Even former carnival fun fair owners can conquer the Midway Marketplace – at least according to Maxwell Ivey, also known as The Blind Blogger. His secret to success? Doing just a little bit at a time until you build up to the point where they become second nature. Maxwell Ivey is a prolific author of inspirational books, with his latest, “The Blind Blogger's New York City Adventures” out any day now. Having forced out of the midway, when his games no longer made any money, Maxwell Ivey had to figure out what he could do next.

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The Blind Blogger Maxwell Ivey

I have with me Maxwell Ivey. He's a former carnival fun-fair owner turned amusement equipment broker. He's also a life goals coach, motivational speaker, online media publicist, blogger, podcaster and award winning self-published author. He's a pretty busy guy. He's written three books so far: Leading You Out of The Darkness into The Light: A Blind Man's Inspirational Guide to Success, It's Not the Cookie, It's the Bag: An Easy-To-Follow guide for Weight Loss Success, and The Blind Blogger's New York City Adventures. This is really incredible so many awesome things under his belt. He works on his own life and that of others by examining every day events and finding the positive life lessons in them. He's always up for a new challenge or opportunity. Welcome, Max.

Thank you for having me on the show, Terri. It's really great to meet you.

It's great to meet you and I've been really intrigued by you. First of all, let's get the story here. You were a former carnival fun fair owner. How did you make the switch to the amusement equipment broker? I found that fascinating.

I say carnival/fun fair because I believe you're from the UK and over there they call them fun fair or fairground rides. It's different from what we call them. Like a lot of things for a lot of people, I was forced into it by one business going out of business. My dad died from lung cancer. Me and my brother weren't ready to take over running the show ourselves yet. We managed to keep in business for about three years before we ended up having to close up and join with my Uncle's carnival. A couple, three years after that, I started helping people sell the rides and stuff. I started doing that full-time through my website, The Midway Marketplace.

How does all of that turn into so many things that you're doing right there aligned with being a life goals coach? Tell us about that.

They are aligned because I was forced out of the Midway, my games no longer made any money, and I had to figure out what could I do next. The one thing I felt I could do that I knew something about already was helping people buy-sell amusement equipment because I had done it for my family. I didn't think about all stuff I would have to learn in order to do something like that online, which included things like hand coding HTML, building email lists, figuring out this social media as good as any of us can, getting people to list their equipment with me. All that stuff I had to learn, especially after I started my first blog. I'd write about it. People said, "Max, you're one of these people who’s finding a way, you find a solution. You just don't let yourself be stopped whether if you’re doing it yourself or getting somebody to do it for you or having somebody teach you how. You just find a way and we find it very inspiring." The stuff I was doing on The Midway Marketplace led to my second website where I'm known as