Time - Freedom - Sacrifice -  What Do You Want?  

As you can see from this photo, eight years ago I decided to leave an 18 year corporate career.  After the banking and real estate crisis, at 41 years old, I decided that enough was enough.  I needed a change after losing so much of our life savings again with the third market crisis in my career.  These crashes were continually "stealing" everything that I had gained over the previous several years.  I was working hard, and had a well-paying job, but I just wasn't getting ahead.  I decided to walk away.  With my wife, we started chasing our Happiness and Lifestyle goals of time, money, sunshine and freedom together.   

As we enter into our 7th year in the network marketing / home based business industry, we have spoken with and mentored thousands of people who have wanted to build their own business. 

However, unfortunately, most have come and gone.  

As for ourselves, Tina and I have experienced success in the top 1- 2% of earners relative to the industry average over the last several years.  We've created a lifestyle that has allowed us to go from 50 - 70 hour per week corporate rat race, to a lifestyle that is focused on freedom, the flexibility of our own schedule, no commutes, and the pursuit of our own "happiness" goals.    

Millions of people join a home based / network marketing business because they like the idea of time and money freedom, and ultimately working on their own and breaking free from their jobs. 

However, over 95% of people just don't get to the level of income needed to achieve that goal.  That doesn't mean that 95% don't make money, by the way.  That just means that most start off thinking that it's going to be simple, and then they realize it's additional work and decide not to pursue it to that level.  

First of all, please don't think that there is something wrong with Network Marketing because of that.  After all, it is an entrepreneurial endeavor.  How many people are actually willing to take the risk and sacrifice their time and energy for a few years to go out on their own to create something like that?  Even in the Real Estate industry, I've read from the National Association of Realtors that over 80% of Realtors do not renew their license beyond the first year or two.  

To make it to a full time income as a real estate agent is tough, and rare.  Same for any small business owner/entrepreneur.  

We're not here to pat ourselves on the back for our accomplishments. 

The reason for this blog is to point out when that when people SAY things to us like "Well you don't have kids."  Or "You don't have a job and have to work all day."  Or "You got lucky" then really it's discounting our sacrifices and efforts that we've made over the years to achieve our goals.  

Most people want to achieve the "Lifestyle" success of time and money freedom and escaping the rat race, but their actions do not back up their words.  

 I just want to clear the air and be a little in people's face who use one reason or another of why THEY can't achieve success (but say they want to), when somebody else in their same situation has.  

Nothing ever comes easy!  Our life has been one of ups and downs just like everyone else, and we've definitely experienced The Entrepreneur Roller Coaster like Darren Hardy's book describes.  

To make any goal come true, it takes hard work, consistency, and sacrifice.  

On social media, many times we just see people's highlight reels.  And people are constantly coming to us and saying "Yes, I'd like to do what you guys did creating a six figure income and having the flexibility to do what we want, when we want, but.....(and fill in their reason why they can't dedicate the time or effort). 

Just to show that it has NEVER been easy for us to accomplish what we have, here's a timeline of events that we have gone through over the past 8 years, and the sacrifices we have made:

2008 -  Lost hundreds of thousands of dollars in Savings due to financial crisis.  Decided to make our Goals and Change our Life. 

Sold off house, car, motorcycles, etc to downsize and pursue our own goals and take a pay cut.  Took 2 years to sell our house (at a loss) and Execute exit plan from 2008 - 2010.      

2010 - Left a multi-six figure job to work on commission. Lost over 50% of  income first year.  

May 2011 - Found network marketing industry at a time when we needed to see a Plan that allowed us to pursue our lifestyle goals on a part-time basis without investing big money into buying our own business or being tied down, while supplementing our income and re-building our nest egg.    

2011 - 2013 -  A period of constant struggle with work life and building a business while maintaining my job.  We made only $6,700 in our first year combined; then $44,000 combined, then $115,000 before exploding in our 4th full year into $240,000.  

So it took us 4 full years with Tina working full time, and me working part-time to match our J.O.B. income.  

Most people (75- 80%) quit in their first 2 - 12 months in the business.  We only made a few thousand dollars by then working our butts off for it, because we saw more and knew what we wanted and what we didn't want to continue.   

During this time, Tina made an incredible transformation from her previous career into a full-blown network marketing professional.  The personal challenges and investment of time and effort and her personal sacrifice to step into this leadership role cannot be understated.   

2014 - No free time, busy with full time job and full time home biz.  

Nobody sees the 5 a.m. or 11:00 p.m. working hours!  

2015 - Real estate office closed down.  Lost full time job and six figure income.  

2015 - 2017 -  Not only did we lose real estate finance career, but our income in our home based business dropped by 60%.  So in this period, our household income from 2015 - 2017 dropped by over 75%.  

We knew we have to just keep plugging away to maintain our flexibility and lifestyle.  

Spent over $50,000 reinvesting into our business and education/training over the years to continue our growth.  That's more than my college education for what most think of as a small-time hobby.  

2017 - With income down by 75%, and after dipping into savings by over $50,000 to maintain our lifestyle and educational/training needs for our career, we discovered our new business (our Wine of the Month Club).  
Our previous company, (Beachbody) allowed us to do another non-competing business according to their Policy & Procedures).  We were still bringing in approximately $1,500 - $2,000 a week with Beachbody despite it having dropped by 60% due to various reasons. 

October 2017 - Wine business started.  Since we didn't want to leave our business/teammates at Beachbody and go back to a Job (which would have caused us to leave our teammates!) we decided to start our Wine business in October 2017.   

March 2018 - After growing our Wine business and maintaining our Beachbody business and teammates, Beachbody changed their Policy and decided NOT to allow ANY other competing or Non-competing businesses for their reps.  

They fired us and closed our accounts which still had $2,000 per week coming in and thousands of reps and customers that we had helped bring in for the company.  

March 2018 -  We continue to grind every day.  Our lives are enriched with thousands of friends and teammates.  We've learned many more skills that we wouldn't have learned otherwise.  We're still trying to work back up to the levels that we were 3 - 4 years ago with our combined income. 

However, NOTHING replaces the ability to come and go as we please and having the time and freedom to do what we want.  

We've been able to:

1.  Make thousands of friends and have a positive impact on many lives.
2.  Travel all over, multiple times per year.
3.  Travel to Florida for 4 out of 6 winters escaping Ohio weather
4.  Watch our grandchildren grow. 
5.  Take 7 months to travel back and forth out of town approximately 60 times to see my mother and take care of her as she was dying of cancer.  
6. Take advantage of tax benefits of a home based business.  
7.  Experience a 7 year period where our personal relationship has grown so much together due to working so closely together and spending so much time together, working towards goals and going through the ups and downs together.  
8.  Growth of ourselves and our leadership abilities to build businesses of thousands of people and millions in revenues  
9.  The ability to make our own rules and come and go as we please.  
10.  We've grown from continual challenges.  

So when people say to us: 

"I can’t do what you do."

Maybe you just don’t want to take the chance.
Maybe you don’t want to put in the effort.

Maybe you don’t want to make different moves. 
Maybe you don’t want to take risk.

Maybe you don’t want to sacrifice some things you like for things you might love.

Whatever the reason,

Don’t say you can’t.  Just say you don’t want to.

But please don't say "You got lucky" or "You don't have a job so you can spend more time."  

We just know what we want more than what we don't want, and are willing to sacrifice for it.  

Are you?