A few months ago, I transitioned from 15 years of office work into a physically demanding labor job. This shift wasn’t just about learning a new role—it meant adapting to long hours, late shifts, and the physical toll on my body. Back pain, exhaustion, and adjusting to a new routine became part of my daily reality.

At the same time, I wasn’t willing to give up on my dream of building my affiliate marketing business. But let’s be real—it hasn’t been easy. The exhaustion from work made it hard to stay motivated, and the mental strain of trying to keep up with everything felt overwhelming at times. Add in family responsibilities, and suddenly, every bit of energy felt like it had to be rationed carefully.

The Physical, Emotional, and Mental Toll

Starting a new physically demanding job after years of office work is a shock to the system. The body needs time to adjust, and pain becomes a daily companion. Sleep schedules shift, energy levels drop, and even simple tasks outside of work can feel overwhelming.

But beyond the physical, there’s also the emotional and mental strain. Balancing work, family, and business means constantly feeling pulled in multiple directions. There’s the frustration of not making as much progress in the business as I’d like, the guilt of missing out on family time, and the mental exhaustion from juggling so many responsibilities at once.

This isn’t just my story—it’s the reality for so many people who are working hard to change their financial future while still meeting today’s obligations. If you’re in this position, know that you’re not alone.

Making This Season a WIN

Even though this season has been tough, I’m determined to make it a win. Here are a few key lessons that might help you on your own journey:

1. Prioritize Your Health – Physical pain and exhaustion are real obstacles. Taking care of your body through stretching, hydration, and rest is crucial. Pushing too hard without care will only slow you down in the long run. Be sure to visit your doctor, chiropractor or masseuse, whatever you need to keep well.
2. Master Time Management – When time is limited, every moment counts. Plan your week ahead, batch tasks, and focus on high-impact activities in your business. Even 30 minutes a day can add up to significant progress.
3. Set Realistic Expectations – It’s easy to want to do it all, but sometimes, scaling back on business tasks temporarily can help maintain long-term sustainability. Progress is still progress, even if it’s slower than you’d like.
4. Lean on Your Support System – This journey affects the whole family. Open communication, setting shared goals, and asking for support when needed can make a huge difference.
5. Stay Consistent – Life will always throw challenges at you, but consistency is what separates those who succeed from those who give up. Keep showing up, even if it’s in small ways.
6. Be kind and understanding to yourself – As important as it is following the previous 5 key lessons, things don’t always happen the way we expect them to. Balls will be dropped, things will be forgotten, tasks will go undone, and your relationships may experience tense moments. It’s best to accept this and not be so hard on ourselves. Remember that this is a season and not the rest of our lives.

Your Journey Matters

If you’re balancing work, family, and a side business, I want to hear from you. What challenges have you faced? How have you pushed through tough seasons? Drop a comment below and let’s support each other in making this season a win!

Talk soon,

Denny

Are you ready to dip you toe in affiliate waters? This is where I started.

The Iceberg Effect

(Any product purchased through a hyperlink on my website may be an affiliate link, potentially resulting in a small commission for me. Please note that these commissions are not an additional cost to you, as the supplier directly pays them.)

The post Navigating Life’s Curveballs: Balancing Full-Time Work and Building a Business appeared first on Denny Medeiros - Reinvent Midlife.

It’s 2025, and time to turn the page and start fresh! New beginnings bring endless possibilities, and there’s no better moment than now to set the tone for an amazing year ahead. Whether you’re focusing on personal growth or professional development, a little planning can go a long way. So, let’s dive into some enthusiastic tips to help you kickstart 2025 with passion and purpose!

Set Clear Goals

The first step to a successful year is setting clear, achievable goals. Start by reflecting on what you truly want to accomplish in 2025, both personally and professionally. Break these down into smaller, actionable steps and set deadlines to keep yourself on track. Remember, your goals should challenge you but remain realistic enough to keep you motivated.

