Category Archives: Leadership

Leadership, Life, The Life You Always Wanted

Handling A Loss

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The Life You Always Wanted may not always go the way you wanted and the reason I decided to write this at this time is because of what just recently happened.   At our New Years Summit meeting in Louisville, KY and Sandy Utah, I had multiple people come to talk to me about their recent losses.   They were asking for advice on how to move forward with their life, how to help their friends and relatives, and what they should be doing to get better.   It has been almost three years since my Jackie passed away, and I am just now beginning to be able to think about it clearly.   I am not sure what book I was reading recently, but it was talking about this subject, and the author said,”I can only think about it in my strong moments.”  Needless to say I have not had many of those, contrary to popular opinion.  I for sure am no expert in this area and have probably done more incorrectly then I have done correctly but I promised those hurting hearts that I would post something to try to help.

The first and most important reason that I have not lost my mind going through this process is because of my faith.   I have no doubt that there is a God and he made this world and everything in it.   God did not create death.   Just this thought alone has protected me from wanting to blame God or at least be mad and ask the question “Why did he do this to me?”  He didn’t;  He created life, and this fallen world has created death.   I cannot imagine mentally trying to handle the situation without knowing that there is a reason why.   That there is an ultimate answer and that she is in a better place.   All that said, I still did ask that question many times but I knew my answer immediately.

I’m not sure how all of this next part will come out because they are just random bullet point memories but I will give it a shot.   I will also list the books that I read that gave me some of these insights and some comfort.

  1. It is ok to be sad and to grieve.   Most people try to avoid the pain and suppress the emotion.   If you have gone through this, you may be thinking I have never cried this much in my life or felt this terrible.   I understand;  there were times that I cried so long and intensely, in my closet to avoid the kids,  that I would literally wake up there later on.   The thought that they are in a better place is actually ridiculous, if you have lost someone.   (Sorry to the people who told me that.  The best place from our view is here with us.   The books I read say to embrace the grief and lean into it.  I did not do that even though I felt completely exhausted and miserable all the time.  If you do not embrace the grief, it will show up in your life later on and more than likely as something negative.  The human natural feeling is to want to stop feeling sad.  It is amazing how exhausting it is to feel sad 24 hours a day.  When that hits most people turn to something else to stop the pain.  I know first hand because I did as well.  Please watch your loved ones carefully, they are in a mental spot that you can’t understand, but they still need your help to make sure no bad habits are created.
  2. Find sources of support.  I did not want to take my kids to any of these places because my mind was just trying to avoid the pain.  Luckily I had great family and friends that pushed me to take kids to Ele’s place.  This a fantastic group and not only did they help my kids, they helped me.  There is something comforting about hearing other peoples grief and pain.  It actually gives you comfort because you know they are the only ones that understand what you are going through.  If someone has never been through this, they can’t possibly understand anything that you are mentally dealing with.  I know because someone in my team lost their spouse and I said the same things about him that others then said about me.  I am forever sorry that I actually thought those things about him, but I now completely understand.  This is why it’s so important to find someone that has endured your pain.    With that said my friends and family are probably the reason I am alive.  I had so much support and love that it helped me to fight everyday to try and make it back from my depths.  Have them watch over anything and everything.  Let them help with finances, housing, a shoulder to cry on, someone to hang out with and for sure let them help with any  major decisions.  I now know without a shadow of a doubt that I was not okay even though it felt like it.  I was just  running away from the grief that I didn’t want to feel anymore.
  3. How do you move forward?  This was the main question that I am asked.  It is asked because your entire life was mentally planned out with the person you lost.  All of your dreams, your friendships, your daily habits, the trust you built were tied together and its like losing a part of your body.  Start or continue to attend a church as hard as it may be.  I now realize that I ran away from church because every time I was there it reminded me of the grief that I was going through.  I don’t know why I felt that, even though every message that I did hear was food for my soul.  It also made me sad every time, but I know that’s okay now and want you to know that it’s ok.  Ask your pastor to find a spot where you can cry in private.   I believe you have to find a purpose to fill the void that is gone.  That purpose could be your faith, family, friends, charity, anything that will give you a reason to continue on.  Things will be different forever more.  Friendships will change, family relationships may change, what you planned for the future may change, dreams and goals may change but always remember there are people that love you and need you.

The pain of an absent heart will never go away but your life will continue. It has taken me three years just to be able to write about this.  I will never stop missing my Jack (my nickname), but you still have many things to do as new relationships  form.  Hopefully you will find another person that you can start sharing your life with.  Overall just know that it is part of a greater plan, even though I know that’s the last thing you want to hear.  I truly hope this helps someone out there.  I understand your pain and you can get through it.

