The winner for our special sponsorship for the course “How to Make a Living in the Natural Health Movement” has been announced!

Drum rolls… it is:

Maria Lemonier

Who wrote:

Frederick,
I am a 56-year-old mom and wife, who has worked as a legal secretary for more than 25 years. I still have three teenagers at home, although two will be off to college soon and I will be left with the 14-year-old. I commute into New Orleans every day, an hour each way to work because I have to contribute to our family income.

I have been on a raw food/vegan/vegetarian journey for 18 years now. I have read all the books, done fasts, gone raw “cold turkey” but have not succeeded in fully embracing any plan because (I guess here come the “excuses”) I AM JUST TIRED! My life is so hectic that I barely have time to myself. I did manage in 2005, right before Hurricane Katrina blew our house into no man’s land, to get my 200-hour certification in Yoga, which is something I love, but can’t make a living teaching yoga.

I just need a break. I need freedom and I want to enjoy my last son’s time at home. I blinked and my kids were grown. I feel it’s been a very chaotic ride.

I would love to be able to stay home and make a living as you do. I am originally from the Dominican Republic and would love to spend some time visiting my mom, who is 76 and still alive.

I read a quote from a world class swimmer who attempted one more time after many years to swim from Florida to Cuba, Diana Nyad, who said, “What scares me is not how much time has past, but how little time is left.” You are still young enough that might not resonate as deeply, but when you are my age, it makes a huge impact.

I am passionate about healthy living. I have taught, amidst the craziness of my life, my children to follow a healthy way of living. And I know I have the passion to teach others. I just need guidance on how to do it.

Please consider me for your special sponsorship program.

Thank you.

The video is available!

PS: If you missed my last story on how I ended up making a living online, read it here:

Part1:
http://www.dowhatyoulove.com/worstjob/
Part 2:
http://www.dowhatyoulove.com/rags/
Part 3:
http://www.dowhatyoulove.com/darkest_chapter/

This is the third part of my story, how I made a living on the Internet. Read part 1 and part 2 if you missed them.

The year before, I had been celebrating my 30th birthday on the paradise islands of Tahiti. One year later, I was in hell.

I spent my 31st birthday at a mental hospital, where I had been forced to take my business partner Jacky, who suffered from an acute case of psychosis.

My entire business was falling apart.

I had lost almost EVERYTHING that I had.

A few months later, things would get even worst, and I ended up in legal battles that were costing my my life savings, and destroying my health.

Stressed out and depressed, I had even abandoned all my health principles.

I was drinking a few beers a night, eating hamburgers, pizza, and whatever junk food I could get my hands on.

For the first time in my life, I suffered from anxiety, and I was incredibly stressed.

When when the bill finally came… I was over $100,000 in the red, and I was risking losing even more. In fact, I could lose my entire business and means of earning a living.

I had fallen to the bottom.

How did that happen?

It was like life threw me a giant slap in the face.

I was on top of the world… and the next thing you know, I had lost everything.

Let me rewind the tape to a year earlier, and tell you a little bit about what happened.

My business partner, that I will call Jacky, had decided to move to Costa Rica and purchase a retreat center nestled in the beautiful Pacific coast of the country.

The place cost much more than we could afford, and even I was very skeptical about the deal at first. But something happened that confused everything: LOVE.

They say you should never make an important decision when you have a strong emotion. Instead, take some time to cool down and think about it first.

Well, love is the strongest emotion of all, and under its influence, I could not think rationally.

Jacki was my business partner, and for two years we had been strictly just that. But something happened — maybe it was the magic of the tropics — and we fell in love and decided to be together.

In the spur of the moment, we made some decisions that were a bit foolish, like deciding to purchase that retreat center in Costa Rica.

The problem was that the person who sold it to us was a real crook —  a thug of the worst kind — yet charming enough to convince us to get into a deal that was truly stupid.

I had absolutely no legal protection in case anything went wrong with the deal, and in fact, everything went wrong, in the worst possible way!

I’m going to tell you a bit about what happened next, but not much more than Jacki herself has shared publicly.

Essentially, Jacky became mentally ill. It was a slow process, over the course of several months. She became psychotic.

