Convention and the aftermath.

WOW

The 2009 USANA International convention was so exciting and amazing. It's slogan 'No Limits' truly fit it well. I'll be talking about some of the things Danielle and I learned over the next several days, but I wanted to share with you the difference it made in us this time.

Our first convention we went to, we went as new associates and we were overwhelmed by the number of people involved with this amazing company. I knew there was a lot, but the Salt Lake City Police Department has to come out when general sessions let out so that they can direct traffic and help all of us cross the street safely. We fill the stadium. Thousands of people just like you and me, spending a week with sore feet and away from home, to come together and celebrate one man's vision. I had complete confidence in the company after that first convention, and I ALREADY had confidence in the product. Danielle and I felt there was still a piece missing.

There was.

Listening to the success of the people this year, listening to the stories. A Chinese woman with NO education, who can't speak English, who has no money and has to work her business between 11pm and 3am the next day. Blows the 'no time' and 'no money' out of the water. Les Brown, Dr Dennis Waitley, and of course Collette Larsen, who admittedly puts me into tears every time.

I didn't speak much about it on the way home. I felt bad. Here we have been in this business and not REALLY even TRIED! Our paycheck showed it too. I tell people it's a job where you paycheck TRULY reflects your work. Listening to 'Think and Grow Rich' by Napoleon Hill, Thinking about the interview of Tim Sales done by Larry King, LIVE on our stage. I knew this business will grow, and I will grow it.

So if you look at me and say “Those things don't work.” I will tell you “I KNOW, it doesn't work, like a bicycle doesn't move. You have to move the bicycle, you have to go through the motions, and it's hard to get it started moving at first. But once that bicycle starts moving, it gets easier. There will be times you can coast. There will be down hills where things are easy. But there will be up hills too. Where things get hard. But if you keep pedaling and keep trying... you'll get to where your going. What I want to know is, where do you want to go?

You see that is what we were missing Confidence in ourselves. You can hear it too. we went from "well we kinda want to do this..." to "this is where we are going." Stay tuned. Because I learned a lot at conference, and I'm eager to share it with everyone. This truly is a business anyone can do.

~James

Who's recipe are you using?

I was recently awakened to my own incompetence (that needs to happen to everyone once and a while). It was during a pep talk from my up line. We were pushing her to tell us what we were doing wrong. We had been fighting to make this business work, and we wanted to know where we should put our troops.

I am a pretty calculated individual. I check the fridge for milk and eggs before making cookies. I measure out all of my ingredients carefully, I ensure the oven is preheated to the proper temperature before I put in a single dollop on the pan. I'm a planner. A slightly paranoid planner, but a planner nonetheless. I like to have my keys in my hand when I shut a car door. I like having money in the bank.

As an entrepreneur, you can't always have money in the bank. I am currently planning a trip to Salt Lake City for the International convention for our company USANA. I'll be investing HUNDREDS of dollars into this trip, driving 30 hours, for an investment. An investment in myself.

You see she told us that instead of working so hard on the business, we should work on ourselves and the business will come. We should stop doing what WE do. Look at the successful people in our company, and do what THEY did. Not that we should stop being us, but that we should focus on US, and where we WANT to go, and GO there instead of being here.

So I look in the fridge, have eggs, have milk, flour, sugar, chocolate chips etc... I pull down my cookie bowl, and pull out my recipe. I start making cookies. Blast it! They turned out the same as they did before. More milk, more eggs, More flour, ect.. this time I change the temperature of the oven... Different but still not what I want. I could keep doing this time and time and time again. Sure eventually I might stumble upon the perfect blend. But wouldn't it be easier, instead of randomly changing my recipe... to try a different recipe. Wow, I like those cookies. Can I have the recipe? Their answer will be yes, I will show you how to be successful in this business. Go to convention, and read these books.

Opportunity

     I have always been intrigued with magic. I am also one of those people that have to know what it is, and how it works. I have taken the magicians oath, simply so that I can know. In return I share small bits of magic I can with children just to see them smile, and listen to their parents relate stories of them attempting to replicate the trick. I don't share my information about magic at all. I do about science. 