Books

  • Bible
  • Getting to the other side of grief – Zonnebelt       ( must read )
  •  When your family has lost a loved one – Guthrie
  • Sunsets – Deborah Howard
  • Letters for healing – Von Kopfman
  • Trusting God – Jerry Bridge

God Bless

Leadership

Is Life Leadership a Pyramid Scheme?

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Orrin Woodward has written a great article about Life leadership.  The thought that most people have about pyramids is the person at the top or the person who started first makes the most money.  I love getting that question because I have a couple that is under me, that signed up in the business after me, and they have made more money then me, almost the entire time we have been in business together.  That kills that argument.  If you want to win at something you talk to the people that have won not to the people that tried to win.

Bill Lewis

Is LIFE Leadership a Pyramid Scheme?

Figures Don’t Lie But Liars Sure Can Figure.

Corporate Pyramid

Corporate Pyramid

Every reputable network marketing organization separates itself from pyramid schemes and scams by ensuring significant sales to outside customers of its products. Impressively, LIFE Leadership has over 40% of its monthly subscriptions going to customers who are not even part of the compensation plan. This is a testament to just how good the leadership materials are from LIFE.

Sadly, some people have drawn the conclusion that network marketing is like a lottery where only a few draw the winning ticket and everyone else loses. In truth, I was one of those people until I took the time to study the numbers myself. Here is my story of how I went from a community building skeptic to building one of the largest leadership communities in North America.

I graduated from GMI-EMI (now Kettering University) as a manufacturing systems engineer. I became an engineer because I have been fascinated by numbers, statistics, and proportions since I was a kid collecting baseball and football cards. In fact, one summer my brother and I developed an entire board game for baseball based upon player stats and using probabilities that I wasn’t supposed to learn until half-way through engineering school. In any event, numbers, data and the proper reading of the scoreboard has been an essential part of Laurie’s and my success over the years.

For instance, one of the first conundrums I was faced with when I first studied community building was the statistic bantered around against the profession such as the following: “Only 1 out of 100 people actually makes 50k or more per year.” At first hearing, this sounds terrible. You mean to tell me that if I get started I only have a 1 out of 100 chance of making it? But these two statements are not saying the same thing, even though on the surface they may appear to do so.

Let me explain.

The first statement (“only 1 out of 100 people make 50 k or more”) is a snapshot of the profession based upon the fact that for anyone to reach the top of the chart (15,000 points), he must build customers, members, and help them do enough volume for him to hit this level. Typically, by the time a person hits the top of the chart (whether he does it in 3 months or 3 years) he has around 100 active members. Hence, the 1 out of 100 number. In other words, even if 100% of the people made it, they would still make it by bringing in around 100 other active members and the 1% who made it at any particular time would still be true.

However, this doesn’t mean the other 100 people cannot also bring in customers and members who enjoy the life-changing products and do the exact same thing as the person who brought them in. And, when they do, the will have built a team (on average) of 100 people so the 1 out of 100 number remains.

Now to my point.

Given that the nature of community building involves building a community (how’s that for obvious?) and that a leader’s goal is to build 100 active people into his community who service customers and members, then the “1 out of 100” number tells us nothing of the success or failure of the business. Rather, it simply reports on the size of community necessary to earn a certain income, as in my example above when I threw out the hypothetical 50k.

Indeed, the model is hard-wired, or designed for a leader to service a community of 100 people in order to reach 15,000 points and thereby achieve the Leader level in LIFE Leadership to make anywhere from 20k to upwards of 50k (with the CAB program included – see the IDS and Comp Plan brochure attached at the bottom of this post). Therefore, the real question a new person should be asking is not the 1 out of 100 snapshot, which merely reports that a Leader must build 100 people communities, but rather, how fast can one build 100 people communities?

Let’s consider an example from my automotive process engineering days.

Thousands of sub-assemblies that usually consist of hundreds of parts each are required to build one car. These all come together in a complex process called a final assembly line, in which workers and machines install them, usually on a moving platform or hanger, as the work-in-process car moves down the line.  At any given moment in time, if a snapshot of the assembly line were taken, the line would have hundreds of unfinished cars frozen in mid-process. From this snapshot, no one in his right mind would argue that only 1 out of 100 cars is ever completed, or that “the chances” of that assembly line making a car would be a mere “1 out of 100!”   This would be absurd reasoning since the other cars are still “in process” and will be completed shortly, if the assembly line is given a chance to continue producing cars, as it is designed to do.

In effect, the nature of the assembly line guarantees that only one car will finish per every 100 (in the example above) on the line because this is the way the process was designed. It is hard-wired or hard-built to do it in just this way.

