Feeling Down Today

My day started out with great anticipation because my daughters came to visit, have dinner and belatedly celebrate my son's twentieth birthday. My girls were great and we all had fun visiting. Then they had to leave because Danielle has an interview with Costco tomorrow. After my girls left, I checked to see if I received any submissions for my Mini Office Outlet business. None. I have put a lot of work in posting free ads everywhere. I knew there would be a slight chance in picking up submissions this way but I have to try. I only need to find a few serious builders. I started posting ads on September 15th. So anticipation fell way to disappointment.


So what do I do to get out of my funk? Well, for my daughters, I made a plan to go see them on Thursday. Maybe I'll stay there for the weekend. I can, you know, I am unemployed and I can take my business with me  because it is all internet and phones. The Freedom Project gives me that ability. For the disappointment of not receiving submission for almost two weeks, I'll reset my mind by reading The Success Principles by Jack Canfield and review the Freedom Projects Training Center on how to post online ads. I'll look at my dream sheet and review my plans to achieve those dreams! That will put me in the right mind. Also, writing this blog helps me keep my ship on the right course because it forces me to explain to myself what I need to do.


I hope this helps you too.

Practicing leaving messages

Tonight,with all my kids out, I am practicing leaving messages to family and friends that I know are not home. I am following the phone message script provided by the Freedom Project team. So far so good. Now I will wait for their critiques. Family and friends are good to practice on because most of them will try to help and some will enjoy being brutally honest. But that is great. It will help me become smooth on the phone. I want to show confidence and sincerity when I speak whether it is to a live being or an answering machine. I want the prospect to know that I know what I am talking about and not just some newbie trying to fake it. It's my business I better be good.

Learning In The Freedom Project

Recently, my friend, Lisa, had this conversation with her son, Jason.

I had just come home from work and I only had a half hour to

pull my art stuff together, get myself together and leave for class.

Unfortunately this didn’t give me much time with Jason. While

I was packing my son asked me why did I have to go to art class?

I explained I wanted to learn more about painting. Jason said mom

you are already a good painter. Why do you have to learn more?

You already know how to paint! I said because I needed to learn

more about painting. There's always new stuff and I enjoy painting. 

I told him even the teacher takes classes and workshops (she's an

artist too)so she can learn more and gain more experience and
progress as an artist. I told him I want to get better.

This is a wonderful illustration of the need to learn more of anything we desire to become better at. I desire to become the best in network marketing and in The Freedom Project. Everything you and I have done since the first initial call from a Freedom Project member was learn about The Freedom Project’s compensation, mentoring model, promotion of Shaklee’s products and nuisances of The Freedom Project. You and I are learning how to read scripts and how to bring prospects through the Freedom Projects pipeline. But you have to learn more and more about yourself.

Peggy, my up line coach and a great one she is, is having us learn more about teaching ourselves how to think-successfully. She is working us through her boot camp learning from Jack Canfield’s The Success Principles, In network marketing you and I are making fundamental changes. We are saying to a skeptical world, to our family, friends and ourselves that there is another way. We are breaking away from conformity. We are saying to ourselves that our view of how the world works no longer satisfies our own new world view. We believe that network marketing is the better way to change our life’s course. Network marketing and in particular, The Freedom Project is our Life Launch(Hudson and Mclean,1995). In the forward of Life Launch, Hudson and Mclean explain that Life Launch requires fresh vision, new plans, and inner courage. Fresh vision, new plans, and inner courage is required of you when you are making a fundamental change in your life. This is what you and I are doing when we decided to sign on with the Freedom Project.

Now fear is creeping in. Will I be successful? How will I prospect people into my business when I never recruited anybody to do anything? Am I wasting money? My answer for myself is I will be successful, no matter how hard or long it takes. Napoleon Bonaparte said that the best trait a soldier can have is endurance. Endurance is needed not courage or anything else. Why endurance and how do we attain endurance? Because the road is long and there are many distractions, detractors and roadblocks. How do we attain endurance? Learning is the answer. To read self help books like,The Success Principle and the magazine I bought, Networking Times. Networking Times is wonderful because it is an easy read and when I doubt myself the articles pick me up.