Examples:

• Personal: Run a half-marathon by June. Break this down into a training schedule that gradually increases your weekly mileage.
• Professional: Achieve a promotion by the end of the year. Outline the skills you need to acquire and set quarterly milestones to track your progress.

Create a Vision Board

Unleash your creativity by visualizing your ambitions through a vision board. Gather images, quotes, and symbols that represent your goals and aspirations for the coming year. Display it somewhere you’ll see every day, serving as a constant reminder of what you’re working towards. This visual motivation can be a powerful tool in keeping you focused and inspired.

You can create paper-based vision boards or as I did on Canva so I can use it as my computer wallpaper so I can see it while I work.

Examples:

• Include images of a dream vacation spot, a diploma representing a course you want to complete, and motivational quotes like “Progress over perfection.”
• Use symbols like a tree for personal growth or a ladder for career advancement.

Prioritize Self-Care

A successful year isn’t just about ticking off goals—it’s also about taking care of yourself. Make self-care a priority by scheduling regular downtime to recharge. Whether it’s through yoga, meditation, reading, or simply enjoying nature, find activities that nurture your mind and body. Remember, when you take care of yourself, you’re better equipped to tackle challenges and achieve your goals.

Examples:

• Dedicate 30 minutes each morning to meditation or yoga.
• Schedule a monthly massage or spa day to relax and rejuvenate.

Invest in Professional Development

The new year is a perfect opportunity to advance your career. Consider enrolling in a course, attending workshops, or seeking mentorship in your field. Continuous learning not only enhances your skills but also opens up new opportunities for growth and advancement. Stay curious and committed to expanding your professional horizons.

Examples:

• Enroll in an online course related to your field, such as digital marketing or project management.
• Attend at least two industry conferences or webinars to network and learn new trends.

Build Meaningful Relationships

2025 is the year to deepen connections with those around you. Reach out to old friends, network with colleagues, and forge new relationships. Building a strong support system can provide encouragement, advice, and opportunities throughout the year. Remember, collaboration often leads to greater success than working in isolation.

Examples:

• Schedule regular coffee catch-ups with colleagues or friends to maintain and strengthen connections.
• Join a local club or group that aligns with your interests, like a book club or hiking group.

Embrace Change

Change can be daunting, but it’s often necessary for growth. Be open to new experiences and flexible in your approach. Embrace the unexpected twists and turns of 2025 with a positive mindset. Adapting to change with enthusiasm can turn potential challenges into exciting opportunities.

Examples:

• Start a new hobby, like painting or learning a musical instrument, to embrace creativity and adaptability.
• Volunteer for a challenging project at work that pushes you out of your comfort zone.

Reflect and Adjust

Finally, make time to reflect on your progress throughout the year. Regularly assess what’s working and what isn’t and be willing to adjust your plans accordingly. This reflection not only aids personal and professional growth but also ensures that you remain aligned with your overarching goals.

Examples:

• Set aside time at the end of each month to review your goals and progress.
• Adjust your strategies if needed, such as revising your workout plan if it’s not fitting well with your schedule.

Join the Conversation!

What are your goals for 2025, and how do you plan to achieve them? I’d love to hear your thoughts and tips for starting the new year successfully. Share your ideas in the comments below and let’s inspire each another on this​ journey of growth and fulfillment!

As we step into 2025, remember that success is a journey, not a destination. With clear goals, self-care, and a willingness to embrace change, you’ll be well on your way to making this year your most successful one yet. Cheers to 2025 and all the amazing adventures ahead!

Talk soon,

Denny

Are you ready to dip you toe in affiliate waters? This is where I started.

The Iceberg Effect

(Any product purchased through a hyperlink on my website may be an affiliate link, potentially resulting in a small commission for me. Please note that these commissions are not an additional cost to you, as the supplier directly pays them.)

The post Kickstart your 2025: Tips for a successful year ahead appeared first on Denny Medeiros - Reinvent Midlife.

Don’t get me wrong; work will not replace family time, and I will not work an unhealthy number of hours.

Let me explain, but first, if you haven’t read my previous post you can access it here!