It is important to understand that community building is a personal development process similar to the assembly line that builds an automobile. 

The difference between a successful and unsuccessful automotive assembly line is not the 1 out of 100, but rather the rate at which autos move from beginning to completion. If one assembly line moves through the process in one hour while another takes one year, with all other variables being the same, which would you choose? They both have a snapshot of 1 complete car per 100 in-process, but one is moving the process along much more efficiently. Engineers cannot improve the 1 out of 100 on an existing line, but they can improve the throughput by increasing the speed at which the automobiles advance through the process.

In the same way, this is exactly what a leader does in his community building organization. He cannot improve the 1 out of 100, because that structure is as locked into the design of the pay plan as is the assembly line process for cars, but he can improve the effectiveness of the systematic process to help people achieve top levels faster.

Since everything rises and falls on leadership, LIFE Leadership focuses on helping leaders serve 100 people communities to be rewarded accordingly. The objective is to speed up the leadership growth process by providing world-class events to attend, audios and books to study, and personal mentoring from which to grow.

In most conventional businesses, it takes years and years for a person to achieve an income above 50k, after expenses. With the new CAB compensation and simple Next Step Program, LIFE Leadership is empowering those who work hard and consistently to achieve these levels in shorter and shorter amounts of time. True, not everyone is willing to work that hard, nor will they go that fast, but the leadership of LIFE is committed to creating a process wherein someone can if they are willing to do what it takes. The question for you is: are you ready, willing, and able?

I am thankful for my engineering background because it helped me sort through the data to understand what was relevant and what was not. Sadly, many people miss the big picture because they think of community building as a lottery with “odds” rather than a process with results similar to an automobile assembly line. But for those who will enter into the process and stay long enough to complete their leadership journey, their success can become just as predictable as a finished car rolling off the end of an assembly line.

I have said many times, LIFE Leadership does not promise “easy,” only “worth it.” As the Chairman of the Board and one of the principal owners of LIFE, I wish you all the success you are willing earn!

Sincerely,

Orrin Woodward

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Leadership

A Recent Lesson on Credibility

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As most of you who follow my blog know, I just did a post on credibility. Fortunately for all of us there are always critics, haters, or simply people who have nothing else to do with their life except watch other people’s lives.  With all that said they also play a very important role in the process of success because without them there wouldn’t be a……..check and balance is a good term, I think.  Ok that was sarcasm but in actuality we all need people in our lives that will point out our flaws and mistakes (some will do it in a positive way, others will do it in a negative way).  Without them we would never have the chance to prove our credibility. Well it has come to my attention that “a group” has identified that I hadn’t paid my property tax on the house that I bought from Orrin.  Why someone would be trying to find that information I am not quite sure, but yes it is true.  Let me say this so this doesn’t get twisted.  I FORGOT TO PAY MY PROPERTY TAX.  Haven’t we all forgotten to do something or messed something up?  So here IS what happened.

– Moved into the house at the end of the 2011

– Tax bills come in twice a year, so about 6 months later I received the first one

– Threw it in my bill drawer because it wasn’t due yet

– Missed the deadline but mailed in the check anyway

– A while later the check came back and said I was past the deadline

– Either I missed it or it didn’t say it but once you miss the deadline you have to mail it to a different address

– I mailed it to the same address again ( stupid of me, yes, never claimed to be the sharpest knife in the drawer )

– By this time it was well into 2012 maybe even 2013

– Mailed another check in but stopped payment on it because the new 2013 taxes came in and it had a different address then the previous one ( which I now know as the “late payment” address )

– Was made aware that people were “very excited” to see that I am human and made a mistake 🙂

– Went to the office and finally figured everything out and stroked 2 checks to pay for all of the taxes. Done

Now unfortunately for some of you out there we were not trying to avoid paying them. We are not struggling financially and neither Orrin or Chris “bailed us out” …..sorry.  As a matter of fact because of the smart financial principles that The Life Leadership has taught us I was able to write the $28,000 checks and take care of it.  So yes it is correct. Even Policy Council members make mistakes. However we don’t try to hide from them when confronted. Instead we do own up to them and we do try our best to make things right.  I just wonder if the people who are throwing stones do the same.  I am guessing not, otherwise they would be too busy with something else instead of worrying about me paying my property taxes.  I grew up with so many people who hated on other people or blamed other people and it always fueled me to become better and continue to prove them wrong.  The sad part about this case is some of them are people I use to call friends and as far as I know I never personally did anything to them except be nice and edify them.   As I have said in many of my talks…..HUMAN.  I have always tried to live my life around the fact that people are messed up and are going to make mistakes.  I just did and so does everyone else.  As my article says it’s not about IF or WHEN you make a mistake, it’s what you do about it after you make it.  What are you doing about the mistakes you have made?  I guess I should probably hand over my taxes to my accountant because I am sure she is perfect haha.

