I am trying my best to get out of the rat race. I don’t like trading time for money. One of the best books I think I’ve ever read was Robert Kiwosaki’s ‘Rich Dad, Poor Dad‘. It really woke me up to a LOT of things. I learned that trading time for money keeps me in the Rat Race. I’ll never be able to really relax. And that made me start questioning a LOT of things that I have grown up believing.

His next book, “The Cash Flow Quadrant” was even better and helped me see the difference between being an employee, self-employed, a business owner and an investor. I originally read those books to help teach my children what they needed to learn, but ended up being the student before I could be the teacher. Reading those books changed my life. Totally.

Now, I’ve bought the board game Cashflow 101 and my life is changing again. I play it every month (by myself if I have to ). It’s an expensive game but I think it’s already been worth the price I paid. I’ve already learned a LOT about me and about money and ways I can change my way of thinking about life and money. It’s a lot like monopoly, only better.

Robert says in the game instructions that he built the board game so that we could learn from our mistakes in the game before we go out and make the same mistakes with our real money. I like that idea!!

Learning the principles from this book has already helped me to quit my job and work from home. Now, I’m slowly but surely getting out of the rat race and learning how to let my money work for me instead of me constantly working for money. Now, I work for fun. Can it even be called work?

Anyone up for a game of Cashflow??

Wednesday morning, as I sat in my quiet time deciding what I needed to do for the day, I realized that my list of things to do was looking a little too familiar. I enjoy doing most everything on the list, or I did yesterday, but it’s beginning to get a little too comfortable for my tastes.

I don’t like to get comfortable. Comfortable eventually means boring too me. It can also mean stagnation. I HAVE to be learning and growing and helping people.

Of course, what I do every day helps people. There are many people who benefit greatly by the websites that I develop. I feel good contributing the skills I’ve acquired and helping people with the technical things that they don’t understand and may not ever want to understand. I even learn and grow doing what I’m doing, but I like to be on the fast track, and lately, I don’t feel like I’m learning and growing nearly as much as I could be. I’m not getting any younger and there are still a lot of things left to do on my bucket list.

So, even though what I’m doing was my passion yesterday, I have grown, therefore my passions may change or, maybe a better way to say it is that my passions intensify as I grow. As I become more capable and increase my knowledge, I feel the need to step out of my comfort zone and intensify my search for a more passionate life.

I sat thinking about my passions and asked myself the question, “If I could do ANYTHING, what would I do?” I know it has to involve computers and programming to an extent. I also know it has to be helping people. I will never be satisfied if I’m not helping someone. And it would have to involve teaching. I really have a passion for teaching, as I’ve explained before, because I feel that that’s the way I learn the most.

It hit me that I could start a community where I helped people start living their dreams. I believe that many people don’t feel that they can live their dreams because something is holding them back. Usually, that’s money. In my line of work, I’ve watched many people make LOTS of money online. I’ve even helped them do it. I KNOW it can be done. And I know HOW it’s done. I’ve been studying this stuff for a long time and I KNOW how it all works.

I truly believe that to live our dreams, we must help others live their dreams. I started thinking of ways that I could help. I could teach web building classes, which I’m already doing. That is going well and I hope to continue to do that, but the way I’m doing it now, it’s hard to tell how everyone is doing. There are so many people in the group, that if they were to all respond, it would be chaos. I have to make a better way. Right now, I can’t make that personal connection that I want to have.

Another way I could help is to educate people on internet marketing and ways to bring more traffic to their sites and convert that traffic to paying customers. I could help people find their passions and then figure out how to make a profit from that so that they could spend more time on their passions and less time worrying about money or stressing in a job that they don’t enjoy.

I truly believe that we have entered the information age and that most jobs will be online and mobile before long. Jobs are already heading in that direction. I also believe that many more of us will be working for ourselves instead of working for someone else. And I believe that’s the way it should be! We NEED to be online and the sooner we are using our passions online and converting those to money, the better off we will be.

It takes many online tools to convert those passions into dreams. I can provide those tools. I know which tools are needed and I have either built them myself, will build them or know where to find the most valuable services. I CAN help people turn their dreams into a reality. I know where to find the information, tools and services that are needed to make an online business work. I enjoy studying online marketing and cutting edge technology so that I can help others keep up with the constant changes.

So, since I KNOW all this stuff and I have a passionate desire to help others, I am going to start this community so that I can help them to live their dreams. A place where everyone helps each other too. This community will have access to me, my tools, my knowledge, my expertise, my services, etc. I want a thriving community that is on the cutting edge of technology, information, and web services. I want a community that I can help thrive online. I will be offering discounts for all my courses, services, tools, videos, etc. to the members of this community.

