The great Indian sage Patañjali is said to have given this beautiful insight into the nature of a life that is lived with purpose. He said, “When you are inspired by some great purpose, some extraordinary project, all your thoughts break their bonds. 

"Your mind transcends limitations, your consciousness expands in every direction, and you find yourself in a new, great and wonderful world.  Dormant forces, faculties and talents become alive and you discover yourself to be a greater person by far than you ever dreamed yourself to be.”

Our guest tonight has followed his passion to create an extraordinary life of purpose. He left the corporate world where he was the chief marketing officer for a major company on Madison Avenue to become one of the most successful and best known personalities in the Internet marketing field.

Since 1991, Alex Mandossian has added value to his clients to generate over $233,000,000 in sales and profits from short term TV stock, infomercials, QVS and HSN airings, VTL catalogs like Sharper Image, and great magazines, like USA, Weekend, and Internet Marketer.

Today, teleseminars are his primary money-making tool to boost sales and profits without having to spend a penny more on advertising. In fact, that is Alex’s suggested key. As he talks to us tonight, I am excited and looking forward to hearing from Alex how he has been able to be so successful in using this principle of leverage to do much, much less and accomplish much, much more.

Alex has consulted with Carnegie Training, New York University, 1ShoppingCart, Mutuals.com, and ChemicalCare, and top business leaders like Mark Victor Hansen, Les Brown, Brian Tracy, Stephen Covey and many, many others.

He is a founder of ValueGenerator.com, InstantVideoGenerator.com, and ASKdatabase.com - all of which are powerful Internet marketing tools. He is also a founder of www.WomensPowerSummit.com.

Alex runs his information publishing business today from the comfort of his home near San Francisco, California, where he lives with his wife, Aimee, and his two children, Gabriel and Brianna.

Chris Attwood: I am pleased to introduce Patrick Coffey, of www.EarlytoRise.com who is my co-host tonight. Patrick is going to conduct this evening’s interview.

Early to Rise is a division of a multi-million dollar publishing group that provides a variety of tools and programs to support all of us in living lives that are truly healthy, wealthy, and wise.

I encourage everyone listening to check out what Patrick and his team do by going to www.EarlyToRise.com. Patrick, thanks so much for being with us, and I am going to turn it over to you now to conduct tonight’s interview.

Patrick Coffey: First of all, I feel like I am interviewing Larry King. For those who don’t know, Alex is really the Larry King of the Internet world. I kind of feel like the tables are turned here, and I am interviewing the master of interviews.

Alex Mandossian: I appreciate it. Thank you.

Patrick Coffey: Let’s dive right into this, Alex. As many of you know, some of you don’t, Alex quit a very successful career in the corporate world. How did your passion, the things that are most important to you, play into your decision to leave corporate America and start your own company?

Alex Mandossian: That is an interesting question that comes up a lot. For me, corporate America, whether it’s a five-person company, a hundred person company, or a hundred, thousand person company, corporate America means living with someone else’s passion.

Now that I have gone through the process, back between the years of 1993 and 2000, I was living for someone else’s passion. I added value to the company; I had equity in the company. I loved working there.

But there was a challenge because there is a collision, a moment in time, and I remember it like it was yesterday. It happened to be October 25, 2000 when my son, Gabriel, was born at Mt. Sinai Hospital in New York City.

I remember watching him with his little beanie on his head, to keep the baby’s head warm, and my wife, Aimee, sleeping after 18 hours of labor, exhausted; and I thought to myself, “Wow!, I have really been in a collision of passion.

The interesting thing is that back then, I didn’t have The Passion Test. I have read it several times now when Janet and Chris asked the question, “When my life is ideal, I am blank,” then filling in that blank and going through the passion test.

If anyone is here as a result an invitation I sent, please take that passion test. Get a few books for yourself and everyone else. I didn’t have that tool. What I asked myself that evening is “What am I really living for?”

I was studying the works of Joseph Campbell back then, and he had this great quote which reads,” The privilege of a lifetime is being who you are.” At that moment, who I was with my family was a workaholic.

I was working 16 hours a day. I don’t know if you are familiar with New York City, but if you come home before 9:00 PM at night, you are not working hard enough.

People come back to their apartments and to their studios and one bedroom, two bedroom apartments in three piece suits at 9:00 – 10:00 o’clock at night. That is normal. That is just the way life is in Manhattan. I lived on the Upper East Side in Manhattan. I worked on Madison Avenue.

I loved what I did, but I was living into someone else’s passion. That was the story of my life. I didn’t realize back then that there was a collision between personal and professional passion.

If I take the passion test these days, I ask myself, “When my personal life is ideal, I am “blank.” When my professional life is ideal, I am “blank” whatever that blank is. It is a very elegant but simple test to take. What I realized back then is that there is no way I could enjoy my family life if I would have worked for another company.

