Tag Archives: Alberta

A Man’s Character

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I know that a man’s (or woman’s) character is built upon many characteristics.  I believe it’s the foundation of what makes us who we are.  I recently blogged about “Trust” and some examples around that and how it relates to this business and in life.  Here are some great quotes that I’ve got up in my office from John Maxwell around character:

“There are really only three kinds of people. Those who don’t succeed, those who achieve success temporarily, and those who become and remain successful. Having character is the only way to sustain success. No matter how talented or rich or attractive people are, they will not be able to outrun their character.”

"People of poor character tend to blame their choices on circumstances. Ethical people make good choices regardless of circumstances. If they make enough good choices, they begin to create better conditions for themselves."

I think it matters what people think about your character, if fact if you want to become successful in any area in life then you better care.  Character is something that continually needs to be worked on and for me that’s why I love this business because that is one of the main focus’s.  As I continue to build this business and grow closer and closer to World Wide Dreambuilders, I’m getting to see the real character of this great support system.  There are quite a few differencing opinions of World Wide Dreambuilders and that’s fine, everyone has their own opinion.  However I’ve not once experienced anything ill willed towards me, my wife or our family, or felt taken advantage of from associating with this company.  This company has great integrity which is another aspect of what someone’s character includes.  Its this integrity that has someone like John Maxwell associating, endorsing and giving his time to this great leadership company.  Check out John’s quick minute on the word integrity.

Integrity

While you cannot build this business without trust, you cannot build this business with a shady character or someone of poor integrity.  As I pointed out in the previous blog post on trust, you need to be selfless which just so happens to be another great characteristic of character.  I believe, and it’s backed up by our growth in this Alberta market, these are some of the reasons why we are exploding and why a lot of eyes are on what I’ll call “The Canadian Movement”. It’s pretty darn exciting to be part of something big, and big things are coming as we have some leaders who have shown good character going into their Diamond qualification this year.

I believe we are in the business of developing leaders, people being able to take charge of their own life and lead it however they want and in whatever direction they want.  The Amway opportunity definitely gives us that ability and we’ve seen it first hand with the year we’ve been building this.  We continually strive to improve our character because nobody can ever be perfect and we are far from it.  We’ve had set backs, we’ve had great successes, but best of all we have never sacrificed what makes up our character and we never will.  That’s why we will become successful in this and help many others do the same.

Have a great weekend!

2010 Easter Seals Video

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Finally got a video of my rappel for the 2010 Easter Seals The Drop Zone campaign where I raised over $1,500 for the Easter Seals.  Amway is a founding sponsor for the Easter Seals and has a huge involvement in this great charity.  I was proud to be there not only for myself but a representing IBO.  Watching this video brings back some great memories from the day and the rush it was to rappel down this 27 or 28 story building.

I know for the 2011 campaign we plan to raise at minimum $50,000 as we leverage other IBO’s within Alberta to raise charity for a great cause.  If we had just 500 IBO’s raise $100 dollars (5 people x $20, which is EASY) we could raise some awesome awareness and cash for this great cause.

Jay at North of the 49th did a great blog entry highlighting this along with a few other IBO’s who participated in other location.  Check out it HERE!

Stay tuned as the 2011 campaign kicks off and we kick this thing into high gear!

2010 Easter Seals Drop Zone from Shaun Guthrie on Vimeo.

On Vacation – Moving Up – Family Reunion

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On-Vacation Today starts our little vacation I’ll call it.  We were able to attend Mike and Brandie Wagner’s Open last night at the Holiday Inn and it was ON FIRE.  WOW.  There is a reason why this market is on fire, because we invest time into people and build amazing relationships in and out of the business and we in succession are doing what the leaders before us have done.  Every single person before us has built a successful business and we are literally riding the coat tails and soaking it all up.  Just amazing.  Last month another amazing couple entered their Emerald Qualification and it’s just leader after leader after leader.  People wonder why there have not been many diamonds breaking in the last little while and that’s because people are just not wanting to step up.  Well this market is, and you’ll see two new diamonds come from this market probably at FED 2011 and many more Emeralds including ourselves!

