Monday, January 10, 2011

My Lifemax Story- 2 years later

In August of 2008 I was 30 lbs overweight, working 10-12 hour days as a Physician’s Assistant in a busy dermatology office, the brand new owner of a skincare retail store and the mother of 2 little boys ages 9 months and 3 years, and I was a mess. I, as many women in this country, had gotten myself into a trap. I made a consistent 6 figure income working as a PA but never had time with my children. My husband and I had developed a certain lifestyle for ourselves which was based on a two income household. I knew that I needed to be spending more time at home with my boys focusing on their nutrition and just being with them but I couldn’t with my busy job and I saw no way out. I had every single book that Robert Kiyosaki had ever written in my library, knew all about the woes of being an employee and was sick of working my tail off to make someone else money, thus the decision to invest in my own skin care retail store with $25,000 in August of 2008. When my brothers asked me to give them my advice on a whole raw food packed with Omega 3s, I begrudgingly started to examine Mila. After doing a huge amount of research on Mila, I joined Lifemax as a distributor the same month that I started my skin care store.

Eight months later the dermatology office that I had worked in for four years was closing because the owner of the practice (also my business partner) was moving and I was looking at starting out all over again in another office. It was then that my accountant asked me what Lifemax was. Under my breath, preparing myself for his reaction I said “It’s network marketing”, he said “whatever it is you have made more money with this than you have with your 25K investment in the skincare store, how hard do you work at it?” Up until this point in April of 2009 I had sold A LOT of Mila, I had signed some distributors up but definitely had not been working the business. When my accountant, who sees everyone’s bank accounts, encouraged me to focus on my network marketing business, it changed my whole outlook on Lifemax. I went home and prayed about not taking another full time job and felt strongly that I was supposed to focus on my Lifemax business. I wanted to know why everyone runs the other way when you say “network marketing” and I wanted to do it differently. I have spent the last 17 months, doing it differently.

When I picked up Kiyosaki’s new book The Business of the 21st Century earlier this year and realized that I finally have that large business I had always wanted, I was shocked. What an amazing contrast, to have started a skin care retail store with $25,000 the exact same month that I started my Lifemax business for under $4,000. Now two years later, I have had employees and lost employees with the skin care store. I have had a location and lost a location with the skin care store. I carry around skincare products in my car and have to keep track of inventory, taxes and endless paperwork with my skin care store. With Lifemax, I have over 800 people working with me in 4 different countries; no inventory to carry around, very little paperwork and I am continuously making 3-4 times the amount of money I make monthly with the skin care store. Wow!!

If you had asked me in 2008 what I would be doing at the age of 40, I would have said, “seeing 40-50 patients per day in a dermatology office.” I saw no way out; there was no hope for me to get out of the rat race I was in. I can tell you now that I will NEVER see 40-50 patients per day again. I am working 10 hours per week seeing patients and spend the rest of my time building my Lifemax business and spending time with my family. I can now take my children to school and take Fridays off if I want to (that doesn’t happen in a cosmetic dermatology office). This is truly the most rewarding thing I have ever done. Every morning I wake up and ask God whose life I can help change today and a life is truly changed in this business every single day. Why do 1 out of 3 children in America eat fast food every day? Because the moms are working!!! We don’t have time to cook meals because we are working so hard to keep up with the bills. What if we can make our children healthier AND change their home life by giving them their mothers back? Talk about changing the health and wealth of the world!!!

My story is different than many of the others you have read in that I did not make hundreds of thousands of dollars in my first year with Lifemax, mine is a story of perseverance and commitment. I am not going to tell you that every day is easy, but I will tell you that if you set your goals and you commit to working at least a little bit every single day at this business and NEVER GIVE UP, you cannot fail!! I run two businesses, see patients, am a wife, and a mother to two young children and I am here to tell you that you can do this. It is okay if you don’t make a lot of money in the first few months or even in the first year, just stick with it. Understand that this business is all about doing the little things over and over and over again and then teaching others to do the same thing. Remember that we are not distributing laundry detergent, or a juice with antioxidants, we are sharing a whole raw food that is changing lives all over the world and if you don’t quit you cannot fail. It doesn’t get much better than that. I truly believe that we have all been given a gift, a gift that we must share with others.

My tips for a successful business? If you are a prayer, pray over your business every single day just like you pray over your children. Pray for divine appointments, if you pray for them He will bring them to you. Find something that keeps you motivated. When I have a bad day (and we all have those days) I just look at my nephew Bo. His mother was told three years ago that he was severely autistic, 70% developmentally delayed and would never be in a school that was not for autistic children. (We aren’t making any medical claims, I am just telling you what happened.) After three months on Mila his teachers said it was like he came out of a fog. Bo just finished his third week of kindergarten in a mainstream public elementary school with no other autistic children. Bo and my sister’s lives were forever changed because of Mila. I don’t care how many nos I have to hear, I am going to scream about Mila from the rooftops because it is changing lives all over the world every single day, whose life can you change??

1 comment:

Ksimp said...

How did you get your nephew to eat Mila? My friend's family is gluten free and she is having difficulty getting him to eat Mila? Any advice? Thank you.