Since 1997 my husband and I have owned a small family business but have never considered making it our primary source of income as we always had the security of his well-paying job. That so-called security proved to be more illusionary than we had seriously considered. Reality came crashing in when my husband’s employer lost an important contract, and subsequently he was laid-off from his job after 15 years of steady employment. Fortunately he was unemployed for only a month before finding a new job that paid him within the same salary range. That solved the income problem for the moment, but things were not the same. With the new job came the necessity of frequent business travel. His frequent jet hopping across the country was taking a toll on all of us, especially him. We knew we had to make changes. We needed to find a way to get him off the road and back living at home where he belonged. We needed more income. Enough to replace his current salary and we also needed greater income diversity so we would not have all our eggs in one basket so to speak.

Since we already had an ongoing small business, it seemed the path of least resistance would be to try and build the existing business up to the point that we could meet our income needs. In our family we have an inside joke; we call what we do “the mission”. Simply put, the mission is to find new and creative ways to leverage the power of the Internet to earn income and never be dependent again on a job that could disappear over night. The nuts and bolts of the mission means not just putting our existing business online, but also starting new types of businesses, and exploring new ways to try and tap into the vast stream of opportunity, security, and freedom that only the Internet can provide.

When I told my husband that I was fully onboard with what he wanted to do, he was so excited he couldn’t get the words out fast enough, he blurted out: “you need to know the business and all it encompasses, everything, we are putting it all on-line, you need to learn ‘internet marketing’, and ‘keyword research’ and the kids, the kids need to be doing this too!”

I thought I was pretty savvy just knowing how to do e-mail and basic Google searches but boy was I in for a shock, I had a lot to learn. It’s a big learning curve but we are getting better and better at this. The kids are onboard too and seem to take to it naturally. The fact that they now realize that they can make pretty good money is a great incentive to them; they love being on “the mission”.

Here is the thing that makes the Internet so powerful: Instead of being limited to selling products in our local market, we now sell our products all over the US using keyword optimization to help people find us and our products. Since more and more of our income is being generated from different sources, we are gaining not only a greater stream of income overall, but more importantly we are gaining income security. We are becoming layoff and recession proof. The goal of the mission is now well within sight.

If you would like to duplicate some of what we have done and are doing, I have some tips to share with you that could help:


• Get into a small business, any business that you truly have a passion for.

• Keep in mind that you need to figure out a way to make it work over the Internet. Choose your products and market accordingly. This is what makes it possible to enjoy a very flexible schedule, and even work from home if you so desire.

• If you are going to sell physical products, you need to sell unique products that are hard to obtain from other sources. You can’t compete against the likes of Walmart. You have to cater to what is called a ‘nitche market’. Put simply it’s a group of people with similar interests who are not being properly served by all the other merchants.

• Keep the physical end of your business as simple as possible, Keep costs and overhead low.

• Just like any traditional business you need to be fully legal. Register your business. Obtain all the necessary permits, tax id etc.

• Sell only quality products and / or services and stand behind everything you sell with a very strong guarantee.

• Provide good customer service, be responsive.

• And finally, start out small, reach a realistic and measurable goal and then keep setting more ambitious goals as you go along. Remember, every race that has ever been won has started with one small first step. Good luck on your mission!