It’s simply because the work I do in my affiliate marketing business is what I love to do.

This means that I’m not hurting for a retreat away from this work. It’s not so taxing like my past career.

It’s true when you love what you’re doing for work you don’t feel like to need to recover from it.

Do you know the feeling? Are you in the 9-5 grind right now longing for time off, or are you doing something you love and enjoying it?

Either way I hope you’re taking time to enjoy the holiday season and get some needed rest, down-time, family/friend time, or whatever you enjoy when you have time off!

Finish ahead

The reason I want to continue working is because I want to finish this year as far ahead as I can so I can start ahead in the new year.

Truth is I have a lot going on and would like to accomplish in the first quarter of 2025 and I don’t want to fall behind.

What are your plans for 2025?

This year it came about that in Canada TikTok was banned and the offices were shut down, which means there really isn’t a future for making money through TikTok in Canada.

For this reason, I’ve decided instead of continuing with my TikTok account I will look in to starting  YouTube channel instead.

This would allow me to make longer videos and the crop and repurpose the content for short videos and reels along with text copy as well.

This is going to require me to revisit the training in my program related to starting a YouTube channel and start building those skills as I utilize YouTube.

As I work on building and using the YouTube channel I’ll be sharing my experience, what I do as I do it and any wins and roadblocks.

This will be a big part of the 1^st quarter of 2025.

A turn of events

There has been another turn of events that occurred this morning.

My morning started by taking my wife to the clinic for some tests she needed done.

While she was there I took our little pooch Turbo to his vet appointment for a blood test.

About six weeks ago he got 3 ticks and after getting them removed he would later need a blood test to make sure he didn’t have lime disease.

Turbo handled it well I must say!

At that point it was time to pick up my wife and make our way to Canadian Tire to get a couple things we needed on sale.

Waiting with our dog in the car while my wife was shopping, I got a phone call.

I was informed I got the position I interviewed for after my last blog post.

I met with an employer several days prior for a warehousing type of role and was successful!

In case you’re not familiar with my situation, which I shared on previous posts, I haven’t made an income and haven’t been able to get work in about a year.

As it takes time to build an affiliate marketing business to a place of making a full income, I haven’t arrived there yet.

I’ve been trying to get work to make an income while I build my business and after almost one year of job searching it has finally arrived! Thank God! Lots of prayers involved

The start day is January 6^th, 2025. Which is the second big reason I want to start 2025 ahead of the game.

Next Steps.

Before I start this new job on January 6^th I want to be able to complete as much of my Google Coursera Digital Marketing course.

I’m going to need to redo my schedule and create a plan that will allow me to do my full-time job, work on my affiliate marketing business and finish the digital marketing course.

With a good plan and some discipline, I should be able to pull it off.

I figure after the 1^st quarter I can assess how it’s going and make any necessary adjustments to continue positive growth.

I feel like it’s going to be a great start to 2025! What do you think about your 2025?

Please take a moment and share your thoughts with me by leaving a comment. Maybe you have a question about what you read or just want to say hi. Either way, I look forward to reading your comments!

Talk soon

Denny

Are you ready to dip you toe in affiliate waters? This is where I started.

The Iceberg Effect

(Any product purchased through a hyperlink on my website may be an affiliate link, potentially resulting in a small commission for me. Please note that these commissions are not an additional cost to you, as the supplier directly pays them.)

The post Wrapping Up 2024 and Gearing Up for a Successful 2025 appeared first on Denny Medeiros - Reinvent Midlife.

Over the past week, I’ve been spending a lot of time on my Google Coursera course, “Digital Marketing and E-commerce”. It’s quite a comprehensive course with excellent video and reading material, especially the activities that help with practical application.

I’ve been working through Modules 3 and 4 in the 4^th course titled “Think outside the inbox”. Module 3 is “Useful tools for email marketing” and focused on topics such as building and segmenting the email list.

How to write an effective email, tools for email marketing are another two topics in module 3. I particularly enjoyed the activities which instructed me on using email marketing automation tools such as HubSpot and Mailchimp.

