Tag Archives: the-life-business

Family, Following, Friends

The Most Forgotten Element of Success

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I have only been able to read a little information on this topic.  The reason why is, it seems most people don’t talk about it or at least they don’t package their writing around this subject.  There are 2 books that will help you, the Bible and a book by Deborah Norville.   The topic is respect.

The test had been announced in advance, which meant the students had the chance to study and come well prepared.  Test papers were handed out, and the college exam commenced.  The room was silent except for the scratching of pencils and the occasional tapping of a pencil as students tried to figure out an answer. Until the last question.  One by one, as students reached the end of the test, they read the final question with consternation.  Some grunted in disgust.  One student exclaimed, “Your kidding, right?”  Another asked,” Does the last question count toward our grade?” It had to be a joke.  “Yes it does,” replied the teacher, somewhat tersely.  When all the papers had been handed in, the professor finally explained.  The last question was,    ” What is the first name of the man who cleans our school?”  Virtually every student had been stumped.

 

The teacher’s point was as you go through life you will meet many people and all of them are important.  We go through life so hurried and in a rush that we fail to recognize people or even give them a nod, a glance, or dare I say a smile.  Every subtle acknowledgment of another human being puts a little deposit in their soul.  You have walked past someone at the gym or a store and if they give you  a head nod or a “hey,” for some reason it makes you feel better.  Every once in a while we go out to eat at these “fu-fu” restaurants.  The ones that have a water person, bread person, and then the waiter.  If we say hi to the water guy he almost doesn’t know what to say.    He will stutter a little…..”Hi”   back to us.                Dr Goldstein says,” You have to have a good self-image of yourself and if you don’t you disrespect yourself and others around you.”  So that means we need to work on ourselves the most and it will grow our respect for others automatically.

 

Some people are great with people they don’t interact with regularly but they aren’t so good with the people that they see on a regular basis.  I think this paragraph from Deborah Norville sums up how we should think about the people in our lives.

Respect requires empathy, the capacity to anticipate and understand the feelings of others.  It requires consideration.  It is letting the Golden Rule shape the way we interact.  It’s being mindful to see a situation from others perspective.  When respect is given it communicates to the recipient of the respect that he is valued and important.

If you go through your day and are so busy thinking about how someone treated you, what they said to you, what you thought they should have said to you, or they should have let you go first.  Then by default you are violating the point from Deborah’s paragraph.  If you are only thinking about yourself, it is impossible to anticipate or understand how someone else feels.  If you don’t understand that all humans are naturally selfish and sinful creatures, then you will have a hard time having empathy when some one does something stupid.

I have to admit that this is a pet peeve of mine.  Not that it makes it more important it just really annoys me when I see someone not even hold a door for the next person. Or cut their way in front of other people.  Every plane ride I take someone from 4 rows back tries to push their way to the front past all the other people standing in front of them.  AAAGGGGHHHHHH!  Those are the moments when my Saginaw side comes out and I just want to clock ’em in the head. But I believe that would violate everything I just wrote about 🙂

Let’s at least agree to try everyday to do the simple respectful things.  Hold doors, smile, say hi (they wont bite), let someone go in front of you,  shake hands,  pick up what that person dropped, help them lift that heavy bag, give your seat up for a woman, serve someone.  It’s not that hard.  I know we can do it.  Lets change the respect of our society one person at a time.

God Bless

 

Family, Following

Are You Attacking Goliath or Running Around Him In Circles?

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I’m sure everyone has heard the story of David and Goliath.  I Samuel 17 tells the story of a small shepherd boy who defied a giant and TOOK HIM DOWN.  The Philistine army and the Israelites were facing each other ready for battle.  They were positioned in a valley and had their backs to the steep slopes behind them.  The Philistine army had the advantage because they had a big whopper of a guy named Goliath who was over 9 feet tall.  The giant would come out everyday and taunt the Israeli army to come and fight.  This went on for 40 days.  Neither side would attack because it would put them at a disadvantage based on where the armies were positioned.  One day David comes to the battle field to check on his brothers.  He sees what this giant is doing and is outraged.  David  decides to go out and kill the giant with a slingshot and a bag of rocks.  David was not qualified to fight anyone, let alone a giant.  He was a teenager and not trained as a soldier but he had the most powerful weapon on his side,  FAITH.  He took his stones and slingshot, ran to the battle field and slew the giant Goliath.

