Who Is Tom Spinks ?

Hello. My name is Tom Spinks a I want to go back to the very beginning when I finally made up my mind to try and create a national magazine that I thought would appeal to people like myself - people like you. I want to take you with me and I will try to share with you the feelings and emotions I have felt all along the way. I have felt as high as high can feel and I have felt lower than low - just like you have probably felt at different times in your life. Like so many other things we do in life, if I had known what all I was about to go through and the length of time it would take, I don't think I would have ever started this project.

Before I begin, I want to tell you a little bit more about myself, not to make you think I think I am something special but to make you understand I am not that special at all. I am just an average person that thinks none of us should ever fail at anything we try simply because there are so many others around us who are willing to help....if we are willing to ask them. My pride has held me back many times.

My dad was a Methodist minister and, along with my mom, they gave me and my two sisters a happy childhood. My childhood and my high school years were full of sports. When I was in the 9th grade, we moved to Shreveport, LA and I met a kid named Terry Bradshaw. In fact, I rode my bike near his home one day and watched him as he threw a football in his backyard at lawn furniture, a barbeque pit, a tree and a clothesline pole - all the while doing a play-by- play radio broadcast about a great quarterback named Bradshaw. He knew long before anyone else that he would play pro football.

fields of Woodlawn High School and Louisiana Tech University. Terry was drafted by the Pittsburgh Steelers and I was drafted by the Minnesota Vikings and then traded to the Steelers. During the early part of the 1971 season, I tore my knee up and my career was over before it even started. I went home, and like the rest of the country, I watched Terry help the Steelers win four Super Bowls, go into the Pro Football Hall of Fame and now I watch him on the Fox Network each Sunday. I have always been extremely proud of him because I know how hard he worked for his success.

But you know what, I had the same dreams he had. We used to ride around in my car just talking about the day we would both play in the NFL. We would lay around the dorm in college, just talking about football and wondering what it would be like. Well, his dream happened and mine didn't. In the time it takes for a ligament to snap, the course of my life was changed forever. Now what in the heck do I do?

I got married between my freshman and sophomore year in college to my high school sweetheart, Barbara Lindsay. When I got hurt we already had two girls - Kimberly and Teri Ann. Teri Ann was named after Terry Bradshaw. He made me. (For the record, we later had Jason and Lindsay. Barbara is still my sweetheart.)

Anyway, at the end of that season we left Pittsburgh. I knew I couldn't run routes and make cuts on my knee the way you have to so I knew I wouldn't be coming back. I remember how sad I was but I also remember wondering what I was going to do to provide for my family. Anyone reading this been there? I think most of us have.

We went back to Shreveport, LA and I got a job coaching at Woodlawn High School. The next year I coached at Huntington High School, also in Shreveport. In 1974, Babe Parelli, who was the quarterback coach for the Steelers when I was there, was named the head coach in New York for a new pro league called The World Football League. He called me to ask how my knee was and, although it popped out about twice a day, I told him I could still play. I signed with the New York Stars and we moved to New York. I had a pretty good season, even though I had to tape my knee so tight to practice and play that my foot would go to sleep. It was the only way my knee wouldn't pop out of place when I ran. (Ah, the stupidity of youth.) But, the league folded the next year so it was back home to Shreveport.

NOW I really had to get a job. Coaching didn't make enough money so I took my degree in physical education and went to work in an oil well pipe supply store....long enough to know I didn't want to be in the oil well pipe supply business.

I then proceeded to sell business insurance, swimming pools, timeshares and several other things that I like to refer to as my time in 'trying to make a living doing things I hated but I had to do them because I had to pay the bills and I couldn't figure out what else I could do "hell".

I look back on that time in my life and I still get sick at my stomach. I remember waking up in the middle of the night trying to figure out how to pay my phone bill or pay our electricity bill. It was like I was in a twilight zone. Why is this happening to me? I am not the smartest guy in the world but I am not the dumbest either. I don't think. To this day I don't like to think about those times. I have talked to a lot of people who have been in that same type of hell for years and I feel bad and sad for them. I hate their frustration and sadness because I remember how bad I hated mine.

When I was 30 years old, I started a newspaper type of magazine on the Pittsburgh Steelers, which I go into detail in the first issue of our magazine. That was my first big break and the first time I got the idea that I really liked doing my own thing - even with the ups and downs of doing your own thing.

I sold the magazine - and five others that I started on other teams and I then started a company that acquired business clients for CPA's. I sold that company and started a Multi-Level Marketing company that ended up with over 85,000 people in it in over 100 countries. That is a fickle industry so I sold that company. How did I start these companies without any experience in any of them? I just asked a lot of questions from people in these industries.

Starting this magazine is actually a pretty amazing story but let me be frank once again, I am nothing special. This magazine is special because successful people really do want others to be successful so they are willing to help this magazine - help it's readers with their stories and experiences.

To the person reading these words right now, I wish for you a better life and I promise you I will get information out of some of the most successful people in America that will teach you, show you and help you become better off financially.

Tom