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.

• New IBO Applications +12%
• PV per Engaged IBOs +8% (I’ll assume engaged = active)
• New IBO PV +7%
• $50 Fast Track +30% (Fast Track program is now a full time program and has expanded)
• First year renewal rates were +2%
• Highest qualification growth rate for the US since 2003

New Pin Qualifiers

• 1 65 FAA
• 1 Founders Crown Ambassador
• 1 Crown
• 1 Triple Diamond
• 3 Double Diamonds
• 3 Founders EDC / EDC
• 39 Founders Diamonds / Diamonds
• 124 Founds Emeralds / Emeralds
• 166 Founders Sapphire / Sapphire
• 155 Founders Ruby / Ruby
• 1,233 Founders Platinum / Platinum

Great growth news for Amway North America.  This also touches on a post done earlier in October by “The Truth About Amway” Blog titled 1222 New Founder Platinum’s and Above for Amway North America!

One last stat to share was World Wide Group / World Wide Dreambuilders (WWDB) had a total new IBO count of just over 19,000. 

The biggest impact and talk of the night was our upline Founders Emeralds going diamond next FED, who received their $75,000 bonus check for holding a consistent Emerald business.  There is money in this thing if you build it right and with the proper parameters.  Slap it together and build it without a solid foundation or parameters and that’s why a lot of people who say they were such and such complained they made no money.

A new Diamond crossed stage however we were not sure if it was based on North American business or Korean business.  A New Executive Diamond Club and Triple Diamond crossed stage as well, both unsure of what business they were representing.  All three live in the US, either way it’s great regardless if it’s here or Korea as the work ethic is the same, the Koreans just have a better work ethic then us lazy North Americans and they understand this business then us thick headed, critical, sceptical, arrogant North Americans.

A picture says a thousand words and this one says Amway + Hard Work + Solid Foundation + Proper Parameters + CORE + a few other things = $75K.

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!

The survey found that 57% of Canadians would be in a tough spot if their paycheque was delayed by just one week.  I don’t know about you but that’s pretty damn scary that people cannot even live without their paycheque for one week.  You may think your in a good spot but the real test is to try it out, you may think your okay but in reality maybe not.  Now not everyone is in this boat and I’m sure a few of the people who read this blog will be quick to say they are just fine.  That’s great because your in the minority then at 43%! The other interesting report is that 40% of the people that responded to this survey will need to retire later than planned.  So much for “Freedom 65”, and it’s quite apparent as many older people are working longer and longer into their old age just to pay for the necessities of life. What ever happened to being able to relax and do the things they really wanted to do and live life?

It doesn’t matter what industry your in or how much you make, people are not getting the message.  I honestly think it’s because of the low interest rate.  People figure the money is cheap and they will just “pay it off” later or what not.  I’m just assuming there.  When the interest rates go up, and they will, people will be at their knees crying because they cannot even put food on their table.

I’ve never said Amway is the answers to your financial woes and have never tried to convince anyone to do what we do, however you better figure out what your plan B is going to be.  People are looking for opportunities of some kind, some way to make extra money to pay down debts, however whatever it is will take hard work.  Nothing is going to be quick and easy, it was easy to get into the mess you made by maxing our your credit cards however it’s going to take 10 times the effort to get out of that mess.

I think the biggest challenge many people have and why they spend more than can afford is because of association, plain and simple.  The whole mentality of “keeping up with the joneses” or “I gotta have that now” is what’s killing people.  I should also mention that status is another thing that kills people, people feel the need to look the part or cannot be seen as not having money and it just drives them further and further down the debt hole.  Again I assume this is what’s happening but by watching the people at work and seeing how some friends act it’s quite clear I’m not that far off base.

So watch your association and maybe start meeting people who have a different take on life.  People who live a life of delayed gratification, people who save now and then pay later, people that don’t care about status, people that just want to live a debt free lifestyle.  There are MANY different ways you can do that such as www.meetup.com or other sites of that nature.  One of the things we’ve done with our involvement with Amway is to utilize the training and support system called World Wide Dreambuilders or World Wide Group that teaches things like delayed gratification, living a debt free lifestyle, marriage, and a bunch of other great principals that not many systems of companies stand for.  Anyway that’s what we’ve chosen to do and have been blessed many times over for doing that.  Debt free and money in the bank that’s growing certainly puts us in that 43% that’s for sure.

Stat’s don’t lie, what are you doing today to make sure your in the 43% and not living paycheque to paycheque?

For a lot of us this picture paints a pretty realistic future.

Here is what the CPA said last year this time – http://www.nupge.ca/content/3571/poll-finds-six-10-canadians-live-payday-payday