So I want to talk about home business ideas, Gen X and sobriety. So welcome to this channel. Even if you’re not a Gen X, you can get some value out of this because I’m going to teach how to work from home, make money from home, which is the best time in the world to work from home with all this craziness in the world.
And Wow, man, if you’re in your 40s, you probably had a wild ride already. I’ll tell you a little bit about my story, my life starting in 97. I was 25. I just got out of Job Corps. I was doing the merchant marine program down on the coast of Oregon and working on tugboats learning how to be a merchant seaman.
I did that for nine months and then I was like, screw this man. I’m an artist. I’m a writer. I don’t need to do this. So I’m gonna go back to my hometown, I was actually doing great physically, mentally and Job Corps, you know, because of the structure and I was sober.
I got in shape, you know, I was only 25. So it was pretty easy to get in shape. In fact, I wasn’t overweight in my 20s. But anyways, I got back to the hometown, and I didn’t have a place to stay. I just became friends with my parents again. We had a rocky ride.
I went through some hard times with them in my early 20s. I was going through an identity crisis. I yelled at them and said that they adopted me because they’re just thinking totally different than I was and I couldn’t accept it.
I couldn’t accept my dad’s strictness and rules and we butted heads from the age of 14 to the time he kicked me out when I was 18 we did not get along.
I’m 25 I just made amends with my parents, which felt really good because having all that resentment and regret, and holding on to grudges just eats you alive, and especially your own parents. So when I came back from Job Corps, they’re like, you can’t be homeless. We’ll set you up in a little trailer. And I was like, cool, all right, only a 15 foot trailer, but like I said, I wanted to be a writer and an artist, and that’s why I quit Job Corps. I didn’t want to be a grease monkey, so to speak. I didn’t want to be a tugboat mechanic, to be out at sea for six weeks at a time.
So the little trailer was perfect because I set up this old fashioned typewriter and I drank tea and I ate cinnamon toast and I typed at night and I would go ride my Schwinn cruiser bike around town. I felt really free. And then about a month into it, my neighbors came over – one neighbor in particular was a little different. I was like, Wow, what’s up with that guy? Because he would ride by on his bicycle with these water jugs because he’d go down to the business that I live next to and fill up his filtered water pitcher, and then he would ride past me again.
Finally he introduced himself and he was just different. He was probably like, 10 years older than me, just a skinny guy, curly hair, kind of frizzy hair and dark glasses. You couldn’t see his eyes and had a black hat on. And I just I just knew that he was off. But in a good way, kind of like One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, and I was like this is going to be brilliant. I’m gonna write about this guy and he took me over to his commune. People were drinking by this fire pit and they started to scream up at the sky, and I was like, these are my kind of people!
You know, I always was fascinated with schizophrenia, and stuff like that and these guys were definitely on Social Security Disability for many different reasons, and in my 20s, that was cool, because I was like, these guys are awesome. I’m gonna have a lot of different things to write about hanging out with these guys.
So I started to drink again and I got really bad. This is in the late 90s, and then numetal came out, like Korn and limp bizkit and Linkin Park. So I used to drive these guys around in my Honda Prelude, and we had would blare Limp Bizkit in the car, drinking and driving and I even was a deaf guy that lived in the commune and he was riding with us and he can’t hear anything, but he’s screaming because he’s drunk having a great time. He is an old Haight Ashbury hobo, and it was just a blast. It was hilarious. Those guys were insane.
But what happened was, I started drinking more than them and scaring them. And the first friend I talked to you about, he’d come over the next day after a big night drinking and he would say, Erik, you went off, you’re doing some crazy weird stuff, man. Your lips were moving on their own. Like they’re their own person, man. When I would get wasted my lips would just come alive. Maybe they’re like my balancing for me, you know, cuz I was wobbling and my lips would kind of try to get me back balanced.
