About

The Dream

“All men dream, but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds, wake in the day to find that is was vanity; but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act on their dreams with open eyes, to make them possible.” – T.E. Lawrence

The Introduction

Hello, my name is a Richard Matthews, I am the creator and author of this site. My wife Karen is the co-author and editor.

If you are anything like us you love your family and hate your job. You wish you could flip-flop the amount of time you must spend at work with the amount of time you get to spend with your family. I know I would and that’s the reason we created MonetizeMyLife. I was so sick and tired of giving the best hours of my life to some unfeeling corporation and giving the left overs to my wife, child to be, and friends. It’s frustrating and it’s what has given my wife and I the passion to start a home-based internet business and share everything we have and are learning right here. We want to meet, network, and give back to other new entrepreneurs who are in the same situation we’ve been struggling with. Hopefully our story will inspire you to discover a better alternative to the drudgery and time-consuption of a traditional 9-5 and give you the hope and tools to start your own business and work from home. You can be your own boss, make money online, and begin to live your life by your priorities instead of your obligations. But before we get into all of that let me just tell you a little more about us…

The Partnership

Karen’s passion for life, ability to dream, and willingness to do what it takes make her an awesome partner in business and a wonderful work at home mom (wahm).  She grew up in what most would consider poverty, though if you asked her, she was blessed beyond measure. Her parents never had a new car or even a good used one. They never moved into a new home.  Going out to eat only occurred when some extraordinary accomplishment happened that needed celebration – and that was usually at Pizza Hut or McDonald’s.  I, on the other hand, grew up in upper-midle class america. I’ve always lived in nice homes, my parents always drove nice cars, and going out to eat at fancy restaurants was taken for granted. We were at seemingly opposite ends of the social spectrums, but a common school and common dreams brought us together. We met many years ago during my freshman year of college and waited to fall in love for 5 years which incidentally was after we were engaged (long story – be sure to check out Karen’s Squidoo lens about it here).

The Promise

When we married, I promised my wife that she could be a stay-at-home mom if that’s what she wanted. So far, I’ve been good on that promise and with our first child on the way, that’s important. But the cost of that promise has been great. Two jobs for me and 60-80+ hours a week. Forty of those hours were over the weekend working several twenty-four hour shifts in a row. It sucked, for both of us. I was spending the best hours of my life with other people’s spouses, making other people wealthy off of my work and coming home tired, leaving nothing but scraps and left over for my wife. That is not at all what I imagined married life would be like. I was supposed to be sharing my life with the woman of my dreams, not wasting my life away at some job. Also, with a child on the way, the statistic that the average American father spends less than 37 seconds a day with his child was looming over my head. If I didn’t do something soon, I’d be a father just like that. I vowed that would NOT be the case.

The Problem

I had been involved with the home-based business industry for many years at this point in my life and although I was crazy committed and very hard working, I hadn’t ever had much success. That’s not for lack of trying though. I had known since I was a little boy that I wanted to be a business owner because that’s the only way I knew that I could gain control over my time and my income, thus getting to live a life based on my priorities and not my obligations. I was involved with a great company and learned a ton about leadership, team building, and sales; but I still struggled to create a good quality team or consistent sales. I had spent years chasing people, being freakishly excited about products and opportunity, and really had nothing to show for it. When I married Karen, the state of my home-based business was a sad one. I was tired of getting lack luster results and knew from my training in leadership that continuing to do what wasn’t working was insanity. I had to do something different and began researching ideas online.  What I found amazed me.

The Solution

I learned about the concepts of attraction and “my story” marketing. Also, I learned that with proper marketing, one could create any kind of lifestyle they wanted with any product or opportunity to which they had access or ability to create. It was an incredible discovery.  My method of marketing, person to person sales, was simply ineffective. Over 99% of the people I was talking to weren’t interested in what I had to offer so I was wasting my time with them.  I’ve discovered that instead of personally sifting and sorting through thousands of people to find those one or two people who are really interested in what I have to offer, I can set up a system that does all of that sifting and sorting for me. I’ve learned methods that allow us to have those who are actively looking for what we are offering… FIND US!! No more chasing, no more time wasting!! Now the only people that I have to talk to are the ones who are already interested and really want to talk to me.

The Vision

What a change, I talked to my wife about these ideas and she agreed that we would work together to become master marketers so that we could take the education that business and life has given us and help create an environment where others could achieve the success they needed in order to get out of their 9-5’s and back at home with their families. We have a vision to help 100 people become job optional by 2012 and it’s out of that vision that the MonetizeMyLife concept was born. The concept is simple and powerful, but it requires a little explaining to fully understand. So let’s go to it.

The Definition

MonetizeMyLife. What does that even mean? How does it affect my life? Simple. We are going to give you the power to exercise and manipulate wealth. Here, let’s break it down.

Monetize – Adapt to the Use of Money.

• Adapt – make suitable for a new use or purpose;
• Use – the power to exercise or manipulate something;
• Money – the assets, property, and resources owned by someone or something (ie-wealth);

My – That’s simple – we are talking about you.

Life – Life is harder to define; but the simplest idea is that you have a collection of experiences that make up the stories you tell. Those stories when put together as a cohesive whole are your life.

So, MonetizeMyLife will help you to make your life suitable for a new purpose; the purpose of gaining the power to excise and manipulate wealth and, in so doing, give you the option of writing new experiences into your story that would have otherwise been impossible. We are going to hand you the keys to real financial freedom if you will but take them and act.

Thanks For Stopping By,

Richard & Karen Matthews