We are on our way today to the Free Enterprise conference in Portland.  On our way we are able to visit with my parents in Southern BC on either side of the event which works out perfect.  W is going to spend the weekend there visiting with his grandparents and they are very excited since they don’t get to see him much.  That works out perfect so that we can focus on the conference and W gets to visit with his grandparents who are always asking for more time with him. Win Win!

I’m quite excited to attend this year, as I was the previous year, coming out of a retirement party we had last night for our personal sponsor.  Stepping away from a noble position as a Fire Fighter for the City of Edmonton is not an easy thing to do, however the ability to become a full time dad trumps that in a heartbeat.  A man that stands on principal, integrity, courage, transparency, marriages, family and living with cashflow are just some of the many qualities that bare the “fruit on the tree” that we seek and I’ll seek out mentorship and coaching from a man like that. 

I’m excited to see the growing Canadian leadership speak on a FED stage as we now have two founders emerald’s in Calgary and Edmonton both of which are twenty wide and on track to hit Diamond by next FED. That’s quite exciting as there have not been any new diamonds in awhile and this is just the start.  All indications are showing Amway is continuing to grow from the number of founders platinum’s, to the growth in North America, and lastly hitting double digits in the billions of dollars last fiscal year (still waiting for the official announcement). Exciting times for sure despite what some may say.

There are a lot of things I’m looking to get out of this weekend of which I won’t share now, but will once it’s done.  Have a great weekend!

Time is the most expensive commodity and something we can never get back once it’s gone.  Time is the most expensive resource known to man and should be included within your wealth and treated with more importance than money.  You can be rich and have all the money in the world yet if you are a salve to whatever is creating that money then to me your not wealthy at all.  What good is a ton of money if you don’t have the time to spend any of it?  Personally I’d rather have more time than money as I believe it’s more important.  I’d rather be debt free, have all the time in the world and have a small amount of money than a large amount of money and no time to do anything with it.

You hear of many parents who run a family business that are pretty much a slave to the business, they cannot step away from it and while they may have turned a profit after the initial 2-5 years, they need to continue working at it.  Not saying every business is like this but talk to your Pita Pit, Subway, or any other traditional franchise and ask if the owner is working. I’d say about 80% of the time its the owner making your food.  I love talking to these guys and have talked to many, that’s where I come up with the 80% that owners are the ones slaving away.  Its almost sad in a way because with the recession that’s still going on a lot of these businesses have had to let their staff go and the wife and husband are the ones working behind the counter. 

So money and time are pretty big in wealth, but how about your relationship with your spouse.  Is it a healthy one?  Are you constantly at battle and stressed at each other? (Top reason most couples fight is because of money).  Do you have that time thing I talked about before and spend enough of it with your spouse?  Are you doing things to ensure you work at your marriage instead of letting it slip away.  Do you respect your spouse?  I think that’s a huge one and to be honest most of us don’t respect our spouses and I’ll give you some examples right now.

1. Calling your wife the old lady, ball in chain, etc. I used to hear “old lady” from my x-boss all the time, to me that’s just disrespectful. 
2. When your with “the guys” and people end up talking about their wives in a negative way.  This also goes for when girls are with “the girls”.  What right do you have to put your spouse down when amongst your friends?  I see this ALL the time at lunch time or when I’m out with the guys golfing or having a drink.  You will never catch me say anything negative about my wife.
3. I could go on with many more examples but I think you get the picture, have some respect for your significant other 24/7, regardless of who your with.

I think those three combined is what determines someone as being “Wealthy”.  It’s not just as simple as having a lot of money, as said before if you have no time to spend it, what does it matter?  When you have that time and money how is your relationship so that when you are together do you take advantage of it in a great way.  Everyone has their own opinion and really it’s based on your value system of what makes you wealthy.  More to think about I guess.

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

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

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

It was just nice to have a full month off and take care of my family for the first month of having a family.  The transition of now having a little baby to take care of turns things upside down and It saddens me to know most people are only able to take a few days off, maybe a week, and then go back to work.  Having this month off has given us the opportunity to set a schedule with Wyatt, allowed us to get him used to napping in his crib now (a recent success), and just get into some kind of groove and really figure things out.  As new parents there is no manual or SOP given to you, you have to figure things out on your own.  You may say there are books, well yeah there are books, however every baby is different and trust me when shit hits the fan the last thing you do is look at a book. 

