I love the first day of the New Year because its really a hard tangible “line in the sand” to start over.  While success principals will teach us that we should be able to draw a line in the sand at any point in the year, the New Year is that pretty obvious line that anyone can get behind and I love that.  Besides it’s a great way to kick the post-Christmas blue’s that I typically get.

In looking ahead you need to take a quick look back and reflect on the year that was.  The things you did, the things you accomplished, and the things you set out to accomplish but didn’t.  There is nothing wrong with not accomplishing things because that’s where you grow and learn and reset your goal for the next year.  People who don’t understand success principals will look at you and say well you didn’t do that like you said you would.  So?  At least you get up and try again. A Chinese / Japanese proverb comes to mind – “Fall down 7 times, get up 8”  It doesn’t say fall down 7 times and stay down, it says GET UP.  That’s where successful people succeed and those not willing to “get up” fail.  It’s proven many times but those who are successful in any type of industry.

So this year we will reset some of our goals that were missed and look forward to the new goals that we want to achieve.  Our focus as always is to build a great life for our growing family and all decisions we make will be towards that focus.  I’m excited for a lot of things but the largest is being debt free with cash in the bank so that we avoid the next downturn in the economy that is being predicted by credible sources.  If anything has taught us over the last two years that’s to get as liquid as possible.

I hope that all of you out there reflect on the things that went on in 2011 and that you look forward to 2012 with anticipation that it will be the best year of your life.  Whatever it is that you have set out, write it down, keep it in the forefront, put it on your fridge, whatever.  You’ll be more likely to achieve them if you do so.  All the best to you and yours in 2012!

I wish you all a very Merry Christmas and hope that whoever you are spending it with you enjoy every minute!

So aside from that we’ve actually be re-focusing our energy on our family and our business and that’s about it right now.  We had a recent lull which was fine, we needed to find out our groove and there was no pressure from anyone telling us what we had to do or what we had to go to.  That’s what’s great about our business and what we stand for. Everyone has their own path, their own goals and their own business.  We needed to take some time to figure out how to build this business with a little one and we’ve done just that and things are moving a long great. 

I may post less frequently however the posts I do post will be more meaningful and more insightful.  I’m excited for the rest of the year and for what we are doing personally and in our business.  It’s Autumn, with season changes brings fresh beginnings.

However I’ve seen how long the other guys were away and their travel schedule and I’m thankful that I can ask my wife when the best days for me to travel are, and I also 80% of the time make my trips day trips.  Its much more difficult day trips sometimes because my days are much longer but in the end I’m back with my family before bed.  Sometimes my trips take me on overnighters however I come back home by noon and I’m working from home the rest of the day. 

There are lots of choices for travel and to be honest I think a lot of people will extend their trips a little longer then they really need to be as a matter of convenience.  Convenience at the expense of family is how I see it and that’s not something I want to compromise when possible.  I say this because of the comments I hear with some of these guys that travel in my industry.  I also hear this because I like to chat with people when I travel and people will open up to perfect strangers and sometimes it’s shocking the things people say, just crazy!

Follow other bloggers for this year’s Summer Blogging Challenge here:

Zita of Ignite Strategic Solutions, Cliff of Peer Pressure Works, Tammy of Tam I Am, Peter of Crazy Wookie Cookies, Chad of The Daily Grind, Vlad of Analog Coast, Robb of Blogging Life, Kim of Nature Baby Bloggings, Liam of ln The Now, Natasha of Natural Urban Mamas, Earl of My Name is Earl (J. Woods), Brad of Kick Me Out Soon

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However, there is a silver lining to this almost depressing state of season change here in Edmonton, its the fact there is change.  Change is good, it gives us a clean slate sometimes so that we can move forward.  While I would much rather have a longer summer, we need to deal with what we have and make the best of it.  Embrace the change and move forward.  Look at the bigger picture and be thankful to have another day on this planet and embrace the things that come. 

So on this last Sunday of August I’m thankful for a lot of things.  I think I’ll take a digital page out of Kim’s blog on Happy and write on what I’m thankful for.

