I read a fantastic leadership article on the power of trust to improve working relationships in any business or team.  Chris Brady and I have taught a principle for years called, “Slow to go fast.”   We meant that you have to slow down and build the relationship before you can accomplish any great task.  My personal attitude is that I want to be friends first and then team partners.  I am not interested in shallow non-trusting relationships.  I desire deep meaningful relationships with people who will go to bat for one another when the chips are down.  This has been one of the biggest blessings for Laurie and me – we have some of the deepest and trusting relationships with many super people.  Trust is earned by showing trust first and this article does a great job in describing the art of earning trust!  Read the article and evaluate how you are doing with this leadership essential – Trust.  God Bless, Orrin Woodward

Trust is an essential basis for a productive, satisfying and fun business environment. Suspicion corrodes working relationships and undermines people’s confidence in themselves and their colleagues. Leaders need to offer trust, since the only way to prove whether others are trustworthy or not is by experience. Organizational leaders have nearly all the power, so it’s usually up to them to set the ball rolling. Trust is always a gift. As a leader, you need to be the one who begins the giving process.

What does it take to initiate a process of trust? Courage, certainly, and the willingness to take a risk.  Employees, who have been denied trust, maybe for years, don’t find it easy to accept responsibility in an instant. You’ll need to help them rebuild their confidence in themselves. You’ll probably have to deal with more than few cynics as well: people who claim to approve the idea of trust, yet constantly find reasons why it shouldn’t be this person, in this circumstance, at this time.

Risks versus Rewards

There are always risks involved in offering trust. Some people—very few, in my experience—will consciously abuse your trust. If so, you may also need the courage and wisdom to refuse to allow the actions of a tiny minority to shape the way you deal with everyone. Others may stumble and betray your trust without intending to. You need to be willing to show them mercy and provide help, not instant condemnation. It’s easy to focus primarily on the negative possibilities: the people who will not live up to the trust placed in them. In reality, the potential for positive outcomes is high enough to tilt the balance of advantage that way.

The results of trust abused are obvious. You find yourself blamed for being “naive” and “too soft.” You suffer a loss of credibility and political standing. You may have to deal with a problem you didn’t expect, or try to reverse losses that might have been avoided by putting less trust in others.

But what are the risks on the other side: The risks of creating a culture marked by chronic lack of trust? Those risks include:

A culture of obsessive secrecy, so important information is not shared and unnecessary mistakes are common.

An organization where all significant decisions, (particularly financial ones), must be referred upwards, clogging senior management time and slowing progress to a snail's pace.

A “silo” organization, with little or no sharing of information between departments, so the wheel is regularly re-invented.

Internal competitiveness that swamps efforts at co-operation and takes attention away from competing in the marketplace.

Growing numbers of “in groups” and cliques that wreck communication and distract the organization through excessive political partisanship.

Resulting strong class consciousness between “insiders” and the rest.

A culture of protecting your butt first and getting results or serving the customer last.

Staffs that are paid to do jobs they don’t do fully, because their bosses don’t trust them, so do the work themselves instead.

Saving Time

Building trust takes time, but far less than is wasted by needing to check every significant piece of work and do more work you than makes any sense. Part of the deluge of work swamping leaders is due to lack of trust in their subordinates. Delegation no longer seems an option.

The more time leaders spend with their people, the more likely they’ll feel they can trust them. It’s human nature to be somewhat suspicious of those we don’t know very well. You can’t guarantee that giving your staff more time will always increase mutual feelings of trust, but it’s bound to help. A little time invested in this way can save a lot of time later, when staff truly does what they are supposed to do, and take much of the burden of routine work away from those in more senior positions.

There’s a bonus to creating trust. When your staff trusts you, they will look out for you. Many a leader has been saved from bad mistakes—and not a few political ambushes by rivals—because of timely warnings by alert subordinates.

Whom Do You Value?

Trusting someone is essential to valuing them. Imagine saying to someone, “I truly value your contribution to our team . . . but I don’t actually trust you.” There’s no value without trust. That goes for customers as much as employees. All those fine words and positive feelings about valuing the customer are destroyed in an instant by a single instance where the customer realizes he or she isn’t trusted. Exactly the same happens with employees. The message is quickly spread that nobody is really valued by the organization, save those in the charmed circle at the top.

Command-and-control executives display little or no trust towards anyone other then themselves and their chosen cronies. This exacerbates the “us” versus “them” attitudes that mistrust produces. Add to this the “audit mentality” that prevails in many businesses, and you have an attitude that those not found to be untrustworthy have simply been too clever to get caught (yet). The “audit mentality” usually defines most financial decision as significant and requires them to be referred to one of a handful of officers given the authority to spend money. If you can’t trust managers to spend a few hundred dollars wisely, what can you trust them to do?

Slow Down!