He’s like, Man, you got on the ground, you’re pounding the floor, I was really scared. And so eventually I became just a drunk, and I stopped writing; stopped playing drums, stopped playing music. The only thing I did was drink. And I started to drink a lot. And then I became a caregiver for a living and I was just doing that two days a week so I could literally get wasted all week long.
I would go into work to caregive and I would be trembling, I would be coming off alcohol. I would try to drink a little before work and then just eat some toothpaste so they couldn’t smell it. Horrible. Music wasn’t fun anymore. I stopped writing a long time ago. So I was getting bad. And people were telling me I was gonna die. And I kept going. In fact, I had a heart attack when I was 32. But I kept drinking until I was 36.
I finally stopped, and I started to pick up the music again, and the writing and all of my creative juices started to flow back, and I thought, this is great. I found internet marketing, and everyone was getting into ebooks. This is during the ebook craze. Everyone was writing a memoir, and uploading it to Amazon, to the Kindle publishing. It was pretty simple. You just had to write everything and save in word doc. Then you’d upload it to your dashboard as a Kindle publisher, and I wrote a memoir, because I got sober. So my first book was called the drunk. It was just a memoir. It’s pretty easy to write because it’s your story. And I started getting sales. It was really fascinating. I couldn’t believe it. I started to make money around the clock. It’s like $1 here, dollar there.
But what was cool was I was getting book sales in Italy, and other countries. I just thought that it was fascinating that someone would buy something that I made. So that was 2012 but before that, I created a rock album in 2011 and I uploaded that to tunecore which was a digital distribution platform that released it on Amazon and iTunes and all these other places. And I sold an mp3 in Japan and that’s what turned me on to selling stuff overnight because I made money while I slept.
I was like, wow, I just sold an mp3 in Japan. You know, I made like 40 cents, but it was still really awesome to see a little bit of profit in my dashboard. And then the book came out, I wrote the book in 2012 and then 2013, I started to do affiliate marketing. I joined Clickbank, which is a marketplace for all these digital products that you can promote. You get a commission when someone buys it from you.
So I started promoting a digital product for kindle writers. It was right up my alley. I already had a lot of followers on Twitter who wrote ebooks. And the digital product aligned with them perfectly because it was software that spied on your Kindle competition, and that summer I sold $2,000 worth just by tweeting it on my Twitter. I had like 80,000 people following me on Twitter. And I’m not saying I’m special. I just followed a lot of people back then you could follow like 500 people a day, and you wouldn’t get suspended.
But I was like, Oh, this is great, but I’m only getting one time sales. Then in 2014, I started hearing about this term called network marketing. I was like, what’s this all about? Then I found out that the leaders were making like $100,000 a month or more – some of them were making half a million a month. How is that possible?
I dove into it more and realized that the leaders were making a little bit of commission from a lot of people on their team. So, whenever someone ordered in the organization or recruited someone, you got a little commission, and these leaders had, you know, 5000 to 20,000 people on their team.
So I was like, this is what I want, because you got a residual income check every month from all the activity in your organization. I just had to build an organization which is gonna be hard to do because I didn’t have any friends left. They all left with the drinking. So I was like, how am I going to do network marketing? It’s for extroverts. It’s for social junkies. It’s for Facebook people that have 3000 friends, I was like, Alright, well, I’m gonna just start doing YouTube because that’s free, and if I do enough videos, people will start to sign up with me.
Then I started blogging because the MLM trainers that I were watching all had blogs. After about two years of MLM blogging, I had 200 articles, maybe 200 videos at that time.
Then I finally got my first leader from my blog article, who joined because he read the best MLM companies of 2014 – one of my first articles that became popular. I actually got a team out of Nigeria, I got a leader from Nigeria, he started building a team under me. Then I got a leader from the Philippines, all from that one article.
Later on I found out it was called attraction marketing where you attract people to you with your content. It’s also called content marketing. So guys, I don’t have any special skills. The only thing I did was I started creating videos like this. I started writing articles, the articles that did the best were company reviews, and you see them all over the place. I’m not saying you have to do company reviews. It’s very competitive. But what you want to do is find your own niche and tell your story. And who do you want to help?
