marcus300 interviews system admin
marcus300: Thanks for taking the time to do this interview, I know your a busy guy so i do appreciate it. Where abouts in the USA do you live and where did you grow up?
system admin: I currently live in Austin, Tx, but spent the majority of my teen and adult life in Houston.
marcus300: Are you married and do you have any children?
system admin: I am not married, nor do I have any children.
marcus300: How old are you?
system admin: I am several days away from being 34
Members question: Where have you travelled to and what place would you most like to visit?
system admin: I dont travel that much, but I plan on changing that very soon. I dont think I have been mature enough to appreciate traveling, however I have grown up a lot over the last few years and I may start to do some research as to where to go first. Nothing strikes me as interesting right off the bat though. Anywhere warm and beautiful!
marcus300: What was it like growing up as a child and what was your first job on leaving school?
system admin: Oh boy, this is not an easy one and will take some time to explain. My childhood years where not so great. My parents separated when I was 1 and I lived with my mother, but got to visit my Father every other weekend. I had a great relationship with both parents until my mother married again when I was about 8. My relationship with my mother soured when she moved me from Houston to Louisiana and then to California with a very abusive man. My visits to see my Father where few and living within the environment I was in was hell on earth. I grow to accept physical and mental abuse as common ways of punishment and did not understand how bad my situation was until I was a little older.
At 13 years old I was able to choose which parent I wanted to stay with and of course the second that chance came, I ran home to my Father. Life was a HUGE mess for me when I arrived back in Houston because I was one of the worst behaved kids in our school. I was sent to the office just about every day for fighting, telling teachers to **** themselves, playing pranks on teachers like and students that where anything but normal for a kid to do, and failing every single subject in school including physical education! I wanted attention very badly because from the ages of 8-13 I was basically left to raise myself and the only attention I got during that time was negative. School was a place for me to act out and get attention. The last place it was for me was a place to learn.
After several years in the 8th grade I was forced to be moved on to high school because I was too old to be in middle school and I would be driving before I made it to high school. That next year I was sent to Military School in Harlingen, Tx (MMA, Marine Military Academy) and attended this school for almost 2 years. It was at this school where I was able to get my feet under me for the first time and feel a sense of pride and accomplishment. I was on the Dean's list the entire time I attended, I achieved cadet of the month, I was on the URL math team for the school, and I was running Varsity Track in the 100, 200, and 400 meter sprints. At this school I truly grew up and by the end of my second year, I decided that it was not for me and I ran away and never returned back. This was NOT a good thing in the eyes of my parents or the school itself. I basically ran away from home and found a place to live with a friend of mine until my parents agreed to let me attend the high school my mother taught at where she could keep an eye on me and make sure I didn't fall back into the same rut I once was in. Lucky for me, I stayed out of that rut and continued to do well in school and continued to run track. Before my finals as a JR. (11th grade) I decided that high school was not for me any longer and that I was going to figure out how to make it on my own. I dropped out of school and went to take my GED soon after, which I scored in the top 1% of people who took the test.
From that point I moved out of the house into a tiny apartment, registered to a Jr. College and got 2 jobs (a video store clerk and a job at Radio Shack). College was not for me and I hardly attended. I failed out quickly and from their I would try to make ends meet. I could not afford my car insurance or gas money, so I sold my car for a Suzuki GSXR 750 Motorcycle and used it for my everyday transportation. Needless to say, I was learning a lot about life. I got mixed up with the wrong people, started selling drugs to pay bills, and did a lot of partying. I was once again failing at life! This lasted for about a year and a half when I was run over by a car on my motorcycle and almost died. This was a blessing from God and my last chance to get my shit straight. I was in rehab for about 8 months (although I dont really know how long because my memory was very bad due to my head injuries). I was not able to drive and lost my license to to my head injuries and was picked up by the hospital bus Monday - Friday 8 hours a day. It was my full time job to learn to think and function again and it was very very difficult to live that way. I had doctor's appointments constantly, meetings with lawyers, and my every move was being watched and recorded by the people we where suing for causing this accident. (fast forwarding) We won the lawsuit for an amazing 120k ALL of which went to bills, my father who gave up his retirement to support me, and the lawyers. I was told we were going to get paid at least 10 million or so by the attorney and to a person in my shoes who was such a lost soul with no future in sight... I was banking on that. When the dust settled and I was broke, I decided the only way for me to have a future and to have the nice things that I desired... I was going to have to get off my ass and do something. I re-enrolled into Jr. College, started to work out, and took a new look at life. My grades were good enough to advance to a University (Stephen F. Austin) in Nacogdoches, Tx (after 1 year) and I decided to apply for grants and student loans to get me there.
