This is a continuation of the previous post and outlines where the idea for the concept of the Mona Lisa Million came from.
To recap… As I mentioned before, I’m a stay-at-home dad to four young children, two of whom are pre-school age. I’ve taken a break from an 18 year career to look after the children while my wife returns to work. It’s been a fantastic experience and one I wish to continue but the loss of my wage has been difficult.
It was a hole in my walking boots letting in water that left me frantically seeking a way to improve my circumstances. I racked my brains trying to find a way to use my skills, abilities and talents in line with my personal values (as advised in the book How To Be Rich And Happy by Tim Brownson and John Strelecky) to earn some income from home, but I wasn’t having much luck. Unfortunately my professional qualifications are only valid within my profession and aren’t relevant online (or anywhere else for that matter).
A chance encounter with a stranded motorist whom I dug out of the snow reminded how much I enjoy and value helping other people – after all, I built a career out of it.
So with that in mind you can imagine how bad I felt when I couldn’t donate to a project trying to get emergency equipment out to Haiti.
… and this brings the story up to date.
I decided I should do something to help others, but I still didn’t know what I was going to do.
I returned to the book for inspiration and remembered there was a chapter that encouraged me to think big and aim high. So my first thought was that it would be nice to make a million.
What a crazy thought! I felt cross for letting myself daydream such nonsense and immediately laughed it off as ludicrous.
How was I going to raise a million? I struggled to earn enough money to buy a new pair of boots during my previous two years online. A million was too high to aim and certainly not something that I could realistically do. Or could I?
Well, the book advises against holding on to limiting beliefs and funnily enough that’s exactly what I found myself doing.
I didn’t believe I could find an idea that could generate that kind of income… but then I remembered that it had been done before!
Straight away I reasoned that there was no way could I raise a million just for repeating what someone else had done, besides, a million seems like a lot of money and much more than I need.
But what if I helped other people with the money?
Helping people is what I enjoy doing! I’m good at it. I’m trusted and experienced and…. and I worked through an idea in my head and all of a sudden the idea raising a million wasn’t so ludicrous.
And then it all started to come together. The boot, the motorist, the book, the million and Haiti.
Over the space of a couple of minutes I came up with the Mona Lisa Million.
Since then it’s taken me five weeks to develop the concept and build the two sites, Mister Good Guy and Mona Lisa Million. I’ll tell you more about it as we go on, but for now I just wanted to let you know that after spending two years online drifting (mostly blogging) I’ve finally found something that fits, something that lets me explore my creativity, something I can get enthusiastic and excited about, and all while doing the thing I enjoy so much… helping other people.
Thanks for reading,
Dave
PS. If this is the first page you’ve dipped into, you might like to find out how the Mona Lisa Million concept works.
Photo: mckaysavage
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