You know, this video is for Gen X – people who were born from 1965 to 1980. But anyone can watch this because the principles are the same. I’m just gearing it towards Gen X because I’m Gen X. And I want to talk about, you know, my life back in the 90s and early 20s.
I remember in 1990 my dad kicked me out. Actually, the day I turned 18 he was like you’re out of here. So, I was homeless. I was literally living on friend’s floors in their basement. I had my drum set and then we started experimenting with drugs and got pretty trippy there for a while and we’re listening to Soundgarden and Jane’s Addiction.
My first concert was the very first Lollapalooza out in enumclaw, Washington, which is outside of Seattle. Jane’s Addiction we’re just crazy. They’re wild. They’re different. They were melodic, they’re heavy. They sounded different than anything else. That was 1990. I remember going into a pizza joint, getting a slice of pizza and Jane’s Addiction was playing. It was the song Stop on ritual de lo habitual and it blew me away. It was like a hot summer day. It was like 140 in that pizza place.
Jane’s Addiction was blaring and there’s just this energy in the air and I pinched myself for the first two months that I got kicked out of the house because I wasn’t controlled anymore by my dad.
I am a control freak today. I’m just a mini version of my dad, and, you know two control freaks in one house isn’t good. I was bullheaded, and my whole M/O was to withdraw love from anyone who hurt me. So I basically became a recluse alcoholic, and didn’t like people – I had social anxiety around people. I used alcohol to try to get some liquid courage up.
Music was my number one lover. And I remember Jane’s Addiction, just playing that song and the fiery summer and I had all of my freedom. And I was doing these psychotropic drugs and exploring consciousness and reading Aldous Huxley. You know, the doors of perception and all these trippy Zen philosophers and then I lived in a van sleeping in a van down by the river.
So life was crazy. Then in the early 2000s it was Linkin Park and Korn and the whole numetal scene and driving around in my Honda with those guys and just being crazy, and then it turned against me. The alcohol turned against me. It didn’t work anymore. I was destroying myself fast. I think whatever you laser focus on you can make it grow. You could focus on negative stuff and that will grow or you focus on positive stuff and that will grow.
So what do you want to do? What can you talk about all day long that excites you, I’m sure you can pair that up with a product. And what you do is you just start doing videos like this and you just talk, you don’t have to hype up your products or anything. You just talk about what you’re doing, and what’s working for you. And then you could have a blog page or something like that or a product and put the link under every video.
Eventually you do enough videos, you’ll get good at it. Don’t worry about it. You don’t have to know anything. Just start talking. Just pretend your phone is one of your friends and you’re going for a walk. Let’s just go for a walk right now. I’m not scared of the phone because I know I can delete this video. You can do it.
I don’t want you to delete it. In fact, the most raw and vulnerable videos do the best on torrents and YouTube. So be open. I think the longer the video is, the more you open your heart up too. So really start exploring that and explore the pauses. You don’t have to keep talking so fast. You know, even if you’re nervous, it’s okay you can stop. Just let nature talk to you. And then talk again. You know, pauses are great. They teach you pauses in acting. The pause is what makes everything poignant. Remember that.
So, what do you love? What can you talk about all day long? Do that. Do what you love, and the money will come. It will be a byproduct of what you’re doing. Don’t make it the main focus. If you’re dying for money – If you’re desperate for money, it won’t come. That’s the irony is that when you desperately want it the most, it won’t come. It will hide from you.
But when you relax, and you take a deep breath and you start tapping into your passion and what you love, then you can start creating and when you start getting creative juices flowing, then eventually the income will slowly come in.
You know, what’s funny is that Charles Bukowski, he’s the drunk poet – beautiful poetry, very straightforward. raunchy raw. I don’t like him now because I’m sober. But when I was drinking, he was like a god to me. And he said that when he finally got money it didn’t matter anymore. He said when he finally got money and women, it didn’t matter anymore because he was like 75 or something like that, and he’s just an old dirty man. I mean, it’s like I finally got what I wanted, but it’s too late. I’m 75 and I can’t get it up. I’m pathetic. You know, I’m pooping my pants.
