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iQuestions Faculty, Randy and Elizabeth Draper 
 
 
Question: 
 
I'm deeply in debt. What are some ways I can climb out? 
 
Answer: 
 
RANDY: We were deeply in debt in the mid-80s, and we found that we 
had a couple of choices: we could either spend less or make more. We 
did everything we could do to spend less. I mean, we cut back in a lot 
of areas. 
 
ELIZABETH: We quit taking the newspaper, we didn’t buy coffee and 
we turned the thermostat up so we would make our house warmer so 
we would spend less on electricity—we did everything we could to cut 
back our spending. 
 
Then we finally realized, not only could we do that, but we also have 
to do something to generate more cash flow. So that’s when our 
home-based business came into play. 
 
RANDY: Sometimes, people say, “Well, I don’t have time to do 
something else,” and you do. You have TV time, you have personal 
time—and not that we don’t need that. We do. But if you’re trying to 
pay off debt and you have no other option but to work harder, that’s a 
great option. 
 
I would have two or three jobs when we were trying to pay off our 
debt, just because we wanted to pay that off and we wanted to make 
right on our commitment to people to pay them back. So I was doing 
all kinds of things, and you can too, in your home-based business. 
 
 
 
You’ll probably find that if you work hard it will pay off, and you will 
start seeing those debts come down. 
 
ELIZABETH: One thing that I found interesting was in owing all this 
money, we had friends who would come to us and say, “I cannot 
believe you are starting a business and you’re investing into a 
business, when you could take that same money and use it to pay off 
your debt.”  
 
We learned really quickly that sometimes you have to spend money to 
be able to make money. Investing in our own business was a way we 
could let go of some money, even though money was very scarce, and 
we could then generate a way to create money to pay off our debt. 
 
So you have to realize that even if you’re in debt, sometimes you’re 
going to have to let go of whatever few pennies or dollars you have to 
be able to start something that will generate cash flow for the future 
for you and your family.  
 
RANDY: Our home-based business started out to be a way to make 
extra money. It turned out being our career. And now as we look back 
21 years, we can’t imagine our lives any other way. 
 
Draper -2- 
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