In case you missed Part 1, start here.
Panama.
That’s where I left off. We were slinging money around like we’d never done before in our lives…cash…this wasn’t “just got a new credit card with a big limit” spending, it was reasonable spending based on our account balances and goals.
And wow, I gotta say, very different feeling.
Good feeling!
(In our almost 15 years of marriage, we’ve wasted SO MUCH money…have made sooo many horrible financial decisions…so much waste, so much naivete…)
Fortunately the month after I got started working online, a local church was hosting a “Financial Peace” seminar taught by Dave Ramsey. It was a 9 week course and we attended every single session…taking everything in, and applying it right away.
Without getting off on a huge tangent, let me just say it was totally life changing for us both, and we highly recommend it to anyone and everyone!
So back to the story…
We did all the necessary prep (and ..over prep actually) for our big trip, and then on the morning of Wednesday June 19th 2013, we headed to the airport to catch our first international flight in over 10 years (we went to Cancun together 1000 years ago).
If you’ve followed our story for very long, you may have already seen our daily blog posts FROM Panama – in case you missed those and are interested, the first of our daily posts from Panama are here.
So like I started to say in my last post, this trip was a big turning point for us.
While we were doing things like spending all day struggling (and enjoying every minute of it) to figure out Spanish as we spent almost $1400 up front to rent an SUV that we’d use for several weeks to drive around the entire country…
…we were making money. Lots of money.
How?
Why?
Huh?
Yeah. Because by this time, we had set up enough marketing, and had enough momentum inside our business that it – the machine – continued to make sales day and night, even though about 50% of the time we tried to get online while in Panama, we couldn’t! (It’s a 3rd world country, remember!)
In my whole life, I’d never seen anything like it. Sure, I’d heard of it…all over the internet, all the time. Most of it I never believed, and I’d certainly never (prior to this experience) believed that I COULD DO IT.
So yeah, BIG turning point.
Epic, awesome, forever life changing trip in its own right, but to have our business cranking away even while we were MIA for a month was the cherry on top.
Moving on…
We got back from Panama just in time for me to head up to Denver for a week for a company event called “Don’t Be A Wussy”. LOL. It was so awesome. I picked up a couple new things to apply in our business that have since made us tens of thousands of dollars.
**** VID FROM EMPOWER STAGE IN JULY ****
See what it’s like from the “big stage” at one of our events – here I was being recognized for having earned over $150,000 online!
The company recognizes not only top producers online, but newbies who have just made their first sale. It’s really wild to see 95% of the crowd get the recognition they deserve!
Towards the end of the Denver event, I got a shocking phone call.
A nearly life long friend, who was only 35 years old, had just passed. A quick conversation with my wife back in Texas and we’d made a decision to get out to California right away to be with family and friends for the service.
I can’t describe in words how good it felt to be able to make a snap decision like that. In the moment, we knew we needed to get to California right away. Even though it was about a $3500 trip for our family to get there (and stay for 11 days), cash flow had continued to increase, and money wasn’t an issue.
Here’s a picture of the impromptu family reunion that came together around our good friend passing:
Yep, big family 🙂
I’ve got 4 brothers, and 4 sisters…and I’m the geezer in the bunch. At 36 years old, I’m first born. If we had 39 hours right now, I’d take you through tons of history that would help you understand what makes me tick…maybe later!
After back to back to back trips (Panama, 1 down day, Denver, 1 down day, California..), we were ready to LOUNGE.
We spent the remainder of August decompressing…and prepping for a wild September!
The first weekend in September brought our private team event (Extreme Team) in Nashville, TN. This event marked my first time being on stage as a trainer!
In the weeks leading up to this big event (350 tickets, sold out fast), my emotions were all over the map. I was excited, nervous, and scared to death all at the same time!
The drive to Nashville from Austin was nice. We took our time, stayed in nice hotels along the way, did plenty of sightseeing…here we are crossing over from Arkansas into Memphis, TN:
*** VID OF US CROSSING INTO MEMPHIS TN ***
Eventually we made it to our venue for this event…the Gaylord Opryland Resort & Convention Center:
It was our first time here…and holy cow. This pic was taken from a balcony in the Atrium area of the resort. There were 4-5 other areas under the roof as big or bigger than this!!
It was an amazing weekend – my training spot was very well received, and as usual…I came back having learned a thing or 3 that I could immediately implement in my business.
Check out this promo video our team commissioned from this event:
*** PROMO VID ***
Here’s some of the feedback I got after my speaking slot:
After this great event wrapped up, we went back into “exploration” mode and decided to lolligag our way through some of the sights in Nashville, Memphis, Mississippi, Lousiana…
This extended and leisurely road trip was a great way to cap off our 1 year anniversary with Empower Network. We did several excursions, guided tours, stayed in historic hotels, ate at one-of-a-kind historic restaurants…it was amazing.
Great memories for all of us. Living time freedom, flexibility, financial freedom…
All because of a decision I made on September 25th, 2012…to buy a $25 course on Monetized Blogging.
Here’s the part where I tell you that if you have any interest at all in doing something online…whether that’s kicking off a big time business (like I’ve done), or just playing with the idea of hobby level blogging, there’s a home for you here.
Take a few minutes to see what I saw the day I made my decision – betcha you won’t be able to resist 🙂
Thanks for reading…we’ll see ya “around” online!
Kristian, Kristin, Kole & Karter!
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