I could have actually taken 8 months off (paternity leave) if I really wanted to and not really have it impact us financially.  Because of the decisions we’ve made and the success we’ve achieved in our business, Lindsay was retired from a full time job working for another person almost a year ago, and now works on our business part time so I guess she’s semi-retired.  We were able to give her the choice of if she wanted to work full time or not, and well I think you know what route we took.  She didn’t need the maternity leave so that gave me the option of paternity leave.  I chose not to take it because of where I am in my full time job and how new I was in that role.  For the time being I still need my full time job and protecting that is still priority one.  Given recent events with how we laid off someone coming back from maternity leave, I felt it best to only take one month.

Lindsay can now comfortably be a stay at home mom so that we don’t have to put our little one in daycare once maternity leave is done.  I know not everyone has this option and can respect that and quite honestly before we got involved in our business we were in that situation as well.  However we decided to make a change and our goal was to not have him in daycare and we made those changes by streamlining our lives, by getting out of debt, by increasing our income stream outside of our full time jobs, all those things led us to where we are now and I wouldn’t change that for anything.  Everyone has options, it’s what they are willing to do to make it happen that sets them apart from those who are not willing to do what it takes.

So August 15th I go back to work, back to what I like doing, working with people, working with technology and toys, but what I hate doing is being away from my family and putting them on the backburner to build someone else’s company/dream.  That will ultimately change as we have a new burn, a burn to have me gain my freedom back from a full time job and give my best hours of the day to my family instead of the man.  Just like we were able to do for Lindsay we can do for myself.  It all depends on choices and options in life and what is important to you.  Having this temporary freedom has lit a fire under my arse to make this happen and we are and it’s going to be pretty fantastic.

So I welcome August 15th as it will be a burn, a good burn so that I can have many more days like this, chilling out with my kids enjoying that mid-day nap.

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

Yes that is part of my job, so I’ll stop that line of thinking right there.  I’m not complaining at all about the drive because I was actually able to listen to a couple of great CD’s and a few audio books that I have during the drive.  Also driving 12 hours gives you some great reflection time as well so if there are some positives those would be it.  However that was a whole Sunday I was away from my pregnant wife when we could have been doing a lot of other things.

However jobs don’t value your time, if they did they wouldn’t continuously ask you to work over time which takes you away from your spouse, partner or family.  I’m a big believer in work life balance while I continue to work out the last year of where I’m at.  However its very hard to get buy in on that and while our company speaks it and says we should have a good work life balance, they don’t actually walk the talk.  A lot of companies are like this, at least the last three I’ve worked for.  I don’t profess to know how all companies work, I can only go by what I’ve seen in my previous jobs and what the IT industry has shown.  However I’d bet I’m not far off base with what other companies are like, especially after hearing many friends complain about what is required of them at their jobs.

The fact is your job will pay you as little as possible for your efforts and time.  Why do you think you get that measly 2-3 weeks of holidays for the WHOLE year to start at most companies.  Then it takes you anywhere between 5-10 years to get another week.  Those who are reading this don’t even try and defend your job because you’ve complained at least once about the crappy amount of holidays you get.  If you say you don’t your lying. 

I’m really just stating the obvious here and I’m not saying that Amway is the answer to this however it is the opportunity that we’ve decided to purse to allow us greater freedom in our lives and that’s why I can say this is the last year that I’ll be working.  I’ve got a family on the way and I intend to spend a lot of time with that family and less time working for someone else while they spend more time with their family.  The Amway opportunity along with World Wide Dreambuilders is paving the way for time freedom as well as financial freedom down the road.  It does come with some work however, and anyone that tells you this is a get rich quick is lying.  We are very transparent with how we build this business with prospective entrepreneurs because we value their time and want them to know just what it takes to build this business.

So how valuable is my time?  More valuable then any company can ever pay me and that should be the same thought for everyone.

