I know you’ve seen the spammy ads that promise you amazing results in no time flat. Get rich quick! Get thin quick! Get whatever quick … And we’ve all become pretty jaded with the headlines.
That made today’s blog harder for me to write because it’s all true and I hope that you just hang on with me through the end. I want to tell you a little story about an entrepreneur who had been beaten up by this economy and what he did to change it all around.
Thomas is my friend and a real live person. Just like me, he took his hits in the 2006-2007-2008 real estate decline. Businesses went down, real estate went down. And we both were on the short end of the stick with some less then honest people.
You probably have heard my story by now. Short version: Richard and I turned it around with businesses, mostly online, so that we were back at financial freedom by August 2010. Financial freedom means having more passive income then your monthly expenses. It’s an amazing feeling to feel free again.
Thomas made the decision last week that he was going to jump into a venture that some people said wouldn’t work. I believed in the venture and said I’d partner with him. I would work just as hard as he wanted to work. So, Thomas sent the pace. (Let me tell you, it wasn’t long before I regretted that promise. Thomas pulled out all the stops!)
He didn’t know all the details before he leapt. He didn’t have all the compensation plan figured out. He didn’t know every last minute detail of the how, when, where, why of business. It didn’t matter. He just started.
One thing I will tell you is that he didn’t sleep a lot. That’s because he completely immersed himself in learning about the business, product and (in this case) the economic forces that were driving this unique opportunity.
I told him I would help him do a live workshop. We did that Tues, September 6th. There were plenty of last minute fumbles with a brand new venue, way of delivery and just trying out something brand new. But we had the resolve that no matter what happened we were going forward.
And it worked! It all worked. At the end of it, the $500 investment that Thomas made to get going was nothing. I’m still not sure how much he has made so far, but I’d guess at least 4 times that much PLUS he won a cruise in one day!
By the way, that $2,000 or so that he made was in the first 10 days. It was active income, but it’s turning into passive quickly as he shows others how to replicate the process.
We finally had a chance to debrief this weekend. His head was still swimming from the change. I will always remember something he said this weekend. He said he kept asking himself, “Why did I almost let $500 stop me from doing this?”
But the thing was, it wasn’t the money that almost stopped him. It might have felt like it, for lack of anything else to pinpoint. It wasn’t the business model either. But it would have been easy to blame it on that.
The thing that almost stopped Thomas was his own story that was rattling around in his head. He’d been beaten up by the economy and that hits confidence. When you’ve gotten hit enough times, you protect yourself. Survival becomes more important that prospering.
The difference between Thomas this weekend and Thomas two weekends ago is that he acted in the presence of fear. He took the jump to try something else.
Yes, Thomas now has a winning business model and in 10 days planted seeds that will create good passive income down the road. But more importantly, he’s back to being the winner he has always been born to be.
Want to hear more? I surprised my co-host with this topic during our radio show “Making Money in Silver and Gold”
We had some fun and actually had some people in tears by the end of the show. Listen to the recording at Making Money in Silver and Gold