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Happy new year! I am grateful for so many things moving into this new year, not least of which is my wife and now mother of our second child Natalie who came on New Years Eve.

This post is to wish you a successful 2009 AND give you a couple ways you can guarantee it.

To give you an example from my life, I have a story that started small but eventually netted me a five figure check!

I was closing out my books for 2008 and found an old check stub. At the time, it was the biggest check I had every deposited and the culmination of the most unlikely string of events.

After watching the Matrix with some friends, I was captivated by the cinematography, the characters, and most of all, the premise found in the movie.

After leaving the movie, we were bantering back and forth about the daunting images of human power plants and the rat-pack revolutionaries of Morpheus and his crew.

It was 1999 and my first thought was “what if we could take conversations like this one to the Matrix – online?”

I ran it by my fellow fans and their resounding “yes!” encouraged me to get started. Within six months, TheMatrixOnline.com was born in 2000.

Remember the year 2000, or Y2K as it was called for a very short time (though die hard advocates still roam the speaking circuit), it was a great time for Internet businesses, especially those providing advertising. Fandom, Thirsty, UGO, and many others sprang up during this period to capture the massively growing market of online users.

Then came 2001 and 2002.

9/11 and the advertising bubble burst for Internet startups. Bankruptcies were rampant. Things were changing on the web and I wanted to know my options. Advertising rates had plummeted and were not enough for the model envisioned.

Chris S., an entrepreneur friend of mine who knew what I was doing volunteered to setup a meeting with Jim Moloshok, the President of Warner Brothers Online at the time.

There were probably a thousand people who wanted to be in this meeting with Jim, Chris, & I but they were not. I was there because I followed through on my desire to create a place to talk about The Matrix, online.

Jim and WB had a bunch of copyright issues to work out and it was clear we had little to offer each other so the meeting seemed like a waste of time to me.

Thankfully, that wasn’t the end of the story.

I continued to publish news, reviews, and other articles on the site and encourage others to get involved. One in particular fan took me very serious. During the filming of Matrix Revolutions (part II) at an abandoned military base in Alameda, California, she and/or her husband would fly their Cessna over the runway-turned-freeway set and snap photos of Trinity’s motorcycle chase and other scenes.

I still remember the feeling when I saw those pictures in my email inbox. Amazing! Or the time when I received actual 35mm film strips from the promotional trailer in the mail (I still have a bunch if anyone is interested).

Since advertising had bombed and WB was out, I partnered with a local theatre (Lowe’s at Universal Citywalk) for their Matrix at Midnight promotion. The line was so long the first night they asked me to continue and gave me free tickets to bring others at will.

The site wasn’t making much money but these perks were sure nice!

Things changed with UGO, a network of entertainment sites contacted me and asked if I would consider being their “Matrix Hub.” This was real money for doing what I had already been doing.

This led to more promotion, more users, and ultimately to a lawyer’s email to negotiate the sale of TheMatrixOnline.com for $10,000. Turns out Jim Moloshok took notice and thought the new Matrix game ought to be called “The Matrix Online.”

I love this story as it has the most unexpected and unlikely events that propelled my dream forward. Many things I thought would didn’t and others I thought should flopped. From the encouragement of my friends and the unlikely availability of “thematrixonline.com” after the movie had been released for at least two months to the chance meeting with Jim Moloshok, it was a great journey with lots of challenges, victories, and lessons.

Here are a few lessons I learned and a single recommendation below so you can write your story soon too!

1. Pig Headed Discipline (nod to Chet): My sale in 2003 only came after I made it through the pains of 2001 & 2002 putting one article, post, and image in front of another.
2. Ask For Help: I never realized my seeking help would yield a meeting brokered by a friend that would later lead to the profitable sale.
3. Unplug: Most of this journey looked like things were just going the way of most fan sites of the time: rise, fizzle, flatten, and disappear. Things are not ONLY what they appear to be.

To your success,

Jon Cline

p.s.
Prior to the sale, I moved the forums to www.thelastfreecity.com to keep them alive as they are to this day.

p.p.s.