Test Run

Hey fellow wealthy associates,

As some of you already know, I freelance as an audiovisual engineer in NYC. It's a path I kind of fell into a bit after my divorce. Although jobs are plentiful the wages aren't enough to afford living in Brooklyn on your own unless you sacrifice all things that make a man sane. When I joined wealthy affiliates it wasn't so much under some grand illusion I'd be posting pictures aboard my shinny new yacht within a few weeks. I really only hoped to gain some A to B to C training on how to make money online. I hoped to have some kind of passive income to help get out of the red.What I have found so far is actually more rewarding.

So by now it's been a week since I joined WA and a few days since I upgraded to Premium. My training so far got me thinking about a website I could do with my son. We don't see much of each other outside of weekends so I thought I could do a site showing other single dads and their kids what we do to bond and provide thoughts on educational toys and such. It'll also help my little Jedi learn about business skills in a friendly and playful environment.

I am at that point in the training where you have a website up, a name and a niche, but zero content. Research looks interesting and all but it takes time to craft content. You wonder if you should be watching another training video or should you be looking for work. Bills are creeping in. Holidays are coming up for some of us. It's enough to make you pull your hair. Which may be why I stay bald.

Yesterday morning I covered an event in the city that honored two girls from Uganda who were going to be the first in their family to go to high school. The mission of the non-profit involved aimed at getting impoverished children into high schools and training them to be independent. It was after I saw these two young ladies that I had my "ah ha!" moment.

When the conference ended and the after mingle started I scanned the crowd for particular faces of importance. The top people like the CEO of the non-profit, and one of the adults I had seen with the two young girls. The particular faces on that side of the event were world shapers. Not all were money-makers. But all of them had taken control of what they wanted to do with their lives and each one had spoken about it. And they were all their committed to the same overall goals within that room. The two youngest, those not yet in high school, had clearly articulated what and where they wanted to be in life, all because of a unique opportunity the charity had given them.

So when one of these particular faces went past I stopped him politely and introduced myself. Not as an AV tech, but as the owner of a blog I am currently building. I let him know the name and how I was doing it with my son, who is around the same age as the youngest of the two Ugandan participants there. We spoke about education and how important it was for kids. I let him know how I planned for my blog to address those issues from the perspective of a single dad raising his son on the weekends, which is why my "ah ha" moment happened here and not at a Krispy Kreme. Our conversation was lively. Turns out he works in Washington promoting Ugandan education rights. Turns out, he wasn't their father as I had suspected, but an international connection between the USA and Uganda, ie educational platforms in Africa and who knows where else. So as I populate my website with articles I can have a valuable resource and contact I had not expected.

My website currently has the wrong fonts, background color, and no content. However, I didn't let that stop me from speaking the idea into existence. Talking about it with a complete stranger helped me to see an actual reaction and things we might have in common from facial expressions and such. I wasn't worried about him stealing my website idea or anything, just a friendly conversation to see what his interests were and connect how they dovetailed with my online business.

I still have a ways to go before I complete the WA training. Two weeks ago I didn't have any of these opportunities. It can be daunting training yourself to build a website, operate the financial side of any business, work full time or part time, learn marketing and yadda yadda yadda, the list goes on and on. But in my short stint here I can say I took my first wealthy affiliate wheels out for a test drive.

And she ran pretty sweet.

All best,

Ced