Of course, I’ve already had some previous knowledge and experience with this as I use it for my affiliate marketing business. It was fun to use some different programs though and I noticed that they’re all very similar. So, if you’ve used one automation tool, it’s easier to figure out the others.

How was module 4? 

Module 4 I just finished before writing this blog post. It was very useful and practical, not to forget to mention, it is super important. It’s titled “Collect and analyze email campaign data.

Again, as I’ve been running email campaigns for several months now, I was already familiar with much of this topic, but I still learned so much.

This focused on the most common email marketing metrics, how to collect, analyze and report the results. Reporting was new to me as I’ve never been part of a larger digital marketing team working for a bigger company.

For my business currently I only have to collect, analyze and understand the data, then the changes I need to make to improve my campaign.

The activity was actually interpreting collected data and bar graphs and creating a presentation of how it should be communicated to the stakeholders (which was a made-up company).

After completing the activities, the course provides what they call an Activity Exemplar. This is Googles example of what it should look like, so we can compare it to our own work.

Now, I start Module 5 of the 4^th course and then I go onto course number 5.

What’s been happening on the biz front?

At the same time, I’m completing this course I’m also still building my business, learning from my mentor, coaches and peers. I have to say my day is quite filled!

This past week I continued to follow up with my email list, post and engage on social media, primarily on Facebook and track my Facebook lead ads daily progress.

As I continue learning from the Digital marketing course it does help that I can relate to my own social media marketing campaign and implement anything I may not be currently practicing.

My Facebook lead ad has lately not been getting as many leads, in fact, even the reach has reduced.

Over the next week I am going to be reviewing what may or may not be working and make some adjustments to improve the ad’s outcome.

Paid ads are a continued work in progress. There needs to be continual monitoring and adjusting for optimal performance. Seeing that I’m still quite new to paid ads as well I’m a work in progress and learning with each day.

I wake up every day and try to do the best I can with the steps and details required daily to run my business. Sometimes it’s exciting and sometimes it’s very stressful and other times it can be blah!

Just being honest. That’s what my blogging is about. Documenting my journey and being honest enough to share the truth, the good, the blah, and the screw ups.

BUT… IT IS ALWAYS WORTH IT! I love what I’m doing!

On the job front.

If you’ve been following my journey you may already know that I’m also  in the background looking for another job.

My business has not generated much income yet and so this leads me to a place where it costs money to live, and I haven’t made an income for many months.

Job searching has been challenging and even disheartening at times. I’ve been turned down from such easy to do entry level jobs, even Walmart.

My wife has been a superstar keeping my mind right and reminding me not to take it personally and believe if I didn’t get it then there’s something better. She’s so empowering!

Anyhow, just today I connected with a distribution company that showed interest and wants to meet with me this coming week to assess if this is a good fit.

Of course, I will be assessing if it is actually a job I can do since I have two back injuries that sometimes act up, and I don’t want to make it worse.

I hope I can handle it and it all works out. Not making an income for so long has been one of the most challenging things I’ve been dealing with.

I’ve worked since I was 12 years old and although I’ve had seasons of not working I had employment insurance relieving some of the lack of income until I found something else.

Mental health

When you have a lifestyle of always earning an income and identifying with a career job and regular income it can mess a person up to not have that anymore.

It messes with my identity, not being able to help provide for my family financially, feeling like less of a person, and it can get quite heavy at times.

Again, my wife is an enormous strength to me. She asks questions that sometimes I don’t want to answer, she shares tips and techniques for managing better mental health and getting out of my funk.

I wouldn’t be able to continue this way if it wasn’t for her support and constant love regardless of the obstacles that smash me.

She has supported my affiliate marketing journey from the beginning and was on board with the Google Digital Marketing training  as well.

So, although my mental health isn’t always in the greatest shape it’s continually improving, and I have the amazing support of my wife and son to keep me going. I’m so blessed!