Thank you to the people who allowed me to show our teammates a live example of what you do when you mess up. I’m pretty sure mistakes will happen again because……HUMAN!

Bill Lewis

p.s.  Just so they don’t say I am trying to hide from something.  I also bought a $20,000rental property in downtown Flint 14 years ago.  I paid of the property and rented it for a while.  Eventually, we could not get anyone to rent the property.  I even called the city to try and give them the house but they said they had so many they couldn’t use the ones they had.  The city was doing a house clean up where they tear down old house.  I stopped paying the taxes and the city claimed the house and tore it down.

Leadership

LIFE Business – Keeps Getting Better!

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I have copied an article from Orrin Woodward’s blog about the spectacular improvements to the LIFE business. In a world where most companies are trying to figure out how to keep more money, the LIFE founders are trying to figure out how to give more money. To do this in the first year of operation is amazing. I can’t wait to see what the future holds for this group of leaders.

 

LIFE Business: One-Time Cash Awards (OTCAs)

Posted by Orrin Woodward on January 9, 2013

The LIFE business has a goal to be the best entrepreneurial start-up company for budding entrepreneurs. By providing life-changing information in the 8Fs and the top-paying LIFE Business Compensation Plan, we are well on our way. For 2013, LIFE has announced that the One-Time Cash Awards (OTCAs) have been increased at nearly every level. BecauseLIFE flows so much of the profits back to the field Members, our goal is, as we grow, to increase the bonuses offered to Members for customers and communities. What other company does that? Here are the details.

Sincerely,

Orrin Woodward

Below are the ranks and respective OTCAs for 2013:

Leader 6

receives $3,000. (As an aside, if a Member is Trip Tracking, he will have received a free vacation earlier as well.)

This means you have to qualify as a Leader for six months out of the year with at least three consecutive months.

There are two ways you can qualify as a Leader:

1. Have a total of 15,000 PV or more with no downline Members with 15,000 PV or

2. If you do have a downline Member with 15,000 PV in your first Team, you must have 6,000 PV outside of your first Team, which includes all outside Teams, personal volume, and customer volume.

Leader 12

receives $12,000 (up from $8,000 last year). (Trip Tracking Leader 12′s receive another free vacation)

This means you have to start qualifying in January, so you can qualify for all twelve months of the year.

Coordinator 6

receives $6,000 (up from $4,000 last year).

Coordinator 12

receives $15,000 (up from $10,000 last year).

Sr. Coordinator 6

receives $15,000 (up from $10,000 last year).

Sr. Coordinator 12

receives $25,000.

Life Coach 6

receives $50,000 (up from $30,000 last year).

Life Coach 12

receives $100,000 (up from $80,000 last year).

Executive Life Coach 6

receives $100,000 (up from $50,000 last year).

Executive Life Coach 12

receives $150,000 (up from $125,000 last year).

Double Life Coach 6

receives $150,000 (up from $75,000 last year).

Double Life Coach 12

receives $200,000.

Triple Life Coach 6

receives $200,000 (up from $100,000 last year).

Triple Life Coach 12

receives $250,000.

Faith, Leadership

The Great Cover-Up

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I want to cover a topic that my pastor preached on this last Sunday.  He was obviously talking to the church, but his point applies to anyone that is trying to build a community of people.  His sermon was entitled “The Great Cover-Up” in reference to how we handle things when we do something wrong, make a mistake, or commit a sin.  Do we run and hide, or do we stand up and face the situation with courage?  Unfortunately, almost everyone in our society has taken the lesser road.  So what we need to do is understand how this trend got started, why we haven’t fixed it, and how we can fix it.  If we could get this right, we could massively change our entire culture.

First we need to understand why this is such a powerful force in our lives.  It all started in the Garden of Eden.  After God made man and woman, He gave them a perfect sanctuary in which to live.  The only rule was that they couldn’t eat from the tree of knowledge.  As you know, Eve cracked under the pressure. 🙂 And of course, Adam followed instead of leading.  (My wife and I always joke about who was really at fault.)  But after they ate the forbidden fruit, what happened?

Genesis 3: 7-8   “Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loin coverings.  They heard the sound of the Lord walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden. 

Now think for a minute how silly it is for them to be hiding from God.  They knew Him on an intimate level that we can’t possibly  understand, so I would assume that they knew He is omniscient and omnipresent.  Yet even with that knowledge, their instinct was to hide like a five-year-old only child who just wrote on the wall (not that that ever happens).  So if Adam would hide from God, for sure, mankind is going to hide from other humans!  It is in our makeup, our DNA.  That doesn’t make it right or an acceptable strategy, but we need to know that it will be our first inclination.  