     When I was a boy my father once came home with the most amazing machine known to man. A Commodore 64. I could actually control a thing on the television! I would play Radar Rat Race for Hours. But like magic, I had to know how it worked. Dad would buy a magazine, and in it was pages and pages of code, Dad would dutifully type it all in and save it to a cassette tape and VOILA a program... ish. I started looking at the code itself. why did these words affect the computer like that? I looked for similarities in the programs until I found common words. GOTO, PRINT, etc. Dad finally gave in and helped me learn BASIC. I was eight. I had to know. High school brought the Internet to the house. In college I was programming my Papers in HTML (that I had reversed Engineered) because it was the only way I could print them on the library printers. 

     The ARMY taught me some new things. Circuits, signal conditioning, and radio theories. WOW, this was much better than programming. I would actually be able to build the circuit to do what I wanted. Honed by working on Point of sale refurbishment, and repair of two way radios, I was excited that I had learned so much. 

     In talking with the VA, they encouraged me to peruse a degree in Electrical Engineering. How flipping absurd was this! Your talking about Tony Stark, Nicoli Tesla, Thomas Edison, people I had looked up to as Magicians, a magic that I had learned some simple tricks to amaze people, but now, someone thinks me worthy of learning the whole show. Bless my beard.

     I run a Home based business, and one thing I have learned is to not prequalify ANYONE. I have met people that were making sandwiches for a living, who were able to replace their income and more, in just a short time. What if their sponsors had said, Nah I don't think this is right for you. But here I was prequalifing the one person I know better than anyone else. ME. I prequalified myself for an opportunity to learn what the masters know because I didn't think I could. I have a tested IQ of 155, I took the ASVAB after three hours of sleep, no food or water for three days and got a GT score that let me do anything I wanted in the Army. But yet I had told my self I wasn't smart enough to do this. 

     I see this a lot in business. I'll chat someone up and tell them I have an opportunity, and they tell me they don't have the money, sometimes before I even talk numbers with them. They tell me they don't have the time. They tell me they don't know how. Here I am, with an opportunity to go back to school, and get paid for it, and all I have to do is say... Yes. All I have to do is step outside my comfort zone, and do it. Will it get me a job? the VA guarantees me a job when I'm done. 

     I know a couple who is MISERABLE. They have an open mortgage, and borrow against it to the tune of (L+~100) where L= last month's borrowing. Their health is terrible, and their future is bleak. I showed them the business. They knew plenty of people that are interested and have REFERRED some to me. THEY HAVE WORKED A BUSINESS, that they are too AFRAID to start. They are so afraid of doing something different that they are running themselves into the ground, to stay in their comfort zone. Like me, all they had to do is say... Yes. 

What is holding you back?

The first Post.

I remember doing art on paper as a child. My parents had a Box of old Ditto paper. I was told to use it up. (it was a big box too) I would draw for hours and hours. Back then that was considered recycling. I remember the dusty box and pulling a new sheet of paper out. The blue Phonetic alphabet on one side, and the vast empty on the other. Over and over I would fill that empty with something. Honing my creative skills. Playing out in my mind visual scenarios. It proved a fatal mistake in Kindergarten. Here I was handed a piece of paper, a drawing of an apple on one side. The teacher instructed us to color an apple. Promptly I turned over the paper, grabbed the green crayon and began work. My apple had a stem, but no leaf. I have seen apples before, they don't normally have leaves. My apple was green. I liked granny smith apples, which are green. The teacher was mortified. NOT ONLY had I not assumed her instruction. but my apple was the wrong color and didn't have a leaf. Annoyed, she told my mother (who was teaching there too at the time) what I had done to the coloring sheet. She simply replied, he's never seen one before.

This first post is to break up the blank. To begin, To show you why I think outside the box. Why, not only do I not color inside the lines, but I color on the wrong side of the paper. I work a lot with Twitter, and Facebook. I recently was told by someone who I started following on twitter, "thanks for the add but if it is to drive me to your website, than... lame" That hurt. I have a serious business that is created from meeting people, making friends, and helping them. Here is a person who wanted to be listened to, but not talked to. Bizarre in my mind.

I have some interesting ways of looking at the world. I have some Unique things to share. I hope you check back often.

~James