I was really at their beckoning call for travel. I had equity in the business, but that really wasn’t a source of security for me. I gave three months notice and, at that moment, from the 26th of October all through December 15th, when we actually took off from JFK Airport and landed at San Francisco International, I knew that of the competing passions I had between personal and professional, personal won out.

I was scared, I was terrified. We were on the runway, and it was snowing, and the runway was icy. The plane actually skidded out and my wife had my three month old baby, Gabriel, in her arms.

Her fingernails dug into my forearm. She was terrified. I was terrified, but not for my life; I was terrified about how I was going to feed my family.

I would love to tell you that it was all planned out. I would love to tell you that it was such an elegant plan that I had, but it was sloppy. It had nothing to do with the plan; it had everything to do with my passion which is in my heart knowing that I could not reconcile the competition between family and my profession.

I have to attribute most of it to Aimee. I went into my marriage thinking that I would be a good personal trainer and teacher to my wife, and I would be a good student to my kids.

It turns out that my wife has been a good personal trainer for me, and my kids have been good students. It is just the opposite of how I came in to it.

I will never forget that when personal and professional passions collide, I decided to choose the personal one. My wish for everyone listening is not to make that choice for themselves, but just decide what is personal and what is professional.

When those two species collide and crash, which one is more important?

Patrick Coffey: What about those of us who do love our jobs and find passion in the work we do. Is it possible to find passion, not necessarily in corporate America, but the job for the company you work for?

Alex Mandossian: I think that it is. For example, there is no reason why as a corporate executive at the VP level, a C level, or even in the mailroom, that you can’t turn a hobby that is part of your passion into something that is professional.

The difference between an amateur and a professional is $1.00. The way I made my transition from the corporate arena to becoming an Internet marketer, is after my son was born, I gave three months notice to my company that I was working for.

I realized then, the first day of work is not the most important day. It is the last day. It is how you are defined as an executive or someone working for someone else.

How do you leave? You are taking that day with you. That part was planned out. I gave three months notice and basically, I took a $300,000 dive in income. I went from $300,000 a year to zero, literally.

It was a huge risk. There was no other choice for me because we had no babysitters on the East Coast. We had no family on the East Coast. My mother-in-law took a trip out and said, “If you don’t leave Manhattan, you will lose your marriage; you will lose your family.”

I thought, “Wow.” That is kind of an alarmist approach, looking back and the way I was working, she was absolutely right. I signed a non-disclosure with my company. All the contacts that I had generated over eight years were gone. I don’t need to remind anyone that in 2001, you know what happened in the San Francisco area, right?

The bubble burst; there were no jobs. Of course, that was the year of 9/11 and those atrocities. Basically, I went from $300,000 to zero. But, here is the thing, and it is probably a little fairy taleish, and maybe it might be surprising.

I don’t know how this will all come across. It is possible to go from zero to making a little bit of money to make a living in a year if you follow your passion.

My passion professionally was training. My passion personally was living with my family and making sure my kids recognize me before I grow old.

That goes for my wife, too. I didn’t want to follow the footsteps of many of my colleagues who, after a lifetime, maybe they are in their 60’s or 70’s, ask “is that all there is?”

Patrick Coffey: That actually kind of leads on to my next question which is, can you tell us the story of how you made the transition from the corporate arena to becoming one of the most well-respected and successful online marketers?

Alex Mandossian: I did the same thing. Rather than training my corporate executive colleagues and vendors within the corporate-executive arena, I trained my own students, and I became an expert in a niche that nobody wanted.

That was postcard marketing. That was strategically done. No one wanted to be a postcard marketing guru. It is kind of like plagiarizing a comic book.

Many people think “What’s the big deal about postcards?” I launched http://www.marketingwithpostcards.com which is still up right now. I launched it in April of 2001. I did work like an animal. You know what it is like, day and night, working like an animal, but I was doing it for myself.

Patrick Coffey: You were overlooking your family at that time.

Alex Mandossian: I did take a step back, but I was doing it at home. Although I was working the same hours, what is interesting is that I was doing it at home.

I could take a five minute break; I could take a 10 minute break and go check in on Amy, or go in and check in on Gabrielle, who was my only child at the time. Two years later, Brianna came into the world.

Even if I am working just as hard, this is my experience, it may be different for others listening, I would rather work the same amount of time and take an 80% cut in income, because that is what ended up happening during the second year.

I bought a new house. At that time, it was a one bedroom home. I went from $10,000 a year to $63,700. I went pro in 2001. I made my first dollar in April and I just kept doing the same thing, training, and teaching.

In 2002, that annual income became a quarterly income. In 2003, that annual income became a monthly income. In 2004, it became a weekly income and in 2005, a daily.

It has become an hourly income in 2006. It is like six or seven times this year. When time, in less than 10 minutes. I haven’t done anything different....

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