Now 33, Brattland traces his entrepreneurial roots back to that
fateful set of tapes. He would sit in his truck between sealcoating
jobs, listening to the tapes. Each night, he wrote down what he had
learned and how to apply it to his own business.
But Brattland wasn't content to just dream; he became a
teenage miniconglomerate. In addition to the sealcoating business,
he started a valet parking service for local restaurants, then
started selling "automotive orphans"-dealers' unsold
inventories or remnants of rental-car fleets.
Eager for entrepreneurial success, he was less than enthusiastic
when his parents insisted he go to college. He left after a few
years and returned to his recipe-for-success books and tapes,
studying them intensely. He undertook an exercise he had learned
from the tapes: interviewing winners to learn their secrets. One of
the people he spoke with, a man who promoted sales training
seminars, persuaded Brattland to join his company as a salesperson.
He soon veered off in pursuit of better money with a multilevel
marketing company. When that business folded two years later,
Brattland was left empty-handed.
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After back-to-back setbacks, he looked for a way to turn crisis
into opportunity. Says Brattland, "It brought me back to my
true love: personal and professional development
programs."
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