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What were you doing when you were eleven years old?
If youāre like most people, you were probably going to school. Maybe watching TV after getting home from school. Maybe you were industrious and worked doing some side jobs, or learning an instrument, or working on art.
Chances are you werenāt making money on the Internet. But Peter Szabo was.
At the age of eleven, the young Slovakian boyās family fell on hard times. He resolved to do what he could to change that. And change it he did.
Szabo is now owner and founder of one of the biggest if not the biggest Facebook ad agency in Europe. Heās a millionaire at the age of twenty. His organization, LeadEvo, is recognized as one of the most effective ad agencies in its class.
And it all started with four cents.
The Small Beginning
Szabo grew up in a normal Slovakian household, and for a time the family finances were just fine. āNothing to complain about…it was a pretty average household, till I was eleven,ā he said in a brief chat.
At that point, the family made some very ill-advised investments. Szabo watched as loans began to pile up, and the over-leveraged investments his family had engaged in sank their finances. The standard of living dropped, and he started to worry.
He got inspired one day by watching a movie called The Secret, which made him believe that anyone could be anything they set their mind to. So he began with a Google search: āhow to make money onlineā.
It didnāt take long before Peterās business started to bear fruit. Unfortunately, it was only making pennies a day. āI didnāt really know what I was doing yetā, notes Peter now. āI was learning on the fly.ā
He bore some ridicule from his classmates for a little while, but then the pennies began to add up to dollars, then to tens of dollars, then hundreds of dollars, then thousands of dollars in a single dayāall the way up to $20,000 in a single day.
The Crossroads
Peter was mostly selling online courses at this point, but he slowly began to realize something: Facebook advertising was the engine that was driving the business.
āIt made sense to focus on the advertising, as that was what I seemed to really be good at,ā Szabo says now. āI was good at managing ad spend and using social media marketing, so sticking to selling other peopleās courses wasnāt the right course of action any more.ā
With the change in focus, Peterās business was growing and expanding by leaps and bounds now, and at the age of 17, he was generating a hundred times the average salary in Slovakia, managing roughly $2 million a year. It was a pretty far cry from where heād been 6 years before.
It was a momentous step, but he decided to devote himself to his business.
He dropped out of high school. From there, Szabo began to travel. Heās been to dozens of countries at this point, crossing and crisscrossing the globe, touching base with luminaries in many different fields and digging into the possibilities of entrepreneurship.
The Awakening
At the age of 20, Peter has had a chance to do things most people three times his age never have. Heās spoken on stage alongside everyone from Neil Patel to Halle Berry. Heās made millions and helped his clients make tens of millions.
Heās traveled the world as a high school dropout, got recognized many places in public, met the love of his life, and appeared on major media channels. Heās even written a #1 Amazon bestseller. If thereās someone you could say āhas it allā, Peter Szabo is it, by just about every societal measure.
But there was still something missingāa sense of contribution and fulfillment. And he couldnāt figure out how to get it.
Until one fateful day in Australia, that is.
Peter showed up at a Tony Robbins event called āDate with Destiny.ā And there he realized that heād been chasing something heād never reach. āIt hit me hard,ā he says.
āAll this time Iād been devoting myself to the question of how I could be good enough. And it was the wrong question. I was so focused on me, me, me that I ended up achieving everything I ever wanted, but at the cost of always comparing myself to others and feeling inadequate, insecure and not enough. I achieved everything that I wanted out of constantly asking myself how I could be good enough.ā
From that point, Peterās priorities shifted from making money and pursuing material success to something a little harder, a little bigger, and a bit more altruistic.
āAt that event, I realized there was an easier way,ā he said.
āAnd thatās to realize that life loves youāthe fact that youāre alive proves it. If you can create from a place of knowing that youāre loved instead of fearing that you wonāt be, you can achieve your dreams and be fulfilled in the process. Bottom line, I feel like I was given so much that I want to pay it forward and give back. The key is this: just spreading the message that you were, you are, and you will be loved unconditionally always, no matter what. Itās your divine birthright.ā
Szaboās latest venture, LeadEvo, isnāt just a social media marketing company. He envisions it as a vehicle to change the world, slowly but surely, like the ripples from a rock thrown into a pond.
āOnce you have the realization I had,ā Szabo says, āyou start focusing on the bigger pictureāhumanity, legacy, all of usāinstead of focusing on making a quick buck out of fear that if you donāt, youāre a nobody.ā
Thatās the main takeaway of his experience, the thing that took him almost 10 years to discoverāthe importance of making sure that your business is not just a machine designed to make money, but a tool that can be used to create a better life for others.
It hasnāt hindered business. Peterās staying quite busy, even if heās careful with choosing his clientele. Thereās a market out there for businesses that put a premium on doing the right thing, and despite his young age Peterās at the vanguard.
Social consciousness is important for todayās businesses, no matter what field theyāre in, and showing your customers you really care about making the world better isnāt just good business. Itās the right thing to do.
Creating a business is hard for anyone, let alone an eleven-year-old.
But Peter Szaboās story shows that itās possible for anyone to make a mark on the world, no matter how old or young. And the end of his story isnāt written yet. Itās hard to say just yet where it goes from here, but if he has his way, Peter Szaboās name isnāt just going to mean āmillionaireā.
It will mean making a brighter future for everyoneāand he has plenty of years ahead to find as many ways as possible to do it.
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