So Monday we fly to Seaside Oregon to attend moving up, I’ve talked a bit about it before and really I have no idea what to expect.  I’ve heard some pretty amazing things come out of it from previous people that went and we are pumped to get the higher level of association and just get around people that are moving on in their business and see what it is they’ve done to create such success.  I’m really excited to explore the Oregon coast though, I’ve heard it’s pretty amazing and cannot wait to get up and go for a run along the beach.  Love it!

Friday we will head back inland to Portland where the Duncan Family Reunion will take place.  This is where Lindsay went to her first function and where I almost didn’t let her go because of my stubbornness and scepticism.  Now I’ll get to experience this function for the first time as official Eagles’ even though we are Double Eagles (we were not Double Eagle’s during qualification month for Family Reunion).  Either way it will be nice to sit at the front of the stage and just be able to soak in the function from the front.  I know we had a discussion earlier on this blog about it doesn’t matter where you sit its all the same information.  That is 100% true it is the same information, however it’s how it’s delivered and for me personally I’d much rather be at the front where I can see the speaker live instead of via the screen and I get to feel more impacted because its like the speaker is talking to you.  Same idea about concerts, why do people fight to get at the front of the row for a concert?  They feel the experience is better right at the front where the musician is literally sweating over them.  Same idea.

Its going to be a great weekend and week coming up and I could not be more excited to celebrate our growth but more importantly get as much information as we can coming out of Moving Up so we can share with our team and the leaders that are growing and riding our coat tails.  We have a responsibility to our team to help build them into leaders so they can lead their own organization into greatness. 

I love this market we are in and you betcha it’s different from anything you’ve seen.  While others out there may have quit, or said it just didn’t work for them or what not, I’m sorry for that.  However we’ve got something special out here which is why it’s catching the attention of World Wide Dreambuilders and even Amway Global Canada is saying “what are you guys doing out in Alberta??”.  The answer really is being CORE and doing what other WWDB Leaders have done before us.  Its working so why change it?

Going Double Eagle is Tough Work

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As of June 29th we have qualified as Double Eagles which is aWorld Wide Dreambuilders parameter for building a strong foundation for your business.  I’m not going to really go into the details of what a Double Eagle is but more talk about the mentality, the ups and downs and temptations we came across as we made the decision to go Double Eagle.

It starts with just that, a decision.  If you do not make that decision in your mind and prepare yourself for the battle then you won’t do it.  That’s how we’ve built our business with every milestone that we’ve achieved.  You need to make a conscious decision on what it is you want to achieve but more importantly WHY.  Why are you striving for the goal your after?  For us this time around it means that Lindsay is pretty darn close to solidifying that retirement day.

So I mentioned we had some up’s and downs along the road to Double Eagle and we did.  We had someone on our team decide to quit and while there are no hard feelings it was a great lesson for us.  It definitely helped us build character and allowed us to get it out of the way.  I would be lying if I were to say that nobody would ever quit. I’d also be pretty insane if I thought that too.  So it happened and we moved on.  We still love those people and will continue our friendship with them, that will never change because we are about building relationships.

We’ve had a few no-show’s where people say they are going to meet us for a coffee and they just don’t show up.  There are a lot of unaccountable people in the world and that’s fine.  A lot of times we are not even meeting people to ”get into” our business, we just want to build relationships and get to know more people.  Somtimes the conversations end up going down the path where people want to know what we are doing and so we tell them.  We’ve also had some people move through the interview and qualification process and they either drop interest or drop off the face of the earth.  That’s cool, we don’t have time to invest our time into people who don’t want it or are just unaccountable.  However through all this we’ve found some pretty amazing winners who are keen about changing their life for the better, want more out of life then the average and are huge huge dreamers.  I love meeting these people because they inspire me in so many ways. 

Lastly we were temped by what we thought was an amazing opportunity to launch a new business builder that was keen on getting setup, was ready to attend the Family Reunion major function and it just seemed that it was gold.  However we later realized this person ended up leaving another line of sponsorship for some personal reasons and never reconciled with those people.  This person was looking for a quick way to get back into World Wide without properly fixing previous problems and relationships.  We counseled on it over and over to make sure we were doing the right thing and we in the long run decided not to sponsor this person.  We would only be hurting this person by giving them the easy road and not letting them reconcile whatever issues they had before.  That was a huge leadership move for us because we could have sponsored this person, solidified our last parameter for Double Eagle and be done with it. 

