Online Business Resources

Question: What is your name?

Answer: Rhonda Giarraffa

Question: Can you tell us about your business? Please include the business name, and the website url. How long have you been in business?

Answer: Learning Link Direct and Affiliate Learning Links

Question: What made you decide to work from home? Was there a turning point in your life that made you seek being a business owner? Please share your story.

Answer:

I started out very young as a business owner. My first sole proprietorship was at the age of twenty. “The Cake Connection” was a full service bakery that I had dreamed about since the age of twelve. I had a passion for baking and cake decorating. After years of working in grocery chain bakeries, which I started doing at fifteen, I had scraped everything I had to fill a dream. The business did not last for long as I was overwhelmed with ironically too much business, not enough help and a lack of knowledge in running a business.

With no money to fund a formal education for myself, I went back to the grocery chains and dug deep into the business aspect of it all. I dropped my ego, shut my mouth, opened my ears and learned everything I could from listening and taking tons of mental notes. I made a point of keeping a close eye on what the leaders of the industry were doing and read about every business book I could get my hot little hands on. I knew without a doubt I would own a business again one day. That dream came to fruition ten years later when I had the right tools and knowledge to run a business with a solid foundation. I remember having a window of opportunity open that I could not let shut on me. It was a risk but one I was willing to take.

Question: What is the 1 hurdle that you have had to overcome or are trying to over come at this minute?

I did not have the funds to lease office space during the start up stages of “Milestone Marketing” but I did have an extra space at home, a phone and a computer. Working from a home office made sense to me. Every one else in the food brokerage industry had offices and a lot of overhead. My profitability was much higher than those that were paying high lease payments. I stayed pretty silent about it due to the fact that I had more working capital to invest back into my business. That fact paid off for me when the state of California went through a union strike and many food brokers lost more business than they had anticipated. I slipped through what could have been devastating and ended up gaining extra business due to other brokerage companies suffering and ultimately losing business from having too much overhead.

It would take another seven years before I would get hit hard with an economic crisis. After my decision to shut down my beloved company; I once again chose to run another business from home. This time as an educator and motivator to help others get through all of the stumbling blocks in business that I have gone through and learned from. I was drawn specifically to Affiliate Marketing simply because it is in many ways along the same line as being a broker. I am basically doing what I have done for years, promoting product lines and getting that product in front of buyers that are looking for it. The only difference is in this virtual world, I don’t have to get on a plane and travel across the country for a half hour meeting and a huge lunch bill. My window this time is always open. I have found that in internet marketing, there is absolutely no end to the possibilities if you are willing to both share and learn. This is what lead me to launching Affiliate Learning Links. I have a true passion to teach others how to do what I do and how to do it with integrity and moral fiber.

Any last thoughts or comments that you would like our readers to know?

Never give up your dreams but know that dreams are just that until you make a decision to map out a plan to turn those dreams into a reality.

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