Did you know it’s possible to create a business around just being you and the things you are most passionate about?

I remember when my teachers asked me to think about what I might want to study when going to university, because they told us, "you’re going to be studying for a long time, you should choose something that you're really interested in".

At the time, little did I realise, it would be close but not quite close enough.

I studied journalism, public and media relations thinking that because I loved English and writing that would be the right degree for me.

Now, when I look back I can see how flawed that whole process is. But because I have that degree, I can also draw upon everything I learnt.

Nothing in your background or your past is a waste.

It was all leading you to this place.

It was building you toward what you really want.

The difference now is that you are thinking more about what you really want against a background of that wasn’t really what I wanted.

You’ve just got to make the fundamental shift which is less thinking about what you don’t really want and more manifesting what you really want.

Along this journey, what I have appreciated the most, is getting out of my comfort zone, and in doing so I have learnt a lot about what is me and what is not me.

By letting go of the parts of me that diminish my own listening of myself, I have come to trust myself and tell myself that "yes, you can have what you really want, through finding yourself".

Being myself and making money from being myself - how exactly is this possible?

Let me tell you how. Your journey is unique. When you get really clear on who you are, your purpose in life, everything starts to materialise.

The more you work on you, the more you get to become much more insightful and recognise what is intuition and what is not.

At the same time you also need a platform to take action, a platform to learn, a platform to grow, a platform to share your strengths and skillsets, just as you are, right now.

The who that you are right now has a bucket load of value to provide. You could be someone who is already in a work or business environment delivering coaching to grow the people you are leading. You could be someone who is so inspired to make a difference in your communities, you are already up to stuff creating projects, collaborating with the people in your life. You want more time to do the things you love, and less time doing the things you don't love.

Learning is the fundamental foundation of all organisations and businesses. If you’re not someone who is great at learning, you have to be someone who learns through teaching others, because one way or another, we are always learning. It's inescapable, learning gives us access to almost anything and everything we desire.

My kids are learning sign language, my sister is learning swing dance, my brother learns to draw, my dad learns guitar, and my mum and I are learning the art of creating an online business from scratch, monetising our passions through digital and affiliate marketing.

The skill of passing on the learning is what makes you a leader. This skillset is exactly the reason you will go on to be able to create a business and much more around just being you.

Start here start now.

You might never know who you meet along this journey called life, which interactions will make the most difference to you?

In this post I want to share with you that I found a community of people equally travelling the same learning and online business journey.

Before I found the learning platform I share through out this site, I had been pondering about people who operate from collaboration versus people who operate from competition. It was innately within me to know the power of collaboration but I struggled with how it showed up in my life and work environments. Mostly, it showed up as competition, and often I would reflect upon it later to realise this.

I was probably less then 12 years of age when I connected different concepts but at the time I didn’t know how to communicate it. I wondered why if we were such a big family (my dad is one of ten and my mum one of six), we all had these specific yet different skill sets, why we didn’t just create one big company and all work together?

I parked that thought for many years after working, getting work experience my parents would call it, getting another job etc

This year, through discovering the learning platform, my vision is being realised and coming to fruition. But the family I thought I would be creating this with is not my extended family but my immediate family and the new community I now embrace as my broader family.

I used to yearn for a mentor or coach I could trust. Trust is so important. I now have multiple mentors and coaches and feel I am in a safe space to share the things that I feel stopped by and able to get freedom and access to keep moving my life and businesses I’m creating forward.

What is so unique about the community is that we all have our own unique experiences to share, we can generate ideas together, we can help piece together the pieces of the puzzle of creating our own niche businesses, seeing different things and sharing things we learn or things we can see are possible.

But it’s not just limited to our online businesses either. We are genuinely there for one another like your family would be for you, and this is people who live right across the globe. Their relatedness and rapport comes from knowing from within: "I’ve been exactly where you’ve been and although I don’t know quite your specific circumstances; I get you".

Having this kind of support network when running our bricks and mortars for the past twenty five years would have made such a difference. But it is never too late. Now we get to share our milestones, share our best practices, warn others of the pitfalls, warn others to be prepared to learn, to get themselves out of their comfort zones and to adapt.

The real beauty of connection is being brave enough to say hi first, being brave enough to know you have no idea the difference this human being in front of you will make to your life. Being brave enough to trust yourself to reach out and connect. Then it’s about listening for the gold, listening for compassion, listening for the possibility in another.

What can arise from one connection is so much. You are learning about another person, but you are learning so much about yourself too. Especially if the connection and your communication is authentic, real, honest and raw. Imagine you could be your real true self always with every single person in your life?

This real true self is capable of so much more than what it thinks it is. Through collaboration and connection, you multiply the possibilities. What an amazing opportunity to live life in this time and place.

We have these gateways to one another and when used for higher purposes and for good, mobile phones, laptops, computers are just ways for us to genuinely connect.

My ancestors took much longer to write a message and send it and for that message to be received and impact a community might take years upon years. This is the opportunity of our time, just as I’m doing now, I can share a message and it will reach people in milliseconds.

If I want to, I can connect with anyone from my community, it’s not just a static message though, it’s interactive, it’s heartfelt, it’s genuine, it’s real.

I have participated in so many different self development pathways and platforms and what was missing was accountability for one another.

What I mean is that literally everyone is committed to everyone else’s success. We almost want to help others more than ourselves. Why? Because when we help others, we get to see what we’re really made of, and that’s the access to discovering who we really are in the world.

