The Journey Begins

Here we go! My name is Jesse and I joined the Wealthy Affiliate community just a few days ago. I came across a few others online promoting Wealthy Affiliate as the means for developing an online business. This is something I have wanted to do for years but never understood how. After exploring the concepts for so long, I began to see how Wealthy Affiliate puts all the pieces together. I have always wanted to take my skills and education and share them with a wider audience, and now I have the platform to do that.

I am convinced that any worthwhile endeavor begins with not a what, but a why! I know now that what keeps someone pursuing a dream over the long haul is a why. The what is only the vehicle for achieving the why. Making money online is not the why. Sharing my passion with a global audience is my why! Building a business that affords my wife to stay home with our kids is my why!

Let me share a quick story...

My wife and I were married in 2011. I was in the middle of a college degree program and she was working for a preschool. We were both 26 years old and never thought about putting off starting a family. Two years into our marriage, it wasn't happening. We chose to go to a fertility doctor. After a string of tests, we were told the odds of conceiving were extremely slim. We had another choice to make: either spend a lot of time and money on a treatment plan in the hopes of conceiving (which we had no insurance coverage for) or hope and pray we could beat the odds. We were not ready for the investment of time, energy, emotions, and money it would take to try and have a baby. So, we chose the natural route though the odds were against us.

Well, years went by and nothing happened. We lived in the tension between finding contentment with what we had and yearning for the opportunity to be parents. Through the years we considered adoption and foster care. We came extremely close once but I have a criminal history that prevented me from taking a child home (long story). We felt helpless. When that fell through, we resigned ourselves to the idea that children just weren't in the cards for us.

That is until 2022...

In June of 2022, my wife was extremely sick. She was sick for longer than she had ever been sick before. I told her she needed to go to the doctor. She was not there more than 15 minutes before she received the greatest news of her life. She was pregnant! You see, my wife has been wanting to be a mother since she was a little girl. We couldn't believe it! After 11 years of waiting, we were going to have our own child! At the end of 2022, we welcomed our little girl into the world!

My wife returned to work after a couple of months, and we have been living our dream of being parents for a little over a year now. Well, the story gets better. We discovered last week that we are now expecting a second child! From that moment, we knew we would love to bring her home to raise our kids. We believe there is no greater investment a mother can make than in her children, especially in the early years. We can probably live on just my income, but what if I could replace hers? She works part-time at a sandwich shop in our small town, but her dream is to stay home and raise our children. What if I could replace her income and make it easier for her to live her dream? What if I could help people online in the process? What if I could take all that I have learned and experienced and share it with the world?

In comes Wealthy Affiliate. This opportunity is not about the money. It is about sharing the message of hope with the world while simultaneously helping my wife live her dream. This is my why. This is an investment worthy of my time and energy. This is the why behind the hours of learning and writing I will do. This is the why behind this business.

Do you know what your why is? Your why is what drives you!