Now that we know where those original feelings come from, we need to understand why our culture has made uncovering mistakes such a negative proposition. This one is easy, and most of you already know the answer.  We have been raised in a society where being wrong is viewed negatively.  We get marked down—not marked up; we get told what we did wrong—not what we did right; we hear news about people that are doing wrong—not about the people who are doing right. Humans are naturally drawn toward the negative. You are looked at as being weak if you admit you have issues instead of being seen as courageous for facing them.  All of this has produced a culture of fear—fear of facing the issues that every one of us has.

Another factor that has affected our ability to fix issues is trust.  We don’t trust the person we are talking to because he hasn’t gone through the same process, so we are not sure if our conversations are going to be private or if he may tell someone else. We may not be sure if others have the aptitude to help us.  And sometimes we just feel like others will judge us.  This last one is interesting.  We all know someone like this: the holier-than-thou person.  This person comes across like he just has it all together and never sins, and if he ever does, it is certainly not as big as your sins.  It is very hard to help people if you give off that perception.  If God is the standard, then all of us are filthy compared to His holiness.

Isaiah 64:6   For all of us have become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous deeds  are like filthy rags.

So what do we do to start repairing this cover-up mentality?  First, we need to follow what Scripture tells us to do.

James 5:16      Therefore, confess your sins to one another, and pray for one another that you may be healed.

This would imply that we are supposed to be part of the process.  If we are part of the process, then we need to create a culture of facing sin—not covering it up.  Following are some actions we can take:

  • Let people know that all of us are sinners saved by grace
  • Let others know some of the areas in which we have struggled
  • Edify the people who are willing to face sin instead of running from it
  • Keep all conversations private
  • Be trustworthy with minor issues, so others know they can trust us with the big ones
  • Attack the thought process—not the person
  • Let people know that nothing they say will affect your opinion of them

This list is easy for me to write up because my mentors have done all of these things for me.  Chris Brady and Orrin Woodward have modeled these behaviors for me.  We must first go through this process if we are going to become really effective in helping our fellow man.  We must understand what it is like to reveal our sins to someone else before we can help others to admit their sins to us.  It is vitally important as a community that we stop hiding behind the bushes acting like we don’t have any problems.  We all have them, and none of them are worse than others because anything we do right is still like a filthy rag.  Let’s become a group in which resolving issues is more courageous than covering up issues.

God Bless

Bill Lewis

 

 

 

Following, Leadership

Success Requires Others

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One key point to remember when trying to succeed is that success always takes a team of people. The notion that someone is self-made is ridiculous. It took two other people just to get you on the planet. I can’t think of anything else on the planet that is less self-made than humans are. So, if we always need others to help us succeed, then we should probably think about how we treat other people. Now, I understand that people are people and are always doing special things. 🙂 I am not saying that people won’t continue to bug us sometimes, but we need to have grace when dealing with humans because all of us are messt up. (I know that’s not a word, but it is appropriate here. Thanks for the grace.) The Magic of Thinking Big gives us four leadership principles to help in this area:

  1. Trade minds with the people you want to influence.
  2. Think: What is the human way to handle this?
  3. Think progress, believe in progress, and push for progress.
  4. Take time out to confer with yourself.

Let me give you an example of number one on the list. A lady was hired to be the assistant buyer for a low- to medium-priced department store. All of the things she purchased were great, but they were not selling well. Eventually, she was let go from her position. The reason was because she was purchasing items that she liked. She was raised in a well-off family that was used to purchasing high-quality items that naturally cost more. She was thinking everyone would love what she loved, but she never tried to mentally switch places with someone that had a tight budget. It is very important in business to always try to think from the other person’s point of view. How to Have Confidence and Power in Dealing with People talks about the importance of moving to the other side of the table with someone—in other words, seeing the world  from that person’s perspective or walking a mile in his shoes. The question to ask oneself is: How can I help that person based on where he is, what he sees, what he likes, what he doesn’t like, and what he dreams about and not what I think he should see, like, not like, or dream about?

Now if you are mentoring someone, you have to have the ability to see from the other person’s point of view and understand his position but also be able to see where he can be, rather than just where he is.

The human way to handle things actually seems like it is not natural to humans at all.  I have seen people try to be the dictator and the letter-of-the-law person. The dictator sounds like this: “You will do it this way, or else!” That kind of attitude is really good for destroying relationships. Now, of course, most of us don’t approach it that way. We  say things like, “Well, I am a so and so, and I think I know what I am talking about” or “Why would you listen to that person?” We have all kinds of creative ways of saying, “I am the dictator” without actually saying those words.