• I’m thankful to have a loving family who has the patience and grace to see me off to work each day.
• I’m thankful to have my health of which I’ve been working at so that I may stay on this earth long enough to see my kids grow up and my wife grow old with me
• I’m thankful for my family and extended family of who we try and see as much as we can, no matter the distance.
• I’m thankful for my chosen family and friends
• I’m thankful to be out of debt and no longer have those shackles in our lives
• I’m thankful to have a wife that loves me and works on our relationship each and every day. 
• I’m thankful I’ve been able to raise a ton of money for Easter Seals and my thanks goes out to all those who have donated thus far.
• I’m thankful for so much more but those are the key ones that are on my heart right now

I highly recommend that you take some time and reflect on what your thankful for. 

Follow other bloggers for this year’s Summer Blogging Challenge here:

Zita of Ignite Strategic Solutions, Cliff of Peer Pressure Works, Tammy of Tam I Am, Peter of Crazy Wookie Cookies, Chad of The Daily Grind, Vlad of Analog Coast, Robb of Blogging Life, Kim of Nature Baby Bloggings, Liam of ln The Now, Natasha of Natural Urban Mamas, Earl of My Name is Earl (J. Woods), Brad of Kick Me Out Soon

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A few people replied back saying yes they were taken care of because they have a life insurance policy, or they will have money within their business or lastly they have investments.  First I’ll squash the investments, that’s like gambling, with the way the economy is these days and with how much people have lost I won’t count that as a “credible” way to secure your future, at least these days.

Insurance policies can vary drastically, while some people may have a Million dollars, a Million dollars these days and especially in the future will not last long enough.  Sure you can do some safe investments and live off the interest and even with that your spouse will eventually have to work if they are not already.  It’s not going to last forever and even if it did you’d really have to watch your spending etc… That’s even if you have a Million dollar policy.  Some people don’t even have that high of a policy and scary enough some people don’t have one at all. 

So if you don’t have those kinds of things in place then what happens? I don’t know 100% cause I’m not in that situation but I can only surmise that hardships will happen and that’s not just the emotional level, but financially.  How will your family survive? Chances are your spouse will find someone else for companionship and potentially someone else that will raise your family.  Not a pretty picture for sure.  Maybe that won’t happen but are you willing to put that to the test?

I’ll be honest at this very moment I’m not 100% satisfied with where we are at and don’t feel my family will be taken care of to my comfort level.  I will say we are working on it and while we have insurance policies and some investments nothing will come close to what we can provide with our business.  Our business has the ability to pass it on to other generations, I think 2 to 3 generations.  Our business if built with proper parameters for a solid foundation will produce residual income. Not to many companies can say that.  We are well on our way and laying a very solid foundation thanks to those who’ve gone before us and are able to teach us exactly what foundation to lay.  Its nice to have direct examples instead of some guy somewhere as so many others have. 

Something to ponder for sure, not saying what we do is what you need to do but we have a plan B that is turning into a plan A.

Follow other bloggers for this year’s Summer Blogging Challenge here:

Zita of Ignite Strategic Solutions, Cliff of Peer Pressure Works, Tammy of Tam I Am, Peter of Crazy Wookie Cookies, Chad of The Daily Grind, Vlad of Analog Coast, Robb of Blogging Life, Kim of Nature Baby Bloggings, Liam of ln The Now, Natasha of Natural Urban Mamas, Earl of My Name is Earl (J. Woods), Brad of Kick Me Out Soon

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By now all those new people to this years Summer Blog Challenge have seen my blog and know that my wife and I build our own business utilizing the Amway Business Opportunity as well as plug into World Wide Dreambuilders for coaching and mentorship. If you didn’t know, well you do now.

Some of you may not know who or what Amway is, and some of you may have heard of it or even had previous experience with it.  I know a few friends here have, it may not have been the best experience but that was with a person, not the company.  With a company that’s been around over 50 years there are a lot of people that have never even heard of Amway, hard to believe but more so then you think .  Guess that’s why the average age of people getting involved is drastically dropping. Last year it was 30, this year it’s 26 and that’s primarily young professionals. That’s a huge drop.

Now it’s not my life’s mission to defend or try and prove people wrong about this company.  Yes it’s had a history, yes it was taken to court back in the 70’s, yes people had bad experiences (however those experiences were with people without integrity and honesty), yes its been called a scam or a pyramid, however times change and just how people change so can corporations. 