So what’s next? My Freedom, I cannot wait to join my wife so that both of us do not have to wake up to some stupid alarm clock.  It’s also I think when people will actually look at us and take us serious that you can actually be successful in this business.  I would never ever put our family in jeopardy and when the time comes to make that decision to step away from my job you better believe I’ll be counselling, thinking about it and making my own decision that’s best for our family.  It will be a great decision and one we plan on making Late Fall next year.  We will be working hard towards that and 2011 will be an amazing amazing year. 

I can vividly imagine my freedom day right down to the last details.  What’s awesome about that is we will have at least one child by then and I’ll also be home to spend time with him/her which is one of my biggest goals is to be around with my kids and see every moment of their lives.  Its a huge goal and not one many parents can say and it’s worth fighting for.  I’ve seen a glimpse of that kind of family with Kyle and Erron where Kyle is a professor for the UofS and he gets a lot of time off because of the school season.  He is an amazing family man and is one father I look up to outside of my family.  I think everyone could learn a few things from the Andersons.  So kudo’s to you guys for raising the family you do.

I want to have that great family life, like I said it’s important to me, it’s worth the fight and we will make it happen.  Step 1 was to get Lindsay free, and we’ve been able to do that with this business and the association. Step 2 is to get me free so that we can be together and raise an awesome family.

FREEEEEEEEDOM!  That’s for you Cliff, in reference to your latest blog post (http://www.peerpressureworks.com/2010/08/29/tales-of-jake-feat-kelly-harll/).

William Wallace portrait in

The Guthrie Castle

on the Isle of Mull, Scotland

Like I mentioned before I was worried what my friends would think and really there was only one blog entry by James where he gave some thoughts into what we are doing. You can find that blog entry here.  It was provoked by my Dream Stealers blog entry.  However after exposing my blog to some people that didn’t know it, or knowing people were following it for awhile really didn’t affect me like I thought.  I have great friends who respect me for what we are doing and I respect them for their views and opinions.  Really it doesn’t matter what people think because we know where we are going and how we are going to get there, despite the odds and all the other stuff that people bring up.

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So I’ve split up this blog post because tonight is the eve of my wife’s freedom date.  The date where she will never have to work for another man again, for someone who will tell her what to do and when to get up to chase a paycheque.  Well I should say she really hasn’t had to chase one of her 3 paycheques each week because one of the broke financial advisors still has not paid her in two months.  She’s submitted that invoice today as her final one so it will be interesting when I go pick her up tomorrow if he has her final cheque.  If not I’ll be pissed.  We’ve budgeted Lindsay’s paycheques for the last two months to go directly onto debt.  Him not paying us doesn’t affect how we live or puts us on the street but it affects us paying off the last line of credit debt that we have and I’m pumped to get that done.  So PAY UP BROKE FINANCIAL ADVISOR.  Maybe you should take your own damn advice!

I’m excited for Lindsay, excited for her to re-discover who she is without the stress of showing up for a job.  The last two jobs she’s worked have been pretty stressful, political, and to be honest degrading to her.  Well no longer.  No longer does she have to dress up for some other man, looking all sexy like she does, she can do that for me now   I’m excited for Lindsay to pick up her yoga practice again and for her to do P90X.  She’s really really pumped for that.  Could she do that during the early morning or after regular work hours? Sure but that just reduces the amount of time for everything else like spending time with me, eating healthy, all that other stuff.

Most importantly I am excited to get my wife back.  I’m excited to get to know my wife where the stress of a job does not loom over her head.  I have no idea what to expect, but I’m pumped to enter this new chapter of our lives together and I owe what we’ve done to smart decisions and great association. 

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Please check out these other all-star bloggers in the 2010 Summer Blogging Challenge. Cliff – Peer Pressure Works, Chad – The Grind, Kelly – ‘Round the Bend, Kim – In Desperate Need of Entertainment, Kyle – Teacher, Tinkerer, Farmer, Geek, Liam – In the Now, Brad – Kick Me Out Soon, Tammy – Tam I am, Erron – From The Inside Looking In, James – Feelings of White, Vlad – Analog Coast, Janine - Because

We are pretty busy right now with all things.  I’m busy at work trying to solidify some budget work and this week is my “on-call” week or “period” as Lindsay likes to call it.  I cannot wait to NOT be a slave to my Blackberry that’s for sure.  More than likely only one more year with how things are going in our business.  We are also preparing for Lindsay’s freedom day, just trying to get some details sorted out for that for when we free her from her job.  Won’t say much more about it cause she reads this blog

Lastly we are busy investing time into people and building up existing relationships and new ones.  I think this is a great “being busy” because I love working with people and what’s even better I like helping them become successful which is what we’ve done with all our team members.  They are all kicking butt and have amazing qualities about them that make them all unique.  Probably the best part I love about what we do. 

