Hi all! I'd like to introduce myself. I'm Bobthebuilder! New to Our Community! SO happy to move in :)

While I was in the first grade, my oldest brother made airplanes that wouldn’t fly, but they looked really cool! He showed me how to make them and I loved it so much, I built dozens. When I showed up to school, my fellow classmates had never seen such a thing before, and although the planes couldn’t fly like your normal run-of-the-mill paper airplane, there was demand. It was at this moment my inner entrepreneur struck. I started to sell the plain papered airplanes for $.10 and then I colored some with markers in cool designs and sold those for $.25. By the end of the day, my teacher had taken me aside and told me how I wasn’t allowed to sell stuff at school. I couldn’t understand why not, but she insisted I could not and should not from then on.

Later, in the 4th grade, the entrepreneur bug struck again. My dad was a bargain shopper, no doubt the man I got the bug from, and had bought bags of snacks 10/$1. I took several bags to school (Hot Fries, if you remember those), and sold them for $.25 per bag. Once again, I was chided and told that I was not allowed to run a business at school. Also again, I could not understand why not.

(Here's a fun pic of me last year)

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You see, I’ve always been excited about earning my next buck. I started investing in real estate when I was 22 and have done well for myself. I now own 3 buildings with no loans on any of the three. Even then, with hundreds of thousands in my “portfolio,” 3 years ago, I got really excited when I made my first penny on YouTube. It was earned by mistake! Here’s how it happened in a very short way. Perhaps I’ll tell the longer story later:

In a nutshell, my father-in-law got me excited about metal detecting by watching YouTube videos of others metal detecting. I saved up for my first detector, as my wife asked that I not just go buy one as an impulse. I bought it, used it for about 7 months, all the while watching YouTube video after video on tips and just plain cool finds. I decided after 7 months that I had gotten a hang for it and would “give back” to the metal detecting community. I felt there wasn’t a really good beginner’s video for metal detecting and decided I would create one, putting in all the tips I had learned from the other videos as well as my experiences with my detector. I posted the video and clicked on a button that asked if I wanted to monetize the video. I thought, “Sure…whatever…People made money on YouTube?! I didn’t think too much of it until about 2 weeks later, I made my first penny! I MADE A PENNY!!! haHA! My wife said, mostly as a side comment, “You get excited over making so little!”

What she didn’t realize was, I wasn’t excited over the penny alone. I was excited over all the pennies I would earn. This was a perpetual machine! After 4 months, I made my first $1. I finally realized that once people watched my video, they would go off to other videos, that I was “feeding” other people’s videos. I decided I better start making more great content to “keep the money flowing.” Story shortened, I now make about $40-$45/month, now 3 years later. My wife is no longer chiding me for “being excited over making so little.” Instead, she asks, when is it going to go big, or when are you posting your next video…hahaha

Why do I tell you this story? Imagine my surprise when I found SteemIt. You have felt the same surprise, so I don’t need to go too far into explaining. I studied it for hours on YouTube and on SteemIt’s website. I now understand, in a crude way, Steem, SteemPower, and Steemdollars. Even then, I don’t think there are a lot of videos that do this place justice. So just like I did for metal detecting, I plan on doing a video for YouTube on SteemIt-not because there aren’t some out there already, but because I think this opportunity is too good to let go.

So this is me in a nutshell: I’m a multi-preneur. I own real estate, I teach people how to work on Natural Gas appliances for a living, I make money on YouTube with 8 different channels (you can see 7 of the channels by going to http://www.thegreatestpatriot.us/youtube ), I own a flag business that is ghosting right now, but will pick back up when I put more time into it, and I drive for Uber and Lyft when I feel like it. I have 5 children and have been married for over 13 years. I have an opinion about many things and consider myself a jack of all trades and a master of a few ;)

I plan on using this as a place to share information and teach others things I’ve learned along the way. I’ll spare you more details, but say, “Thank you” for reading this far. I hope to see your posts soon! My plan is to follow everyone who comments below, because I figure that is the best way to find those most active in the community. Thank you for a warm welcome! I appreciate this opportunity! (For those who wonder, it took 2 days from the time I requested to join the community and the time I got my approval-I know there were some posts about this previously.)

Another fun pic with my mustache ;)