I knew I had to make a little extra money for beer and dating, so I asked a friend of mine whom I met at the gym and who sold bodybuilding supplements if I could buy products from him for a few % over his cost so that I could sell them to people in the gyms at my new college. He agreed and I started handing out lists of prices to people at the gyms and would hand deliver them to the customer in my car the following day they arrived. (My buddy shipped them to me from Houston which was only 1 day delivery) Before school even started I had a decent business growing and decided to rent a shit hole of a space inside the back of a cell phone company (400 bucks a month) so that I didnt have to drive around and deliver the supplements. Long story short... I started making some decent money, started an online supplement business with 3,000 (www.allsportsnutrition.com), and sold my (RETAIL business only) for an amazing $75,000 to a local gym. From that point forward I kept investing in more retail supplement stores and smoothie shops. At that point I started AnabolicReview.com so that I could market my online supplement business to that demographic of customer. From there on I just kept pushing forward and reinvested into my businesses.
marcus300: When and how was Steroid.com/anabolic review born and how did you first start in this industry?
system admin: Oops. I kinda started this story with my long winded start to this interview. AnabolicReview.com was created to drive a certain type of customer to my new online supplement store www.allsportsnutrition.com The first time allsportsnutrition.com went online, the search engines LOVED US! It was amazing. If you typed in "sports nutrition" or Sports Supplements" we where number one on 3 different search engines. Sales where incredible. I actually couldnt believe how many sales we where getting to the site. However that did not last very long. One day I came to work and noticed that my site was no longer online. I called my hosting company and asked him what was wrong and he said that the server shut down and that it would be back up in a few minutes. Several minutes we popped back up online, however there was some horrible consequences to us going offline... the search engines dropped us from number one on the first page... and moved us hundreds of pages down the line!! All that success was gone. Orders died down to a fraction of what they were and I knew I had to come up with a better way to get traffic to that site other than to rely on a search engine. At the time I was using steroids quite a bit and realized that all of my steroid using buddies where all buying supplements and we all bought them all year long. We were the type of customer I needed at allsportsnutrition.com... So with that thought, I went to all of the pay sites (back then they where all 29.99 a month to view) and I wrote down all of their best ideas. I took the list of content that I thought was the best from every site and created a plan for my own site. That plan was to re-write all of the content and include ALL of the best ideas from each site and put them on my website (which I called AnabolicReview.com after the very popular book "Anabolic Review 1996") and to top it off.. I was going to make my website FREE to view. The idea was a success. The site grew quickly and with only one banner ad linking to allsportsnutrition.com, sales stated to pick up and within a few years we were selling between 300k-500k a month. Back when I first started the site I DREAMED of owning a better domain name and contacted the guy who owned "Steroid.com" to find out how much he wanted for it. He was a 17 year old Asian kid who lived in California and was going to college. He requested $100,000 for the name, but at the time I was first starting AnabolicReview, I didnt even have more than 5k to spend on it. Every month I would email the guy and ask him how much and every time he told me the same price. Well, one day out of the blue this guy called me and said that he needed money badly for college and asked me what I would pay for it.... I told him that I had 5k in cash now that I could send and next month I could send 5k more. He reluctantly agreed and I had my lawyer draw up the papers and set up the transaction in Escrow. 2 months later.. I owned the 2nd best domain in the Steroid world!! Now, my dreams where on Steroids.com, but that is another story and one just as long. I will wait to tell you that one! lol
marcus300: Its a remarkable story about how you first started out and how you required the domain names in the steroid world. When you bought steroid.com did you ever think it was going to be this big and what dreams did you first have with the site?
system admin: I NEVER thought it would be this big, however I will admit that over the last 13 years while I was buying these domain names I knew in my heart that I was buying virtual real-estate and I had a feeling that they would be worth buying IF I could get a vast majority of the good ones. Back then I was paying 100 bucks a domain name and dont forget that for the first part of my business I was BROKE! I spent every extra dollar I had on domain names and the only reason I did was because I kept having a feeling of being OCD (like a crazy gambler that can NOT stop betting) and felt that one day it would be a valuable collection. I didnt buy them to sell them however. I bought them to develop them. To date have HUNDREDS of websites built and operational! To directly answer your question... I had NO idea what I was doing or even what I would end up doing with these domain names at the time of buying many of them, but something just told me to keep buying. We have done better than anything in my imagination during that time period and I cannot believe it half the time when I look back on the journey.
Members question: Has there ever been a time where you thought of closing down the forum?
system admin: I have thought (very brief thought) of closing down the forum several years ago when we were fairly new due to the direction the board was taken. Instead, we changed direction and it appears that was a great choice.
