7 Years and 4 Days at Wealthy Affiliate

byIncomeLegion

8.8K followers

Updated 3 years ago

Holy Cow! I have really at Wealthy Affiliate for 7 years as of the 24th and have learned so much and helped teach so many. I am blessed.

I have been hem hawing about how to write this post for the last 4 days and come to the conclusion that letting the keyboard fly is the best policy. The journey from where I was to where I am was one of tumultuous ups, downs, twists, and curves.

When I started 7 years ago I was just a few months out of a 10-month recovery from surgery and in d dark place in my life has been through a nervous breakdown that took my physical and mental health in what seemed like overnight. Truth be told it was decades in the making.

The day I broke though was like a fuse on a bomb ticking.

I was talking with my business partner and several of his 3rd party advisors. I call them his because they had his ear and didn't care if I was on board or not. My partner was in Australia and I would come to work in the morning and find the entire system changed without my say. I was the freaking CEO and it felt like the company was no longer a partnership.

I blew up over this and wrote what turned into a small e-book of rant and walked away from Kooiii spelling out exactly how it would fail a year before it did. This day left me in tears sobbing as 9 years collapsed in one shot but I was also so angry I could chew through nails.

For days I sat in an easy chair and didn't want to look at the computer. I unfriended over half the people I knew when I did return, and it made me sick to talk to anyone in the know about the business. Physically ill. I noticed immediately that my anger was out of control and my ability to go to the store was just no longer there.

I went to Wal-Mart and I got chest pains and trouble breathing just from standing at the checkout. So bad I later went to the hospital.

I punched the walls, screamed at others daily, and cried over the damnedest things. In fact, I sobbed sometimes for nothing, and the worst thing that had ever happened to me did. My youngest son was not yet diagnosed with ODD but in a fit, he wouldn't stop screaming at me and I slapped his face. It left 3 finger-shaped bruises, and CPS was called.

The following day I have scheduled anger management classes and set up with a Doctor to advise on my possible condition. After a time we came to grasp that I had a nervous break and that the resulting injury was bipolar depression which runs on my mom's side of the family and social anxiety disorder.

I was prescribed new meds just before a new challenge arose.

I started developing bad cramping in my lower stomach and it got so bad I couldn't walk before I called the doctor and went by ambulance to the hospital. I was then diagnosed with a severe case of diverticulitis and hospitalized for nearly a week to get the infection down before they decided to do surgery and remove a sizable portion of my small intestine.

The surgery went well but the mixture of their drugs and my psych meds meant a very long recovery in which I reached 336 pounds. I found at times I absolutely hated the, me I had become and started to wonder if life was best without me. I was advised to find something productive and positive to fill my time instead of video games.

It was at that point I knew we needed money and that returning to affiliate marketing was my best hope. After all the offline I couldn't talk to 2 strangers without cold sweats. In 10 months though I had lost resources I had for 9 years and with my last period of years, I had money and resources to aim at any program and earn I no longer had.

I was so unsure of myself and needed the training to get on track and start back over and found Wealthy Affiliate within 2 months of starting my true recovery.

My following year was spent in the text of the WA training and in helping others through live chats and the blogs here. Over the next several years I went through a couple of domain names that just didn't seem to fit my mission or would leave Google wondering what exactly the blogs were about.

I would have politics and unrelated reviews mixed in with home business training that I saw as my primary niche. I was in a bad way because my mind kept switching channels and though I knew right from wrong I was self-destructive and throwing away a good part of what would be a new success story.

Then last year I started seeing success again and went into developing my own membership sites. These were originally supposed to complement my blog but soon I was making more money than blogging off the membership sites and found posts and newsletters coming out further apart. In fact, in the last 56 months, I wrote one post and sent 2 e-mails.

My overall business waned and my hours went up, the focus was shattered and a few days ago I realized the business was declining but so was my health. I was back to 80+ hour weeks and staying up 24 hours or more just to advertise the business myself and my therapy which had been my blogs was all but out of my life.

I logged into WA 4 days ago to congrats on 7 years.

It was then I realized where I was happy. What I was doing that had allowed me to return to the store and take in a live Arizona Diamondbacks Game. It was WA that made me feel whole again and presented a stronger path that kept me growing and allowed me to have Work-Life Balance.

I immediately wrote a letter to my Canadian Business partner and ask him to buy one of my two sites and told him I was retiring from our partnership to explore blogging again. I told him I was unhappy and getting ill again and would have another breakdown if I continued on the trip I was on.

The New Beginning is coming so help me write it.

I decided I made enough of a mess out of Affiliate 3 Percent, my flagship blog of yesterday, and needed to rebrand it and my newsletter to fit an Image and Niche more satisfying. I decided to not be focused just on affiliate programs and to open the doors to all things side hustle related and even have room for work-life balance niche posts.

I want the last of those on the list to be a big learning experience for me. Work-Life balance is something I have always been challenged by and one thing I need to work on the most to stave off stress. So with that my new blog is born.

Income Legion is my new mission.

With Income Legion I can talk all things business and money tapping into over 30 years of combined management and ownership experience both online and offline. It will give me a reason to keep learning something new every day and teaching things that I had never fathomed.

Our pledge to Help Rebuilder or Build up a You to be Proud of. Regardless of well-being, disability, or mental health, we will empower all people to find their passion and build a business that will change their lives for the good.

I am very open in it with my mental health and pray it finds others and lets them know before a break they need to take heed and cut back. I want to see more people come to grasp conditions like bipolar and social anxiety and realize it is only over if they quit fighting. Income Legion is about you and the Journey to Wealth as much as my own.

Andy Zeus Anderson