With the growth in Alberta soaring, as confirmed by Amway Canada’s Jeff Johnson, there is no doubt that we will double the numbers next year if not more and be in the Coral Centre.  While this is the first Major Function, outside of Dream Night, that we’ve been able to attract, we will attract our very own Free Enterprise Day event in 2013.  Some people who read this blog may rebuke the growth but it’s very apparent that World Wide Dreambuilders is growing, Direct Selling in Canada is growing, and Amway it’s self is growing month over month and year over year.

We’ve got a new spark and are looking at continuing our own growth and contributing towards what is an amazing Canadian movement.

Go and Grow!

Anyway Im looking forward to hearing what everyone has to say including our own leadership who are on the verge of going Diamond. A lot of explosive growth going on in Western Canada and Canada as a whole. Weather you care or not, things are moving in a great way!

If you are here, enjoy the weekend!

Greg Duncan with the traditional Calgary White Cowboy hat.

Spring Leadership is just that, a conference/seminar on Leadership.  And If your going to talk about Leadership then why not invite the world’s foremost speaker and writer on the subject, John Maxwell.  I have to say that’s the best part of the whole weekend, two keynote talks by John and for those who want to attend, a non-denominational service on Sunday led by him.  I don’t think a guy like John Maxwell would want to hurt his reputation by endorsing an organization that wasn’t full of integrity. 

I always find the biggest growth in our business happens coming out of Spring Leadership, it helps to draw a line in the sand and move forward from whatever was going on before.  While I will miss the road trips down to Spokane, I’m excited to continue to build up this Canadian market so that we can earn having our own Free Enterprise Day’s, which typically happens around October.  I have no doubt with hearing some of the growth numbers from Amway’s latest visit out this way, and that’s pretty exciting to hear.

The only way to really understand what Spring Leadership is like is to actually go to one.  Reading it from me or anywhere else on the internet just won’t do it justice, make up your own mind and come to your own conclusions.

Distractions or as some may call it, life, can certainly throw some curve balls and distract you from your overall goal, whatever that may be.  For us we are moving and with that comes a ton of things you need to do in order to prepare and get setup in the new place. Utilities, moving vehicle, asking friends and family to help, purchasing things to fill voids in a new place or things that broke in the move, the list goes on and on and on.  For most it can easily be an excuse to not do the things that we originally have set out to do.  What I’ve learned in the last two years is really how to prioritize things in my life and really be a master of my schedule.  A great book I read on this even before I got involved with World Wide Dreambuilders and Amway, was a book called ‘Getting Things Done’ and it talks a lot about prioritization and organization.

Continuing with my example of moving, I could easily fall into the procrastination trap and wait until the last week or two and pack like crazy.  Studying success principals has taught me that maybe I should start earlier than later.  Yet some may say that just sounds like common sense, and it is, but I can’t tell you how many people I’ve moved in my lifetime that leave everything to the last minute.  Doing things earlier not only makes it easier but it gives me time to do other things and it reduces the stress in my life significantly. 

For us those other things include continuing to build our business and sow into the people we are working with by showing the plan, doing counsel sessions, meet and greets in our own business and in our tap roots, and so on and so on.  We can’t use the excuse that we are moving to distract us from the people we’ve committed to help build their own organizations.  Other things like date night(s) which are very important to keeping our relationship on track and making sure we at minimum set some dates to reconnect.  You’d be surprised how little couples do this.  Things like family time and making sure W gets to see his Grandparents and other family members.  The list goes on but if we get distracted by things that really shouldn’t be a distraction and apply some success principals to our lives, we’d be much better off and get a lot more accomplished. 

Its easy to read some books and say you’ll put these types of principals in place, but if you don’t get around others that do the same, you could end up spinning your tires or be frustrated why you let distractions get the best of you.  Learn to control them and you’ll be that much more successful in whatever it is your doing.

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. 

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.

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

Todd Woodward recently joined Amway as Vice President, Global Amway Brand and Public Relations and has some pretty high credentials from past employers.  University of Notre Dame, Weber Shandwick Worldwide, Harley Davidson and the National Milk Processor Board.  I’m glad to see someone like Todd take over this position as I’m sure he will take Amway’s reputation and only increase it as it already is. 