Members question: Has this site turned out the way you wanted it to?
system admin: I think the site has far surpased my expectations.
marcus300: What does a typical day look like for you?
system admin: Honestly, a typical day today is filled with phone calls, emails, web surfing, etc... I now have over 500 websites that are constantly needing attention. I have a staff to help me, so I send my requests to a manager who then looks to make sure the job gets done. I have a lot of time on my hands now-a-days, but its not at all as fun as it would seem. I am a dreamer, so I typically sit in front of my computer and look for new ways to improve on what we have created over the last 13 years. The ideas never stop and to make a dream into a reality usually requires a LOT of time for my staff and I to come up with and finalize a plan. Once the plan is in place, it will still require a lot of attention because I am a perfectionist and I do NOT want to put out anything that is shit.
marcus300: What as been your biggest achievement and biggest regret?
system admin: My biggest achievement would probably be my collection of steroid domain names. Steroids.com is my biggest win, but to have the domain name portfolio we have, that can never be duplicated. We own just about all of them that end in .com including most drug names, chemical names, and common terms used in the steroid community. The biggest regret is two fold... one is that I did not make steroid.com a little bit more educational to young people and teenagers. I would like to have relayed the message of how dangerous these drugs can be to young people much more clear. The great thing is that we own so much of the online steroid world, the bad thing is with that comes a responsibility to do what we can to keep people safe. I think safe use by adults can be life changing, but when I hear of teenagers using these drugs and not getting a clear message of the side effects that can take place in their bodies, I get very concerned. I dont think we can change the direction of steroid.com, however I have decided to make steroids.com a place where we can contribute some good and make that message a bit more clear. The second biggest regret is of my own personal use of anabolic steroids. I would have liked to have known of a website like steroid.com BEFORE ever using, because I could have used the people on the message boards to learn a lot more than what the steroid dealers where telling me. I was so excited to give myself a boost in the gym that I jumped in with both feet without having any knowledge of these drugs. I would have done things a lot different.
Members question: Whats the turnover over Dynamic Sports Nutrition annulally?
system admin: I cant give that information to protect my assets, but it is a very big number.
marcus300: You have a passion for sports cars, what cars have you owned and what do you drive?
system admin: I have had more than a handful of cars! My first sports cars where Mustangs and Trans Ams. I then bought a Mitsubishi 3000GT when I sold my first retail store and then moved up to a new Corvette in 2002. Since then I have had a wide range of cars and trucks, but as far as fast cars I bought a few Vipers, the latest model Z06 (unreal car), Crystler SRT-8, 3 Lamborghini's, several different Lexus cars but my fastest and one I drive now is an IS-F. I have had many types of cars and trucks, but those where not fast so I won't boar you with those :0) I drive only two cars now which is an 08 Lime green Lambo (I hardly take it out because the attention I get in it is very unwanted and I think I have just about outgrown such an exotic and pricey car) and an 08 Lexus IS-F...
I am currently looking at getting the new Nissan GT-R, but have not made up my mind yet!
marcus300: What hobbies do you have?
system admin: This is a question that I wish I had a better answer for. My hobby used to be working out, however for the last 13 years all I have done is talk fitness and working out. When I am at work I talk about supplements and working out... nutrition plans and workout ideas, in the gym when I am there to work out... I get asked about supplements NON stop due to my retail businesses being next to the gym, when I am at a bar or restaurant people will do nothing but talk about working out and supplements. My hobby used to be working out... now I dont have a hobby because I am SOOO sick of talking about it and being around it. I guess it is sad to say, but BUSINESS is my hobby and if you read what I just wrote.. in actuality NOTHING has changed. Now all I talk about is business, so when I am not doing business I am talking about business..... I need a ****ing hobby!!!!
marcus300: Come on Brian, who is *Admin* I wont tell anyone lol?
system admin: I make all of the Admin anonymous for ONE REASON... As many of the long time members know, power goes to the heads of moderators and staff. After the last huge blowout with many moderators and vets, I knew that we needed to take the personality out of the forum "Police". It is very hard to take a moderator or admin seriously when they are using their powers to help their friends and hurt their enemies. Also some of the admin and mods in the past have proven that power can get to their heads and they quickly become bigger than the website.... We needed a change and that change was to have un named admin using the same admin title to make sure the board and its members are in line. The monitors that we have do not have any powers, but they are chosen because we believe that they have the best intentions of the website at heart and they notify the admin of anything that they may think needs attention. Many things that are brought up by the monitors never get handled because the admins do not agree with the complaint. Never the less, it seems to be a good system and seems to be working. My ultimate goal was to take out any personal comments out of the decisions of the admin. Now, with the admins identities being secret, everyone gets the same treatment and no one can get their feelings hurt
marcus300: I agree having an anonymous Admin does have its advantages and was definitely the way forward when there were to many forum police giving out tickets lol. Are you happy with how its progressing?
system admin: This is one system that I put in place that I am 100% happy about. I am also proud of this idea because it was thought up by me and a few staff members as a totally unique idea! (if there is another forum that runs things like we are doing now, that is a complete coincidence lol) Im proud of the way things have taken shape and from what I see, we have one of THE MOST respectful message forums out there today... especially with the topic we cover. Flaming is pretty low, people support the site and look for violators, and the forum itself created a life of its own and in my opinion, it became what the majority of the members wanted. It took its shape by the way the members treated it and I am very proud of our members for making it what it is. Now we don't have rogue, power hungry individuals making life hell for new members or taking out a personal grudge with admin like power on someone they dislike. I am very happy with the progression of the discussion forum!
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