Kinda seems like everyone is trying to sell you overpriced and underwhelming courses from their annoying webinars, right?
Ya, I feel that way, too… And I'm sick of it!
Hey, I'm Miles and on this page, you are going to learn some deep/dark secrets about my industry and why I'm shining a light on the fake gurus trying to scam you out of your hard-earned money.
For 7 years straight, I was happy behind the scenes working on my wife Melanie's site full time.
For years I was full time running the tech stack, shopping cart tech, FB ads, the SEO and conversion rate optimization #LikeABoss
I call it "Melanie's site" but it's really "our site"
She is the 'face' of that brand and since you are reading this on 'my site' it is easier to keep them straight this way.
We started her site together in 2009 with a simple blog on WordPress and I've been full time online as an internet marketer since 2010… Still to this day, her site is my main focus.
We get more than 8,000,000+ visits per year on that site, compared to the 250,000 per year on this site... So it has some interesting tech challenges.
And I'm still super passionate about meditation and spirituality which is what that site is all about.
In a minute I'll share the crazy story about how we started her site…
But first, I want to address the internet cesspool and the "fake gurus" I mentioned above...
Because they are a big part of why this site even exists…
You see, over the years of growing that business with my wife, I've signed up for more courses than I'd like to admit.
From the $7 and $17 ebooks to the $1,995 courses and $5,000/mo coaching programs...
I've invested a half a mint on my digital marketing education.
You know one thing I now realize?
Most people selling courses and coaching are regurgitating ideas they learned in a course...
It is like the courses are copies of copies, getting worse quality content every level... But still sold for 'high ticket' pricing.
Usually the fake gurus don't have a 'real business' beyond selling you that one course.
It gets incestuous, fast…
The "Facebook Ads Guy" selling his Facebook ads course through Facebook ads…
But he has no REAL WORLD experience beyond copying another Facebook ads guy's course...
#SHADY
I've spent over $10,000 on Facebook Ads courses and in person trainings...
Most of them suck. And the more expensive ones were some of the worst!
Most of them don't share as much (or as updated of info) as I do for free, here.
The fake gurus think that hyped up evergreen webinars, fake scarcity 'high ticket prices' and a "good enough" product is a recipe for the 'dot com lifestyle'…
Well, I'm tired of it.
And this blog is here to pull the rug out from under their B.S.
Additionally, for a 4 year period, Melanie and I were full time digital nomads.
Meaning we had no home base… No 'room at our parents house' waiting for us to come back…
No storage unit full of stuff waiting for us…
Just 2 bags each, our laptops and a desire to see the world while growing our business.
On this adventure the number of times people asked "How do you earn a living while traveling?" got me to repeat the 'basics' of internet marketing about 3,194 times.
Finally… In 2016 it happened.
Somewhere between absolute frustration from the fake gurus selling their overpriced bullshit courses…
And constantly repeating myself about how to grow a successful business online…
I decided to start publishing 'how to' content on my YouTube channel.
This way, I could point people to those videos when they asked how we earn our living while traveling full time.
Plus, I could start to chisel away at the fake guru problem by giving away better content than the fake gurus sell in their rubbish courses.
That's my kind of win-win right there!
What started with a 90 day challenge, posting 1 video per day for 90 consecutive days has unleashed my inner content creator…
Now, I'm addicted to sharing the most valuable, actionable and helpful content I can, three times per week on YouTube.
All this while still supporting my wife and her site in it's continued growth… Because that site continues to grow at a rampant pace!
Then, I have a very small team of editors who help me take the YouTube videos and turn them into blog posts and podcast episodes.
So that's the most 'recent' version of me… The 2019 update, if you will.
But, there's more...
Maybe you wanted the full story when you clicked on "About"
Like back when I got my first taste of making money online in 2003, 6 years before I started my first successful site with my wife.
The days that were filled with dozens of failures... Or... I mean... "Learning Opportunities"
Back when the internet was the wild west and MySpace was the dog's bollocks.
Ok, I'm an open book… Let's do this!
Rewind back to 2003… I was at a community college in the San Francisco Bay Area, where I grew up.
I worked for our college radio station as the promotions director and my Program Director (another student who was kinda like my boss) wanted me to spend more time working at the station…
But I worked full time as a customer support rep, 45 min across the bay…
Plus I lived 45 min in the other direction...
I always had to commute back and forth, and back and forth…
And because I grew up working class poor in a blue collar family, I have been working since the age of 14 to pay for life.
One day, my Program director showed me a 'method' to make money online by direct linking people from MySpace to an affiliate offer.
He wanted to help me earn some side income so I could dedicate more time to the station.
I'm going to say this bluntly… I learned how to spam an early social network with affiliate links.
This is and was 100% the wrong way to go about building a business with a complete lack of giving value to anyone.
Being the over-achiever I am, I went all in and got that method cranking out a few grand a month, fast…
The checks came in and I thought I had the internet marketing game figured out!
I had moved to the beach in Santa Monica and increased my living expenses by MORE than I was making with my affiliate scheme…
Note: Lifestyle creep is the enemy.
So here I was making good money on the side with the MySpace hustle and I still had to hold down a job just to make end's meat.
This is lesson #2 - Cutting expenses, saving money and buying assets is a good idea vs. spending everything I earned 😉
About a year after kicking on this income stream and growing dependable on it… MySpace got sold to Fox News Corp.
Fox News goes and changes their terms of service and instantly, my affiliate links stop working.
Overnight, I went from hero to zero.
I was DEVASTATED.
Now, another little 'learning moment' we will call Lesson #3.
Had I been adding value to my audience I was connecting with on MySpace…
Growing an email list instead of direct linking to an offer….
And growing a relationship with that list (the most important part)…
I would have weathered this storm.