Her problems put a tremendous strain on our relationship and our enterprise, as I had to deal with non only the financial stranglehold we had put ourselves in, but also her increasingly irrational and damaging behavior.

The problem is that I did not know she was sick. I did not understand what was going on at the time, and nobody around me did.

Not until things got really bad, and she went full blow psychotic.

I had seen movies about crazy people. I had seen the “exorcist.” Yet nothing I had seen or read about could have prepared me for what I experienced.

Dealing with someone who is that ill, especially in a third-world country, was the most stressful experience I ever had.

I’m talking about staring in the eyes of the person you loved, and not recognizing that person anymore. Instead, you see a dark passenger that took hold of her, and stripped away her soul.

It only got worse with time.

We had to take her to a mental hospital, while being in the middle of the jungle of Costa Rica. And let me tell you, it was quite an adventure to get there.

After it all went down, the whole project fell apart.

Not only was our relationship over, but so was our project in Costa Rica. We had to separate, and before it was all said and done, we ended up going through a tough legal battle that threatened the survival of everything I had worked for years to build.

We managed to come to an agreement and go both our own ways, but in the meantime the ship was sinking. This entire adventure wiped out all of my savings, but also left me with over $100,000 in debt.

Everything was gone.

I had lost my girlfriend, my dream, and all my money. And I was in the process of losing my business.

Rising From the Ashes… My Personal Transformation

For the first time in my life, I even gained weight. I weighed a 172 pounds, even though I had never weighed more than 155 before.

My life was a mess.

I had so much anxiety, that I started seeing a psychologist to help me. I didn’t take any drugs, but I had to go through some therapy to understand what happened when my business partner became psychotic and left me with deep, psychological scars.

I never felt like a victim though.

Quite the opposite… I blamed myself for everything that happened.

I resented the fact that I had been so weak, going against my instincts and gut feelings to listen to other people, leading me to make really bad decisions.

I blamed myself for not having acted sooner, waiting for everything to get as bad as they could before taking action.

The only thing I had left was my laptop, and just enough cashflow to keep my business going.

Then something strange happened. I had a sort of personal REVELATION.

An old friend of mine, Stephen Arlin, had said something that I always remembered. One day, we were talking about people who commit suicide because they can’t handle their life.

He said. “You can always keep going. You can just walk somewhere… naked. Start over. People think something is holding them back, but it’s all in their mind.”

I started counting my blessings.

Even though my situation felt really bad, I realized that compared to other people’s life circumstances, it wasn’t that bad.

Nobody had died.

I had friends and family to help me.

But more importantly… I had my mind and my life experience.

I could start over!

I was still young, only 31.

And everything that happened to me was a huge learning experience!

I realized that everybody who has accomplished anything went through a tough period in their lives. Steve Jobs had been kicked out of the company he had founded… but still came back for his greatest accomplishments.

Other people had lost everything, and gained tremendous power in the process.

In fact… it was probably a good thing that this happened to me now, rather than later, when it would have been much worst!

My realization was that I COULD start over. In fact, I could start over MANY times if I needed to, just because of the information that was in my brain!

I realized that I had made a big mistake by trying to run a retreat center, instead of doing what I did best, which was Internet Marketing.

I also realized that I had given up all the health principles I believed in, but what I was doing was not working… so it was time to get back into it.

I transformed my resentment about what happened into positive energy.

Now I could do everything I wanted to do, but this time do it right!

And what was the result?

I did not become a millionaire.

I did not sell my soul to sell products I did not believe in.

I continued doing what I did best, but I got rid of everything that did not work.

I streamlined my operation, to the point that I could even run my entire business on only three hours a day. I even managed to take a three-month vacation, while earning the same income that I normally made.

I discovered and applied the principles of automation, outsourcing and system-thinking.

I’ll tell you more about it in a new video, coming next week.

NOTE: My course “How to Make a Living in the Natural Health Movement” is coming soon! This will be the best edition ever, and the ONLY time we do it in 2012, maybe even up to 2014. If you’re interested in making a living with your passion, you will not want to miss this.

How did I go from making $60,000 a year in sales to more than $600,000 in less than one year?

I owe that in part to a friend who became my personal, marketing guru.

There’s only a handful of people that I’ve known for more than 15 years and that I still consider true friends. Olivier is one of them.

