Hi! Today’s article is from Alex Nerney and Lauren McManus. Alex and Lauren—formerly a personal trainer and a CPA—are now full-time bloggers who run Avocadu, focused on health, wellness, and weight loss for women, and Create and Go, where they teach others how to build profitable blogs. They’ve been highly successful, earning $818,105 in one year. Below is their story in their own words, rewritten for clarity and flow.
Alex and I met in Dallas, Texas on a Tinder date three and a half years ago. He was working as a personal trainer and I was an accountant studying for my CPA license. Our careers couldn’t have been more different, but both of us were motivated, hard-working professionals chasing success.
Alex always wanted a different kind of life. He didn’t want to keep trading hours for dollars; he wanted financial freedom, flexibility in his schedule, and the ability to travel when he wanted. I was more comfortable following the traditional path—school, a stable career, and climbing the corporate ladder—because that’s what I’d been taught to do.
We talked about working from home and starting our own business, but mostly we entertained the ideas without acting on them. Eventually a few decisive steps changed everything and set us on the road to becoming six-figure bloggers within our first year.
We have since created four courses that help diversify our income, and today we earn more than $75,000 per month combined from our blogs.
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1. We decided to decide.
After attending a conference called The Millionaire Fast Lane, Alex made a clear decision: he would start a blog and run his own business. No more dreaming—he committed to action. As a personal trainer, he wanted to focus on health and fitness. I liked the idea and began helping with design and content. Gradually I found I enjoyed the work so much it didn’t feel like “work.”
We worked on the blog every night, on weekends, and during any spare hour outside our full-time jobs. After months of blogging with no income—and some out-of-pocket expenses—we realized our best hours were still being spent on jobs that drained us. After a particularly grueling day preparing taxes, I called Alex and told him I was done with my job and ready to commit fully to the blog.
We moved to Seattle to stay at Alex’s father’s empty house for the winter to focus without distractions. It was scary; friends and family thought we were crazy. I had just earned my CPA license, yet we had saved enough to give blogging a year. If it didn’t work, we could return to traditional jobs.
By the end of that year we had made $103,457.58 with our health and wellness blog.
The first step was deciding to act. You can stay on the fence waiting for things to happen or get off and make them happen.
2. We stayed focused on our goals.
Our goals weren’t primarily monetary. Yes, we aimed for $10,000/month, but the real motivators were non-financial: quit soul-sucking day jobs, work from home, exercise and travel freely, and design our days. Personal goals like “travel to Europe before 30” mattered more and kept us disciplined when small sacrifices were required.
Early on, we launched one blog that failed after a few months because it focused on what we wanted rather than what readers needed. We learned, pivoted, and launched Avocadu.com with a clear focus on helping others. Even with doubts and sleepless nights, our vision of a different life kept us going.
In our first month in Seattle we earned our first $200 from the blog. The next month we doubled, and continued doubling for several months. The progress came from consistent focus and learning what our audience wanted.
3. We tried everything and weren’t afraid to make mistakes.
We embraced a “fail fast, learn faster” mindset. We experimented with list building, email funnels, affiliate marketing, product launches, webinars, and more. Many attempts failed—one webinar had only about twenty attendees, many of them family—but each failure taught us something valuable.
Don’t cling to ideas simply because they worked for someone else. Test, iterate, and find what works for you. Some things that fail initially can succeed later with better timing or packaging. For example, a diet plan we created early on flopped, but after reworking and rebranding it on our new blog it became our best-selling product.
4. We diversified our income.
We discovered what worked and what didn’t and layered multiple revenue streams. Our first passive income came from Amazon Associates, a few dollars a day that meant a lot at the time. That taught us the value of affiliate income but also its limits—Amazon requires massive traffic to scale.
We then explored other affiliate products through ClickBank and created email funnels that sold a yoga-for-weight-loss product, earning more per sale than Amazon. Recognizing demand, we built our own product, the Yoga Fat Loss Bible, which allowed us to keep higher margins.
We also revisited and improved our earlier diet plan, turning it into the 21-Day Fat Loss Challenge and successfully launching it to our list. By the fourth month we were consistently increasing revenue through product sales and affiliates. Diversifying made our income more stable and scalable.
5. Growth can be exponential if you do it right.
Over the following months we optimized products, learned sales strategies, tested new affiliates, and focused on driving more traffic. This combination led to exponential growth: within seven months of quitting our jobs we made over $40,000 in a single month from our health and fitness blog.
Blogging is like assembling a puzzle—once the core pieces fall into place, the rest becomes easier. It takes time and persistence, but initial wins are contagious and motivating. We learned a great deal about online sales and marketing, and because we enjoyed the process we wanted to teach others.
That led to Create and Go, where we share our experiences and help others build profitable blogs. We continue to run Avocadu and have expanded into physical products like a probiotic supplement and other items sold on Amazon with family partners. On Create and Go, our YouTube channel shares tips, mistakes, and strategies we’ve learned.
Blogging is not a get-rich-quick scheme. It’s still work—but it offers more enjoyment and freedom than many traditional jobs. Along the way we encountered both good and bad advice, but trying many approaches taught us the right combination for our audience.
Our goal at Create and Go is transparency: to show realistic strategies that helped us succeed so others can apply similar approaches to their own blogs. Today we make over $75,000 per month across our projects and travel frequently—to places like Peru, Portugal, Bali, Costa Rica, and Nicaragua—because we stayed focused on what mattered most to us and didn’t let fear or failure hold us back.
Summary: Five key factors that helped us go from $0 to $10,000/month in less than a year:
- Decide to decide. Stop planning and start taking consistent action.
- Stay focused on your goals. Personal motivations—freedom, travel, happiness—are stronger drivers than money alone.
- Try everything and embrace mistakes. Fail fast and learn faster to discover what works for you.
- Diversify your income. Multiple revenue streams accelerate growth and stability.
- Keep improving for exponential growth. Avoid complacency—the moment you stop pushing is when growth stalls.
Blogging opened doors we hadn’t imagined because we stayed focused on our priorities and kept moving forward despite setbacks. What are you doing to grow your income?