I could have kept emailing…
Continued adding value and nurturing the relationships…
I would have been able to send more offers and I would have kept making money.
But no.
I was all in on a shortcut…
And I learned the hard way that shortcuts lead to long delays.
This is lesson #4.
Shortcuts (like the ones the 'fake gurus' try to sell you) ALWAYS lead to long delays.
So, there I was…
Unable to afford my lifestyle anymore (the day job wasn't enough) and I needed an escape route, FAST.
The obvious option was to borrow $50,000 from student loans and go finish my Bachelors degree.
This bought me 2 years and in that time I tried to start 10 separate businesses…
By 'tried to start' I mean failed at… To be clear.
A clothing company, a real estate investing company, multiple MLMs, a handful of other websites…
Every time I was searching for another 'short cut' but never putting in the work…
Never committing to adding value to the lives of others.
Well, this EXPENSIVE path had one big bright side… It lead me to meet my beautiful wife at real estate school in Albuquerque, New Mexico!
We fell in love, had an overlapping interest in meditation and the metaphysics…
And within a couple years we we got married.
During this time, I went all in following a fake guru in a "Me Too Marketing Scam" that required me to sell the same 'system' I had bought…
You've probably heard of these… They go beyond MLM and are in the affiliate marketing world now, too…
Shady stuff… Avoid at all costs!
Drinking the Kool-Aid, hand-over-fist, I went flat broke again…
Couldn't afford rent anymore…
Melanie and I had to move back in with my parents in their tiny house in the Bay Area…
We had even sold our cars to go 'all in' on the scam and had to borrow money from my parents to buy a $1200 beat up Jeep.
I couldn't make my minimum payments on the $50,000 in student loans, so they just kept growing, too.
This was the low point.
My personal 'dark night of the soul'
Absolute rock bottom, for me.
And it turns out that rock bottom can actually be a POWERFUL experience.
Disgust can be a very motivating emotion!
Because, out of this immense frustration I had with myself for repeatedly failing…
For borrowing myself into a $50,000 hole of debt for a degree that doesn't mean anything…
Feeling like I had broken my promises of success to my beautiful new bride…
I found another gear!
A new determination to do whatever it takes to create the lifestyle freedom I have always wanted.
So did Melanie.
This whole time, through the ups and downs, we both had been meditating every day…
During this dark time, meditation is the one thing that felt good, to be honest…
It was a form of escape from all the problems, stress and B.S. I had created.
Out of this low point, feeling this little glimmer of hope from daily meditation…
We decided to share our love for meditation and the metaphysics with the world.
And that is when we started her main site…
We scraped together the $95.40 for a domain name and hosting…
I had no clue how to install WordPress, or do any development at all…
But I had no choice.
And I had no budget…
So, I got resourceful.
We both got 9-5 jobs and spent every other waking hour creating content for our site.
Melanie produced the content, I optimized it for the search engines.
We started growing an email list (remember lesson #3?) and our content started ranking…
Traffic started to grow and our email list did too…
We started by selling one-on-one services and evolved to selling downloadable products.
This was about 9 years ago, now…
Today we've helped tens-of-thousands of customers enjoy the benefits of meditation.
And this kind of business TAKES WORK! More work than most fake gurus will tell you...
For 9 straight years we have been putting in 60+ hour weeks…
Focusing every hour on our audience, our subscribers and our customers.
Always thinking "What can I create for my audience today that will delight them?"
Still, to this day… I wake up at 5am and work until 7 or 8pm…
Now, I don't live in the office...
I get out and hike, paddleboard, 4wheel in my Jeep, or do something fun each day…
I also still meditate every day.
And I get to travel business class to speak at cool events on other continents.
But now that I've tasted the fulfillment that comes from being of service to an audience…
And the FREEDOM available from digital entrepreneurship…
Time freedom… Location freedom… Financial freedom…
The freedom to rent a 10 room beachfront mansion in Bali to bring 14 entrepreneurs together, fly in a private chef and host a luxury mastermind retreat.
The freedom to go live in Mexico in a beach mansion because I want to practice Spanish and I'm tired of being cold.
And the freedom to pay off my student loan debt, fill up retirement accounts, buy real estate, protect forest land (this is my philanthropy project)…
To afford the lifestyle I desire… And the time to enjoy it.
And here's the real key for you...
That these FREEDOMS are the byproduct of the value I bring to my audience.
And this is exactly why I focus all my energy on being of service to my audience.
And this is what I teach here at MilesBeckler.com
Everything I've learned from this crazy path from my early days of doing it wrong… To the efficient, lucrative and fulfilling days we are enjoying, today.
Really it is here, on my podcast and YouTube channel.
The same content in 3 formats, so you can get the knowledge bombs in the way that works best for you!
The content I create falls into two main categories…
First is the 'how to' do all the digital marketing stuff… The tactics and nuts and bolts…
I give it all away for free as a big EFF YOU to the fake gurus…
Second, you will also find content about the mindset behind being of service at scale…
Because the MINDSET is the real key to success.
Mindset is what I had wrong in the early days...
The wrong mindset is why I fell for the marketing scam that left me flat broke.
And when I 'fixed' this mindset part, everything started to work!
So here I am… Sharing my story and my 'how to' knowledge in hopes it inspires you to commit to publishing.
If I could get one 'result' from this site it is getting you into ACTION
All with the hopes that you commit to publishing great content for an audience who you can help.
To encourage you to focus on giving value to others because that is the ultimate path to creating the lifestyle and financial freedom you deserve.
And I hope you find the content here on my blog helpful in that pursuit.
Cheers.
Miles "Here To Help" Beckler
P.S. From here, if you want a more detailed 'plan of action' that retraces how Melanie and I grew our business from zero, get my 7 step blueprint course free where I taught how we went from side hustle to successful online business owners.
