Joan Sotkin’s Bio

Joan Sotkin knows how to create prosperity—from the inside out. After years of struggling financially, Joan found her calling when she built her first website ProsperityPlace.com in 1995. Her dynamic personality and holistic approach to creating a healthy financial foundation have made her a sought-after prosperity guide, speaker, and workshop leader. Her thirty years of research into the connection between emotions and money blazes a pathway to prosperity through personal growth rather than quick fixes.

Joan received her BA in English from Rutgers University and, after brief stints as a schoolteacher and salesperson, worked in radio, producing several successful Los Angeles–based shows and becoming a popular guest in her own right, and eventually working in network television.

Her life changed dramatically in the 1975 when she left a difficult marriage despite the fact that she was plagued by a long list of physical disorders. Told my medical doctors that she was a hypochondriac and would never be healthy, she began a long search for answers in the alternative medical community. At the same time, she was attracted to meditation and other spiritual practices.

After a series of what might be called mystical experiences, Joan gave away everything she owned and wandered from place to place hoping to find answers to her physical problems and to deepen her connection to the guidance she was receiving.

In 1977, she began using crystals and minerals for healing and meditation and eventually established a wholesale, retail, and mail order business called Joan’s Crystals, through which she marketed a line of stones, Joan’s Stones, via 600 New Age stores and her mail order catalog. Despite its success as the first business of its kind in the United States, Joan’s Crystals went bankrupt, prompting Joan to explore the connection between emotions and money and to learn better financial management skills.

In 1995, after returning from another round of spiritual wanderings, she purchased a computer and connected to the Internet, which she recognized immediately as having huge potential. Within two months, she had her first website, which morphed into ProsperityPlace.com.

Two years earlier she had the sense that she would be moving to New Mexico, although she knew no one there and was still struggling with physical problems. In 1996, after earning enough through her website to pay all of her expenses, she moved to Santa Fe with $200 and whatever fit in the 10-year old car given to her by her mother.

Santa Fe turned out to be where Joan found the healing she was seeking. After six months, she was admitted to the hospital where she had major surgery that fixed her long-standing digestive problems. Her physical healing paralleled her financial growth as she established a website development company and published a popular e-zine called The E-Commerce Advisor.

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