This article appears courtesy of Early To Rise, a free newsletter dedicated to making money, improving health and secrets to success. For a complimentary subscription, visit http://www.earlytorise.com.

Notes From Nicaragua: How an Hour Slave Can Have a Very Good Income

By Michael Masterson

I fell asleep during the plane ride to Nicaragua, and woke up with a stiff neck that just wouldn't go away. Yesterday, CO mentioned that he knew a good massage therapist at a local surf camp. Today, he showed up with Flavia at his side. "She was free now," he said, "so I figured I'd grab her."

Flavia is a pretty young woman with an easy smile and an unfamiliar accent. As she began adroitly mobilizing the muscles around my neck and back, she told me something about her life and work.

She grew up in Madrid, and then fell in love with a surfer from Argentina. They moved to the Basque country "so he could be near his beloved ocean," and now spend half their time there and the other half at the surf camp here in Nicaragua. The actual schedule of their lives was determined not by their children's schooling, as it was for K and me, but by Neptune's whim. "So long as the swells are good, we stay," she said. "When there are no more good waves, we go."

They have two children, a three-year old and an infant of seven months. "I have been thinking about how to educate them," she told me. "They are young now, but in a few years I will have to make a decision. A friend of mine is home-schooling her children, and she's doing a good job of it. But that's not what I want for my kids."

So Flavia is talking to people and searching the Internet for answers, while she supplements her husband's modest salary as a surf guide by charging between $35 and $55 an hour for her very good handiwork.

Flavia is one of dozens of surf spouses I've met since our Rancho Santana community became a Mecca for international surfers. They have all impressed me with their willingness to mix marriage, children, and the nomadic life they have committed themselves to.

While Flavia continued to work on my aching muscles, I looked out the window. It was another spectacular day, all right. The color of the sky. The shape of the mountains. The pulsing, pounding of the ocean. Who can say she hasn't chosen the best possible life for herself? She spends her time in two very beautiful places. She has two healthy children and (I am told) a very nice, easygoing husband.

As her family ages and expands, she will face some problems, though - and many of them will be connected to their lifestyle. She is already thinking about one of them: her children's schooling. But there will be others. Where, for example, will the money come from to buy a car that doesn't stall each time it attempts a hill ... to pay for doctors, dentists, and medicine ... and for a house (or two) that they can call their own?

What can Flavia do now to prepare for her future? A lot - starting with making full use of her existing resources.

As a massage therapist, she has a financially valuable skill that she has mastered. It won't earn her $100 an hour in Nicaragua, but if she learns something about business and marketing, she could certainly do better than the $45 an hour she's currently averaging.

Another resource that Flavia has is her attitude. She is naturally energetic, optimistic, and enthusiastic. These are qualities that make people happy to do business with her. If she could learn to sell her services as well as she sells herself in person, she could take a big, financial leap forward.

Finally, there's that very nice, easygoing husband. Nice, easygoing people aren't always the best money makers, but they are very compatible companions to those who are. If Flavia turns her part-time gig into a profitable business some day, her husband - if he is willing to stay home and take care of the kids - will make her responsibilities that much easier to manage.

Those are three very useful resources. To take full advantage of them and secure a financially comfortable life for her family, Flavia needs to establish and follow a specific plan of action.

Here's my suggestion - and this plan should work for lots of people with paid-by-the-hour skills:

First, she needs to understand the basic economics of her situation.

As a professional who charges by the hour, Flavia's wealth potential is limited by her time. To boost her income, she can do two things:

1. She can charge more per hour.

2. She can work more hours.

Her average hourly rate of about $45 an hour is pretty respectable here in Nicaragua, a country where the cost of living is so low. But if Flavia works only 10 or 12 hours a week - which is what she is doing now - she can make only about $25,000 a year.

That's enough to feed and clothe her family, but it won't pay for private schools, better cars, and the travel expenses involved in catching the next big wave.

My recommendation is for her to try to get her average hourly income up to $60 an hour. Also, to double the hours she is working and, depending on how things go in the future, double them again.

Flavia can increase her hourly income by developing more private clients in Rancho Santana and other nearby upscale communities. She won't be able to make more than $35 an hour at the surf camp where she and her husband are based - but that's okay, since she doesn't do enough business there to worry about.

To maximize her productivity, she should advertise her services at the surf camp, but limit her hours. Surfers generally aren't interested in massage treatments until after sunset and sometimes in the middle of the day. She can figure out which hours are best, and then post them. That way, she can keep the surf camp management happy without curtailing her outside work with more affluent customers.

She can easily boost her rate on the outside by leaving the $55 an hour as a one-time rate and charging $60 an hour thereafter. Once clients see how good and knowledgeable she is, they won't quibble about the extra $5.

She should also sell products to them. People who travel overseas often forget to bring their favorite skin and hair products with them. Having been relaxed into submission for an hour, Flavia wouldn't have to sell very hard to boost her hourly income to, say, $70 on a net (after cost of product) basis.

If she continued to work 10 hours a week at the surf camp and added a solid 10 additional hours outside the camp, she would be earning just over $1,000 a week (10 hours times $35 and 10 hours times $70). That amounts to over $50,000 a year.

If Flavia could eventually book 40 hours a week outside the surf camp (at $60 an hour), she could afford to quit the camp and locate her family elsewhere. Or, better yet, she could make a deal with the surf camp management to supply them with therapists at, say, $30 an hour. She would train and supervise them, and make for herself a third to a half of what they bring in.

If she did all that, she could be making $120,000 a year plus another $15,000 or $20,000 a year from the surf camp.

Massaging people for 40 hours a week isn't easy. Unless you develop techniques to prevent it, the stress on your own joints will eventually break you down. (Thai massage specialists, I've been told, employ such techniques and often work 40-plus hours a week with no problem.) So that's something Flavia can do right away in anticipation of full-time work: Change some of her techniques (less hand manipulation and more use of elbows, forearms, and feet) so she can work more hours.

If and when Flavia got tired of spending 40 hours a week working with her hands (and arms and feet), she could expand the little business she would already have going with the surf camp. By taking advantage of the low wage scale in Nicaragua (as she should, because it's good for the economy), she could get all the help she wants to work for her for $4 an hour. (That's four times the rate a gardener makes here.) By charging her clients - local spas, hotels, and communities - a fixed fee of, say, $20 an hour for the therapists, the management, and the accounting, she could have herself a high profit margin.

The key to making all this happen, of course, is marketing. Flavia must add that second financially valuable skill to the one she already knows.