Personal: Married 36 years and counting. Mother of four.
Grandmother of five.
Business: Co-owner of two restaurants, a wholesale cake bakery and a wedding cake company.
Internet Affiliate Marketer.
Training: Classic Pastry Arts
The French Culinary Institute
New York City.
SBI Site Building and Affiliate Marketing Master Course
Make Your Site Sell.
21st Century Marketing.
Bob Proctor/Loral Langmeier's Millionaire Maker/Wealth Foundation Summit
MY STORY... a long way home
Please read the entire page. I want you to get to know me and also the One who brought me to this place in my life. I'm just like you. No one special. I just made a decision and stuck with it. I let God guide me and did my best to obey His direction. There really is hope for financial and personal recovery... if you persevere.
Heights by great men
reached and kept
Were not attained by sudden flight.
They, while their companions slept,
Were toiling upward through the night -- Anon
This is obviously not your typical "business opportunity" website. I'm not asking you to buy or join anything, so you're probably wondering -- why bother?
Well, it's not about me, it's about you. You're not alone as you struggle with the difficulties of these economically trying times...and life in general. There's encouragement, hope, and some very practical alternatives if you've been looking for a way to earn money at home. Watch the video and read on to find what I hope will be inspiration to change your life too.
This video showed me that I was not alone. There were solutions to the problem. Her story is so much like mine that I've decided to tell you my own story and what led to my starting my internet based home business - and this website. I hope that it will encourage you as you struggle with this uncertain economy. Through a series of events, I found some Internet based Home Business Opportunitiesthat helped me learn how to find success as an affiliate marketer. My hope is that these and other ideas you will find on this site will be helpful to you as well.
I'm a Christian mother and grandmother. I live in Florida, and here's my story.
When my husband and I came to the U.S. over 30 years ago our life seemed full of promise. But for reasons we couldn't explain the promise never came to fruition. We were both working very hard but not getting to where we wanted to be. Sound familiar?
It seemed like we were always taking one step forward and two back. We had four beautiful children to raise and I desperately wanted to be a work-at-home Mom so I could be there for our children. I was always searching for something I could do as a home based business... but that was before home computers and the Internet. Back then, working at home for additional income was, for most people, just a pipe dream.
Our children were (and are) our pride and joy, and we felt they deserved the very best of everything, but despite our best efforts, what we could manage was a far cry from what we really wanted to do. It saddened and frustrated us.
It was a very difficult time, but we struggled through it. And God, in His goodness, rewarded us with the joy of seeing them become responsible, loving, compassionate adults with a heart for people.
However, even though we'd managed to raise our kids, despite the problems, we still weren't satisfied with our financial situation.
Although the Lord was gracious throughout the lean years, we never gave up trying to "make it". We still wanted more. We wanted that abundant life the Bible talks about...a life filled with meaning, passion, purpose. A life lived with peace of mind -- not based upon circumstances...abundant both in the material and the spiritual. But the material abundance and resulting peace of mind we thought that would bring seemed always just beyond our reach. Still, we kept trying.
We treasured our dreams and hoped that someday they would come true. We had prayed and cried and struggled to rise above our circumstances because we felt our children deserved more...much more. We developed several business ideas, but nothing worked. There were times when we just wanted to give up. But something inside kept us struggling to achieve... to be better.
It was a depressing, frustrating, and confusing time for us. Why couldn't we make it? It wasn't for want of trying or dedication to the pursuit, but we just couldn't "crack the code" because, as we realized later, there were lessons to be learned first. Lessons from God about how to do things His way.
Something to Think About
When money and the acquiring of it is your focus,
it can elude you.
When you do something that ignites your passion... something that will provide a solution to a problem or help other people achieve their goals...very often you realize your own.
In striving to help someone else, you achieve success and contentment, and inevitably, the money follows.
Napoleon Hill author of "Think and Grow Rich" suggests that if you find a need and fill it,financial success will follow.
Ken Evoy, Founder of Site Sell and creator of the SiteBuildIt! system teaches that if you give your website visitors the information they're searching for with no "pushy" sales pitch, financial success will follow.
Give before you take or sell and success will follow.
We were well aware that it is the Lord who gives the power to get wealth, but apparently He wasn't ready to release financial prosperity into our life. In hindsight, we see now that the Lord was trying to lead us, but we kept trying to manage our own problems instead of letting Him take control, and because we were so caught up in our circumstances, we focused more on them than we focused on Him.
Anything that is given more attention than we give to God becomes an idol. That was hard to learn, and it is something that God despises.
We had to learn that we weren't going to prosper until we learned to put Him first in our lives. He taught us that His grace is sufficient to see us through any circumstance. He was always there. His promise to provide our necessities was fulfilled. He taught us that being generous and giving to others was one of the greatest blessings there is.