I know I was quite personal here with what I’m going through, and I hope that’s okay. I believe in sharing the truth in my journey not for sympathy but to show the possible reality in how a life building an online business can be.

We see so many people on social media that look so accomplished and like nothing goes wrong, but they’re only showing the good in business.

What I’m sharing is how it can really be, and often really is. Of course, each person deals with their own ups and downs and experience different wins and failures.

It’s important to know it’s not easy, it’s not quick, the crap will hit the fan, but never give up and keep working toward your goals!

That’s it that’s all for today friends!

Please take a moment and share your thoughts with me by leaving a comment. Maybe you have a question about what you read or just want to say hi. Either way, I look forward to reading your comments!

Talk soon

Denny

Are you ready to learn a bit more? This is where I started.

The Iceberg Effect

(Any product purchased through a hyperlink on my website may be an affiliate link, potentially resulting in a small commission for me. Please note that these commissions are not an additional cost to you, as the supplier directly pays them.)

The post Business, training and mental health – My journey in progress appeared first on Denny Medeiros - Reinvent Midlife.

First, in case you missed my last post and want to find out about a new course I am working on and what wrote about the core skills for online success you can check it out here!

There was a time…

There was a time I can remember when I was able to do so much, so quickly and many things at the same time.

Let me give you some examples.

When I was a teenager and worked at a burger franchise as my second job. I earned $3.50 per hour. I was able to man the grill and maintain 40 burgers at a time (dinner rush), and the condiment section at the same time for about 2-3 hours straight.

This carried on with every job I ever had. I would learn anything and become excellent at it in no time!

Into my 30’s being the cook for our family, I was able to cook almost any meal in 30 minutes to an hour. In addition, I remember when I would batch-cook and in one day I would make 3 – 4 different full meals to last the whole week, things like curry chicken, lasagna, pot of chili, roasted chicken.

When you think back to your younger days can you remember being more capable?

What it’s like now.

Now in my fifties, it’s a very different situation.

It takes much longer to cook, and I can’t do too many things at once. I feel like I have to focus more to make I don’t forget an ingredient or food item or process.

A simple distraction can cause me to forget what I was just doing,,, SQUIRREL!

I drop things so often and burn myself much more frequently. I even sometimes put refrigerated things in the cupboard and vise versa, then stop and think “what did I just do”.

Can you relate or are you the superhero that I envy?

I must say, sometimes I feel quite incompetent, and yes it does bother me, but we just have to come to terms with the fact we change as we age. Some more than others.

And it’s okay!

No need to beat yourself up, like I often did, it’s okay!

This same process has followed me through work and now into running my business.

I don’t seem to be able to do as much work, work as fast, or multitask like I once did.

With all the learning that comes with building the skills needed for an affiliate marketing business, I find it takes longer to learn and is more challenging to retain as well as I did.

How about you, do you feel you are capable of doing less than you have in younger workdays?

It’s been the biggest challenge.

I think that has been my biggest challenge, coming to terms with the fact I can’t function as well as I have in the past, even just 5 years ago.

One thing I’m certain of is that I’m not letting it STOP me! I may take longer but I’m not stopping because it’s harder.

One day at a time. One step at a time.

If this is a challenge you face you’re not alone. Take it one day at a time! As long as you don’t STOP you will continue to grow and develop.

In fact, if we focus on what we can do and not what we can no longer do we’ll be in a more productive and positive mindset and move in a positive direction.

We would definitely be happier in the process

That’s it that’s all for today friends!

Please take a moment and share your thoughts with me by leaving a comment. Maybe you have a question about what you read or just want to say hi. Either way, I look forward to reading your comments!

Talk soon,

Denny

Are you ready to learn a bit more? This is where I started.

The Iceberg Effect

(Any product purchased through a hyperlink on my website may be an affiliate link, potentially resulting in a small commission for me. Please note that these commissions are not an additional cost to you, as the supplier directly pays them.)

The post There was a time… 🤔 And now… appeared first on Denny Medeiros - Reinvent Midlife.