Just doing some searching on Amway or even World Wide Dreambuilders has changed since I first started.  There are many companies that help repair reputations and remove old or negative publicity and it seems like Amway is making strides there.  I don’t blame them as people that hide behind anonymous or alias’s really don’t lend much credibility to be honest.  Why hide?  If you believe 100% in what you talk about then you should be able to use a real name, at least that’s my opinion.

Today’s blog post on the Amway Insider was a good one that talked about online reputation management and some thoughts from Todd about Direct Selling Companies and Amway.  This comment really resonated with me because I really do believe this to be true at least with our business. “Direct selling is the most human of businesses. . . we believe that helping humans – not companies – to be successful is a world-changing approach. Translating that online is critical to improving our reputation”. While some may think it’s crazy to think a business like ours helps “humans”, it’s the people who are crazy enough to think that that actually make it happen.  We help others become successful before we become successful and that’s very fulfilling.  If you can serve others before you serve yourself you will become successful. Don’t believe me? Ask people like Warren Buffet, John Maxwell, or anyone that is very successful, they got there because they served others first and that’s exactly what we do.

Just today I had two different counsel sessions with different members of our team.  They had various questions, some business related some non-business related and I didn’t get paid for those two hours.  I could have used that time to do something else however  I served on them because they needed me, they needed to talk to me about whatever was on their mind or heart.  That’s just one way of how you serve others and do exactly what Todd was talking about, “helping humans”.  I love that quote.

Click the link above to read the blog entry to see some other quotes from Todd on what is going to be hugely impactful for Amway in the coming future.

Is doubling your Dream Night numbers year to year and outgrowing venue’s

No it’s not, it’s called growth and I have a confession to make, I attended or will be attending two Dream Nights this week.  Yup, it’s true.  Out of our own free will without any cohesion, guilt, pressure, etc… we attended last night and will be attending tonight.  Both nights, different venue’s and different speakers, in fact because of growth they’ve had to move one of the nights to the Shaw Conference Centre.  If there wasn’t growth in this area that would seem like overkill or a waste of money to put it up there don’t you think?  To be honest I don’t know how many people are attending each event as I’m not function hosting and who’s going to more than one, quite frankly I don’t care.  I care about my wife and our business only.

(Just incase you didn’t understand the first paragraph that was some sarcasm for some of my most devoted loyal readers )

Tonight will be quite the night as Ron and Georgia Lee Puryear will be one of the speakers and as far as I know this is their first visit to Edmonton.  I have no doubt they want to see the growth and excitement going on in the Edmonton area and the hard work the leaders in this organization have done over the last few years.  We are excited as we have a few guests coming out to check out what Dream Night is all about but more importantly my wife’s parents are coming out.  They want to see a bit more of what it is that we do, the excitement, the association and everything that World Wide Dreambuilders is about. 

I’ll leave you with this as you start your new year; don’t gauge your future potential based on your past disappointments.

There are a lot of things out there and really where do you start?  I figured I’d start with people and names I know and then fan out from there and see what is available locally as well as on a larger scale.  So I started with John Maxwell, I’ve mentioned him before and read a lot of his books.  If you do a quick search for leadership guru’s you’ll notice he’s at the top and rightfully so.  World Wide Dreambuilders is very fortunate to have a great partnership with him as he speaks at the Spring Leadership conferences every year as well as Taste of Diamond weekend and always has a huge impact.  I wanted to see what resources he had for the general public and potentially any conference or seminar style of teachings.

John offers what he calls the Maximum Impact Club which can be found here (http://www.johnmaxwell.com/development-training/maximum-impact-club/) and entitles you to his monthly CD along with notes.  Total cost per year is $179 for the online only version and $259 a year for Online + CD in US/Canada.  I’m also going to assume his company is making a profit off of that, which would make sense and is normal.