In my last post, I told you about my first turbulent years when I was trying to make a living doing what I loved. (if you missed this post, you can read it here).

It wasn’t until my friend Olivier became my personal mentor and “guru” that I was able to take things to the next level.

You see, until 2004, I was writing and selling books and newsletters. Although I had a website and a list, I hadn’t managed to really earn a living with it.

My friend Olivier had been studying marketing intensely for the past few years, and agreed to coach me and do some joint ventures using my raw food business as a “guinea pig.”

I learned all the main concepts of marketing that I know from Olivier.

What his coaching allowed me to do was to fully take advantage of the power of the web.

In our first project together, we figured out a system to create an information product and sell it to my subscribers in less than two months… and made more doing so that I normally did in 6 months!

Olivier taught me a few key lessons that changed everything:

1) The list. The first thing he taught me was the importance of building an email list. He said that the SOLE purpose of my website should be to build my list… and nothing else! Every thing I did on my website should be with the goal of building my list.

2) The products. Olivier taught me that people didn’t necessarily want to buy just books and magazines. People would be willing to pay for information offered in different media. For example eBooks, audio interviews, videos, DVDs, MP3 downloads, CDs, manuals, etc.

I could package the same information I had been offering in books, and offer a wider range of products.

These are just some basic lessons I learned from Olivier. Of course, he taught me much more than this.

At that point, I realized that my goal in life would be to spread the best information I could find about health through the power of the Internet.

So I started becoming an expert in Internet marketing.

Over the next two years only, my business grew like crazy.

One thing that really allowed me to grow was to hire a great, motivated woman who would eventually become my business partner. Let’s call her Jacky, for the sake of the story (not her real name).

Because we had different strengths, I could now focus my attention on what I did best (writing and creating products), while Jacky helped take care of all the back-end operations.

By 2004, I was making maybe $60,000 a year in sales with my business.

By the end of 2005, I was making $50,000 a month!

In 2006, my business generated over $600,000 in sales (not all profits, but exciting nonetheless).

Things were so successful, it was almost cliché. I felt like I was a testimonial for a “get-rich-quick” ad!

In 2006, I literally felt on top of the world.

Of course, it wasn’t all profits, but the level of success felt so awesome to me that I think it got a little bit to my head.

In 2006, I spent my 30th birthday in Tahiti, visiting the islands of Bora Bora, Moorea and Rangiroa.
I also spent a month in Bali. On the picture on the right you can see me on that trip. As you can tell from the picture, I felt pretty good then!

The level of success seemed non-stop.

I wasn’t interested in buying a fancy car, but I started thinking about what could be next. Maybe I could afford buying a house.

Jacqui and I had big projects. We started thinking about escaping the crazy cold winters and spend a few months a year in Costa Rica.

But as we started talking about it… the project became even bigger. Why just buy a place in Costa Rica… when we could open a retreat center! We could host events in a tropical paradise, and live there part of the year.

Everything seemed to be getting better and better, and we had awesome projects for the future.

And then, as if the whole thing had been taken out of a bad melodramatic TV Show script, the whole thing fell apart, and I fell to the abyss, feeling like there was no way out of it.

I’ll tell you more about it in my next email.

NOTE: I’m about to launch the best and greatest version of my course “How to Make a Living in the Natural Health Movement.” This will be the ONLY time we will offer this course in 2012. We are offering ONE special sponsorship of this course (a $1997 value) to a person who will use this information and transform their lives with it. If you’d like to participate, please leave a comment for this post. We will pick ONE of the commenters. Hint: what you say does matter!

In my last email, I promised to tell you my story of how I made a living online, doing what I love. And let me tell you, it’s quite a story!

In 1996, I was just 20 years old, and I had just decided to become a raw foodist. This new passion for natural health became the primary focus in my life, and I wanted to make a living.

I did not have any connections. My parents were middle class.

After months of investigation, I decided that I should go to California, to meet people involved in this movement.

The problem I had is I did not have any savings.

So I ended up finding a job. However, it turned out to be the worst possible job in the world (of course, I knew that other people had even worst jobs and by comparison I was fairly lucky, but it sure felt like the worst job in the universe at the time)!

