You can improve life tomorrow...

Copy of an email I just sent, thought it would be good to post here also. I hope you enjoy it.

Before I leave my office today. I wanted to send you a quick email. After 5 and a half years of working from home I wanted to share some prespective with you. In some ways I am no different than you are. In other ways we are drastically different. Before I started working from home, my life looked much different than it does today. My father passed away when I was 9 years old. Back then we were less than well off living in a 15 year old single wide trailor. Later my mom met a man who took over the father role in my life. He was a tobacco farmer in North Carolina (still is). From 12 years old till college (when I moved out) life was very difficult it was an endless cycle of waking up working on the farm literally until it was time to go in, eat, take a shower and go to bed.

There was none of this "prime time TV, let's watch American Idol stuff". There just was not time for it. However our family was better off financially somewhat. We lived in a home this man had built. Nothing extravagant but it beat the single wide we had once lived in. To this date, from about 12 years old till 19 years old when I moved out, were the hardest years of my life. The reason I moved out was because, I was doing my best to go to college and get a Nursing Degree which would give me a way to move out and be on my own. However, mom and her now fiance both felt that the work on the farm superceded anything else that I had going on with college. I have often wondered why they didn't encourage me and support me more with college I think they wanted me to eventually become a farmer, they have a lot of pride in their work. Which is good but that was not the life for me.
I had an oppurtunity to move in with a family which I did not even know at the time. I knew the daughter of the family, she was dating ( now married to one of my best friends at the time). For whatever reason, her mom offered to let me live with them. I don't think she was very serious when she made that offer but I took her very serious and took her up on it. A week later I moved out of my home and in with them. I remember the morning I left home. My mom was crying in the kitchen, she told me she loved me and I left. In the car I remember be scared to death. I remember crying. I did not know these people I was moving in with, I did not know how I was going to make if this didn't work or if I failed out of school, my grades were already in jeopardy.

Living with another family was definitely an adjustment. I was always the outsider infringing on someone else's family and it's dynamics. I slept in one of the bedrooms, share the chores, shared their food, eventually moved to sleeping on their couch. In some ways I had a home in others I was totally homeless. However, living with this family gave me the oppurtunity I needed to help change my life forever. If you ever meet Jean Palumbo or Randy Palumbo in Western Springs Illinois, just know they are good people who helped change my life.
Eventually I graduated Nursing School and became an RN (again thanks to Ms. Jean and Mr. Randy). I moved out right away and start renting a single wide trailor. It felt like "deja vu" but hey it was a start in life. I knew early on that I was going to have to do something different. At this point I had acquired some debt, I saw myself slipping backwards financially. I knew I had to find away to start getting a head. I started looking into every form of investing or income generation I could find. I started a couple of small businesses and failed. I looked into working from home and worked with a couple of companies and still could not get ahead. Part of me had considered giving up but late one night I stumbled on to Coastal Travel. I got started and the rest is history...
I went to a training event with Dani Johnson and 30 days later generated $15,000. I felt like I had hit the megamillions lottery. My first year I earned $70,000 working part time with Coastal Travel. That's when I left my nursing career behind. My second year I earned $120,000 and have been working from home ever since. I have told you all of this just to give you a little prespective. Live is so much better today than it once was. I am no longer living in a single wide trailor, I no longer work sun up to sun down like on the farm. I no longer have to worry about sleeping on some else's couch, I am no longer going backwards in debt and life continues to improve.

Your life can improve as well. No matter where you are or what your situation is. Things can get better for you. No I'm not about to tell you starting a home business is the answer for you because it may not be. What I am telling you is just focus on what you can improve tomorrow about the situation that you are in. It is not today that counts, it's what you do with tomorrow that is the most important. If you will just focus on improving something anything tomorrow then eventually your situation will start to improve. If every tomorrow gets better than naturally each yesterday gets better as well.

There was a time when I was on the farm growing up. I felt stuck, and hopeless. I honestly felt like a slave many days. I was fed, and I had a roof over my head. But every single day was a grind and there was no clear end in site. At 16 I knew I just had to hang on cause by 18 or 19 I would be in a position that I could make decisions to improve my life. So what did I do at 16, I waited and calculated and planned for the time when I could make those decisions. I am telling you, if life is tough right now there will be a better time and a better season ahead for you. Shift your focus from where you are and start focusing on where you are going.

There is no magic bullet to improving life or success. Just work with the right focus and direction. It sounds like I had success really fast when you here my first two years. But I promise you it did not always feel like that when I was in the middle working each day during those first two years. Doing my best to squeeze in time to build a business, around my work schedule that was always changing. It felt tough in the beginning. It felt like a grind once again. But I knew that i just had to focus on the actions of tomorrow which was being diligent with my business knowing that eventually success would come. Then it came, even after that there were doubts:

"Maybe you were lucky"

"It will not happen again"

But even then I could not dwell there I had to focus on what my decision was going to be the next day. Again .... don't dwell on where you are at, focus on where you are going.

O.K. so this wasn't a short email but I hope its given you some hope.


Have a good weekend,

Jackie O'Quinn
International Coastal Director
1-888-309-5759
www.flexiblebiz.com/

Passion and Poetry in Atlanta Georgia

Last night the wife and I celebrated our Valentine's Day. It was a good night. We ate at an Italian resteraunt called Maggianos. It was very good. I am not usually a big fan of Italian food. Don't get me wrong I love my wife's amazing speggehti and her lasagna. However, I would prefer to eat other cuisine's when going out for a dinner. However, Carmen loves Italian so that is why we went there. I am really glad we did.

After Dinner, we went to Passion and Poetry downtown. That was a very interesting experience to say the least. The first Poet came out and his name was Bo Ellis, he was ultra vulgar from the start and had rhyming skills that were just simply not that impressive. However there were some highlights of the night. Sphinx, was a Poet who was one of the few that wasn't over the top sexual. His poem was all about relationships and making it as team when you realize that you may have lost that initial puppy love at the start of a relationship. He was great.

Another Poet was Raucus, she was very sexual in her poem. She was amazingly skilled and alot of fun to listen to. If I have ever heard a wordsmith it was her. She had complete command of the english vocabulary. Another highlight, without question was when "Theo" from the Coosby Show came out and preformed. He too was also very good. Over all I would say it was a great time. Most of the Poets were OK with a few stand outs. None the less I very well could attend again.

Today, is about having a relaxing day at home. I will probably log on and play some online Poker. I also have some Snow Crab Legs set out so I will probably steam them up alittle later as well. Overall a lazy Sunday.