So that’s the irony of money is that, you know, when you finally get it, you don’t really care anymore. But just do what you love because life is too short to be stuck in a cubicle. Life is too short to be stressed about bills. If you have too many credit cards, start cutting them up. Pay them down. Don’t pay them off, they say that you should have like 20% balance on your cards for the best utilization score. So don’t get rid of them, but cut them up so you don’t use them anymore.
Start saving a little money and start investing. I’m starting to save money and food because we don’t know what’s happening in this world. You gotta stockpile stop spending because you can’t rely on anything that you see on the media and they’re censoring left and right it’s not even social media anymore. It’s another news channel. Twitter just gives you what they want you to see. Same with Facebook.
So don’t trust social media. Don’t trust the news. I don’t even watch that stuff right now. This is my news right here. All this all around me. All of this around me is teaching me. This is reality, not the crap on your TV, or your computer screen. So tap into yourself.
So anyways, I’ve been sober for 12 years. I love it. Every single day is a miracle. And so if I were you, I’d tap into a higher power. Gratitude is huge in the universe. It’s right up there with love. Love is a currency. It’s the only currency in heaven. Everything else is man made illusory. It’s an illusion. It comes and goes, it rots and it decays. The only thing that doesn’t decay or rot is love. And that’s the only currency.
So God’s gonna look at what you do and he’s gonna be like, Alright, well, did you love other people? Did you help anyone else? Or did he just try to help yourself? Was it all about you? Or was it about helping others? I’m serious. I’m not trying to go Jesus on you. But love is the only currency and I’ve failed. I was a selfish alcoholic. I was bitter. I was very angry. I was angry. I’m mad.
Were you angry when you were young? Were you getting in fights and getting pissed off and being a rebel? I hurt my parents really bad. I think I still sit with some kind of subtle resentment for doing that even though we made up and we had a great time together – it was beautiful bliss. You know, it was awesome.
When I got sober I’d go over every Sunday and have dinner with my parents. And we’d laugh and talk and hug each other. And then I had this stupid panic attack about two years into sobriety with them at the dinner table. And it made me scared of them. Because you don’t want to go back to the place where you had the panic attack.
It’s like an imprint. You could have a flashback, if you go back to the place that caused the panic attack, you can have a flashback and re-experience it. It’s also called panic disorder. So once you have one panic attack, you could have many more and it causes panic disorder, which means you’re afraid you’re going to have another panic attack.
So after that, the social anxieties formed. I fear the dinner table because that’s where it happened. And I was scared of my parents and it ruined many more years now. I’m working on that. There could be, you know, regret and stuff coming up from all the alcohol and all the anger and rage.
I had a therapist tell me that I had that panic attack because I let my guard down finally, and old emotions were coming out and I couldn’t maintain or keep calm with all those feelings coming out because there was still a lot of bitterness and resentment towards my dad, even though I loved him a lot. We were having dinner together. And I was talking about my ebook sales. And the room just went silent. I felt like I was BS’ing him even though I wasn’t, but I really wanted to make him proud and I was only selling like three ebooks a week or a month, it was pathetic. It was like $8 a month, $30 a month.
And I was trying to brag to him, make him proud of me, and it was just crickets. Then all of a sudden, I turned white and I started sweating. And my dad’s like, are you okay? And I was like, No, I gotta lay down and I felt like I was having another heart attack.
So now when I visit my parents, you know, I told them, I was like, I’m really nervous around you guys and my mom doesn’t really get it. She’s like, why were your parents? And I was like, I got panic disorder. I don’t know. Just roll with it. And my dad’s like, it’s okay, honey. There’s a lot of mental illness in our family, and so he has it. You know, he was like I got it. It made me feel a lot better.