The point I want to make is this.   Are you attacking the goliath’s in your life or are you cowering on the sidelines.  I am experienced on both sides.  It is not easy to face the goliath’s that we have in our lives but it is necessary for growth.  In leadership and life you are getting ripe or you are going rotten.  The second you stop facing goliath’s and growing from the experience you are beginning to rot.  It is even more of a tragedy if you have a mentor that can help you defeat goliath but you still choose to run circles.  My mentors Orrin Woodward and Chris Brady have helped me immensely with conquering and with calling me out when I am running circles.  Do you give your mentor that freedom?

 

Lets look at a couple of key teaching points about this process.  The first one is, David killed the giant with a stone.  Not a bazooka, M-1 tank, or a cannon.  A simple little stone that was lying on the ground.  I have found that conquering personnel goliath’s is very similar.  It may seem like you need a bunch a fancy things and be trained in special ops techniques but it doesn’t.  It is a bunch of small process and thought changes that lead to the big victory over your goliath.  So don’t be afraid that you have to make some radical changes that you wont be able to maintain or implement.

 

The second point is did you notice that the story said David immediately questioned what was going on and then he ran into battle.  Does this sound like someone who was worried about what others thought about him.  NO, I am assuming that it didn’t even cross his mind. One of the biggest factors in people not attacking their goliath’s is, they don’t want to look bad.  Well let me help you clear something up.  If you are using a mentor by definition they are going to be helping you identify weak ares and come up with a plan to fix them.  They are not there to judge you they are there to help you see the areas you can’t see.  They are also going to give you a different way of thinking about your situation.

 

The last one is simply that David had total faith that he would destroy Goliath.  When you start the mentoring process you need to have total faith that you will overcome your goliaths.  Once you conquer one goliath you start to feel like you can take down any of them.  This process is not fun or easy but it is necessary.  I wish you the best of luck in attacking your goliaths and becoming one of the rare people in this world.  The person who won’t run from Goliath but will face it head on.

God Bless

Following

The Mereness of Leadership

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What makes a leader a leader?  The question has been asked over and over again for years and years.  There are many answers to that question and many books have been written about, what is a leader.  I have had the privilege of being associated with some great leaders.  I have seen them on stage in the public and I have seen them behind closed doors.            Orrin Woodward,   Chris Brady,   Tim Marks, George Guzzardo, Claude Hamilton and Dan Hawkins are all different in personality and how they lead but they all have some similar traits.

I just finished a book that referenced Jim Collins book ” Good to Great ” and he discuss Jim’s level 5 leaders.   In Les Csorbas book he refers to these top leaders as having developed a mereness.  They develop this mereness in 3 ways.

1. they have developed a core understanding of their humanity

2. when they understand there depraved nature

3. when they grasp that the purpose of leadership is not leadership itself

This first one could be taken in so many directions that you could write a whole book on it and many people have.  I would classify this as knowing the basics about how humans act and interact.  If you don’t have this basic understanding then it will be difficult to help move someone forward because you will be trying to move them by force instead of by influence.  Lets take the very basic of human nature, personalities.  When you are leading people in any way this is a basic must know.  It’s also a must that you know your own personality so you know why you do the things you do.  You must be able to identify if someone is choleric, melancholy, phlegmatic or sanguine.  The other popular classification is the D.I.S.C. system.  Each of these personalities interpret and process things very different from each other and if you don’t know why you will be taking your self down the path of ignorance instead of understanding.  Other deeper subjects would be how humans process thoughts based on their own pre-suppositions and being able to think about that as you’re trying to help you team.

The second point would be tied to faith.  When you understand that humans will do amazing and special things because they are fallen and sinful creatures.  We hear and see things that people do and we think to ourselves,” I would never do that.”  Some things we may be correct on but other things we would shock ourselves if we were in that person shoes.  I am not saying that the sinful things we see people do is ok but I am saying that you have to know where the root cause of the behavior comes from.  My 2-year-old son is using scratching as his revenge tactic.  If I don’t understand human nature I could say, “Well he was born a scratcher.”   We say of course that’s not it and we start to guide him out of doing it.  If an adult has a bad attitude we just say,” whats wrong with them.”  If you understand fallen nature you know whats wrong with them and you are now empowered to help them overcome that.   You can’t truly guide someone unless you can see from their footprints.

