About

Hi I'm Liz Tomey! I'm the brains and brawn of BackpackBusinessLifestyle.com and if you want to know more about me then you've found the right spot!

I'll give you my entire story here and within it all there are some serious “gold nuggets” that you'll learn from. This is quite a lengthy story so settle in because you're going to learn a lot! Both about me and how I've built all kinds of businesses and gotten to where I am at today.

I was born to two teenagers in 1979 in Indianapolis, IN. They were divorced when I was a little over a year old, and my mother and I lived with her mother (my Grandmother) who I was very very close with. At the same time I was very close to my father’s parents (my mamaw and papaw) who thank God are are still with me to this day.

After the passing of my Grandmother my mother met a man and married him and we moved to Chattanooga, TN. I had an awesome childhood full of love from my mom, step-dad, and grandparents.

I spent each and every summer growing up in Indiana with my grandparents. They had 6 kids and treated me as there 7th. They actually do to this day.

Between my mom, step-dad, and grandparents I was always told I was the best at everything, and there was nothing in this world I couldn’t do. Again, to this day they all still tell me this.

When I was 15 my mother and step-dad divorced, and my world was turned upside down.

If you’ve ever had and raised a teenager girl, you know they are the devil to begin with. Throw in a divorce and they go absolutely insane.

That’s just what I did…

My mother lost total control of me, and I became mad at the entire world. I turned to drugs (LOTS OF THEM), and took off traveling the country.

Looking back on it all, a lot of bad things happened, but some key things stuck with me and some key people stood beside me.

My family never gave up on me, so I had an amazing support system.

I had to grow up fast on my own, so I developed a take charge get it done attitude.

Now you should get some “gold nuggets” from that.

They are…

1. Get yourself a support system – It could be friends, family, a mastermind group online. Whatever it is, get yourself a support system. My support system was my backbone. Yes it came automatic, but if you don’t have a support system get one.

2. Next it’s survival of the fittest in everything in life – Until I was on my own, I had never stood on my own two feet. I had never had to do anything myself. I threw myself into the real world, and it was the best thing that ever happened to me. That and some tough love from my mom. 🙂

Now let’s talk about exactly what I did to become successful…

After a few years wandering the country I finally came home. My mom asked what my plans where and I told her… “Well I don’t like to be told what to do, and I don’t want to be a “working chump”, so I’m going to start my own business.”

And with a smile mom said… “Good for you! I know you’ll do well.”

So the years went on, I left the drugs behind, and met a man who I married and had my son Logan with. Thank goodness before Logan came along I had already established an online business. Being able to work from home and raise him myself has been amazing for both of us!

My first business was a direct mail advertising business. I put together promotional direct mail campaigns together for people, and sold them advertising. I had several services I offered, so I started selling “dealerships” to others. They could buy a “dealership” promote my offers and keep half the money for every order they got. Then they’d send the other half the money along with the order and I’d fill the order.

That business did very well and I grew it to about a $60K a year business and in this part of the country that’s pretty decent money.

After divorcing my first husband I married my second husband (and by the way he came with four extra kids) and we found ourselves in a bit of a pickle. He had been laid off from his job. This was 2004. We lived in a small town of about 800 people so you can imagine that there wasn’t much work to be found.

I for the second time in my life said… “I’ll start a business.”

I had him take over the direct mail advertising business, and I began my search online for my next business.

Okay, heads up time…

Now this is where real success starts!

The first thing I did when I got online was to look at what other people were doing successfully. No reason to reinvent the wheel, right?

I found a ton of people selling ebooks and doing really well with it, so I decided that’s what I would do.

There’s another “gold nugget” for you! Find what others are doing and follow them!

I was in a lot of Internet marketing forums at the time and saw a lot of people talking about joint ventures. It seemed cool to me. The two main ways I saw joint ventures being done was people finding other people to promote their products, and people coming together creating products together. That's when I decided that I would create a product not only about the topic, but also use joint ventures to create the product, and get others to create it for me.

So I had about 15 people I went to from the forums, asked questions about joint ventures, and then contacted them to ask them if I could use their answers in my product, and they all said yes. After the product was done, I asked if they would promote the product. All but one said yes…

In two weeks that product brought in $37,000

Oh did I mention that it took me 6 months to get everything figured out, and during that time we were falling behind on ALL our bills. The repo man was literally calling the house asking when to come and get our only vehicle, and we were one month away from forclosure on our house?

Yeah it wasn’t a bed of roses, but I did it, and so can you!

So here's a few more “gold nuggets“…

… Find what others are successfully doing online.
… Do it my way and get it out there!

There's some serious power in what I just said. Read it over and over!

If I hadn't of just taken the plunge and followed what I knew would work you wouldn't be reading this story.

Now from 2004 until 2011 I was a rockstar. I came out with tons of products and services for those in the Internet marketing niche (an many other niches) I was a speaker and a coach, and was making big time money!

But in 2011 my world came crashing down…

The backbone of my being (my mom) was diagnosed with breast cancer. They used the word “metastatic” cancer and us not knowing exactly what that meant (it basically means an aggressive form of cancer that IF it does go away will always come back in a different place in the body) thought no big deal we'll fight this just like everything else, it's going to be hard, but in the end all will be okay.

I mean my mom was only 52 years old! Certainly this wouldn't take her?

I took care of my mom as she went through surgery, chemo, and radiation. Just when us and the doctors thought she had kicked it she woke up one day and was having an issue with double vision. We took her to the doctor and found that the breast cancer had turned into brain cancer and they gave us the “game over” speech.

We went through a few more months of some “experimental” treatments and finally the day came when we had to make the call to stop all treatments. She was really only doing it for me (although I didn't know that), and when I told her it was okay to stop abusing her body and end her earthly journey she did.

On October 22nd 2012 my mom took her last breath with her hand in mine…

My world came tumbling down!

I couldn't work. I couldn't function. I just became totally numb to everything and everyone. I THOUGHT I was okay, but I wasn't. Over the next two years I found myself in a downward spiral that cost me a marriage and almost my online business.

So how did I bounce back?

In the early part of 2014…

I got healthy first… I started walking, and then running, and now I do a whole bunch of things to keep myself active. You'll see me talking a lot about these things and how I lost 70 pounds (20 more pounds to go) on my blog.

I got happy… I went through a divorce, found myself, and became happy with ME. That's a HUGE key!

Well the wealth came back naturally because I just did what I had worked for me before. I found a need and filled it.

So now  it's a year later and I'm back on top and want to teach you how I got happy, healthy, and wealthy even when things haven't been the best for me!

If you’ve made it this far in this post congratulations because what I just revealed to you is ALL related to my success.

I had an amazing support system, I believe in and live by “do or die”, I studied what worked, I put it into place for myself, and I have had more success than I have ever dreamed of.

I hope you’ll do the same!

So there you go… The real Liz Tomey right here in black and white. Like the song says… “You should have seen it in color”…

Feel free to leave your comments below…

To your success!

Liz Tomey