The Worst Job in the World

I worked in a factory that processed vegetables for restaurants. Most restaurants don’t train their employees to cut cabbage to make cabbage salad, or slice bell peppers for their stir-fries. Instead, they purchase prepared vegetables from companies that specialize doing just that.

Although I wanted to eat raw fruits and vegetables, this job was the most detached from my goal, even though it involved cutting them!

You had to work in a giant assembly line where most of the work was done by hand. The temperature in the factory was kept very low, around 39 degrees (or 3-4 Celsius).

The work consisted in doing one thing at a time for several hours, like cutting the ends of bunches of celery, or deseeding bell peppers, or processing cabbages in a giant shredder, one that could easily chop off your hand.

I would spend hours cutting those vegetables, and it would drive me crazy. After I was done work, my entire body smelled like onion, and it was impossible to get rid of the smell, even after taking 2 or 3 showers in a row.

The hours were horrendous. I usually worked for 16 hours in a row. But one day, against all work regulations, I worked for 24 hours in a row!

Everyone who did this job hated it, but it was the summer so after spending an entire workday inside a cold factory, at least I got to take breaks in the sun. I could not imagine doing this in the middle of the winter.

I only survived this because I was young… but also because I had an exit strategy.

I told absolutely NOBODY at work that I was planning to flee to California as soon as the winter arrived.

I didn’t even tell them I was a raw foodist (although they thought I was weird for eating a fruit salad for lunch!).

I was keeping my secret, and secretly planning my exit.

My boss was a complete jerk. Imagine the sergeant from “Full Metal Jacket” packed into a skinny guy who hates his life. He worked us all to death, yet would get upset when we complained about the long hours. “You can’t leave until all the jobs are completed” he screamed!

Finally, I got to do what every employee dreams of.

I told him what I thought of him and quit my job in the middle of a shift!

It was one of those crazy shifts where we had to finish all the orders before we could leave. We were 19 hours into it, and I couldn’t take it anymore. I reasoned that I probably had saved enough to go to California, even though it wasn’t much.

So I walked up to him and said. “I’m sorry, but I have to leave.”

He said, in more crude language than I can remember, “What the hell are you talking about? You can’t leave! We have a shift to finish…”

He just went on and on and screamed at me like I was a slave from the ancient world, trying to reclaim my freedom.

So I looked at him and said. “Watch me!”

Then I three my work outfit on the ground and left with a big smile on my face, while I heard him insult me in my back!

I knew at that moment I never wanted to do anything like this ever again. I would have to find a way to make a living doing something I really loved.

A Learning Experience

For the next few years, I became a hippie nomad… Except that I didn’t smoke drugs or drink alcohol. But I hitched hiked, grew my hair long, did yoga, remained a raw foodist, and try to get any job I could to get experience in the field.

Along the way, I became the publisher of a newsletter, called Just Eat an Apple.

I also wrote a few books, and managed to either get them published, or publish them myself.

So for about five years, I essentially built websites, sold books and magazines to make a living.

I was having fun, but I was chronically broke. It was all okay because I was young, and my life was a big adventure.

I made $1000-$2000 a month at the most, but through a lot of creativity, and being invited to speak at various conferences, I managed to spend a lot of time in Europe, and even traveled to other destinations as well.

I had lots of ups and downs in my personal life… but mostly I was trying to discover who I was and what my strengths really were.

This was the “learning and discovering” period of my life.

That was all until I was around 26 years old, and although I was making a living in a field that I loved, I had a long way to go to get rid of my money worries and live up to my potential.

That’s when I met my mentor, and everything changed!

I’ll tell you more about it in the next email….

NOTE: In April, I will be releasing the course “How to Make a Living in the Natural Health Movement” for the only time in 2012. One lucky person will get this entire program (a $1997 value) for free, as part of a special sponsorship program.

How to participate? Post a comment on this article. I will select from comments on this post and future posts and decide on the winner by the end of next week. Tell me why you want to win!

One of the most fundamental needs of humans is that of security.

We need to feel that we’ll be able to maintain the same standard of living in our future and that our needs will be taken care of.

In the previous economic paradigm, those needs would have been met by a benevolent government or company through well-funded pensions that would take care of us in our old age.