The other big violator is the letter-of-the-law person. I saw this one tragically implemented one time. Our business team produced a CD that talked about the husband being responsible for the family finances. The letter-of-the-law people told all the males that they should be writing the checks and doing all of the budgeting. WOW! I have never seen so many couples’ monthly budgets get destroyed so quickly! The wife was the organized one, and the sanguine males started torturing themselves trying to do the budgets. The human way is to look from their shoes and implement the principle, not the details. The male could still be responsible for the month’s budget without having to do the technical work. Study anyone that has successful long-term relationships, and they have handled things in a human way instead of the dictator or letter-of-the-law way.

The third item of always seeking improvement can cover many areas, but let me try to boil it down to a few simple steps. First, be harder on yourself than you are on your team members. If you strive for excellence yourself, your team will always follow suit. Second,  try to make all your goals revolve around helping others hit their goals. If you plan it that way, then by default, you are focusing on others but still striving for progress.

The last step from The Magic of Thinking Big is to confer with yourself. The number one job of the leader is to think. I believe it was Henry Ford who said, “The hardest work in life is thinking; that is why so few people engage in it.” If the leader is not mentally ahead of the followers, then that means he is mentally with the followers and, by default, cannot be leading. Leaders must have quiet moments in which they give themselves time to think through issues, game plan, and set goals. This should be a weekly habit, but then leaders also need some bigger (or longer) thought-processing moments. Bestselling author Chris Brady wrote a great book talking about that very subject called A Month of Italy.

God Bless

Bill Lewis

Following, Leadership, Orrin Woodward Life Business

How Do You Handle Setbacks?

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As many of you that read my blog know, I have a lot of contact with people that are on the journey of success. This gives me a great window to view how people react to failures. What has become very evident is that the way a person views his failures will ultimately determine his overall success. I have seen it both ways. I have seen the person who gets knocked down again and again but continues to get back up and fight for his victory. And I have also seen the person who doesn’t get knocked down but gives in to failure anyway because it looks like he is going to get knocked down. If you can take a hard look at how you view failures and get back up every time, then success is yours. As I talk about this, do not take this as me looking down on people who have failed. I know that the majority of people have never been taught the principles of success. I failed for 28 years of my life until I was exposed to the LIFE business and my mentor Orrin Woodward. That is why we need to talk about it, so we can learn to view it through the correct lens.

If a study was done of homeless people, I can assure you that we could find a person that endured the same circumstances and succeeded. Some had their spouse leave them, some lost their jobs, others made bad investments, and some fell into addictions. (The interesting part of my life is that I have personally seen all of these within my own family.) Instead of adjusting a behavior, making sacrifices, or fighting back, they just gave up. The successful person makes the necessary adjustments and moves forward. Hopefully, you have seen the movie Cinderella Man. It is one of the best examples of what I just explained. A down-and-out boxer goes through the Depression and loses everything. While many people around him gave up, he continued to fight for his family and eventually became the heavy-weight champion of the world.

When you take a shot, how do you react? Do you fall down in self misery, do you get back up but are scared to take another shot, or do you do what success requires? Get back up and move forward with even more conviction. Don’t get me wrong. I don’t mean you just bounce back up like a weeble-wobble and don’t feel the effects of the blow. I mean you gather yourself, look at what just happened, figure out what adjustments need to be made, and then move forward again. The FAA is in charge of studying airline crashes to determine what adjustments need to happen within the airline industry. Imagine if they reacted like most of us do when crashes occur. “Sorry, we just don’t know what to do. We are giving up.” Air travel would be non-existent because the safety of flying would have never improved. I know someone is reading this and saying, “Well, of course, they have to do that; it’s important.” What I would say to you is: “Aren’t your life and the lives of your family members more important?”

So what do we do? When we hit the TAR (things are rough), we need to be ready mentally. First, remember that just like with a plane crash, you can salvage something from every crash that will help you improve. Determine what caused the failure, put in a system to fix it, and move forward. Your plan might not be the total answer, but it will move you forward enough to determine the next piece of the puzzle. Albert Hubbard says, “A failure is a man who has blundered but is not able to cash in on the experience.” Second, be persistent. Most people don’t ever get to the lesson they need to learn because they are not persistent or willing to fail enough to get to the heart of the issue. Remember what the famous poet Rocky Balboa said: “It’s not how hard you can hit; it’s how hard can you GET HIT, get back up, and keep moving forward.” Third, recognize that you get what you picture. When you get knocked down and all you see is the negative, then that is what you will get from that lesson. If you take a second, give your head a shake, and continue to look at victory, then that is what you will get.

