Author Archives: Shaun

Current Education System is Failing Us

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I came across this RSA Animate on “Changing Education Paradigms”. Was quite eye opening hearing it presented like this but at the same time I’m not surprised.  Its partially why entrepreneurship is being called the new “Adventure Sport” as people are sick and tired of being told to get a good education, get a degree, and then get a good job.  That is as this video shows an old age thinking and it’s that old age thinking that people are trying to apply to today’s ways and it’s just not working. 

I guess you could say that Richard DeVos and Jay Van Andel had some forethought back in 1959 when they created Amway to give people an opportunity to do something more and get ahead of that old age thinking.  I’m of course summarizing that in my own words and in no way saying that’s officially what they were thinking.  However if I look at where the Amway Business Opportunity is today and what it’s providing for many at least in the Western Canada, it’s giving people with the passion to do more than what the rest of the sheep are doing the ability to excel.  It allows those with divergent thinking or those who want to work on divergent thinking to apply those skills to entrepreneurship.  It can apply to this opportunity or any other opportunity, you just have to apply it.

The talk was done by Sir Ken Robinson who is a world-renowned education and creativity expert and recipient of the 2008 RSA Benjamin Franklin Medal.  You can actually check out the full 1 hour talk here: http://www.thersa.org/events/video/archive/sir-ken-robinson

Serving Amway Again–St.Albert

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Today my wife and I were able to serve Amway again by taking part in the Amway Active Start Soccer Fest for the St. Albert Soccer Association. For those following, you may remember we did this last year for the Red Deer Soccer Association however it was called the Nutrilite Active Start Fest.  Amway has changed it’s sponsorship to highlight the main brand name Amway.  I think this was a great change as it now allows us to highlight some of the other brand names other than Nutrilite at these events.  It also gives us the ability if it comes up to, talk about this business opportunity.  While that was not our main goal, it was nice to know we could do that if possible.

Since this was an indoor event for us we had to change our booth a little bit. No tent like last year which I thought brought the whole thing together. However we made due and the setup looked great thanks to my wife’s keen eye. 

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This was a busy day as the St. Albert Credit Union Servus Place (http://www.servusplace.ca/) as it’s a multi-use facility, beautiful at that, which has a lot going on.  While we were there for the Active Start Soccer Fest, having our booth in this location gave us great exposure to everyone using the facility.  We had a lot of people stop by our booth and recognize the Amway name as well as the Nutrilite brand.  They were pretty happy to see us there and had lots of questions about the products and in some cases told us about past Amway experiences.  We even had an older lady come by and say “Amway, that’s still around?”, to which we replied you bet.  In fact Amway Canada is celebrating it’s 50th year here!  Lastly for those who stopped by we had them enter a draw for a few free gift baskets that we put together.  One highlighting edibles, one Artistry and the last one Kids vitamins and supplements.

So we’ve done this twice now and you may be thinking why are we spending 5-7 hours attending an event like this.  Well it’s simple, serving is what makes people successful.  We went there to help educate and represent the Amway name as well as gain some clients and help fill a need they have.  We took a few client orders and will follow up with a few others that left their name and number to get more information.  Being there to represent Amway and not feel shy about talking about it actually feels great.  This event had nothing to do with World Wide Dreambuilders or the training system however the training system is what’s given us the confidence and self image to talk about a company we believe in.  A company that sponsors a pretty awesome event like Soccer for all ages in Canada.

Recently Canada Soccer announced the name change for the Canadian Championship.  This is a great name change and really highlights the name Amway as it should be. See the links below.

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http://www.canadasoccer.com/amway-canada-to-return-as-title-sponsor-of-canadian-championship-p149017

or

http://www.fcedmonton.com/news/2012-01-27/Amway%20Canada%20to%20return%20as%20title%20sponsor%20of%20Canadian%20Championship

Quick Post–Momentum

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I’ve really not written much about business and to be honest we have a lot momentum going on where we are out living life on purpose and the funny by product of that is people are attracted to that.  When you are debt free, have no real stressors in life, it’s amazing how people want to get around that.  We are just enjoying ourselves and truly enjoying our business as we are getting to meet a lot of new people in personal width and depth.  This business really is like no other where we put others first before ourselves.

A quick side note, this year, 2012, marks 50 years that Amway has been in Canada. That is pretty cool. http://www.facebook.com/AmwayCanada

 

Amway50Canada

National Constitution Centre’s New Leader

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Very interesting article came across my twitter feed today.  Doug DeVos is now the executive board chairman of the National Constitution Centre.  While I’m a Canadian and the US constitution is well just that a US constitution, it does share similarities with Canada.

Very interesting position for someone like Doug DeVos however I’m not surprised due to the huge success and wealth of experience he has.  What’s even cooler is the quote by the National Constitution Centre President and CEO David Eisner; “Amway exemplifies good corporate citizenship, and the company’s core values of freedom and opportunity are strongly aligned with the Center’s mission of illuminating constitutional ideals and inspiring civic engagement."

I don’t know many companies that truly live by that statement.

http://www.mlive.com/news/grand-rapids/index.ssf/2012/02/learn_which_devos_now_heads_th.html

 

225Constitution

Time and TV

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“I don’t have any time”, “I’m too busy”, very common phrases these days I either hear or overhear on a daily basis.  I’ve known traditionally the TV is the biggest consumer of people’s time and did a little research on just how much time TV consumes.  I think you’ll be quite surprised what I found by heading to the ultimate guide on TV watching, the Nielsen Cross Platform Report. 

I’m not going to go over the whole report, you can do that here.  What you’ll be shocked to learn is overall TV viewership has increased 22 minutes per month per person over the last year.  The highest quintile is clocking in nearly TEN hours per day!  The newest trend that is starting to take note is streaming video online and this too is measured since more and more people are doing that.

Nielsen Cross Platform Report Q1 2011

You’ll see on the above report the highest quintile in 2011 Q1 is 598 average daily minutes for 2+ people.  Divide that by 30 days and divide that by 2 and you get the nearly 10 hours per day they are talking about.  The report is quite interesting however the overall summary on time spent watching TV is that people spend a lot of time doing it!

Those who say they are to busy for the gym, to busy to hang out, to busy to change things about their life, to busy to read, to busy to cook/eat healthy, to busy to involve their kids in other activities or join them in activities, to busy to clean, to busy to walk the dog/take are of animals, to busy for your spouse/date night, and the list goes on and on.  People use this wimpy excuse of “I’m to busy” and for the most of us that’s a crock of you know what.

If you’ve ever said your to busy for whatever, check your TV watching habit and I’ll bet you you can cut out just a few hours a night or even a week and you’ll have more time on your hands for those things that are more important than the boob tube. 

Lets do a little math for fun…(I’ll round down to 9 hours and keep that constant)

  • 9 Hours a day x 7 days a week = 63 Hours a week of TV
  • 63 Hours a week x 52 weeks in a year = 3,276 hours of TV a year
  • 3,276 hours divide by 24 hours = 136.5 days of TV watching
  • 136.5 days x 10 years (10 years is within that demographic range) = 1,365 days of TV watching
  • 1,365 days of TV watching divide by 365 days = 3.74 years of TV watching in 10 years.

Now that is pretty damn scary when you get down to how many years of TV watching are in 10 years.  Something to think about, however no matter how slice and dice the numbers, people are watching WAY to much TV.

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