That may have worked for people currently getting benefits out of the system, but anyone under the age of 55 today probably doesn’t believe that the same system will be in place when they get older.

We’ve seen the whole structure of the welfare state collapse in recent months in Europe. Recently, the new minister of social affairs in Italy was crying on television when she announced that:

“I’m sorry. People who work have no more money for you. Consequently, the retirement age will be raised to 62 years for women and 65 for men. We can no longer afford to index pensions with inflation, so you’ll have to do without. ”

You probably know what a Ponzi scheme is. A lot of people have fallen for those over the years.

The concept is pretty simple. You get investors and promise them an awesome rate of return, way above the market. For example, a 20 or 30% annual return. Then, you pay these suckers faithfully for a while, but only with the proceeds of other investors that are joining in! So you spend all the capital you have to pay everybody, but eventually the structure has to collapse.

The company takes your nest egg and runs!

Government pensions are a Ponzi scheme because people receiving benefits today are being paid through the taxes of people working today. What you pay in taxes today doesn’t go to fund your own pension… it just goes to pay people that were promised benefits decades ago.

And it doesn’t matter whether you live in the USA, Europe, Canada or elsewhere. Most countries have the same problem.

So we know we can’t count on our governments to take care of us in the future.

We also know that the companies we work for might not be able to take care of us in the future.

The only thing that’s left is personal accountability for security.

The beauty of the Internet Freedom Lifestyle is that you can develop skills that can earn you a living no matter what happens in the world.

I know for a fact that even if I lost everything I have built so far, I could still start from scratch and with everything that I know, make a full-time living again in a matter of just months. And once it’s setup, I only need a few hours a day to maintain it.

Sure, you have to adapt with the times. The Internet, as it is today, will not last forever. Eventually, it will change form as technology evolves.

Even if you have a full-time job, I highly recommend that you start developing an Internet business on the side. You have a better chance to count on that as your “Pension fund” than whatever your government is promising you.

If you can’t wait to get started, check out the Do What You Love Success Group.

And as a special bonus, if you try out the Success Group, you’ll get a copy of my program “Laptop and a Beach” that teaches exactly how to create a mobile, Internet Freedom Lifestyle.

Check it out at:
 http://www.dowhatyouloveuniversity.com/new.html

“You work from home? Wow! I wish I could do the same.”

If I had a quarter for every time I heard someone tell that to me, I wouldn’t be rich but I would definitely have enough rolled up quarter to buy me a stay at a Hilton hotel, maybe for a week.

Working from home is often romanticized as the best job ever.

You rarely have a boss. And if you do, you never have to face him in person.

Then you can set your own hours, work whenever you feel like it, and NOT work whenever you feel like it.

With a laptop, you can work anywhere — lying on your bed comfortable (which I do regularly), in your home office, on your kitchen table, outside on the patio, and best of all, while traveling to exotic places.

You don’t have to stay in one place! You can work anywhere. It’s complete freedom.

Or so they say…

I won’t deny that working from home, overall, is pretty awesome. I would not switch what I do for any job in a corporate office.

But one thing that is rarely talked about are the challenges of working from home. The dream of working from home is what they sell you in books and self-improvement seminars. But there’s a few things they never told you about it, that only people who experienced it will be able to nod and say “oh yeah, I know exactly what he’s talking about.”

Let’s talk about the “dark” side of working from home and how smart entrepreneurs deal with it.

The Trap of the Open Schedule

In theory, everybody loves the idea of an open schedule. You set up your own hours, work whenever you feel like, and if you want to take a day off in the middle of the week, that’s okay too.

In practice, this approach never works!

It’s just human nature. Without structure, we’re lazy and disorganized.

Start working from home and pretty soon you’ll start chasing your own tail, wasting your time in unproductive activities and have the constant feeling of not getting anything concrete done, yet never allowing yourself the freedom to take any real time off, out of guilt.

Anyone who’s worked from home long enough knows that you have to set yourself a schedule and stick to it.

Once in a while, you can change your schedule or skip it completely, but there must be a basic setup in place.

For example, my typical work day starts around 10 a.m. (I know, poor me…). In the morning before 10, I exercise and get ready for the day. Then, starting at 10, I work for a couple of hours, and then have lunch. Then I try to have a productive afternoon. In the evening, I’ll often work for two hours from 7 until 9.