 Bill Lewis

 

 

Following, Leadership, Orrin Woodward Life Business

Be Encouraging by Removing Your Layers

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IT is quit amazing that one of the smallest parts of the body, the tongue, can have such a powerful impact on us and others.  The number of Proverbs and statements about the tongue are vast.

  • Death and life are in the power of the tongue  (Prov. 18:21)
  •  A soothing tongue is the tree of life  (Prov. 12:25)
  • The tongue is mightier then the sword ( ok I know its,pen, but the pen just writes what the tongue would have said )

Even though the tongue physically speaks the words it is the heart that creates the words before they are spoken.  Luke 6 :45  “A good person produces good things from the treasury of a good heart, and an evil person produces evil things from the treasury of an evil heart. What you say flows from what is in your heart.   Since it is the heart that produces the words we use and the way we use them then we really need to solve the heart issues to become a true encourager to others.  You see what happens is we are living our life and words are spoken to us and about us.  Those words have a great effect on our view of ourselves.  We will start to build up protective layers around the fear in our heart that we are trying to protect.  As we speak, our words are affected by those layers.  When we build up enough layers we begin to speak from the layers instead off from our core self.  This can lead to creating blind spots.  These blind spots are areas that we don’t even recognize as causing issues in our life.

Let me give you a personal example of how layers affect your life.  My mom and dad were divorced when I was eight years old.  Not having a father figure produced some protective layers that I did not recognize until my 40’s.  Not having a father or any other male role model created a fear of  acceptance in me.  Now to protect that fear, I built up a layer of toughness and anger.  I was always noticing people that I thought were looking at me funny, reacting because of what I did ( lets use driving on the highway  🙂 or talking about me.  All of these were rooted in my fear of male acceptance.  I know this is true because one of my friends had the same issue and we were always looking for a fight.  One of my other friends didn’t have this fear ( layers )  and always thought me and my other friend were crazy.  By the way, he did have a great relationship with his father.  I think the layers we create are manifested based on our personality traits.  Choleric, melancholy, phlegmatic, sanguine.  The choleric’s layers become aggressive or angry; the melancholy becomes sarcastic or introverted; the phlegmatic becomes stubborn or recluse;  the sanguine becomes goofy or unaware of whats going on around them.  These are just some of the layers I have witnessed but there can be many more.  As these layers develop we start to hear everything filtered through those layers and speak from those layers.  Both situations will make it more difficult to build great relationships with people.  You have all experienced these conversations.  You say something to someone and there reply back to you has nothing to do with what you just said.  Now you have layers also and so you reply back with something that has nothing to do with what that person says.   Example, I was getting physical therapy and had to lay there and witness a half hour conversation about NOTHING! I thought I was going to go nuts.  Started off with ” My husband took me to that new restaurant” “Did you hear there is a food poison break out”  “My son was sick two weeks ago” “I think I’m going to train for a race.” “I just don’t like working out” both ladies were going back and forth and never acknowledged once what the other person said.  That was when I started praying that God would seal their lips shut.  God didn’t answer that prayer so I was forced to endure.  You see the problem with speaking from layers is that it means we aren’t really hearing the other person we are trying to achieve a desire of our own.

A desire may be defined as something wanted that cannot  be obtained without the cooperation of another person.  It is an objective for which a person can assume no responsibility, because it is beyond their control.  Reaching a desire must never become the motivating purpose behind behavior, because then a person is assuming responsibility for something he cannot fullfill on his own.  Encouragement by Dr. Larry Crabb and Dr. Dan alexander

 

Think about it for a minute.  The person that is best to talk to is probably the person in your life that has the fewest fears that they are trying to protect.  The less fears they have the less layers they have.   They can hear what you are saying, without filtering it through layers, and when they speak they are speaking from their core, not their layers.  When people speak from their layers their words seem like they are coated with the film of the desire they are trying to fulfill.  Some speak trying to make you feel worse about yourself so they can feel better, some speak in a way that they are fishing for compliments,  others speak in tones that imply to leave them alone, some speak in a way to try to convince you they know what they are talking about.  The list goes on and on but when you hit that person that doesn’t have layers it is like a breath of fresh air.  So how do we fix this.

The real key to fixing this is to eliminate the fears.  Once you eliminate the fear the layers go with it.  A lot of people try to fix these layers with technique or skill.  They will read books on how to improve their people skills but the core fear is still there and so their protective layers just change to a different type of protective layer.  Reading and self analysis can work but very few people are skilled enough to identify their own fears and layers.  The best way to identify and change them is by mentoring with someone who can help you see what you cant see.  I have been very blessed to have two mentors  (Orrin woodward – Life founder and Chris Brady – Life founder) that have helped me eliminate some of mine.  Once you have done this process you are now able to help others identify their fears, grow, and become better.  I wish you the best of luck on this very important subject.