If you go further back on my blog, you’ll see that I was really sceptical, so much so that I let my wife build this business for 5 months before I joined her after a lengthy research period. I would poke fun at her, and was really quite negative towards her and the people she was working with.  I’ve seen all the negative and positive blogs out there, I’ve seen the videos of the ‘lumberjack’ being interviewed by dateline, I’ve talked to people who “got screwed by Amway” and yet I came up with my own opinion and got some first hand information. After 5 months I decided this wasn’t anything illegal and actually looked to be a promising opportunity and joined my wife, we’ve not looked back since.

I’ll tell you what Amway isn’t; it’s not illegal, it’s not a pyramid, it’s not a get rich quick scheme (this is the hardest work we’ve ever had to do, but the results are worth it), it’s not a fly by the night company, It’s not the person on the top makes the most money (That’s your job), you can make more than the person above you (unlike your job), and it’s not your Grandpa’s Cadillac.  Amway has been around for over 50 years, it’s been around long enough to have some deep roots.  It’s gone through the trials and tribulations and as such is the governmental model by the FTC (Federal Trade Commission) for all other Direct Selling / Network Marketing companies, THAT actually make money and hit the FTC’s radar.  It is an accredited A+ business by the BBB and has tons of third party accolades that I’m not going to bother getting into here.  It’s a company that for the last 9 years, and during a recession has grown continually each year in sales reaching over 10 Billion dollars.  Not many companies can say they kept increasing profits during a recession and because of that many companies much larger than Amway respect them for that and the core values they stand on.

We don’t put on recruiting hats and troll the malls and parking lots looking for people to “get in”, we don’t have a route and a red wagon, and we certainly don’t have rooms filled of SA8 and Scrub Buds.  We ask people to give us the opportunity to earn their business with some amazing products that are on par if not better than Wall-Mart prices and come with a 180-day money back guarantee, something Wall-mart will never give you on for example bottle water.  Don’t believe me? Try drinking all your water and then returning the empties for your money back on the 179th day… won’t happen.  Amway stands behind their products and would take back those empties.  We talk to people every day in casual conversation and if someone is looking for an opportunity then we tell them about this opportunity, we are open, honest and transparent with them.  We are not scared of mentioning the ‘A’ word because honestly 80% of the people we talk to have never even heard of Amway and if they have its in a neutral or positive way because of the amazing sponsorships they’ve done.  Not to mention the $1Billion+ advertising campaign they’ve been doing to even further the name.

I’m never going to convince people to do what we do, or “get them in” to what we are doing because that’s just not who we are.  However I will go toe to toe and defend Amway should such a situation arise because I do believe in this company and the principals for what the founders of Amway stand for.  If anyone out there had a problem with Amway, it wasn’t actually Amway, it was a person who miss-represented something, lied to you, or promised you something, blah blah blah.  The negative out there is dying because you can only re-hash the same thing over and over for so long before you want to gnaw your own arm off.  What to know who the real Amway is? check out the video below…

Follow other bloggers for this year’s Summer Blogging Challenge here:

Zita of Ignite Strategic Solutions, Cliff of Peer Pressure Works, Tammy of Tam I Am, Peter of Crazy Wookie Cookies, Chad of The Daily Grind, Vlad of Analog Coast, Robb ofBlogging Life, Kim of Nature Baby Bloggings, Liam of ln The Now, Natasha of Natural Urban Mamas, Earl of My Name is Earl (J. Woods), Brad of Kick Me Out Soon

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What do I mean by time broke? I mean just that, people are constantly saying I don’t have enough time in the day, I don’t have time to work out, I don’t have time for another activity, I don’t have time for this or that.  The funny thing about being time broke is that unlike being broke financially, you can fix time broke very quickly.  I think people use time as an excuse all the time instead of actually understanding where they spend their time.  I did a post in October about time and how much time people actually have and it was quite shocking.  We have more than we think we do.

Time as an excuse is the weakest excuse in the book not to do something.  For example it’s an excuse I hear a lot when I talk about my recent gym training.  People mention all the time I wish I could work out, I just don’t have time for anything else in my life. That’s such horse crap!  I thought the same thing as well.  Lindsay and I are obviously busy with our business in the evenings (by removing our t.v. watching time) and I thought we would not have the time for me to go to the gym.  We sat down one weekend and actually went through our schedule and was able to find at minimum 3 evenings of 1 1/2 hours to spend at the gym as well as any time on the weekend.  Now how hard was it to find that time?  It wasn’t, it was removing the excuse, looking at our calendar, making it a priority, and putting it into action.  Something so many of us are to lazy to do I find.