The third item is an interesting debate.  The best leaders start out not trying to be the leader.  Meaning they aren’t mentally thinking, “I am the leader.”  They are leading by example.  When your starting out and you’re trying to be the leader you usually end up being a manager because you’re trying to force your leadership.  As your role changes you may have to recognize that you are a leader and therefore there are things you can’t do and things you must do but you’re not doing them just so you can say, I am the leader.  You are doing them because you now have more responsibilities than rights.

Leading requires a lot of sacrifice and growth but it has some amazing rewards.  I wish you the best of luck in  your leadership and I hope this short article will give you some insight into some of the top leaders that I have been associated with, with the  Life business.

Finances, Leadership, Orrin Woodward Team

What foundation are you building on ?

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This post will include some of my thoughts and ideas but I have also attached an article from Orrin Woodward Team / Life that is a great article on how he has position the Team – Life business.  It also ties into my post and goes deeper into how some other business choose to operate when they are threatened with real competition.  Click this link for Orrins full article called – Dreams Dramas and Creative Destruction.

Two days ago something happened that has happened many times to me but it never seizes to amaze me.  The allure of the fast buck, the get rich quick, you don’t have to do much to make money here, the success should be simple and easy thoughts.  There is a gentlemen that I was helping start his LIfe business.  I stopped by his house to pick something up and after we finished I asked ,”Why haven’t we seen you around.”  His reply,”To be honest, we have been very busy but we are part of another business now.”  Him choosing to be part of  another business does not bother me at all and I hope everyone finds a way to help themselves and their family become successful.  The statement that followed is what I want to write about.  His next comment was,” THEY ARE GIVING MONEY AWAY.”  Well if they are giving money away then sign me up for that!

Un-fortunently there are 2 major issues with that statement.

1. If anyone promises you quick or easy success then you can guarantee that its false.

2. He is basing his thoughts on the good-looking building instead of the foundation.

Our whole society has been brainwashed to think that success should be easy, simple and they should give money away.  I have read many books about successful leaders and personally meet many successful people and never have I heard them say that success was easy or quick.  The process of winning is always tough and full of challenges.  Hopefully that should get you excited because that means not everyone will take that road.

One of the first things it takes to be successful is to make a commitment to what you are doing.  Now the level of your commitment may grow deeper as you get farther into the process but you have to make some base level commitments to succeed.  In the Team / Life business there are some basic steps.  Attend all open and seminar meetings.  Listen to cd’s and start to read 15 minutes per day.  Show the plan and try to show 15 plans per month.  These will get your business vehicle moving and will allow you team to start steering you in the right direction.  To do these steps may require you to make some schedule changes, find some babysitters, sacrifice some hobbies or television time.  THis may also cause you to have to communicate with your spouse.  That is always fun to watch 🙂

The second part of our discussion is the most critical one.  What is the foundation that the company is built on.  If a company is giving money away, do the math.  Our government is the only source that can continue to print money and give it away.  Successful business cannot operate that way.  These get rich quick business’s never last and almost always end up getting shut down and damage the people who were lured with, make money quick and easy.  You have to look at the character of the individuals that are running the company to get a good perspective on what will happen in the future.

Les Csorba in his book called Trust states, ” Leaders are worthy of trust for at least 3 reasons.  First, they develop a track record of credibility and reliability over a long period.  Second, they do not make bad decisions willfully or consciously.  Third, they almost always act and lead with wisdom and integrity.”

I have been in business for 13 years with Orrin Woodward and Chris Brady and seen them live up to those expectations.  That is why I continue to follow them.  I hope you find your vehicle for success and be one of the few that will make a commitment and stick to it.

God Bless

Faith

What has happened to Americas character

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I have been made aware of a recent issue in our society that has truly disturbed me to my core.  I have tuned into it because of the outrageous events that surround it.  I am talking about the Penn State college issue.  If you are not aware of the events I will update you  as much as I can.  It has come out that an assistant coach at Penn State was arrested for 40 counts of sexual abuse to at least 8 boys that range from the age of 8 to 12.   Obviously, that is disgusting enough but the other facts that surround it are a reflection of where our society is.  I understand that humans are fallen creatures and are born with sinful natures but the way people are responding to this is truly astounding.