In order to change our thinking we have to learn how to think to make those changes. A fundamental change for me is to read. I am not a reader but to be successful in the Freedom Project I will become a reader. I want to change.

Finding A Way

Thursday,September 9,2010 I joined the Freedom Project and that was just great. Problem is I don't have the money to become a Shaklee member. I wanted to come in as a Gold Ambassador(Gold Builder) which is where anyone starting their Freedom Project business would want to come in as. I want to come in as a gold builder because of all the benefits that Shaklee provides. So next week around September 30th I will become a Gold Ambassador(Gold Builder).


How will I do it? Well, I want to. I really want to and will become successful in this business so I will do what it takes to make my goals. Being a Gold Ambassador(Gold Builder) is what I want now. So I went through what I do have. I had a very small IRA account. That IRA account as hard as it may try will never amount to much especially a retirement for me. But that IRA account will help me get moving in this business. So I am stoked and ready to roll! I will be a Gold Ambassador(Gold Builder) next week!

Stay At Home Dad

On September 11, 2009 I became a stay at home dad. Thanks to the U.S. economy and our fabulous leaders in government I became unemployed. Now my kids get to see me every day on the computer, on the phone and leaving to go find that needle in the haystack job that everyone is competing for. While the bills are backing up and the kids need shoes, clothes and have other needs that require money I wait every two weeks for that huge unemployment check. I also found out my temper is getting shorter each day and my anxiety is growing. Sounds like I have it made.

Funny thing though, I like being at home and getting a check in the mail. This really works if only my checks were much larger. I like taking my kids to school. I like seeing them when they come home. It is much easier to monitor their homework and other responsibilities when I am with them. I love walking with them and conversing with them about their day and what is on their minds. I like cooking dinners for them. I really love being part of their lives. Being a stay at home dad is great.

My children saw this as they were growing up. They woke up and Dad was gone. I would come home usually around seven p.m. That meant they saw me for about an hour and a half because they were little and had to go to school the next day. There is not much you could do in an hour and a half but I tried to spend all that time with them. All that time commuting and working just does not seem worth losing being with my kids as they grew up.

My circumstances changed when my employer decided that they had to lose some of their employee salaries because business was slow. I won that lotto. I was out a job but quickly was hired by a LTL trucking firm. My hours changed. I started my day leaving home at midnight so I could begin the morning shift at 2 a.m. As supervisors we were required to work ten hours. I made it home at 2 p.m. Instead of going home I would drive directly to my children’s school, sleep in my car and wait for my kids to get out of school. Then I could maximize my time with them. I would stay up with them until about eight p.m. when I would have to go to bed.

The sum of all that work and commuting was no time for my family, weight gain, and flipping my car over off the freeway, rolling down an embankment and never seeming to get ahead and provide a better life for my children.

Being a stay at home dad is much better than being called into a meeting with my bosses (not mentors) to explain how I am going to improve drivers’ productivity or dock productivity. Cutting cost to save money usually involves laying off people or cutting the number of hours they work. My last job required the supervisors to do more clerical work as the clerical personnel were being laid off. That meant upset employees. What did I get for telling my group of employees that raises are frozen and hours were being cut? More work for me, longer hours and not receiving a raise for three years. My children are young adults and two are teenagers in high school. They are very busy with their lives.

My kids, as all kids do, want to spend most of their time with friends. But I get to see them and plan things with them now that the economy is in the dumps. There is a silver lining in everything.

All of this taught me a lesson. I let employers dictate my time, my wage and my life. None of it was very good. I knew but never acted upon it. I knew that I need to take control of my life. But it took Peggy and Rose of the Freedom Project to call upon me to make that change. As soon as they taught me what their program was all about I knew this is what I needed and desired. Now I can become the director of my life. To be the dad I so much want to be. To be rewarded for my efforts. To build a life that my children and their children will be able to enjoy.