Adventures We Survive

Recently, I was going through a stack of old files and came across some of my past writings. I was quite surprised to find notes from an interview I did 20 years ago that talked all about my success in business and other successes in my life. My overall thoughts were, “Wow, I did all that, little old me!”

In these files, there were some interesting thoughts and stories like these things I wrote about back then:

Someone once said that life is a series of adventures that we learn to survive. We live each day either dodging what life throws at us or watching and holding it until we can figure out a way to pass it off. But it’s not only what life throws at us that we must deal with, it’s also our own decisions and their consequences that we must learn to survive.

This is a story of how one man’s search for financial freedom and personal identity became a series of adventures that changed his idea of what success meant to him. (Yes, I am talking about myself.) It’s a story that illustrates how the journey is surely more important that the goal itself. It is a reminder that in life, we are often awakened from our comfortable lives and asked again to perform.

In October 2001, a trial began at the federal courts. The Federal Trade Commission had been building a case of fraud against the American Home Business Association and its founder, Mark O. Haroldsen. Yep, that was me, and, wow, that lawsuit hit me like a ton of bricks. The amazing thing was I wasn’t even running the business then, but they knew I had plenty of money.

Years later, we finally went to federal court where the FTC put on many, many witnesses to try to support that multimillion-dollar lawsuit. I didn’t put on a single witness. I testified for myself and told the court that my company did nothing wrong nor did I. The case went on and on and after the FTC had put everything out on their case, the judge went into his private chambers and came out a short time later, delivering his verdict.

The court found me and my company totally innocent of any wrongdoing and basically said that the FTC should never have even filled a case against me. Then he gave them a bit of a lecture.

That case took years and the mental pressure, worry, and costs took a huge toll on me. I wouldn’t want to go through that again, but I am proud to say that I stood my ground and stood up for myself and the company I founded. I’m proud of what I did back then, and I not only survived, I kept working and I kept thriving. I didn’t need to dodge that particular challenge because I built my business with integrity, and it really paid off!