Speed and haste undermine trust. Many leaders don’t intend to suggest a lack of trust in their people, but that is how their actions are interpreted. There isn’t time to explain or coach, so they do the job themselves instead. With maybe only a few moments to make a decision, it seems obvious the leader should do it—there isn’t time to risk making a mistake. That isn’t how it will look to the staff, whether it’s true or not. Staff will believe the leader does the work herself because she doesn’t trust them to do it properly.  “She’s a control freak,” they’ll tell one another. “She makes every decision of any importance. Oh, she says it’s because of time pressures, but the real reason is she thinks we’re all dummies. She doesn’t even trust us to make the decisions that are crucial to our work.”

Don’t risk it. Even the “losses” caused by a few genuinely untrustworthy people, and the inevitable frailties of human nature, are minor compared with the damage leaders do when they choose to withhold their trust from the people who work for them. Too many organizations today are wasting money and resources by failing to use the full creative abilities and commitment of their people. Chronic mistrust soon shows on the bottom line.

It’s not just true that if you pay peanuts you get monkeys. If you treat people as untrustworthy through assumed incompetence, low motivation or downright dishonesty, that’s exactly what you’ll get. When you treat employees as feckless dummies, all the good ones will leave, while the rest behave exactly as you seem to expect. A leader without the courage to trust people is as much use as any coward in a fire fight.

Assignment:  What do leaders that you follow consistently do or not do to earn/inspire trust and loyalty?

Here is the incredible "Last Lecture" from Randy Pausch a PHD from Carnegie-Mellon.  Randy has been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and has only months to live.   The professors at Carnegie-Mellon have a tradition of giving a "Last Lecture" to their students.  The first eleven minutes is Randy's last lecture shared again on the Oprah show.  Some of the key points to think upon from this courageous man are:

1. Anything is possible to someone willing to dream.

2. If you don't get your dream - you still learn alot in the process.

3. Experience is what you get when you don't get what you want.

4. People who care will push you.  It's only when they no longer care that you will not be pushed.

5. Brick walls are in your life for a reason - they let us prove how bad we want our dream.

6. You can spend your time in life complaining or playing the game hard.

7. Live your life properly and the dreams will come to you.

8. Tell the Truth.

9. Apologize (Properly) A. I'm Sorry  B. It's My Fault  C. How do I make it right?

10. Wait & people will show their good side.

11. People are way more important than things.

I have been doing research on the difference between self-responsibility and self-centeredness.  On one hand, a person must absolutely accept responsibility for the results produced in their life and be accountable for the outcomes—both good and bad.  On the other hand, a person cannot be focused entirely on self and forget to serve others or they will fall into self centeredness and lose influence.  One of the biggest turnoffs for people is to follow people or companies who are selfish.  If I were to pinpoint the lid on most people's leadership, it would boil down to one word—Self.  Until a person can reign in their selfish desires and motives, they will never lead to their full potential.  No matter how hard a person works, people will not follow them fully until they are convinced the person desires what is best for them.  The question boils down to: How do I focus on self-discipline while being other-people centered?  This is not something that can be answered in one article—but let’s start with this excellent article from Scott Campbell.  There are some thought provoking points on accountability and self-responsibility in this article.  I remember reading a story about Robert E. Lee: he was asked late in life by a young mother, what advice he could give to her to pass on to her baby boy?  His answer still resonates with me today, “Teach him to deny himself.”  God Bless, Orrin Woodward

My original copy of Stephen Covey’s The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People still bears the scars from the time I hurled it in anger against the wall of what was then my office. The broken spine and loose pages bear witness to my lapse in self-control!

I had come across Covey’s book in the early 1990’s, a time when my life seemed to be unraveling. I was angry much of the time, unhappy with my career, my marriage, and much of life in general. I had recently begun counseling to try to untangle this web of misery and was beginning to touch on some very painful events from my childhood. For the very first time in my life, I was beginning to acknowledge the impact of what had happened to me as a child.

And then I read Habit # 1 of Covey’s book: Be Proactive.

Essentially, Covey seemed to be saying, “You are as happy as you are choosing to be. You are responsible for the current state of your life.” When I read that I reacted in anger. And Covey went hurtling.

I was furious at him. I remember thinking, “What does this highly successful, affluent consultant who jet-sets around the world, whose clients are Fortune 500 companies, know about suffering? He’s had an easy ride and knows nothing of what prolonged childhood trauma can do to you. How dare he tell me that I am responsible for my current level of misery!”

But I couldn’t stop reading his book. He had struck a nerve, gotten under my skin.

When I returned to Habit # 1, I went on to read (for the first time) the story of the Jewish psychiatrist, Victor Frankl. Frankl, as some of you likely know, is the father of ‘Logotherapy,’ an approach to therapy that emerged out of his own experience as a survivor of the Nazi death camps of World War II.

While I might dismiss Covey’s experience as lacking credibility for his claims, I could not dismiss Frankl’s experience. Here was a man who had suffered in ways I could not imagine. Thus, when I read the words of Frankl as quoted by Covey, they struck the core of my soul:

“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”

These words came from a survivor of the most horrific atrocity of the 20th century, a man who had lost his own family and friends to the horrors of Nazi brutality.