God Bless

Bill Lewis

 

Leadership

Orrin Woodward Team / Life updates

36 Comments

Here is an update  One of the points that I love about free enterprise is the ability to serve customers and produce results. Businesses thrive when legitimate customer needs are satisfied.  All the rhetoric for a business is worthless, if the customers are not being served. Similarly, all the rhetoric against a business is worthless, if the customers are being served.

The LIFE TEAM is passing the customer’s test. In fact, based upon the first month’s data, LIFE has received a huge validation of its business plan. From the customer’s perspective, there is finally a company that provides world-class monthly leadership materials at a price that anyone can afford, especially with its three for free program.

The TEAM community has been serving leadership communities in network marketing since 1999. As part of our training, we created a CD of the week program, quickly establishing ourselves as the top community building organization in the US market. By 2000, we routinely hosted major functions with thousands of people in attendance. Indeed, many of the top leaders within network marketing have benchmarked our processes and systems to improve the leadership culture within their communities.

However, even with this solid foundation, nothing could have prepared me for LIFE’s launch. In its first 30 days, LIFE added over 4,000 new leadership subscribers! I’m not talking about sign-ups here, I am referring to people who signed up for our monthly subscription program. Let me explain the magnitude of these numbers. The LIFE business, in other words, has added more new CD and book subscribers in its first month than the TEAM community added in its best year!

Remember the saying, “In God we trust, all others must have data”? This data confirms something the LIFE founders believed in their hearts – that high-quality, low priced, monthly leadership information is a huge customer need in this intensely competitive marketplace.

However, don’t take my word for it. Try the products for yourself. Over 800 customers, people not involved in the LIFE business are enjoying the leadership information. Most of these customers sold themselves by listening to the leadership materials, eventually requesting a monthly subscription. That is the beauty of the model, members do not have to convince customers against their wills. Instead, members only have to provide the customers an opportunity to hear the life-changing information for themselves.

I want to congratulate all of the new pin winners for the month. So many amazing stories of growth and depth happening across the LIFE TEAM communities. With so much growth, there are more people receiving checks and progressing towards their dreams this month than ever before in the history of the TEAM’s community building endeavors. This can only happen when opportunity and preparedness meet.

One success story that I have witnessed first hand is my yacht captain, Bill Howard. Bill has been part of the TEAM community since 2005. In that time, he read and listened, changing himself from the inside out. Many criticized him, thinking him crazy to believe he could ever lead his own community. However, Bill understood that private achievements precede public ones and even though he wasn’t making big money, he was making big changes. In other words, Bill got himself right; the LIFE TEAM business got the opportunity right; and success was the result. Bill powered over the 50% level in his first month of LIFE, which means his bonus check will be nearly ten times higher than any check he has received in network marketing career. Oh, and by the way, he did this completely without my day to day involvement. In fact, I didn’t show a single plan for him, as he was fully capable of  building his own business thanks to the leadership training. All I can say is congratulations to a job well done!

In life, people are either part of the solution of part of the problem. The LIFE Founders have vowed to be part of the solution. Although governments think they can solve people’s problems by offering handouts, God utilizes a different method. God allows us to get in over our heads, so that He can teach us how to swim by faith. Unfortunately, many times this process is interrupted by well-intentioned people who throw life-jackets in the middle of God’s swimming lessons. I refused to throw Captain Bill Howard a life-jacket, for I knew that God was in the process of developing another champion swimmer. Captain Bill’s leadership community never threw him a lifejacket, for he was capable of swimming, but they did provide him with the encouragement, CDs, and books that changed his thinking, thus his life.

Don’t misread me, I am all for saving a drowning person. However, more often than not, we save a person who is fully capable of swimming with the right training. When we do this, we not only do not help, but are actually take away a person’s dignity and respect, communicating to them that they are not capable of swimming without us. How can a person become a producer in society when he hasn’t developed the ability to swim on his own? LIFE is teaching the leadership skills needed to let go of the life-jackets and start to swim. Western Civilization needs men and women who will swim against the currents of despair currently sinking our society. LIFE is our opportunity to restore our great countries, offering a hand-up, not a handout.

The LIFE business has a goal to change the world one person at a time. We understand that no change is possible until a person is ready. Our goal then, is to have the life-changing information ready when he or she is ready. Are you ready to confront and grow, becoming the leader you deserve to be? If so, then perhaps the LIFE TEAM is worth checking out. Listen to the CDs and read the books for yourself. This may be the opportunity you have been praying for. Sincerely, Orrin Woodward