I believe because of that choice we were blessed with an amazing opportunity to sponsor someone else who was ready to go pretty much within ten days.  That’s probably the quickest we’ve ever launched someone but they were ready.  When they were researching about what we did and saw our website they found out it looked someone similar to their cousin’s website.  So they called the cousin and he said they’ve been involved with World Wide Dreambuilders for 15 years however are not actively building at this time.  He spoke very highly of the Alberta team (he’s not in our market but hears a lot of what’s going on here) and said that whatever you do, make sure your upline is plugged into World Wide and that they are strong active uplines.  He also mentioned that he should not sponsor our prospect because the person that finds you is the right person for you.  How awesome is that?  This person could have easily said, you should sign up under me, we are family but instead he doesn’t and does what’s best for our prospect.  The awesome thing is World Wide is World Wide no matter what part of the country.  That’s the kind of integrity that we have within our organization.  Yes some might not build it the same way but that’s how WE build it and that’s why we will be successful in what we are doing.

So the road to Double Eagle has been a tough one but has been very rewarding.  We will also be attending Moving Up which is a huge leadership event that will help us elevate our own leadership so that we can become the best coaches for our team. 

Look out Seaside Oregon here we come!

Leaders Incentive

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Yesterday we qualified for a leaders incentive at our upline Emeralds parents farm.  The qualification was the Eagle parameter or higher.  We’ve held the Eagle qualification since we first went Eagle in February and re-qualified this month for this incentive which was a huge goal for us because we wanted to experience this incentive and be around some highly elevated people.

We were split into teams and we were matched up with our crossline Eagles so that was awesome.  We really enjoy getting to know them on a more personal level and at these events we don’t really have to worry about “crosslining” to much because it’s a day full of fun times.  The day started out with us in our teams doing a few quick team games to get the excitement going for the day.  After that the next event was our own version of “The Amazing Race” where we raced from the farm 30KM’s into Athabasca and where challenges and roadblocks were set out all over the town.  It was done very first class where we actually felt like we were in The Amazing Race.  Sadly we didn’t do so well however we enjoyed the time with our fellow Eagles :)

We went into a dreambuilding excerisze were everyone shared why they are building this business and what this business means to them.  Every single person in that room spoke on relationships with their significant others, marriages with their partners, and family.  That is why we build this business is for all of that.  We build it because we want strong marriages which is exactly what this room was full of.  We build this to set examples of what a great marriage should be.  Not saying there are are not good marriages out there however we want a GREAT marriage.  Getting around others that want the same thing, are doing the same thing helps us grow so that we can achieve that as well.  It was so humbling to see why others are building this business and how its impacted them.

Next was dinner with a HUGE feast fit for kings!  So much food.  I really used this time well to get around the male leaders in our organization and soak it in.  I had a few questions that were on my mind that I had asked, however it was more about getting around the leaders outside of functions and boardplans.  It was awesome to get real with the men in this organization as if we were friends for a long time.  Its just been an amazing blessing to get around these people in a casual setting like this.

Lastly was where everyone in the room got to share for some time on what was on their heart, what they are going through or pretty much anything.  I was on the verge of tears pretty much the whole time when others were speaking because that was how motivational, how inspiring others were.  When it was our time to speak I just unloaded and cried because of what was on my heart.  My wife’s one year was on my heart and how I almost stole her dream and vision for our future.  Because of my arrogant, statusy, negative, skeptical attitude towards what she was doing at the start, I almost tore that away from her.  5 months I did this, until I saw exactly what this business and association was.  I spoke what was on my heart and I thanked my wife for having the courage to stand up to me and take charge, take charge where I wasn’t and set the path for our future.  For that I cannot thank her enough.  It was pretty damn emotional to share that in front of 75 or so people in that room.  Everyone else shared various things and every single thing people said in that room was different, but impactful just the same. 

I cannot begin to explain or express within this blog just how impactful Saturday was.  It’s something that needs to be experienced and is something that you will not find in any other business out there.  No traditional business can compete with what we have and that is why I build this business WITH my wife.  We will continue to move our life forward and continue to be united to the ‘n’th degree.