Maxwell Ivy’s Success Story …

Hello everyone. I’m very happy to be here today to share the story of how I got to where I am today. The first thing you should know is that I’m a totally blind man who grew up in a family of carnival owners. All I ever wanted to do was follow in my dad’s footsteps (and other family members). That being … to someday run my own show. And even though retinitis pigmentosa (RP) would cause me to gradually lose my vision, I still got to do just that.

Along the way I graduated from high school and college, achieved the rank of eagle scout, and managed the bookings for our company. Then sadly, in 2003 my dad died from lung cancer. My brothers and I tried to keep the business going, but I could tell from where things were at that we weren’t going to be able to stay in business for very much longer. I knew that very soon I was going to be in that place of needing to figure out what I’m was going to do next.

I decided that since I had helped my family sell surplus rides for carnivals that I could possibly make that my new profession. So, as of September 2007, I finally went all. Even after an exceptionally disappointing week, where my game booths didn’t make barely any money despite having perfect weather, large crowds and plenty of licensed toys to give away. That very same week I asked my brother Michael to help me file for a domain name. I had to ask for some guidance as I didn’t have the first clue of what a website even was, what a domain name meant or how I was even going to get myself online.

Everyone (and I mean EVERYONE) said I needed to have a website. So, I decided to do just that. I asked an endless number of what I felt were “dumb” questions in online forums and even some email lists. Someone finally pointed me to the W3C schools. I went through every single one of their tutorials and learned how to build a basic website.

At that time there was no such things as WordPress. You either had to use WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) or manually code your entire site with HTML. Obviously as a blind man my only option was to hand code. I probably wrote over two million lines of code before finally switching to WordPress in 2012. I did have some trouble selecting the colors for my website. There you had two choices. You could pick them by name or by color number. I had no way to figure out which number went with which color or shade within that color. So, I went with the names. I decided on yellow for the background because when I could still see I thought the prizes in the games always looked better on yellow rather than on white. I then chose blue for the text, red for the links and orange for links previously clicked on.

I would later find out that the yellow I chose was an eye screaming yellow, the blue was dark navy, the red was brick red and the orange was a florescent shade like something you would see on a honky-tonk. I was told more than once that it was so bright that Ray Charles and Stevie Wonder could have had an argument over it. LOL!

But despite its vibrant colors, I still managed to sell equipment. I spent my time focusing on recruiting new clients, promoting existing listings and making new connections with leaders in the amusement industry. But I would still have to learn so much more including how to build an email list, use social media, set fees, write copy, record videos and much more. I still have that site by the way, The Midway Marketplace, and continue to help people who are needing to buy sell or trade their carnival equipment. There were a lot of people who were inspired by all the things I was doing online to promote my business and kept encouraging me to share more of what it is like to be an entrepreneur. One who happens to be blind.

That lead to a second website and as well as a blog, The Blind Blogger.