So what if people really are legitimately busy with say a job that demands more than the 40 hours, typically around 50-60 at a minimum if you include driving time (not including OT which most of us all work freely), and then a second job and maybe a few other hobbies or other life events and they really don’t have time to add say something like the gym in, but they really want to.  Well wouldn’t you want to explore another option to help you recover that time back into your life?  Or would you rather just continue complaining about how you have little time in your life and keep doing the same thing over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again?  See the definition of insanity is doing the same thing expecting different results, so maybe most of us are insane? Something to think about.

Anyway we were tired of wasting our time and not getting something back for it which is why we are building this business so that we can gain our time back.  We’ve already created time in Lindsay’s life to become a stay at home mom WITH options.  Our kids will NEVER know what a daycare looks like and I’m proud of that.  Now we are working on freeing up my time so we can spend it together as a family and not have that time excuse ever again.

What are you doing in your life to remove the time excuse you’ve been saying to your friends and family?

Sure it’s nice to go to places you’ve never been, and I’ve got trips coming up later in May to Atlanta and Palm Springs, but that’s time I spend away from my family.  Time where my family doesn’t come with me on travel.  I would have loved for Lindsay to come with me to Halifax but I’m only here for really a full day Saturday and then I’m back home Sunday morning.  It doesn’t make sense to have her out here especially when I’m working.

I know a lot of other people that have families that really do enjoy the travel, I look at that and say there is SOMETHING wrong when you think traveling is MORE important than your family. Yes I understand that some of us need to travel for our job, but still doesn’t mean we to flaunt it.  I’m training my guys at work so that I don’t have to travel as much where as some guys will just horde is to they travel more and get away from the family.  It’s family values, some people have it and some don’t. That may be a bold statement but I see and hear it ALL the time when I travel.  Just today I heard comments from this guy sitting next to me at lunch that he was happy to get out of the house and travel so he didn’t have to hear his crying kids.  Hey JA, they are crying cause your NEVER HOME!

Anyway, traveling is nice once in a awhile but when it becomes excessive that’s when it’s to much.  Check with your family, ask them if they think your traveling to much, and if your able to, do something about it.  See if someone else can go for you instead.  See if you can reschedule.  I know some of that isn’t possible but what’s more important your family or your travels?

I’ve not skied with my dad in a long time and by skiing I mean skiing hard and looking for those great pockets of untouched powder and some challenging blacks and double black diamonds.  My dad for being almost 55 was a trooper and still has a few tricks in his skis.  He’s not the spring chicken that I may be but he holds his own and I’m pretty amazed.  He’s an amazing skier and is where I learned to ski the way I do today.  His technique has been perfected over the 50 years he’s been skiing.  It was a pretty darn good trip that’s for sure.

I got to do some dream building as well while on this trip as the trip to and from Jasper is almost 4 hours not to mention the dinner and a few drinks we had while watching the Oilers game.  Got to talking about future plans for both his family and also ours and where we are going to end up.  He’s moving out to Vernon, BC next summer which is about 20 minutes north of Kelowna where we want to head to in three years.  We got to talking about houses, vehicles, travelling and life after retirement as he will be retired at 55.  Out of all those conversations I’ve found out what I’d love to get for my father which is something he will never buy himself because of the upcoming retirement.  I won’t write it here just incase he comes across this blog but rest assured I’ll be doing a video just like my buddy Clay did for his dad.

Most of all what really hit me hard during this trip was the time I got to spend with my dad.  We don’t often get to spend as much time as we’d like together and that goes for ALL family members.  Work, life, and all other stuff gets in the way of that and as I’ve mentioned before we are building our business to create more of that time so that we can hang out with our family more.  There is no other option that I can think of that at least gives me the opportunity to do that.  My job doesn’t and owning my own traditional business sure as heck wouldn’t either and would only be me 10’s of thousand’s into debt.  So for us we build a business that contracts with Amway and World Wide Dreambuilders.  My dad while supportive doesn’t fully understand what we do but I’ve told him rest assured we will have many more days like this when you are retired and there will be much much more to come!

If you’re ever in the Jasper area during the winter make sure you stop by Marmot Basin. It’s a gem in the Canadian Rockies.

2011 Marmot Basin VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL