Ok, So, Now What?
- Jul 31, 2019
- 6 min read
Ok, I told you my sorted sob story and left off with what my plans were. So, what am I doing now?
I got all fired up to jump full force into two things at once. 1. Find a work from home company that was reputable to sign up with to earn a living from home. 2. Find a system/coach to tell me how to get my business off the ground.
I already had a step forward towards the first objective from the last time that I got to this point. In a group on Facebook, a woman wrote about the company that she was working for; allowing her to work from home. She seemed pretty satisfied with her life/work balance and she didn't have any complaints about getting paid or the work that she was doing.
I applied and found out that in order to work for this company, I would have to have my computer hard wired and use a land line phone system. At the time, the modem was in the living room and there weren’t any phone jacks in the trailer that I live in. I had just begun a lease-to-own contract on a shed that I was planning to make into a tiny house so, that was not an option.
In the meantime, by sheer luck, I found another reputable work-at-home company. This company was an agency that would hire me to work as an agent for them doing customer service, sales, tech support or a combination of those things for companies like Intuit, Carnival, Comcast, Enterprise! So, I got the application process started with them as well. Wow, right?
I had to buy a phone pad/headset system, a USB headset and in order to use their platform I would have to pick which company I wanted to do the work for, apply to take a certification course to work for that company, pay the training course fee, and wait for the course to start. They would charge me a fee every month and only pay me twice a month. I would not start earning toward getting paid until I had progressed in the training process (unpaid training; and I had to pay for it).
I wanted to work for QuickBooks, since I am a ProAdvisor. I asked the agency, what the pay rate for that assignment would be and I was told $10.80 an hour, BUT the training course would cost $85 and would last until the end of November. That meant that I could start making money around the end of September. The hours available to do that work were 9-3 Monday-Friday.
Let's do this math! I would go almost two months without making ANY money. Once I was eligible to start earning money, I could only work 30 hours a week; IF I even got approved to and was scheduled for those hours. (Not all people get a full schedule) So, now I'm down to $10.49 an hour! Granted, I get to work from home, but it's still less than minimum wage in MA AND it would cost me $85 up front and I am down to my last $100 as I am writing this.
I got my first H D M & B client at the beginning of July. The woman who I leased the shed from found out that I could build websites and asked me to build her one. That led to her being so satisfied with my work that she agreed to have me do monthly maintenance for her and in return, she agreed to refer me to others, if I gave her a VERY cheap rate.
In researching ways to grow my reach and engagement on my site, I found tons of coaches offering tons of programs for TONS of money. I whittled the list down to one that focused on Pinterest, one that focused on LinkedIn, one that focused on Facebook Groups and one that focused on blogs, e-books and email marketing. I began cramming in as many webinars as possible, took massive amounts of notes and I even bought a template series for Pinterest and a masterclass on content. I took action, made changes and participated in challenges for a week straight.
Fast forward to two weeks ago. I quit the 5th job that I'd gotten since January and I returned the shed because those plans were shot to hell (That’s a whole other blog in itself)!
Now that the modem thing was possible, I called the cable provider and was told that my best option was to have a guy come and move it, it would cost me $60, and I had to wait a week for an appointment. I bought my phone pad/headset, my USB headset and I waited.
While searching for other websites to steal inspiration from, I found a third company that was taking applications for remote workers and I did a video application with them. I wrote a blog & an article and plastered them everywhere. I even applied for multiple affiliate programs. I applied to re-open my unemployment claim from last year to get the last $318 out it and I put in an application to work for the upcoming 2020 census.
Today was the day for the cable guy to come. He moved my system successfully, but contrary to my understanding, he did not hard wire the computer for me. I had 3 webinars planned for the day and he came right when the first one was supposed to start. Once I realized that he was not going to hard wire me and that there was no ethernet port on my laptop, I ran down to Wal-Mart to see what I could buy to make this work today.
Par for the course, they had ethernet cables and they had HDMI cables that would do what ethernet cable do, but no cables that had an ethernet tip on one end and an HDMI on the other end. Then, I remembered that, at home, I had a bus (USB hub port) that might have an ethernet port in it. I bought the cable and headed back home.
I checked the bus and what I had pictured in my mind as an ethernet port was a printer cable port! So, to Amazon I went and found a tiny little jack that would allow me to jump the line from the modem to the laptop for only $6.99. That combine with the $4.00 for the cord now, had me into this for another $10.
I checked my email and there was the message I had been waiting for from the 1st company that I was doing all of this for. It instructed me to do my video interview for them. That only took about 30 minutes with the practice and checking the systems.
I had gotten home too late to catch any of my webinars, but I was able to re-view the webcast of day 3 of the 5-day challenge that I was into. Right after that, I got a live video request from some people that I had never heard of on LinkedIn and they were the ones that I got the affiliate program idea from!
Then, I hit the brick wall. I got H A L T; hungry, angry, lazy and tired. It’s been a week of changes and mental fatigue and stress and worry!
One of the most important things that I can pass along to anyone else who may be on a similar path to mine is you really do need to take care of yourself while you are growing your dream.
I have always functioned better at night than during the day. I’ve been staying up till 3 a.m. working on building what I can, getting up at 7 a.m. to feed the cats and have breakfast, and then going back to sleep till my first webinar starts and doing it all over again.
Now, amid all of this, my client’s website mysteriously went down. It took me two days working with Wix to get it back up. Plus, I do her postings Monday, Wednesday and Friday so, I have had to keep her content fresh while I am melting down. Imagine if I did actually have multiple clients!
My plan for the next week is to get my body back on a normal track; 8 hours of sleep, 3 meals a day and force myself to get out of the house and take frequent breaks away from the computer. I’m taking the rest of today to recharge and then, I’ll be back at it, full force tomorrow!
Thanks for following me on my journey. I promise it will never be boring!
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