Three years ago my wife and I made the decision that I should quit my day job and be a work-at-home-Dad for our newly born son. My days became filled with diaper-changing and educational children games along with working on my small home business.

I'm a programmer. Programming is just like quilting, music, accounting, or anything that anybody does during their day: when you practice more, you learn more. My focus is on helping people learn more and I use my programming skills to do that.

After a lot of practice - and some failures - I built a small computer program called "VMT". VMT is a program people download when they want to learn about something. Maybe they want motivation each day, maybe they want stress relief, or to learn about computers. Each week they get a new message on a topic they're interested in. I help my clients build these small programs that help people for free and help my clients stay in touch with them.

Eventually, I began getting feedback from people using VMT. At first feedback came from my own users letting me know that my weekly "tech-tips" were really helpful. "Wow, your tips helped me with a huge project," was the typical response I'd get. It made me feel great that I was helping people.

Then both my clients and I started getting feedback from other people. People we didn't know. The first email of this sort said, "I recently lost my father to cancer. Your message lifted my spirits and made today easier, thank you." That message came from someone in Australia.

More emails came in from people everywhere. China. South Africa. Brazil. India. Finland. Pakistan. Greece. Uganda. Everywhere. In each email there was a simple "thank you." Sometimes it was making someone laugh, teaching them something, motivating them, or just making them think.

At some point I sat back and the realization of my little program's global impact started to sink in. Lives around the world are being touched every day due to this computer program that I made with my own ten fingers. My daily life - even filled with diaper changes, kiddie TV shows, and mornings at the playground - is changing the lives of others in places I'll never see.

How is it that I'm positively impacting lives in more places than are reached by companies with multi-million dollar budgets? I'm just trying to help some people. No different than you or anyone else.

I know I'll never meet the person whose father passed away. And years from now that person may not remember VMT. But I know that I'll never forget their email. If a regular Dad like me - sitting in his apartment in front of a beat-up old computer - can make a difference in the lives of more than 20,000 people in 160 different countries, anyone can. You certainly can.

This is where the story ends. Not because it's over, but because I need to go change my son's diaper.

©2005 ViralMarketingTool.com

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