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Replace Your Job with This 6 Figure Work From Home Career

How to Replace Your Job with This 6 Figure Work From Home Career

Deciding to create a work from home career for yourself can mean much more than just the money it provides.

Imagine for a moment if someone you loved became critically ill. Would you be able to support your family, both financially and with the time they needed for proper care?

Earlier this year, Amanda’s life changed in a major way. With her husband seriously ill, Amanda quickly learned the importance of being prepared and having a plan in place to run her business full-time from home.

Find out how Amanda’s work at home career has allowed her to not only make 6 figures a year selling websites to local businesses, but also be the full-time carer she needs to be to support her family.

Watch the video or read the transcript below to see how Amanda has set her business up to run whenever and wherever she needs to be for her family.

If you’re thinking of how to replace your job, check out how Amanda made a Work from Home Career of Selling Local Business Websites…

Matt Raad: Here we are with the beautiful Amanda Steele! Thanks so much for coming along.

Amanda: Hello. I’m coming from sunny Melbourne where we are not in lockdown. Yay!

Matt: That’s a first.

Liz Raad: Yes, for once!

Matt: It is just wonderful to see you, Amanda, and to hear how you’re going. And it is particularly relevant what I just said, isn’t it? About having some friends in this community who can help you out.

The Desire of Something More lead Amanda to her new Work from Home Career making 6-Figures a Year

Matt: Let’s jump straight into your journey. For those of you that don’t know Amanda, she was our Champions cup winner from 6 years ago.

So Amanda, do you do the local business strategy full-time now?

Amanda: Yes. These days I now build and design websites for local Melbourne businesses

Liz: For the people in our community who haven’t heard you or seen you before, where did you start out? What got you onto the Champions program? And what was happening in your life that made you think, “Okay, I need to do something different?”

Amanda: Many years ago, I was a graphic artist (pre-computers) working in ad agencies. I didn’t learn how to use computers until a few years after that. So, I got myself in a few little businesses and then I worked in a school doing marketing and promotions.

I realized I wanted something more, and wanted a work at home career. I wanted to get back into some creative work.

Learning Digital Skills showed Amanda how to Replace her Income from Home..

Amanda: It was around then that we heard about Matt and Liz Raad from eBusiness Institute, and came across your digital skills course. We met you in person and your community. So my hubby and I started the course. It would have been about nine years ago.

Since then, I haven’t looked back. I did all the digital training and felt like I needed to stop working – I wanted a work from home career. So I thought, “What am I going to do? Well, I need to build sites for local business.” I went out and got a couple of clients, and I hadn’t even built a website yet!

And I have been able to build up an award winning Melbourne Web Design Agency.

Matt: Amanda, you have now learned how to replace your job, and you have hit your six figure income goal. And the reason I bring that up is because everyone in our community sees you and how happy you are with your new work from home career.

Look at you – you’re smiling there, you’re happy, you’re super confident, you’re on top of the world and you’ve hit your six figure income goals. You have the best work from home career.

Learn New Digital Skills with Matt and Liz Raad
Amanda speaking on stage with Matt & Liz Raad explaining how she started her Work from Home Career

How a Work from Home Career allowed Amanda to Support her Husband

Matt: But that’s not the full side of the story – are you happy to share with us how life can throw a bit of a curve ball?

Amanda: Yes, life can throw a curve ball!

My husband and I have been married for 34 years. And on New Year’s Eve, he had a stroke when I wasn’t with him. He was supposed to come and meet me at a friend’s house, but he didn’t turn up. At the time I thought, “What’s going on?” I rang him and his speech was all slurry, and I thought, “I think he’s having a stroke.” So I called an ambulance.

He’s now had two brain surgeries, and he’s got an ABI (acquired brain injury) from the stroke.

So, my life has completely changed. But I’m very thankful that I have a work at home career where I can be at home. I can be with my husband most of the time throughout the day. It means that I can take him to his appointments every week (physios, outpatients etc.).

I have my office in the car. There’s no point going home for just 15 minutes between appointments. So I will take my laptop, sit in the car and make my phone calls etc. My husband will hop into the car and ask, “How did it go?”. And then we chuff home and I can just be there with him.

Amanda’s work from home business allows her to be prepared for any change in her future…

You just don’t know what the future holds. There can be change in our health, in the world economy, and in the world around us. But I think having a digital presence and the ability to have a work from home career is incredible and it’s a real blessing.

To all the people who are in the Digital Investors course now (and the people who are about to come in), it’s a great skill to be able to COVID-proof yourself as well. So not only for your family, but to just be available (with your kids or with your family if they’re ill), and also for the economy. I’m very, very thankful. So thanks to you guys.