I try to take at least one complete day off per week, and some days I only work 2-3 hours.

You need a schedule and a plan, otherwise you’ll start wasting your time and never get anything done.

The Cabin Fever Syndrome

One of the problems of working from home is that you’re home all the time!

After a while, cabin fever sets in.

First of all, your house is a mess, because you use it more than most people. You will stay in the house 8 to 10 hours more a day more than someone working in an office, meaning that you’ll end up needing to vacuum the floors and clean your place more often, leading you to spend even more time in the house.

When you have a job, you spend most of your day outside of your home. Then your home becomes a restful place that you associate with relaxation.

When you work from home, you start associating your house with work. It seems that there’s no place to escape. When you’re done with the day, it’s difficult to “call it a day” and relax, because work is always waiting for you under your laptop.

Sleep experts tell us that our bedrooms should only be used for sleeping and sex, but not for watching TV, and certainly not to work.

In your home, you should ideally have a dedicated office space where you work. When you close the door to that office, you leave your work behind. Don’t bring that laptop to the kitchen table or the bedroom bed, if you can.

To avoid cabin fever, you’ll need to plan more activities outside the house. Go out for a jog. Run errands yourself instead of ordering everything you need on the Internet.

That’s why I don’t start work until 10 in the morning. I need those few morning hours for myself, to read, go for a walk or a run, and enjoy the house without the thought of work.

As people who work from home grow their business, many of them end up renting a separate office space outside the house. Why? To avoid that cabin fever syndrome.

I personally rent an office in my city with the Regus.com group, through a subscription that allows me to use a private office 5 times a month. That way, at least once a week I get to spend an entire work day outside the home and alone, which keeps me productive.

Another strategy that many entrepreneurs have used, especially those with families and children, is to rent a hotel room once a month or so to conduct a “lock-in.”

This hotel room will not be used for illicit romantic encounters, but rather to work like crazy! For some reason, having a desk in a hotel room is very productive place, away from all distractions of home. I personally have used that technique successfully many time to finish projects.

The Schizophrenic Social Life

I recently met a lawyer who told me he could never work from home because he needs the stimulation of meeting people every day.

Work-at-home entrepreneurs tend to be a bit more introverted than most people. I personally am like that and that’s why I love to work at home.

But at some point, any normal person will start to go a little bit crazy from the lack of social interactions from working from home.

That’s why you need to plan more social events and get out of the house to meet people.

While it’s tempting to automate everything and never leave the house, conducting all of our business online, I find it liberating to be able to run some errands myself, go to the post office and do “normal” stuff, even though I could do many of those things on the Internet without having to leave the house.

Final Words of Advice for Work-at-Home Wannabes

The advantages of working from home outweigh the disadvantages.

You’ll never been invited to a boring christmas party.

You’ll never be molested by your boss! Or accused of sexual harassment for making a politically incorrect joke.

And you’ll never have to breathe the strong perfume of your co-workers, or the underarm smell of those who forgot to shower that morning.

And best of all, if you sleep in one day, no one will ever find out. Except you… and that may be the challenge of the work-at-home entrepreneur. You still work for someone: yourself! And you need some accountability.

Some tips:

• Don’t think that working from home means you don’t need any discipline anymore. You need MORE discipline working from home because you have no one to keep you accountable, except yourself.
• Try to separate “work” from “home” as much as possible. Don’t bring your work anywhere and everywhere.
• If you start to feel cabin fever, change environment. Go work at the public library, or at your favorite coffee shop.
• Resist the temptation to buy everything online, and sometimes actually get out of the house to run some errands
• Plan some “play days” in your schedule. Ideally, in those days you should not touch your laptop at all.
• Don’t forget that you need a social life. Schedule social meetings in your calendar, otherwise they will never happen!

Remember that the best thing about working from home — the total flexibility and freedom — can also turn into your worst enemy. Avoid that from happening by putting some structure into things, and you’ll only be more productive and happier.

To discover how to make passive income from home, consider joining the Do What You Love Success Group! http://www.dowhatyouloveuniversity.com/new.html You’ll get over $1700 of free education just for giving it a try.