1. Multiple people saw the acts happening

2. People are defending the people who didn’t report it

3. The fact that leaders in the college new about the incident and didn’t do the morally correct thing.

4. No one is talking about the victims

The first thing I would like to point out is that it seems that multiple people were I witnesses of crimes.  They saw the act and the action they took was to inform their boss!  They didn’t stop the act from happening, they didn’t grab a bat and assault the person doing the act, they didn’t even call the police!  What is wrong with the men in our society?  Have we been so wimp-ified that we can’t stand up and do the right thing?  That is a whole blog by itself,  about the siss-ification of the American male.  If I saw something like this, I am not sorry to say that I would have been the person in jail because I would have attacked the person doing this!  According to the “letter of the law”, they did follow “protocol”.  However, they failed to do the morally correct thing.  We are starting to live out the famous words of  C.S. Lewis

We make men without chest and expect of them virtue and enterprise.  We laugh at honor and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the gelding be fruitful

 – the abolition of man, C.S. Lewis

The second thing that is bothering me is that many of the students, ex-players and faculty are upset that the population of America is calling for the head coaches job.  Now would be a good time to point out that the head coach also new about these acts.  We will talk about that in the next paragraph.  Have we totally lost our moral compass.  Little kids were attacked and odds are they will be mentally harmed for the rest of their life! And the students are mad that most of the population wants the coach fired.  Unbelievable!  If it was their brother, or friend or worse their son I would think they would feel different.  Our culture has been invaded with       non-judgmentalism.

Allen Wolfe, in moral freedom, argued that non-jugmentalism has become the new attitude pervading our sentiments.  We have lost our anger and have adopted an attitude of non-judgmentalism.  

The last one is the biggest failure of them all because it was a failure of leadership.  The head coach and most powerful person at the university new about the acts and failed to do the morally correct thing.  This is a reflection of what continues to plague the United States.  The leader that could have stopped all of this and could have stopped this tragedy from happening to many other young boys failed at the time of his greatest calling.  Being the all time winningest football coach will pale in comparison to this leaders lack of character when it was needed most.  A lack of character that allowed one of the worst crimes ever.

I understand that I am a fallen human and I am far from being perfect.  But every one of us knows in our heart that what happened and how the leadership reacted  is wrong!   We continue to try to take God out of our lives and it continues to get worse.  When will we realize that there are moral absolutes and when you mess with those absolutes you open the door of humanism.  The door of humanism leads to a room that is filled with the stench of human sin and the smell will only get worse if we don’t stop.

God bless those little kids and God bless you for striving to become better.

Orrin Woodward Team

Orrin Woodward Team – thought on conflict resolution

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click on link for entire article – Orrin Woodward team life 

Why is it that the greatest leaders of all-time seem to either have rabid fans or rabid critics? The answer is simple: truth polarizes. When a leader leads with his convictions, others, who do not hold the same convictions, will criticize the endeavor. Throughout history, men and women like Mother Theresa, Martin Luther, Sam Walton, Oliver Cromwell, George Washington, and Abraham Lincoln, to name a few, have received mountaintop praise and sewer-based criticisms. In fact, if a person desires to change the world, then he better build a tough skin while maintaining a soft heart, because he will be criticized! – Orrin Woodward 

I have seen this in my own LIFE.  As I went out and started my business there were many that criticized what I was doing.  I could never understand why someone would criticize a person for trying to do better and trying to get ahead.  Then one day I was at a Team leadership seminar and I heard the answer.  The speaker said that its like watching a dog that is chasing a rabbit.  The dog is running over plants, through bushes, doing everything he can to try and catch the rabbit.    If the people who were watching the dog couldn’t see the rabbit they would think the dog was crazy.  This is how some of my critics saw me.

Orrin also covers how and why conflict resolution is important.  Hope you enjoy it.

God Bless

Orrin Woodward Team

Life Business is Officially Launched

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The -Team.biz  and the-Life -business.com, Lead by Orrin Woodward and Chris Brady officially launched today!  It has been a very interesting journey to get to this point but it has been totally worth it.  Any leader that has ever accomplished something, they know that the journey to do something great, will have obstacles and goliath’s in your way.  ( read this with a Rocky accent ) Life is not about if and when you are going to get knocked down it’s about how hard can you get hit, get back up and move forward.  Probably the best Rocky line of all time.