Sweet so I actually made it well over the 150 word mark and actually had just a little bit to say.  Enjoy the evening!

Hey and if you’ve not checked out these other bloggers, make sure you do! 

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I Like fun, fun is my favourite! Cliff – Peer Pressure Works, Chad – The Grind, Kelly – ‘Round the Bend, Kim – In Desperate Need of Entertainment, Kyle – Teacher, Tinkerer, Farmer, Geek, Liam – In the Now, Brad – Kick Me Out Soon, Tammy – Tam I am, Erron – From The Inside Looking In, James – Feelings of White, Vlad – Analog Coast, Janine - Because

Lindsay and a few others from this area and Saskatoon! will be added to this video in the next few months.  While Lindsay’s freedom will be on there I cannot wait to be added to the debt free section which we are aiming for the end of the year. 

To be honest I love motivational videos like this because 1) they were build with heart 2) they actually inspire (me anyway) and 3) we know it can happen.  There is nothing wrong with being motivated or inspired and it doesn’t have to be these videos.  It can be whatever works for you, just have something that inspires you!  Have a great weekend!!

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Please check out these other all-star bloggers in the 2010 Summer Blogging Challenge. Cliff – Peer Pressure Works, Chad – The Grind, Kelly – ‘Round the Bend, Kim – In Desperate Need of Entertainment, Kyle – Teacher, Tinkerer, Farmer, Geek, Liam – In the Now, Brad – Kick Me Out Soon, Tammy – Tam I am, Erron – From The Inside Looking In, James – Feelings of White, Vlad – Analog Coast, Janine - Because

One of guys Lindsay works with is actually still an IBO and said he used to be a Platinum with an Emerald in his downline (which is not profitable) and he started to coach her and say a whole bunch of stuff to justify why he was no longer active and such.  He was within the Network 21 LOA which I believe I heard has a F rating in the BBB.  Not 100% sure on that just what I heard.  [Post EDIT: I should have done better research when originally writing this article.  Network 21 does not have an F rating, they don't have a rating yet as they are still under the radar of the BBB. Rating Here] Why wasn’t he profitable?  Because he didn’t build the business with proper parameters to help secure and solidify his downline legs.  It happens and is a lot of the reasons why people are unsuccessful from some of the failed organizations I’ve heard of.  I don’t want to de-edify but this happens due to a lot of different reasons.  We build our business with those parameters which is why to some it doesn’t make sense how we have a self funded business or how we are making money at lower PV levels.  Build it right with a coach and mentor who have integrity and you can be profitable if you work hard at it.

I’m so excited for Lindsay and the next two weeks.  She will never have to get dolled up for another man ever again which is pretty awesome.  She can focus on what she wants to do in life and pick up some of the things she hasn’t been able to do because of the 8-5 day job.  One of the biggest things we are excited about is when we start trying for kids in the next few months she can do it healthy and stress free.  Not having to have a job that creates stress which isn’t good for the new baby.  Sure there will be those life stress’s which for us have been reduced to a minimum since we have little debt left.  That’s the big life stress right there we’ve been fortunate to get rid of.  Once you do that, everything changes.

So two more weeks and Lindsay will become a free woman, a woman with a choice!

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Please check out these other all-star bloggers in the 2010 Summer Blogging Challenge. Cliff – Peer Pressure Works, Chad – The Grind, Kelly – ‘Round the Bend, Kim – In Desperate Need of Entertainment, Kyle – Teacher, Tinkerer, Farmer, Geek, Liam – In the Now, Brad – Kick Me Out Soon, Tammy – Tam I am, Erron – From The Inside Looking In, James – Feelings of White, Vlad – Analog Coast, Janine - Because