You know, we all want love. And, you know, I thought I was a badass in the 90s. I thought I was tough. I thought I was rebellious. I used to just walk away from relationships like Oh, they don’t mean anything to me and I’m paying for it all now – because love is the only currency. I didn’t have any love in the 90s or early 2000s. I’m still learning self love today. And I’m still trying to learn how to love my wife.
You know, I’m still doing crap. I’m still doing the autistic rocking all day long. You know, it’s a self soothing mechanism that Asperger’s people do autistic people. And so I still have a lot of demons, a lot of skeletons in the closet. But all I can do is just be real and honest. Talk about my feelings and listen to others. I gotta listen to others because people with Asperger’s, they tend to be very self centered because they’re in fight or flight. I get all worked up over nothing.
I go into fight or flight. I’m like, you know, very dramatic. So there’s a therapy called CBT cognitive behavioral therapy. There’s also Act, which is acceptance therapy. And those counselors teach you how to think because your thoughts create your behaviors.
So when I’m thinking that it’s the end of the world, when I get in a fight with my wife, my body is reacting. You know, I get really mad. And I’m in like f you mode. I never want to see you, you know? Because she instantly becomes an enemy or anyone who I think is disrespecting me. I’m like, Alright, that’s it, man. It’s war. And it’s very dramatic. And so it causes a lot of problems in my life.
But if I change my thinking to, oh, they have their own opinions, it’s not just my opinion in this world. There’s other opinions. And I need to listen to every opinion and learn compassion, and look at life through their eyes. That’s empathy, and compassion.
So sociopaths don’t have any of that. Ted Bundy He’s a true narcissist. He only cared about himself. But what fueled him was other people’s attention. And when I think it’s not the death sentence that scared him, he was worried people wouldn’t pay attention to him anymore. That is what scared him more than death was people withdrawing attention from him. And that’s crazy.
If you think about it, people like that are so deprived of love that they learn life without love. They become hard. But deep deep, deep down inside, I think they still want love. Even the most evil people, even though their conscience is seared. I think that’s what they say in the Bible, I heard it somewhere that people sear their conscience to the point where they don’t feel anything anymore. And there’s no turning back. There is a point where you go too far. There’s a point where you go too far and you’re just too evil, you’re gone.
It’s sad that there are people roaming this earth that are byproducts of evil parents, and their grandparents, it’s generational. It’s environmental. And there’s people that have been through crazy stuff. I’m actually pretty sheltered. You know, like I said, I’ve been rocking most of my life listening to music. Yeah, it sucks being recluse sometimes. Life could have been a lot worse.
My parents are still together. They’ve been together for 65 years. They love each other. They have a great system. Great routine together. They laugh but my dad is on meds. And he wanted me to get on meds and I was like no not doing it. I’m not. I was watching this guy named Chris le Sala on YouTube. And he broke down what meds are. He calls it alchemy and the Big Pharma. They perform alchemy on pills just by the manufacturing process. But there’s a satanic alchemy to it. You know, you’ve seen all these crazy side effects on these drug commercials. And yet people still take them.
In fact, Big Pharma is at its record high. It seems like everyone’s on a pill, or pills, but listen to the side effects. It could kill you. It could cause this, it could cause that. And yet people are like, Oh yeah, that’s just they just got to say that. That’s just the disclaimer. It’s like, really? What if I said that to you? What if I had to do like a pop soda pop? And I was like, this could kill you. But here it can help.
Doesn’t that sound insane? And that’s what Big Pharma does. They’re like, well, this could help. But it could kill you. It could cause nausea. It could cause dizziness. It could cause suicidal tendencies. That’s a twisted man. That is twisted. Once this world comes to you. So anyways, if you want to make money from home, click the link. Now I love you guys. Leave a Comment. Do you like these videos? You want me to keep doing them? Am I helping you? Do you want help? What’s working for you? Leave a comment, like and subscribe. Have an awesome day MLMers and network marketers!