Those of you that want to join this community will need to make an investment. I’ve been offering a lot of things for free such as the html classes and websites for training. What I’ve found is that when people get it for free, many of them don’t value it as much. They don’t take it as seriously. Since they have little to nothing invested, they don’t push themselves to actually take advantage of the knowledge, service, or tool. Or worse yet, they feel guilty for taking my time and won’t ask the questions that they need to ask. So, you have to pay something.

Here’s the good news. I want to reward those that sign up early and help me build this community. There will be little information at first as I get this started. Eventually, there will be MUCH information and much benefit from being a part of this community, but for now, I want to work with individuals to find out what’s needed most and how I can best be of service first. So, to reward those that sign up early and help me get this going, I am only going to charge the first 10 members only $1 per month for as long as they stay active in the community. The price to join will steadily go up after that, so the sooner you join, the less you will have to pay each month, regardless of how big the community gets or how much information is included or how many tools or services become available. Your price will never change unless you cancel your membership and then rejoin.

Keep in mind that the sooner you join, the more of my attention you will get. Eventually, as the community becomes larger, I will be spread thinner and won’t be able to help each member as much. I will come up with alternative plans as the need arises, but I want you to see the opportunity in joining early. My goal is to make this THE best online community to help and support those that want to have their own online business. I want to provide the best value for tools, services, and support. I truly believe that the more people I help become abundant, then the more abundant I will become as well.

I have a couple of websites that I need to finish up so I won’t be able to get this community together for a week or so, but I wanted to get the word out there so that you can keep watching for the launch date. I hope that I have time to get it up and running in the next week or so, but my schedule at work has been pretty demanding lately. I hope it will slow down a bit, but I just never know. So, stay tuned!

In the meantime, I would love to hear your feedback!! Please leave me a comment below or send me an email and let me know what you think. I’m anxious to see if any of you think this would be a valuable service to you or not. I WANT your suggestions! I want to make this YOUR community! To do that, YOU have to be involved

I homeschool my three kids.

My oldest son, Matthew, is 16 and has started to drive. That reminds me that it won’t be long until he will be out on his own.

As they get older I wonder if I’ve taught them all they need to know to make it on their own. This, of course, is NOT the first time I’ve thought about this.

When Matthew was 5, I thought that homeschooling was just bringing school home, complete with school desk, set hours and a set curriculum.

He was a good student and loved to read – taught himself when he was 4 – loved most anything I could offer him in a book.

And then 2 years later, when it was time for Mason to start kindergarten, I realized that my whole world was about to change. He didn’t want to have anything to do with a book. We fought every day. I finally gave up and decided to send him to public school when he turned 6.

Just before he turned 6, to keep from going to public school, he seemed to learn to read overnight on his own. He still didn’t want to do anything from a book, but I was beginning to see that even though he was not totally infatuated with books (which is totally foreign to me since I am an avid book reader), he was learning everything he needed to learn in his own way and in his own time.

I relaxed my teaching methods just a bit and I found out that even with Matthew, who enjoyed the books but hated ‘homework’, they learned more when they did it their own way. They learned more when they could feel ‘in control’ of their learning. And as long as I encouraged their learning of anything they seemed interested in and bought them the necessary tools and educational materials (even though these may not be traditional educational tools and materials) they learned it much faster than they did when I was standing over them forcing them to ‘get it done’.

And then, along came Mallory. Not only did she not want anything to do with a book, she didn’t want anything to do with anything unless it was singing, dancing or bouncing around from one thing to another. I thought she would never learn to read and the more I tried to force her to, the harder it seemed to get for her.

By this time I began to realize that they learn what they need to learn when they want to learn it. The key word is WANT here. Until they see a real need for it, I can’t beat it into their heads. The more I try to force it in, the harder they resist it. So, I tried to find ways to manipulate them into wanting to learn it.

I was exhausted. And so were they. So, each year, I seemed to give up just a little bit earlier. And each year, they seemed to learn even more than they had learned the year before, WITHOUT me standing over them to beat in into their stubborn little heads.

Yes, they were spending too much time in front of the computer according to most of the world’s standards, but I really couldn’t say anything about that since I spend all my time in front of the computer too. I understand that fascination and ‘addiction’ (at least thats how much of the world explains it) to computers since I make my living in front of the computer and then continue sitting in front of my computer on into the night. But, I’m here to tell you that it’s a PASSION for me instead of an addiction! I totally LOVE my work – so much so that it’s really not work at all. It’s play. And I would do it even if I didn’t get paid to do it.

Yes, they play a lot of games, but Google is their best friend. They have the WORLD at their fingertips. And they know that when they have a question about anything, they can find the answer online. Whether it’s which tv show a tv star has been in before or how far it is to the moon, they know how to find the answer in a matter of seconds.

Computer games have helped them learn to drive, learn to cook, learn to budget their time, learn social skills, learn physics, and much, much more than I could have taught them by myself. I dare to say that each one of my kids is much smarter than I am on many, many different subjects. The only subjects where I might beat them are the subjects where my passions lie.

Why? Because when we are passionate about something, we LEARN it! It isn’t work, it’s play. It isn’t hard, it’s easy.

Do I worry about my kids not being able to ‘cut it in the real world’? THIS IS the real world!

And I know that their passions can support them and bring them financial security – now more than ever – BECAUSE of the internet.

So, instead of spending all my time trying to beat things into their head so that they could get into college which would help them get out into the ‘real world’ and get a job working for someone else that really doesn’t have their best interests at heart, I’ve been doing my own learning. While they’ve played their computer games, researched their passions online, and played their way into learning everything they’ve needed to learn, I’ve been learning how to turn those passions into a supportive way of life.

I’ve been learning as much as I possibly can about business so that I can pass that onto them when they are ready. I want them to KNOW how to get whatever they need while depending on no one but themselves and God. They must take responsibility for their own lives and make their own way.

I am a computer programmer. I’ve been doing this for over 26 years now. I’m very good at what I do. I started my own online business 5 years ago. I just knew that since I knew SO much about computers and technical stuff that I would be an overnight success. Boy, was I WRONG!

People that have NO computer skills were passing me up left and right! I realized I had a LOT to learn. And that’s ok because other than my passion for computers, I have an even greater passion for learning. I think that’s where my passion for computers comes from anyway… I know I’ll never get bored with computers because the more I learn, the more I realize I NEED to learn.

So, as I started learning more and more about how to start and run my own business, I fell in love with not only computers and programming but with marketing and sales and the challenge of entrepreneurship! I found adventure and excitement… all the things that really get my heart to pumping.

Since my biggest passion is learning, my next biggest passion is teaching. Why? Because teaching is the best way to learn. I’ve found that when I have to share what I’ve learned, I learn it better. I have to KNOW what I’m talking about and if I don’t know what I’m talking about, either my students are quick to point it out or someone that knows more than I do is kind enough to set me on the right track.

By putting my knowledge out there, those that can learn from me, benefit from my knowledge, and those that can teach me, find the holes in my knowledge and help me fill it. It’s really the best of both worlds!

When I keep that knowledge to myself, others don’t benefit from my knowledge and those that know more than I don’t realize what they know that I don’t. So, teaching and sharing ALWAYS helps me to grow and learn and get better than I was the day before.

I have a GREAT job as a web developer. I get to work from home most of the time. I make more than enough money to support us. I didn’t need to start a business. But, there are many, many reasons why I WANTED to start a business. And there are many reasons why I want to make this business grow as much as it possibly can. There are many reasons why I want to gain as much experience as I can when it comes to starting a business.

The more people I can help start a business, the more experience I get. The more experience I get, the more people I can help and the more I can help my kids when they finally realize that I’m not going to support them forever

I’m going to start sharing everything I know so that those of you that can benefit from what I know, will. Those of you that see where I’m going wrong, will hopefully help me get back on the right track! I’m putting my ego out the door! I want to LEARN!

Now with ALL that said, I am not against making money from this blog or from most anything or anywhere else! I like making money! And if you tell me you don’t, I would really have trouble believing it, but that’s a topic for another post.

It would be my dream to be able to do this all day, every day! To write about what I love to write about. Even start doing some video blogging since that’s where they say things are heading. I know that if I provide good, quality content and never give up, this could turn into a full time job. But, only when I get in the right place with my head and my heart. And only when I’m completely honest and up front with you about my intentions.

I think that by sharing as much as I can with you, it can only help my business. But, if that were my only reason for doing it, it wouldn’t be enough. As a matter of fact, one of the things I’ve learned is that my heart MUST be in the right place before any money will come – at least any money that will last.

If I do this only for my business, it will fail.

If I do this because I care about you and want to help you, it will eventually succeed – in many ways – not only monetarily.

Because I truly want to learn and because I truly enjoy my subject matter, then I can never fail and I won’t be able to keep the abundance – of everything – money, success, fulfillment – away. They will eventually come. But, it will take patience, perseverance and dedication. Things that only passion can bring over the long haul.

These are the things I’ve tried to leave out of my business before. I tried to keep my business and the rest of my life separated. But, I’m learning that they are VERY intertwined. If I don’t have my emotional life in order, then my business will never succeed – at least not for long. If I have stinking thinking, then I can never succeed. I HAVE to have my head and my heart in the right places before I can realize my abundance.

Ok, enough already. I’ll leave the rest for later posts. I’ll try to work up the nerve for a video post

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