I went on to find that John offers a 2 1/2 day event called “Exchange” found here (http://www.exchangegathering.com/) and the cost of that event is $8,000 per person and does not include your accommodations.  That’s quite an event however if you wanted to attend a smaller workshop you can do that as well located here (http://www.johnmaxwell.com/speaking-events/public-workshops/) for $299 per person.  So that’s a quick and dirty of what I found for John Maxwell.  Glad we may nowhere near those prices to see John at our Spring Leadership event or for his CD’s.

I thought to take a different approach on someone I’ve heard of for many years and I’m sure all of you have as well.  Tony Robbins.  He’s more of a life coach, mentorship, power within you type of person and he has lots of books and CD’s and what I found was his “Power Within You” event which has MANY different ranges in prices. (http://www.tonyrobbins.com/holiday/power-within.html) Starting with the basic package of $995 going right up to $2,595 for a 4 day event. He’s also got CD’s like John Maxwell however I won’t bother posting that as it’s pretty much the same.

So with those two people you could be looking at some pretty hefty investments if you’re looking into personal growth and leadership material.  All well respected people who’ve helped a lot of people gain success.

I started looking at some local support structures and seeing what Edmonton had to offer it’s Entrepreneur community and found a MeetUp group called The Edmonton Entrepreneur Meetup.  My wife and I have been to these a few times now and there are people from all different walks of life and business’s.  It’s a great networking event getting around like minded individuals looking to do something more and work for themselves instead of working for someone else.  I’ve talked many times about association and who you get around, it’s important.  Why else would Entrepreneur’s gather together, so they could bounce ideas off each other or get around other successful people and ask them what they did to get where they are at.  Sounds familiar to me.  Cost for these events are typically free or the cost of your favorite coffee beverage.

Corporately, I know a lot of business’s subscribe to this Harvard ManageMentor program (http://corporatelearning.hbsp.org/corporate/products-and-services/reference.html) that has teachings on everything from time management, leadership, finances, to goal setting and everything inbetween.  The cost for something like this in a corporate environment is not cheap.  I was able to find for 51+ users it works out to $99 per license.  Each employee needs to have a license so for a company of just 500, that’s $49,500 a year.  A rather large investment for something that’s typically not mandatory but strongly suggested by your employer.  I’m guessing Harvard is getting some kind of kickback from those prices.

Books books and more books, holy crap there are a ton of books you can find in the Health and Well-Being section at your local bookstore.  You can literally find a book on any part of your life that you’re looking for help in. Marriage, Finances, Leadership, the list goes on.  The well known saying goes “Leaders are readers”.  Ask any successful person to see their library and they will show you a ton of books they’ve read.  Ask them for their favorite most impactful book and read it!

I could go on but the fact is Support Systems are out there for a reason, its to support those involved in whatever it is they are doing.  Be it the World Wide Dreambuilders support system, the Harvard’s ManageMentor program, or John Maxwell’s Workshops, you’ll only get out of it what you put in.  The best thing about all of these types of systems, they are all optional, nobody says you have to take them or follow them.  However without partaking in these systems you won’t get the benefits of what’s offered through them.

I encourage you to do your research on whatever support system you’re looking at getting involved in.  If that’s World Wide Dreambuilders make sure whoever is taking you through the process explains everything in detail.  Make sure you actually read through everything in the information system that was given to you as it contains a lot of answers to your questions.  If there are questions, ASK them.  I can only speak of what we do and that’s full disclosure of those we are looking at going into business with and are going through a qualification process.  Nothing bothers me more than people who hide and twist the truth, its not a great way to start out a partnership that’s for sure.

Again Happy New Year and Much Success!

I’m not a cape crusader of Amway or World Wide Dreambuilders, if you don’t like either companies or have had wrong doings in the past with a person involved with these companies then stop reading.  My blog is about my personal experiences with this type of business, the personal growth I’ve undergone, achievements, failures, and everything in-between.  I no longer need validation by anyone that what we are doing is “acceptable”, the industry is doing that on it’s own with or without me.

So with that discussion and comments will be permanently disabled, I don’t want to make the time to check email or the spam filter list, Akismet does a great job of that for me without my intervention.  I could be doing a lot more productive things with my time.  Again thanks for your continued interest in this blog.