Donna Cicotte

I grew up in a family whose passion was the car business. It's what everybody did - grandparents, parents, step-parents...so it was a natural that I started buying and selling cars before I even had a drivers license.

I also grew up in a family that believed that if you wanted something, you had to work for it - there were no free rides. So, when it came time to go to college, I did what I knew how to do, and I put myself through college with a used car lot. It was a lot of work, but a lot of fun, too - and probably a better education than I received in college pursuing a degree in English.

After college, I continued zooming through life doing Mach 3 with my hair on fire...and that's when I met my husband. My husband grew up in an environment that was 180 degrees different from the one in which I grew up, and he was concerned that if I didn't slow down, I was going to burn out. (I thought he was crazy. And lazy!)

We got married and Saul (my husband) convinced me to take some time off so that we could do some traveling before we settled in to raise a family. We spent months traveling through Central America, and more months traveling by bicycle in the U.S. and Canada. And while it took some getting used to for me, I came to love it.

In 2004, on a bike trip from Massachusetts to Honduras, we picked up another traveler (what they say about Virginia...that it's for lovers...is true!)

Our first child was born in August of 1995 and THAT changed everything for me. I no longer wanted to be outside of our home doing Mach 3 with my hair on fire - I wanted to be home raising our son to be a citizen of the world, a good steward of our planet. I wanted to spend every minute with him because I knew it would be all too soon before he was grown and off doing his own thing; every minute with him was precious.

Our family grew with the birth of another baby boy in October of 1997. My commitment to being a stay at home mom had doubled! And I now knew I wanted to homeschool my children as well.

In 1999, we put a bow on the whole thing (as John (J.J.) Jackson likes to say), with the birth of our daughter.

I was in heaven...except for one thing. Where I had been used to earning my own money, contributing to the household income, and having enough resources to do what I wanted to do when I wanted to do it, I now found myself raising a growing family on a single paycheck, and to quote a popular CW song, there was frequently "too much month at the end of the money."

Statistically, the average American family is only one paycheck away from financial disaster...literally, one paycheck away from bankruptcy. I felt that. I lived that. And I wanted to change that. I wanted to change it for us, and for other families who wanted the freedom to raise their children as they longed to do. I wanted to find a way to profoundly impact the lives of families - parents and kids - the fabric of all societies.

I tried all sorts of things to generate an income from home: designer sewing, hand painting tourist shirts for sale on the beaches of Florida, a new company called Nu Skin (!), making ear candles - I even caved to the fear of no money and went back into the car business - with disastrous results for our family.

In 2005, I responded to a magnetic ad that was stuck to the back of a travel trailer somewhere in the state of Florida. And February 17, 2005 was the beginning of my journey in the home based business arena.

It took a lot of courage and our entire tax refund for me to get started with this direct selling company, but I was determined to stay home with my children while being able to help out financially. I had no "team" to work with (I didn't even know that such a thing existed!), no contact with other marketers, it was just me and a website and white-knuckled determination, and it was rough.

I plugged in to all of the training that I could find, I sat in on every training call and took notes, I used every resource that I had available to me, and while I spent some tearful nights in my husband's arms, frustrated and afraid, his faith in me and my desire to provide the kind of life for ourselves and our children that we were committed to, helped me to push on.

On May 3rd, 2005, I made my first sale, and I knew that if I could do it once, I could do it over and over again. I went on to make 10 more sales before that month was out, which generated a 5-figure income! And I continued to do that, month in, month out.

That was the beginning of a journey that would lead me to co-found (with three other great women) a marketing and training platform that we used to help lead thousands in our company to success. It led me to become a well-respected prospecting trainer, reaching out to thousands in multiple companies with "Prospecting 101," it led me to co-host training seminars for our team, and when I left my first company and moved over to Network Marketing, I was able to quickly achieve recognition for providing outstanding training and for attaining the milestones that are rewarded in Network Marketing companies.

But, I wasn't happy. Yes, I was helping people physically and helping some people financially, but I couldn't help enough other people to achieve the level of financial success that would profoundly impact their families.

I knew there had to be another way to help families to generate a real income from home that wouldn't require them to cold call, or to pitch family and friends over and over again, that wouldn't require them to stock product or host parties or any of the other things that they didn't want to do. (And keep in mind, it wasn't that they didn't want to work to achieve their goals - people are willing to work - they just didn't want to do it the traditional, old-school MLM way.)

Frustrated and disheartened, I turned to the Internet and online marketing as a potential means for families to generate a real income from home, and I set out to learn everything I could, with the goal of being able to teach others to do the same.

What I found is that there's so much information out there that "overwhelm" will stop most folks in their tracks. I also found that for many, doing it on their own would require more technical skill than most folks have. And, I found that to do it right (especially if you need web designers and copywriters), can take lots of money - something that most folks don't have, right?

I was just about to throw in the towel when I came across something that profoundly impacted MY family. And that's when I realized that I had found it! This was what I had been looking for - this was the key to connecting A to B all the way to Z. And it WOULD impact families profoundly, just as it had impacted mine!

Now, I'm a woman on a mission - a homeschooling mother of 3 with a passion to help other families to live life by design, not by necessity. Finally, if I can do it, you can too!

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