The Life business is going to be a great model to help someone succeed.  The model that I started with was very different from what we have today.  But even as good as it is and even though we have tried to make it as simple as possible it does not guarantee success.  Someone can join this business and sign up for the subscriptions and not listen to them.  They will not help if they are not listened to.  Someone can listen to the cd’s and not implement what they are hearing on the cd’s.  Listening will help but taking the information and applying it will do the best.  This business is great because the door is open to anyone that wants a chance but the business cannot make someone take or do  the right steps that make the model work.  I can… guarantee that the leaders I work with will do every thing they can humanly do to help you.  Notice that I said human.  Not robot. Not a perfect person.  A human, someone who wants to help but at some point will make a mistake, will say something with a wrong tone, will forget to do something they said they were going to do.  I should probably stop telling you the things I have done 🙂 We all are human and this business succeeds with humans so something is going to go wrong.

The flip side to everything that I said is someone will get involved and not build the business but listen to the marriage pack, implement the ideas, and save their marriage.  Someone will get started and listen to the finance pack, get mentored and they will be out of debt.  Someone will get involved and not do anything for years except keep growing themselves and then one day start to explode their business and become one of the success stories.  Like a Dan and Lisa Hawkins.

I wish everyone that got involved would do what a Dan and Lisa Hawkins did, with their Life business, but we are human and we let many things sway our emotions.  The Life model will give people one of the best chances they have had for success and the worst case scenario is they will hear some great information.  Opportunity does not guarantee you success it guarantees you an opportunity.  People still come to united States ( at least for now) because they know they will have a shot.  They don’t expect easy they expect an opportunity to strive and see how hard they can get hit and keep on moving.

God Bless

Freedom, Orrin Woodward Team

How do we maintain freedom?

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Orin Woodward, Chris Brady and the founders of the-Life-business have just finished their launch and it was a huge success.  There was so much recognition that anyone attending could not deny that this business model is working.  I would personally like to say congratulations to Chris and Daneae Mattis for joining the policy counsel ranks.  They have joined a very unique group that has dedicated their life to serving others.

I want to try to explain a topic that our guest speaker Oliver DeMille covered with the leadership group.  I know I will not do it justice but you can read his thoughts in his book Freedom Shift.  The diagram I am going to be referencing is what Oliver called, “speaking Anglo saxon”.  I believe what he meant was that speaking “Anglo-Saxon” is in essence understanding the ideas and thoughts that our founding fathers had in arranging the structure for the new America.  He asked us to diagram the governmental structure.  We thought we had the answer.

3 Branches pictureThen Oliver said, ” That is a good start but there is more.”  We thought we had him when we added the same 3 branches of the state government.  He drew a box underneath the federal and the state levels of government and he had us stumped.  He stated that the box underneath the federal and state governments was something that the Team was already doing.  When the founders wrote the constitution, part of everyday life was a community council.  Meaning that every community or town had a council that would legislate, execute and make judicial decisions that would govern that town or community.  We all nodded our heads in agreement starting to understanding what he was sharing with us.  Then he said that’s not it.  Even with the town and communities layer he said there is something else that was a given in those days and crucial for our system of government to work.   He drew 7 circles above the state and federal layer and said these are essential to keep every area in a true checks and balance system and are above in importance then the federal and state government.  Blasphemy, I know!   They are government, business, church, family, education, media, community.   If you just have family running things, that is called the mafia.  If you only have government, that is called communism.  If you only have the church, that was called the dark ages.  They are all important and equal or at least should be.  As soon as the family can’t decide how to discipline their kids and the government starts to tell you how, then you have begun to slide down the slippery slope of lost freedoms.

The most important issue that Oliver raised was that if you don’t have the top layer and the bottom  layer working then it doesn’t matter what happens in the federal and state layer, it will not work.  Have you ever wondered why no matter who is in office or which party runs the house and senate it seems that things always end up just about the same. Or I should say, they continue to get worse.   Well, as Oliver stated, “You now know how to speak Anglo-Saxon”. At least my attempt to teach you.  The business I am associated with and my mentor Orrin Woodward believe very strongly in educating people on these concepts.

GOD Bless