You Are More

I have something to share with you today that you are going to want to know, and it's worth getting excited about, it's worth going to work for, and it's worth believing in. It doesn?t matter if you are a top producer in our business or a person who is just beginning in AdvoCare, the message is the same for those at both ends of the "result spectrum." You are more than you have become! Perhaps you expected something better? If that's your response, you've missed out on the real magic that transforms people and that transports them to a better place, and that opens new doors to wealth and happiness that have been locked and nailed shut for years. The secret to success has nothing to do with new techniques; special techniques come from special thoughts and special actions taken by those who have first become special people. You already are and already have all that you need for you to get whatever you want. We're all a lot like a package that's gift wrapped and sitting in front of us; we can sit and wonder who put it there, who wrapped it, is it really for us, and what the occasion is and we can wonder what's inside. But like all gifts, analyzing and wondering won't reveal the gift; we have to turn loose of our anxieties and unwrap the package, and that begins with taking the initiative. That's also true of what's inside each of us; we have skills, experiences, ideas, emotions, desires and other capacities, values and assets, but we have to unwrap ourselves so we can discover the special gifts we've been given. We have to put aside the fear of failure, the self-doubts, the lack of true faith, and all the other self-imposed limitations we've put on ourselves over the years and get back to the imaginative, creative and curious person we once were when we were younger. Your current bank balance and circumstances are not an accurate indicator or your true value. You may have made some wrong choices in the past, but those experiences that followed those choices and the circumstances of the moment are not a sign of who you really are. To accept what we have done as having predestined us to remain that way is a major error in judgment. It is in the future that we will find our true calling, and the greatest value of the past is found in how we invest its lessons in the creation of a better future. Success is not "forever" and failure is never "final." You have been guided toward something yet undefined; you are as it was said in the Book of Isaiah - "Behold, I have chosen thee; I have forged thee in the furnace of affliction." You are more, and because you are, you can have more - and you have a great calling; embrace it and move toward your great promise. Climb out of the box that your past has erected and be who you really are deep inside, but to see who you are you must first be willing to look, to accept, and to understand that you are unique in all the world.

Sayings from Charlie Ragus and 1995 postings from Vitamins for the Mind

Before we can ever begin to enjoy the promise of the future, we must find a way to put aside the burdens of the past." "You must put debt behind you before you can discover the magic that resides within you, and before you can capture the fortune that lies ahead of you." "For things to change, you are going to have to change, otherwise things are going to be about like they've always been." "By age 30, not only have most people failed to achieve their dreams of earlier years, they cannot even remember what those dreams were." "To escape debt, you must learn to take a new interest in interest, for we are either paying interest to someone else, or we are earning it for ourselves. The difference is that those who are on the road to wealth earn interest, while those who are struggling under the burden of debt are paying it." "Being the best we can is not a choice, it is a responsibility imposed upon us by virtue of the fact that we are free. There are no limits placed upon us here, other than those we impose upon ourselves." Those ideas are as valid today as they were in 1995. Many of those who heard them back then today are either debt free or well on their way, and have a new mindset about money.

Empowering Other People

The major key that unlocks the door to high levels of success in your business is to find people who are willing to listen to your story of products and opportunity, and who stand in need of a chance to show what they can learn and what they can do. When a story of opportunity falls upon the ears of one is searching for a new purpose, remarkable things begin to happen; it is for that reason that you, as a distributor of AdvoCare's products and a messenger of its opportunity, must search for dissatisfied people, and offer to them the chance to take back control of their life. Now, please understand that we are about sharing products with people, but in that process, we are in the business of interrupting the lives of people who are encumbered with a set of problems created by their past mistakes and errors in judgment. The products get people's attention, but the opportunity we offer gets them going and gets them emotionally involved. If all you do is "talk products," you'll get some customers, but if you talk life changing concepts that come from engaging in our business, you'll start the process of changing people and steering them onto a course that will lead them to a new and better destination. If there's one expression Charlie Ragus used more than any other, it was - "We are in the people business; we are not just in the business of selling nutritional products, we are in the business of finding other people to help us sell nutritional products. People are the lifeblood of what makes our business work." If you cannot or will not see the value and the wisdom of tapping into the time, the talent, the contacts and the dreams of other people, you are going to be on your own, and when you're on your own, you're headed down a path that will find you in business for yourself, and by yourself. Your business, even if you succeed, will own you, instead of you owning it. In essence, then, we are about finding and empowering other people who will come to know what we know, feel what we feel, and see what we see; you begin by looking for and finding one person who is eager to liberate himself or herself from their current circumstances, then both of you look for another, and another and another. Finally, in your search for those who will become, like you, a difference maker, be aware that you're destined to encounter those who opinions and concepts are just the opposite of what you're looking for. Do not, in your attempts to "sell them" on your message and what it offers, let them sell you on their view of the world; you must stand guard at the doorway to your mind - you must let rejection and suspicion build you, not diminish you. "Go ye forth and multiply," and in time, your business will explode beyond all of your expectations!

Responding Responsibly

It's Monday again, and another full week on the job lies ahead for John and Mary; one day down, four more to go and then, finally - another weekend. It's nearly bedtime; John and his wife had put the kids in bed and sat on the sofa to watch the news before going to bed. The news was going from bad to worse; foreclosures were setting new records, inflation was up, and unemployment rates were up to over six percent - the highest level in almost a decade. Jobs were hard to find and those who were employed - even though at a place they didn't want to work - were uncertain and insecure - as employers fought to make a profit. The only good news was that gas prices had dropped from over four dollars a gallon down to three-fifty, but that was still over a dollar per gallon more than they had been paying just a year before. John and Mary were both "working parents," and one or the other of them dropped their two-year-old off at the daycare center and then took the two sons to school, then had to reverse the process at the end of the work day. The two incomes were necessary just to be able to meet all of their overhead expenses each month, and they weren't really "meeting them" - the number of those they had to pay late each month was increasing. Deep inside both of these good and well-intentioned parents resided a subtle but ever-present feeling of a life without any real hope; their was the usual passive hope, the kind many people have that somehow one of the two candidates running against each other in the election will come up with some solutions that will help, but they almost knew for a certainty that changing national leaders wasn't going to directly filter down to the struggling individual. The fact that they - John and Mary - were going to have to come up with their own solutions haunted them, and they couldn't see what they possibly could do that would offer any direct and significant solution, other than to wait for things to get better. After all, everyone they knew was going through the same challenges; everyone seemed to be using their credit cards to pay for things that were both needed and wanted. Now, imagine yourself being in similar circumstances; imagine, if you can, having each paycheck be the same, every two weeks, and every month, and any hope of the next raise still being nearly a year away. And, even when the raise came, they knew it would be for no more than three percent, and with inflation going up four percent, they were actually getting one percent "poorer" every year. You are not in this circumstance, or it may be more correct to say that even if you are, there's something you can do about it; you have products that people need; you have a message of hope that millions of people so desperately want and need. You are a voice of reason amid all of the hopelessness, and you cannot only change your life, but you can change the lives of many others in the process. A ship is meant to sail, not sit in the safety of the harbor, so don't just sit and listen to how bad it is, take action now, before the world moves in upon you. Get out the spray can and go after the bugs and the weeds of circumstance before they get to the roots of your future harvest.