MSU senior turns basketball passion into successful web business

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There are few 21-year-olds who can say they have complete financial independence. But entrepreneur and kinesiology senior Alex Maroko has just that.

After spending his childhood dreaming of becoming a college basketball player, Maroko’s passion for the sport led him in a slightly different direction — helping others improve their game instead of working on his own.

Maroko runs “The Truth About Quickness,” an online training program for aspiring basketball players that Maroko said is already a six-figure business.

Patrons can watch videos and purchase e-books that feature training methods.

While studying at Eckerd College in St. Petersburg, Fla., from 2006-08 — where he played for the school’s basketball team — he met trainer Ryan Magin at a local gym and decided to combine his passion for basketball and his own training experiences with an online marketing method employed by Magin. At the time, Magin was offering training help through a website aimed at those interested in bicycle motocross, but told Maroko to make it his own.

“I told him he should be doing this for what he knew, which was basketball,” Magin said.

Maroko took Magin’s advice and today offers a variety of training e-books for aspiring basketball players looking to improve their individual games. The e-books include everything from training schedules to advice from professionals.

One of the first e-books offered focused on techniques associated with dribbling, Maroko said.

After transferring to MSU at the start of his junior year and spending several months developing a website, Maroko said the hard work finally paid off after he received a scholarship for aspiring entrepreneurs to network with established online marketers.

“I went to this thing and I got the whole VIP thing because I was a (scholarship) winner and all these people who are seven-figure guys who are Internet marketers were mentoring me,” Maroko said. “That was the ‘Aha!’ moment — the turning point where everything changed. I came back home and implemented the changes and a month later I made like $20,000 my first week after I relaunched everything.”

Magin said the passion behind what one sells is a key aspect to having success in the world of online marketing, and said his use of his own personal experiences is what makes his product successful with buyers.

“He wasn’t necessarily a major authority, (but) he could relate to a younger audience because he was a younger athlete,” Magin said. “He related to people on that ‘anyone can do it if you put in the hard work’ level.”

Aside from knowledge of the sport, Magin said Internet marketers have to be able to approach the business with an open mind and be willing to put the time into what needs to be done for a website — whether those are the traditional methods or not.

“We always joke that it’s kind of a funny thing,” Magin said. “As Internet marketers, we’re from a different breed. We just hate the way things are and we want to change that. Nobody ever fits the mold we are looking for.”

Beth Maroko, Alex Maroko’s mother, said her son embodies what young people can do with the tools available to them.

“This is a perfect example of someone from (Alex’s) generation seeing what he can do with the Internet,” Beth Maroko said. “He is extremely motivated and driven.”

Alex Maroko said working on the website is something he sees himself enjoying for a long time and for now, he is enjoying the benefits of his work.

“It’s the coolest thing when you go to bed at night and you wake up and there’s more money in your (bank) account,” Alex Maroko said. “The financial freedom has been the coolest thing in the world.”

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