That's cool. Good read.

My sister in law also fled Romania in the 80s.

It's a small world. I meet people all over the place who are Romanian or know people who are.

Originally Posted by Adrenaline981

Great read. Congrats on your success and I hope everything works out for you.

I do have a question though; do you regret buying a Lambo that early on instead of just saving and investing?

Thank you. I do, but I hate to say that I regret chasing a girl at that age more. I should have sucked it up with blue balls and without a lambo till I was ready say 28/30 years old and then I could of bought myself whatever car I wanted and be independent. When I say independent I mean not living at home again.

Originally Posted by ikozhukhin

Looks like you had a combination of being in the right place at the right time to help out your family and also the persistence needed to maintain multiple businesses at the same time. Welcome and I look forward to hearing what you have in store in the future.

I got blessed. I hate to admit this but as a young kid I hated computers. I was mortified by them. I had tremors using them. My friends laugh when I tell them this. They all say, "yes the guy that built robots when he was 15 was scared of computer." Something in me put two and two together and knew computers was the future and I needed to learned them.

The business part I am still learning. How I got this far has amazed me but I do thank some of you guys here on the 4 cause I did learn some good things.

Originally Posted by Gamble

Nice story thus far, and at this point in your life, that's only the introduction to your life. Keep at it and post a follow up one day, once you hit your 30's

Originally Posted by BullsFTW

I'm almost afraid to open these intro threads lately ....but this is a good one, nice story. Congratulations on your persistence.

Originally Posted by RAWMEAN

Welcome to the 4. Enjoy your stay here.

Originally Posted by Arthur

Good first post, welcome to the 4

Originally Posted by IamStephen

Great first post! These are the type of people we need here on L4P! Welcome man!

Thank you all for the kind words. Again, I am new to posting on the forum but been around the 4 for a while lurking this section. Some of you guys I look up to because I have used things you have told people in other threads. I am new to business and have made plenty of mistakes and am always looking to improve myself and one of my blessing is this board where I have the opportunity to do so. Cheers to all you guys and hope to make some friends/learn things along the way.

Maybe in a few years time I will be joining the sponsors on this site.