Another lesson was in tithing -- giving. We gave what we could, when we could, of money and our time, but it's the motivation of the heart that God is interested in, not the money. It's all His anyway. If the motivation is right -- the desire to help others less fortunate and to spread the Word so that everyone has a chance to make that most important decision in life to surrender their life to Christ -- the giving will be consistent, not "whenever we can". And it's the consistency of it that brings the financial blessing.
God wants us to give to Him to further His work because we love Him and not out of a sense of duty. Life is really about loving, giving and developing relationships... the most important one being our personal relationship with God.
We thought our tithing ensured our financial well being, but we still had our financial ups and downs. And through it all, God was giving back to us as well - He enabled Ivy League educations for our children, good health for all, and later in life, good jobs, and a lovely home. We opened up this home to young people from visiting church groups, and to our children's friends. Sometimes to perfect strangers who needed a bed for a night. But we made some unwise decisions, and as we neared retirement age, the jobs were lost, our income dwindled, and our home was in jeopardy.
Has something like this happened to you? You probably wondered, and even asked out loud..."Where are you God? Why have you abandoned us?" But I discovered that even when He doesn't answer as quickly as we would like and in the manner that we would like, He is still there. Always there. Still loving us, and still working out His plan for our lives. We later realized that --
Whenever He doesn't rush to our rescue in the midst of a crisis, it's because He's up to something bigger!
He's preparing us to fulfill a task that's bigger than we ever imagined. But the road to that task may take unexpected twists and turns as God sometimes uses negative circumstances in our lives to teach and grow us.
In the midst of yet another financial crisis... God gives me another dream.
My husband and I had been doing wedding cakes as a side business for many years because we love the "art of the cake" and frankly, it was a way to earn some extra money. We decided that a wedding cake business was going to be our second career after retirement. We certainly had enough experience to do this at the professionaI level, but from out of nowhere came a compelling desire in me to become a pastry chef.
I didn't have the first dime. I didn't even know if I had the qualifications to be admitted to pastry school, but I couldn't let go of the intense desire to do this.
Where did this harebrained idea come from? Go back to school at my age? It was laughable. But as I started to wrap my mind around it, the more I thought about it, the more appealing it became.
When God gives you a dream, it very often doesn't seem logical. Sometimes it doesn't even seem to make sense from our point of view, but...His thoughts are higher than ours and His ways are not our ways.
I'm sure my husband, kids and friends thought I was nuts... and I had my doubts as well, but I just couldn't shake it. The desire became an obsession. It was in my thoughts day and night. It just wouldn't let me go, so I committed it to Him.
I asked for a sign to be sure it was His direction for me, and I proceeded with plans...intense planning soaked in prayer... and... He granted me the desire of my heart.
The answer was clear when I won a partial scholarship and some grants which enabled attendance at a very prestigious culinary school. I went to New York to learn Classic Pastry Arts and I did very well at it, despite being a retiree in a class of "twenty-somethings". I'd been out of school for 30 years, yet I graduated close to the top of the class with a 95% overall average, having scored 99% on most of the tests. That could only have been God.
Our plan was to go full throttle into the wedding cake business upon my return from pastry school, but yet again that plan didn't work out. By the time I graduated and returned home, the housing industry was on the brink of collapse. Refinancing to raise the capital for the business was out of the question. The cake business was to have been our "cash machine" and it just wasn't happening.
No cash machine = no income. This plan was not working out.
I heard someone say many years ago, if you want to give God a laugh, just tell Him your "plans". Our "plans" were obviously not coming to fruition due to events beyond our control. I was in the depths of despair. How could God allow this? Hadn't He prompted and enabled me to go to pastry school? Hadn't He sustained me while I was there? I had been so sure the cake business was His Plan. But now things weren't working. Had I been mistaken?
I started to question God -- why aren't things working out? I became so overwhelmed with our negative circumstances that I lost my focus, and I seriously came to a crisis of faith. I started to think that maybe God didn't want to bless us. Maybe we weren't worthy.
That is a lie from the pit of hell, and it smells like smoke. The Lord reassured me through His Word that since Jesus is my Lord and Saviour, I've been made worthy by Him. I am worthy of His blessings, His promises to supply all our needs -- because I am His child.
Eventually, like Job, I stopped looking at my perceived "unworthiness" and started looking at His attributes. God can't lie. His promises are true. He said, if you do thus and so, I will bless you... but in His own way and His own time. Our business is simply to trust, even in the dark times, and do what He says to do.
