I’ve always had an interest in electronics and I can remember disassembling gadgets just to see what was inside of them. When I was 11 years old my parents got me the Radio Shack Armatron for Christmas and this was one of my favorite toys until I ruined it.
I wanted to see what was inside of it so I removed the screws that held it together. After examining what was inside I went to put it back together and I couldn’t get the gears lined up properly so I put it under my bed so my mom and dad wouldn’t see the mess that I made of it. I felt terrible about ruining that toy but my curiosity with electronics only heightened as I grew older.
I graduated from Iowa State University of Science and Technology with a Bachelor of Science degree. I’ve always been a proud Cyclone and often brag that my alma mater is home of the first electronic digital computer.
After college I worked for a sport organization and during that time I learned website development. This was back in the day when pages had to be coded in HTML until eventually a program called Dreamweaver made the task much easier. I built the company website which saved thousands of dollars as it allowed us to cease communicating through print media. I now think back to those days and laugh at how horrible that site looked! But hey, it saved a lot of money.
Over the coming years, I built websites as a side-gig for small businesses in the area. Although I enjoyed doing this, I wanted to build my own website where I could share technology tutorials and offer reviews for various electronic devices.
On November 15th, 2001 the original Xbox was released by Microsoft. The game console modding community quickly figured out how to run “homebrew” software on this system and Xbox Media Center (XBMC) was born. XBMC was eventually renamed Kodi which millions of people still enjoy today, including me.
At the beginning of these modding days if you wanted to run this homebrew software you would be required to solder a modchip onto the motherboard of the Xbox.
After successfully doing this on my own box I created a website where I sold a tutorial showing how to do this. On November 22, 2005 the Xbox 360 was released and this came with modding capabilities as well. I added additional tutorials to this site and continued selling the online guides for a few more years.
In 2009 while I was traveling for my job I would often listen to audio books while driving. I came across Crush It by Gary Vaynerchuk. I can honestly say that if I wouldn’t have listened to this audio book, TROYPOINT wouldn’t exist today. Gary teaches that anyone can become successful on the Internet if they’re willing to put in the time and do something that they love. He explains that, “Riches are in niches”, and the Internet/social media is a great way to leverage a strong community where people will buy products that you endorse. After listening to this audio book, the TROYPOINT website was launched.
It took me six years of working on my website and YouTube videos in my free time before I started seeing any substantial traffic. Once the first Amazon Firestick was released in 2014 I started focusing mostly on streaming tutorials. I created a video on YouTube that showed how to install Kodi on a Firestick which was right after the app was removed from the Amazon App Store. That video exploded and generated millions of views! That’s right, it took one video to put TROYPOINT on the map and since then we’ve amassed over 360,000 YouTube subscribers and millions of website visits.
In November of 2015 I launched the Fire Unleashed E-Course that I sold for $99. Subscribers enjoyed over forty videos that offered step-by-step instructions on how to unleash the true power of the Firestick. The overwhelming success of this digital product paved the way for a strong online community that still thrives today. Over the years, this membership site has evolved and is now referred to as the TROYPOINT Patron program.
I truly appreciate each and every one of you fans and look forward to serving you for many more years to come.