Tag Archives: Family

Taken Care Of

Posted on by

familyEarlier today I asked a question on Twitter that was inspired by a conversation I overheard at lunch today about is your spouse and or family taken care of, God forbid, you happen to pass away.  I started to think about that a lot this afternoon as we now have a family and had to ask myself that same question.  I’ll answer a little bit further on.

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

Also follow this on twitter with the “Official” hash tags #SBC #SummerBloggingChallenge

Who is Amway?

Posted on by

 

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…

 

Who is Amway?

 

Founders’ Fundamentals

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

Also follow this on twitter with the “Official” hash tags #SBC #SummerBloggingChallenge

Time Broke

Posted on by

The-Time-ExcuseI’ve spoken and posted articles like this http://www.ctv.ca/CTVNews/TopStories/20110420/canadians-financial-status-survey-110420/ many times however what’s missing is that while people may be financially broke, to the point they cannot even save money, they are also time broke.

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?

Travel Travel Travel

Posted on by

business-travelWell I’m in Halifax this time and I’ve never actually been out past Montreal before.  I took a walk down a few of the streets this evening to get a sense of the downtown core and smell the sea air.  However to get to Halifax from Edmonton is a LONG day of travel.  I’m wiped and right now it’s only 9pm my time, yet here in Halifax its just past midnight.  Travel is not all that it’s cracked up to be…

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?

Weekend of Skiing With My Father

Posted on by

This weekend my father took me skiing for Christmas and my Birthday which just passed on the 4th.  We had a great time heading up to Marmot Basin in Jasper.  The weather was looking a bit chilly as we left Edmonton early Saturday morning but weird things happen with the weather in Alberta as it was warmer in the mountains than if we had stayed in Edmonton.  It was around –2 on the hill at the top and around –10 at the base of the mountain. Weird, but I’ll take it! 

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.