That has not been easy because not knowing where you're going in life is frightening. When our plans were derailed and we were set adrift, we felt powerless to do anything about it, but God is always in control of a life committed to Him, He has the power to change things, and He always has a Plan. We just had to truly believe it.
As I said earlier, if He doesn't show up immediately when we cry out in desperation, He's not ignoring us, He's up to something bigger. He's preparing us for bigger things, and sometimes He has to allow us to go through tough times and change direction in order to be able to properly handle the next step.
I eventually came to the realization that He was gently steering me in a new direction...
We spent some time in a hotel room. Had I not been at this particular hotel, having lost our home, I would not have discovered Affiliate Marketing, website building, and SBI!. SBI! was a system my brother had told me about at least two years before, but I did nothing about it because I had no idea how this Internet business worked and I didn't particularly want to learn it. But now, I was intrigued. Now, I had a renewed, driving desire to finally achieve some financial stability. It resonated with me. It sounded like something I could do to make some money to finance my passion - cooking, baking -- specifically, wedding cakes. I decided to look into it.
As I explored and learned about the Internet and how I could make money with it, it became clear that having a website would make it easier. I decided to learn to build a website. I talked to my brother about it. He was already working with SBI! building his own website for his internet based home business, and doing quite well. He sent me some information -- the SBI! Action Guide -- and as I read, my excitement grew. This was the answer to my dilemma.
This was a detour -- a new direction into which I had to walk blindly because I didn't really have a clue about this stuff. But I was not alone. God took my hand and led me through and taught me how to do this. He led me to internet based home business programs run by honest decent people who wanted to share their knowledge and help other people achieve. It was uncanny and amazing and I learned a lot -- but that's a whole other story.
I could see how this new venture could develop into a lucrative home based business which would eventually enable me to do what I really wanted to do - wedding cakes - so I pursued it. I was particularly interested in the Affiliate programs because they are low cost or free and offer a good return for the effort expended. I could see that if I persisted, I could succeed. I could reach my goals if I didn't give up.
But the most important thing about creating this website and learning how to make it successful was, and is, that it gives me a voice... a voice for Him. A way to let people know that "with Christ in the vessel, they can weather the storm". He wants everyone to know that there is hope. Things may be rough, but they are not hopeless. He is the answer to our every need. He will supply... just as He promised.
Persistence - the capacity to stay on course in the face of difficulty and refuse to quit Obedienceto God's direction born of a desire to please Him and generously Giving Backto help others and show them His love
That's the meaning of "Seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you." Matt 6:33
In other words...my job is to be totally obedient to God's direction (seek the Kingdom). His job is to take care of me and my life (all these things will be added). I decided to trust and and stop worrying. Obey God in everything... and leave the consequences to Him.
This is life at its best and, somehow, I knew I couldn't lose doing this. All I had to do was to start. Take that first step of faith and not let doubting people or adverse circumstances get in my way. So I didn't tell anybody what I was about to do. I just trusted that this was God's direction and that He would take it from there and guide me to where He wanted me to be... and He has.
I knew nothing about website building when I started this. He took me by the hand and guided me at every turn. He has shown me "great and mighty things which [ I ] knew not" -- "I am the Lord your God who teaches you to profit, who leads you by the way you should go." Isa.48:17. He changes the times and the seasons... He gives wisdom to the wise and knowledge to those who have understanding. Dan. 2:21
I stopped looking at my desperate circumstances and started to see the stress free future I wanted for myself and for my family...the future that God had already planned for me. There was no turning back now.
"No man, having put his hand to the plough and looking back is fit for the Kingdom of God." Luke 9:62
I decided to face forward. To forget what had been lost or not achieved in the past and to do whatever my instructors said to do, as long as it was legal and honest, and it was. I decided to stick with it until it paid off. Then I vowed that I would give back generously.
That's how the idea for "Home Biz Ideas 4U" came about. As I searched for home business ideas and tested some of the programs I found, I learned a great deal about this business. I also learned a lot about myself and about subconscious mind pre-conditioning which was keeping me from the success I wanted.
One crucially important thing I learned is that MONEY and the desire for more is NOT EVIL. It is the LOVE of it and coveting what others have and scheming to take what is theirs that is evil. Being financially free is a very good thing. It's the people who have lots of money who give back from grateful hearts. Those are the people who generously help others. They know that kindness, compassion and generosity are pleasing to God, and He blesses those whose purpose it is to please Him.
I created this website so you, my visitor, could have the chance to make these same discoveries for yourself. I put everything in one place so you can get the full picture, evaluate your situation as I did, and be able to make changes and move forward.
There were some surprises along the way with the online home business opportunities I chose to become involved with, so I've included some inside information to eliminate the element of surprise for you. This way you can make informed decisions and go forward. This is part of my "giving back" - helping you to "fish" for yourself as I quoted on my Home Page.
