Dear Entrepreneur,
I grew up on a farm near a small town in southern Colorado and was taught the value of integrity, trust, and hard work. Early in my adulthood I began my more than 25 years in corporate America “trading time for money”. Most of those years I worked between 55 to 65 hours per week… sometimes even more. Add to those hours a one to two hour commute to and from work and you know I was putting in some LONG hours. And for what? The money was mediocre at best… nowhere near what we needed to keep our family a-float. Most days I’d get up by 3:30 – 4:00 a.m. in order to beat the traffic. Rarely did I even see my children when I got home from work, and when I did they didn’t really know me, except as kind-of a zombie in the evenings anyway. I feel I carried a cloud of anxiety with me and I know my wife and children could feel it.
During these years we carried a huge amount of credit card debt, living paycheck-to-paycheck, and between that hectic life, the amount of strain on our lives, and the discontent this caused between my wife and me it’s a miracle we even survived.
In addition to my schedule being jammed, my wife’s schedule was insane as well… working full time and managing the kids and household.
I used to work as much overtime as I could get away with. I found myself working as much as 93 hours per week for an extended period one year… where did that get me? A few extra dollars in the checks for a time to catch up on some bills… all that, only to realize that we would be back into the grind of living paycheck-to-paycheck once again.
One thing about working all those hours… we all really only have a certain amount of time allotted to us in our lives. I once heard a speech in which the speaker said that when you reach the end of your life and you try to buy another week… there’s no amount of money that you can pay to buy another week? Even with a million dollars you cannot buy another week.
In recent years… I’d been thinking about what I would do for retirement. My idea of retirement is not to retire and have to then live on 40-60% of what we were used to living on. My thought on this was: Seriously… retire? I realized I would not be able to retire… I thought… I’d retire the day my boss has to call 911 and have the paramedics carry me out on a stretcher. I saw no possibility of retirement.
When I came to my senses I determined that there MUST be another way… I thought I MUST find something other than “the JOB” I was chained to… something where I could create a better future for myself and my family.
I used to try to think of how I could start my own business and used to talk to co-workers about the fact that here must be something we could do that would provide that boost to break through the ceiling that corporate America had placed on me.
During the final several years of my corporate career I was constantly searching, reading books and listening to audio CDs about how to become an entrepreneur. My DESIRE was there.
Then, as a result of the recent world economic down-turn my circumstances were about to take a down-turn as well. My boss called me to his office to notify me that I would be laid off.
The truth is I had been preparing for this possibility for quite some time.
To that point in time I had been exposed to the idea of working via the internet from home. I had seen news stories as well as TV advertising about opportunities to use the internet for a home-based business. And I knew these opportunities MUST exist. I also knew in my gut that lots of “internet opportunities” were scams and hype… but I also knew in my gut that there had to be legitimate businesses on the internet as well.
So I began to VERY SERIOUSLY search the internet for what I might do. I was determined to find a legitimate business opportunity, one that I could do, myself, from home.
It was during this search that I found it. Oh yes, I was skeptical at first, but every sentence I read seemed to give me more reason to continue reading. Something inside me was guiding me to continue. Still, I knew I had to be sure this business was real since I had previously been burned by other, so-called “opportunities” that people attempted to pass off as real businesses, only to find out later that they were nothing more than scams, “gifting” schemes, etc. I don’t go for that!
This business had to pass these simple but important criteria:
- Is it REAL?
- Is it LEGITIMATE?
- CAN I DO IT?
The rest is history… I am SO happy and grateful now that I am now a leader in the internet marketing industry and I write my own paycheck from home. Now that I own my own business, I work from wherever I want. I don’t have that painful commute… I don’t have to answer to a boss… I AM my own boss. I help others find the same joy I was searching for… that I found. And yes, I now live the life I’ve been dreaming of for my entire life. I now have time on my side. Isn’t that what life is all about? We all have a certain amount of time. Now I enjoy my time. I now enjoy my time with my children and grandchildren and can share what I have with them… most of all, TIME.
I believe God has a plan for each of us. God’s plan includes that his children prosper and share with others of his children.
I would like to share what I have learned with you. I can help you change your financial condition. It’s your decision though and it will take courage from you. Don’t let life pass you by before it’s too late. Let me show you how I got my life back!
To your success!
Richard Decker