Although reaching out and connecting will feel surreal at first, you’ll pull your walls down, you’ll be yourself, you’ll realise for far too long you’ve had this mask or act and you’ll drop it. You’ll know you’ve arrived home.

That’s the opportunity of connection.

It’s the year 1995.

Mum and dad launched our first family business.

A fish and chip shop - one window of fish and chips and the other window with Indonesian dishes.

Back then, sales and marketing was simply “sales and marketing”.

Our takeaway food shop was located in a major shopping centre.

The shopping centre promoted itself to bring customers in. They also helped us with promoting our “offers”.

We had to compete with hundreds of other shops in the centre to get their attention and buy something from us.

What were our “offers”?

Our offers were special deals. We would quickly brainstorm. Print, snip and either letter box dropped or sat on our front counter. The offers were vouchers stating they could be claimed within a limited time. The customer would be tempted to bring back the voucher for presentation, happy to be getting a really good deal.

We could count the number of offers/vouchers used - as customers returned them. We would know how popular or not the offer was.

We paid an exorbitant amount of rent, we could barely cover the costs of running that business.

I was 15 at the time went to school, did my homework when I could and spent every ‘spare’ moment, working in the shop, helping Mum and Dad.

Fast forward to 2020.

We have access to a multitude of platforms and ways we can put our 'offers' in front of our ideal customer.

The problem isn’t the access to the number of ways. The problem for most entrepreneurs and those starting out with an online business, well really any business is "where do I start?"

Logically and in the beginning for our restaurant, Mamaku Street Food, Mum and Dad relied on me to launch our online presence.I did all their marketing, I was the go to in the family for everything "marketing". I had a degree and one time, I designed a wine bottle label as part of my degree. Mum and dad helped me at the time and so that's how I became the "go to".

In the beginning, being new was the reason customers would come and find us and try us out. Which at first was a great strategy. My sister is an interior designer and with the small budget mum and dad and my brother had, they furiously moved from imagination to creation of the cosy little corner shop in CLAYFIELD as it is now known.

But a few years on and subletting the restaurant to another family. Our helping hand turned awry. And the restaurant landed back in the family’s hands albeit with 12 months of back rent.

But for us, we battled on as we always have, seeking out the question: "what is the life lesson for our family? Will we ever learn? Why are we so trusting and generous? When will the time come where we stop working hard all the days of our lives?"

And "do we stop believing in the power of what’s possible? Or do we keep believing?" We started to build from scratch our business and it’s following with a slight name change, restoring an online presence. But it was literally like we were starting all over again.

During this time, my mum found a digital marketing learning platform which had opened her mind to the opportunity of online business. She shared this with me but I shook it off at the time.

She spent 18 months talking to me about affiliate marketing and at the time I was listening to her but not really hearing her.

What is affiliate marketing?

In a nutshell (let me out), it’s referral marketing.

It’s the promotion of another company’s products and or services, and the receipt of a commission in return.

My mum, husband and I have all worked in real estate in the past. It’s essentially no different to working with and for a client to sell their home or properties and receiving a commission in return.

Being an ex banker and home lending manager, it’s also no different to the writing of a home loan, similar to the way a mortgage broker will write a home loan for their client and get paid a trailing commission from the respective banking institution for writing one of their products.

You’re not just handed the commission on a platter though, are you? There is a mutual understanding that you are being rewarded for your hard yards, your marketing ability and ability to attract a new customer, or repeat custom with an existing client.

What is your ideal customer for the property? How will you write up the property description to appeal to your ideal customer? What channels will you use to promote the property? How will you monitor the effectiveness, essentially to know if you are on the right track? How will you keep communication channels open for both your prospective buyers and your seller? How will you get to know what your buyer wants and identify their buying signals?

In the case of writing a home loan, you are responsible for understanding what your customer wants, what’s important to them and how you’ll set them up for success by matching them up with the right bank and the right loan to suit their particular needs. It’s a long term relationship if you get it right. 30 years in fact.

When it comes to creating a business online, or even enhancing your online presence for a bricks and mortar business, understanding the mechanics of affiliate marketing can get you a leg up on the competition and on all kinds of marketing.

And in February 2020, I had the epiphany my Mum had been waiting for which was to connect the dots between the opportunity of the learning platform and our bricks and mortar and my passion for writing.

I realised that what the learning platform provided was much more than affiliate marketing but training around being effective in the way you tell your story, build your list, promote your products/offers, and tell more of your story.

What was even more amazing about the training was how it shines the light on the sheer volume of opportunities available online.

I soon learnt there were many options and many affiliate pathways. But most channels won’t tell you how to be effective. They tell you, yes you can be an affiliate for us, give you a personalised link and off you go.

The opportunity of a platform like mentors, is you receive tailored guidance on the pathways and channels that will most suit you and your talents, skills, knowledge and abilities.

For me, it’s like this you can get a casual pass to the gym. You can buy a 7 day membership to the gym. You can buy a yearly gym membership. Then if you are someone who knows exactly what you want and when you want it, you’ll get a personal trainer, who will tailor the way you use the gym, maximising your time at the gym and showing you how not to hurt yourself, how to do the exercises correctly etc.

The mentors platform is a membership base and there are a number of ways you can get started on learning about everything related to maximising the digital footprint of your online business even if you don’t yet have a business or dont know where to get started.

The unexpected surprise with this platform is its community of like-minded driven and committed individuals who are all at different parts of their own journeys, some leveraging affiliate marketing while others focus on their own niche markets. All give back to the community learning, doing and teaching things they learn along the way. What that provides is an honest, raw, real, authentic space, and people growing within that space to realise their own potential.