The Lord said, "Give and it shall be given to you, good measure, pressed down shaken together and running over, shall men give into your bosom...For with same measure that you use, it will be measured back to you." Luke 6:38.
He promises an abundant life - "I have come that they might have life, and that they may have it more abundantly." John 10:10. He wants His people to have an abundant life. Abundant in every way - spiritually, physically and financially. He wants us to have more so we can share generously with others who are less fortunate.
The poor will always be with us. The Bible says so. That's why I feelif one has been given the desire to achieve more in order to help less fortunate brothers and sisters at home and around the world, one has an obligation to develop that desire into a definite goal, and pursue that goal under God's leadership -- a challenging goal that demands our best and requires His help -- always remembering that God never calls us to do anything that He hasn't already equipped us to handle.
Believe that and step out in faith. You will discover new talents and skills that you probably never knew you had.
PRAY, BELIEVE, YOU WILL RECEIVE. PRAY IN DOUBT, YOU DO WITHOUT-- Dr. Adrian Rogers
I encourage you to set challenging goals for yourself and develop a passion to make that goal a reality. Rely on God to enable you to use your skills and talents to bring about your desired outcome, and remember that He says that whatever things we ask in prayer, believing, we will receive. See Matthew 21:22.
I have learned to fight my financial battles, as well as all my "other life battles" on my knees. I just concentrate on being obedient and I leave the rest to Him and watch what He does. And the things He has done in my life are amazing. "Let Go and Let God" really does work.
I discovered that when you do this, YOU CAN'T LOSE! ... but be warned - As in football, the one who has the ball is the one who gets tackled. The evil one may start an attack on you, but HOLD ON. Don't let Him steal your joy and your resolve. Pray. Believe. Get on your knees when the problems seem overwhelming and you will always rise triumphant.
We have stopped trying to manipulate our circumstances and outcomes. We just believe His promises, listen to His direction, act upon it, expect the good to come, accept it when it does, give back generously to express our gratitude and praise ... and then, leave the consequences to Him. I found that it's simple if we don't complicate it with worry and wilfullness. And above all... it works.
I hope you found encouragement in my story, and I'm praying that you will use the tools on this site to improve your life.
If your story is anything like mine or my friend in the video - one of trials, disappointments, mistakes, bad decisions - then take steps to change it. Don't just accept adverse circumstances. Change them by systematically thinking constructive, happy, uplifting thoughts. Start and end each day in an Attitude of Gratitude. Then act upon your ideas with passion and purpose.
Begin here... discover The Secret to the Abundant Life, then go to the Success Secrets page and learn how to start changing your thoughts and actions so that YOU TOO CAN SUCCEED - STARTING TODAY!
Visit the Business Opportunitiespage for links to internet based home business ideas you can work at from home on your computer.
And if your life has been fraught with problems you can't seem to resolve, Click Here for 7 printable Action Points to help you start resolving them.
If your home is in jeopardy or you're in need of financial services of any kind to help you through a difficult spot, Click Here. You will find agencies that can help with credit repair, credit counseling, loans, mortgages, refinancing or even bankruptcy if that's what you need. All handled privately and confidentially, no bias and no embarrassment.
Click this button to this with your friends. Click on the "Sign Up" button at the top of the Home Page to accept your Free Subscription to Stephen Pierce's FREE Mini Business Course which is chock full of great advice on how to make your Internet based home business, or any business, profitable. This link will also subscribe you to our free newsletter when we get it up and running. This is something I'm still learning, but I'll let you know when it's ready.
I truly believe the Internet is a Godsend for those of us who didn't care for the corporate world for whatever reason, but who still have a burning desire to do something extraordinary.
Pick up the pieces of your life. Replace your lost job with your own online home based business and Go For It!
"...forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to those things which are ahead, I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus." Philippians 3:4.
To Your Health, Wealth and Lasting Success!
This song is very meaningful to me. I hope it speaks to your heart too.
I then shall live as one who's been forgiven
I'll walk with joy to know my debts are paid.
I know my name is clear before my Father
I am His child, and I am not afraid.
So greatly pardoned, I'll forgive my brother
The Law of Love I gladly will obey.
I then shall live as one who's learned compassion.
I've been so loved that I'll risk loving too.
I know how fear builds walls instead of bridges
I'll dare to see another's point of view.
And when relationships demand commitment
Then I'll be there to care and follow through.
Your Kingdom come around and through and in me,
Your power and glory, let them shine through me.
Your hallowed Name, O may I bear with honor,
And may Your living kingdom come in me.
The Bread of Life, O may I share with honor
And may You feed a hungry world through me.
