Learn to sell on the web at John Abbott

In 1983, Don Wayne Patterson was held at gunpoint in the back of a car in Mexico City, and it changed the Pierrefonds resident's life. "He said empty your pockets and get out of the car," Patterson recalled of his assailant.

At the time an entrepreneur trying to expand a nascent music record business south of the U.S. border, Patterson had gone to Mexico in order to meet up with a potentially interested business partner.

Instead, he was met at the airport with someone who presented himself as an American and said he also had been stood up for an appointment.

To his later regret, Patterson wound up accepting a lift to his hotel from the stranger. "Luckily, I had a $100 bill, my passport and my visa," Patterson recalled, adding his were items the gunman did not take from him before leaving him on the road.

Today, Patterson, now retired from the music business, is teaching entrepreneurs young and old the necessary confidence skills and marketing savvy to make a buck on the Internet in courses at John Abbott and Dawson Colleges. "I show you the highway to get on with the least amount of exits, where the gas is the cheapest," Patterson explained. "In other words, it's a highway to success if you wan to do it, and if you've got the time, and the patience and the energy," he said.

Patterson said a large part of his course consists of building self-confidence for his 15 to 25 students, who can have all sorts of different motivations to hop on the bandwagon. "I had one who was a writer trying to promote and publish his book," he recalled. That was in the same class where he had a lawyer and two freelance video shooters. "Sixty and seventy per cent is the direction on how they want to make money," Patterson explained, "and the other 30 per cent, we'll get into the specifics," he added.

After his ordeal in Mexico, Patterson began to learn from a mentor who taught entrepreneurs how to make money in the mail-order business, following him across Canada in the 1980s.

Many years later, he began to occasionally visit Concordia University to lecture groups of economics students who had one of his friends as a teacher. "I realized that one or two or three weeks later, the enthusiasm (among the students) goes away because they don't have anybody to get them into the routine," said Patterson.

That was when he decided to approach John Abbott College about developing a 10-week course based on the idea.

Patterson takes a practical approach toward showing his students how they need to change their ideas of how much everyday objects around them are worth.

One of his first in-class exercises consists of giving each student a dollar, asking them to buy something with it from a local thrift store, and attempt to sell it on EBay for more money. "I believe in my case it was a little figurine," recalled Hudson resident Diane Piacente, a retired fashion model and actor who took his class recently. She said with a laugh that she was unable to sell it for value later, saying even in that failure there was a lesson to be learnt.

Piacente took the course on a whim after discovering its description in John Abbott College's catalogue. "My husband had kind of inherited a bunch of old books," Piacente recalled, and seeing the course description made her realize she could learn a couple of tricks about selling them.

She has not regretted the decision since, selling off most of the books and then selling her online book business to her Patterson. Now free of it, she intends to focus her energy on an upcoming political campaign as she runs for council in Hudson in November. "He's got a real can-do attitude," Piacente said of Patterson's attitude.

For Patterson, encouraging his students to display that kind of energy is very important. "We're surrounded by negative people," he said. "You go sit in a brasserie with ten people. Nine out of ten will tell you you're not going to be able to make it. You're not going to be a millionaire, don't bother."

He said being surrounded for several weeks by 20 students full of enthusiasm is one of the best ways to motivate oneself.

His students from last semester have taken this concept to another level, agreeing to meet up over a supper networking event to compare notes on how far their self-started projects have come along.

The course is called EBay and the Internet at John Abbott and runs from Sept.22 to Nov. 24. Sessions are every Tuesday night, from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. Registration is possible up to September 15. <@Cp>Chronicle, courtesy photo<@$p>