Over the last year I have written many articles covering many areas of real estate and business including technology, marketing, how to get government contracts, media communications, banking and finance and more, information gleamed from over 20 years of hands-on experience.

Information I wish I would have had when I was just starting out in business, when there was no Internet, no method of mass communication other than a library or a phone. I remember when desktop computers were coming into existence and an IBM PC with an amber screen monitor and a 10-megabyte hard drive was the thing to have… We were thrilled at having a software-based word processor with spell checkers and auto correction! The ability for people to create, store and retrieve data was a revolutionary idea then as it is today. Technology certainly has changed but our need for information has not. Indeed, today's competitive business world demands we have access to better information faster.

When I started Smart Books publishing back in 1990 it was a result of the awareness that people needed access to quality real estate and business information fast to make good personal and business decisions. We designed our Smart Books to be high quality, affordable books and kits, which everybody could afford, no matter who you were, young, old, rich or poor. That was critical to me because I originally come from a low-income childhood and didn't have the best direction or access to information. I was a wayward kid who got involved in drugs and who thought the world spun on sex, drugs and rock n roll. It wasn't until my early 20's and a near fatal car accident that I started to wake up and realize that success didn't come by chance or luck, success was something that I had to work hard for, and I did.

I started by going to the library and reading everything I could get my hands on about business, and I mean everything. I usually could not see over my kitchen table because of all the books… books on business management, marketing, sales, real estate, manufacturing, distribution, retail, advertising, law, finance and motivational materials. I met a commercial attorney in Toledo, Ohio named Doug Wright who represented nearly all the banks in Toledo and he took me under his wing and introduced me to some major players in banking, finance, real estate developers and other shooters in business. He exposed me to projects and the type of people I had been reading about in all the business books and it was all starting to come to life for me. As time progressed, I realized I needed a college education to hang with the pros and struggled my way trough college to get a degree in business and there was no stopping me, I was hell bent for knowledge and success.

So I plowed through the 80's, got my degree and a real estate license and ended up in the residential and commercial mortgage business. Probably the most exciting career possible if you are interested in funding malls, hotels and office buildings. It was a blast and I was able to meet some major players during that time. But the latter 80's saw a crisis in the savings and loan industry and commercial real estate projects were failing all over the country and big money was hard to get during those days. I lost my ass on some large scale real estate deals (as did people across he nation) and found myself working for a residential mortgage brokerage firm as a humble loan officer, taking home loan applications from people who were buying a house. A long way to drop for a guy with my ego and talent, but it paid the rent.

It was during this period of time that I discovered how crooked the real estate business was, how people would sign contracts and do stupid real estate deals, both home buyers and sellers and how unscrupulous real estate agents got over on people. And that bothered me… I am an honest man and I could not continue to sit back and watch agents abusing ignorant home buyers and sellers any longer. I decided to write a book called "Everything A Real Estate Agent Doesn't Want You To Know" and the rest is history… I formed a business called smart Books Publishing and took the book national during 1991-1994. It sold in every state in the country including Alaska, Hawaii as well as Japan and Pakistan… another long story, which I will spare you…

But as fate would have it, whatever goes up must come down and after a complex set of business and personal setbacks including a divorce, I retreated for a few years to lick my wounds and regroup, to find out what was really important…what really mattered. And my conclusion was this: God and Jesus mattered, family and love mattered and people mattered. Money mattered too but it was no longer at the top of my list. Then I asked myself what did I have control over? The only thing I had control over was the Smart Books project and myself. I never lost perspective of what it meant to come from a humble origin with a lack of knowledge about business and real estate and I was hell bent to provide a way for people, like you, to have access to information that would help them make better decisions faster. I knew I could save people time and money with my knowledge and experience and I decided to re engineer the smart Books project back around 2000 and here we are today…alive and well.

And this is my 100th article here at ezinearticles.com, which I have written this year. I have the honor and privilege to put forth some of the best advice I have to offer (obviously holding back the real powerful stuff that is tucked safely in the smart Books and kits) to readers of Ezinearticles. Why do I do it? Let me tell you why:

Everybody has an angle. Most every article writer here has a website and products they want people to buy and article marketing is a way of connecting with people like you. The angle being you like what you read, click and visit my site and buy something. Well, for me that is only a very small slice of the motivation behind my article writing.

I write the articles to help people whether they visit my site or not-there is enough information in these 100 articles that I have online to keep anybody out of legal and financial problems if they take the time to read them. Each article has been carefully thought through to provide key-nuggets of integrated information across a wide spectrum of real estate and business issues to help you think smarter, faster across a broad field of business. Sure, I want you to come to the site… it has been designed for entrepreneurs with an extremely high quality research center giving people business and government information at their finger tips. I designed the site for entrepreneurs and it is set up like an information-dashboard providing access to all the information sources you need to be successful without guessing and wasting time rethinking everything from the ground up. It's a hell of a resource for people who are in business. I wish I would have had access to my site when I was starting out in business, it's a real treasure trove.

The answer to why I do what I do is you. So that your path is a little easier than mine was. If you are an entrepreneur or just a person who dreams-dreams and wonders why not, there is an answer for you found within these articles here at Ezines. And like I said at the beginning of this article: information technology and mass communication has changed everything for the betterment of people who need it, people like you.

And when you look at what a tremendous information resource Ezinearticles.com has become on the Internet, you have to stand back in awe that so many people have come together to give you the best of what they have to offer. People, with the power of their written words in an organized forum of people helping people. What a tremendous advantage you have over your counterparts of 20, 30 or 40 years ago… when all they had was a manual typewriter.

That's my story, what will yours be?

To your success!

Copyright © 2006 James W. Hart, IV All Rights Reserved