Matt: That’s a really great lesson here Amanda about the important of a work from home career. Earlier you were saying that Pete can’t ever work again. You are pretty much his full-time carer. And now with COVID, you can’t even take the risk of going outside for Pete’s sake. He can’t afford to get sick and go back in the hospital with COVID around. So, you are extra-grateful to be able to work from home right now.

An Ideal Work from Home Career is one where You Form Friendships and Support

Matt: The beauty of being able to replace your job is that you’re home right there where you’re needed. You can work from home and keep your family safe without taking the risk of going outside. That is a sobering thing to share, but it is also so wonderful for you. And even during the recovery period with your husband, your car is your office. It’s pretty amazing.

Amanda: As long as I’ve got internet I can work from anywhere. I’m really looking forward to going on a holiday. We would like to try caravanning. I’ll have to learn how to drive one! But as long as we can take the caravan wherever there is internet, I can go.

Matt: You can be on the road with your favourite friend out of Champions, Chris! Chris has also been able to use websites to earn more money and travel around Australia.

Amanda: I Know. We’ll go and meet them somewhere on our travels.

Forming Life-Long Friends in the Champions Community has helped Amanda Grow her Business

Matt: That is so cute! So that is the other thing about the Champions community is the friendships that you form. And your friendship with Chris is a bit unlikely isn’t it?

Amanda: Yes, well Chris is old enough to be my son! So it’s the weirdest combination – how does this kid have a friendship with this old lady? It’s very weird. But we just get on so well and I just treat him like an equal.

I’ve formed some really good friendships in the Champions community. At the quarterly bootcamps, I would hang out with Chris, but also with Pete and Renee who have also learned how to replace your job. We would often meet together, and we’d have a day of planning and working together. We’d also do our own accountability calls and it’s just lovely.

Chris is in Perth, I’m in Melbourne, and Pete and Renee are in Queensland. We’re spread out across Australia, but we just gel together and have a really lovely friendship. There will be times where we don’t talk for a few months, but then we just take off from where we left. That’s one of the lovely things of the Champions community, you’ve got to foster it and look for the people that you connect well with.

Matt: And that friendship with Chris has gone on for 6 or 7 years now?

Amanda: Yes.

eBusiness Institute Graduate students
Amanda has formed life-long friendship and support in the Champions community

Amanda’s Important Lesson to have backups in place for your Work from Home Career

Liz: And it’s actually Chris who’s your backup now too?

Matt: Because your husband can’t be that anymore.

Amanda: Yes, when you get a life changing event like this, it makes you realise you’ve got to have the important things in place – wills, power of attorneys, insurance etc.

But that’s also the case with your websites. Like, if it was me who’d had the stroke, who’s got all my logins? Who’s going to look after my clients etc.? These are the big questions that you’ve got to be prepared for when you’ve got an online business. You need to have a backup. So, my backup would be Pete, Renee and Chris.

How Amanda Mastered Selling Websites to Local Businesses

Liz: One of the things we love about your work from home career, Amanda, is your ability to go out there and sell a website to local businesses.

Amanda: Yes, I remember my very first local website sale. I went to see a client and I had your checklist of what I needed to say to them. At the time, I was very, very nervous and I just couldn’t say the word $2,000!

I went to see the client, and we were chatting, and I just used the script you gave me. And I realised, “Okay, I think they’re buying it. I think I’m doing ok!”. So then I said the price of the website ($2,500 for my first website sale). And without hesitation, they just said, “Oh right, that’s okay.”

I had to act like that’s quite normal, but I was also dealing a lot with imposter syndrome where I felt like, “Who am I? I’ve learnt this stuff, but I haven’t got a degree. Can I really go and mix with all different doctors and lawyers and people in the local BNI group and with people whom I wouldn’t normally associate with? How do I hold myself and sell a website to these people?”

Amanda’s confidence in selling websites has allowed her business to grow to 6-figures…

Amanda: Since then, I have grown a lot. That’s probably one of the biggest things I got out of doing the Champions course with Matt and Liz Raad. I’ve grown in my confidence as a person. And now I can sell a website. I still have the criteria that if I can have them over for dinner, I like them to be my client.

Liz: That’s actually really cool. It’s the inner strength to be able to say, “Yes, I want to take this person on.” Or, “No, they’re not going to be right for my business.”

Amanda: That’s right.

Work from Home Career

Amanda’s future plans to grow her Work at Home Career even further..

Liz: And so what’s next for you, Amanda? After building 120+ websites for your clients you have an impressive portfolio of client websites! Are you going to start building your own portfolio?

Amanda: Yes I’ve already started! I’ve got a couple of directory sites, and I’ve started building more of those. Work has quietened down a little bit. I’ve only got three local website builds at the moment. So I’m looking forward to doing more of my own portfolio websites, and setting a bit more time for myself there.

Liz: All right. Thank you so much, Amanda. We really appreciate it.

Amanda: Thank you.

Thinking about replacing your job income with a career that you can do from home? Register for our free masterclass.