These words I could not dismiss.

I began to realize that what Covey was saying was not a denial of my pain and trauma but rather, a way out of it!

The “pill” of assuming personal responsibility for my life was a hard one for me to swallow, but I realized that unless I accepted at a deep level that I was responsible for how I had responded to what had happened to me, I would forever be a captive of my past. But if I could accept that I had chosen my response, I was now free to choose a different one.

Hope began to dawn inside me. I started to believe that if I was responsible and able to choose my attitude, to choose my own way, I could choose a new and better path for my life. One that would result in greater happiness, greater inner freedom, and better decisions for my future.

This was my awakening to the importance—and the freedom—of self-leadership.

Since then my conviction has only grown that self-leadership is the foundation of a deeply satisfying, truly successful life.

I define “self-leadership” as the capacity and commitment both to take full responsibility for one’s own responses to life and to create a life that is personally meaningful and fruitful. It is the antithesis of shifting responsibility for one’s degree of happiness and satisfaction to others or circumstances.*

It is by no means easy to exercise self-leadership. From personal experience, I know how easy it is to become stuck in blame. I know the seductiveness of victimhood. For many of us, self-leadership runs against the natural tendency of our thoughts and feelings. Furthermore, self-leadership is, to some degree, counter-cultural. Our culture tends to be blame-oriented. I spill coffee on myself so I sue the company that brewed it. Practicing self-leadership can seem like swimming upstream. What’s more, life’s circumstances frequently are difficult to change—whether it’s a career that doesn’t fit, a marriage that isn’t working, financial difficulties, cynical colleagues, a tyrannical boss, a downturn in the economy, or a myriad other tough times.

It’s important to acknowledge and anticipate that self-leadership isn’t easy.

But it is vital to inner freedom and outer success.

When we fail to exercise self-leadership, we give our power away to others and/or circumstances. The failure to exercise self-leadership tends to enshrine the status-quo. It leaves success and positive change to chance and the desires, dictates, and decisions of others. It can foment feelings of bitterness, anger and disappointment (trust me, I know!). The price we pay when we fail to exercise self-leadership is huge.

So, how can we increase our practice of self-leadership? How can we cultivate it as a habit of mind? Here are five suggestions.

First, accept at a deep level that you are responsible for your past and present responses to what life has brought your way. Don’t deny the past or present and their impact on you. But accept that you had a role in adopting whatever negative beliefs, attitudes, and self-concepts that may have become imbedded in your life as a result of your past and present responses to life’s hardships. Give up the very understandable and natural desire to blame others for your difficulties or negative emotions. Choose to accept that your outlook and emotional responses to life’s challenges were/are your own choice.

This first step tends to be much more a process than an event. Especially if, like me, you have had years and years of practice in blaming others and circumstances for your pain and disappointments. So, commit to the process of learning to accept responsibility for your responses to life and the consequences those choices have created.

Second, start monitoring your self-talk and assumptions in specific situations. Watch to see when you are saying things to yourself (or others) like, “Well, if only they would…” or, “There’s nothing you can do when…” or, “You make me so…” These types of statements, verbalized or thought, lead away from the vista of self-leadership toward the murky bog of blame and reactivity.

Third, when faced with a difficult situation, consciously ask yourself, “What would it mean to exercise self-leadership right now?” If, for example, your boss has been berating you in front of others on a regular basis, ask yourself, “What would it mean for me to exercise self-leadership in this situation?” There are numerous possible answers that could be right for you: choosing to confront your boss at a separate time when you are calm, transferring to a different department, reminding yourself of the pressure that your boss is under and deciding not to take it personally. By asking the question you create the space to be proactive rather than reactive. If you have the time, journal your answers or, if you prefer, talk it through with someone to gain clarity about the best response for you.

Until self-leadership becomes a habit of mind, we will often need to pause and consciously shift to a self-leadership stance. Posing and answering this question forces us to look at circumstances and decisions from a self-leadership perspective.

Fourth, deepen your own self-awareness. The more you know about your deepest needs and values, your talents and strengths, as well as your stressors and blind spots, the more you can make choices that result in greater satisfaction and effectiveness. Self-awareness allows you to play to your strengths in exercising self-leadership. It allows you to better get your needs met, manage your stress, and compensate for your weaknesses. It helps you create circumstances that work for you, not against you.**

Fifth, dream of the future you want to have. While taking action is the ultimate expression of self-leadership, visualizing the future we want to have (whether that is a matter of responding differently in your current circumstances or changing the circumstances themselves) is a key for increasing our motivation for action. Furthermore, it actually increases the likelihood that we will do what we are visualizing. Athletes have used the power of positive visualization for years to increase their levels of performance by visualizing themselves excelling. Recent studies have demonstrated that visualization actually creates the patterns in our brains in advance that we will use during the actual performance.

Most of us already visualize regularly. It’s just that usually we envision things going poorly. Why not use the power of this mental process in a positive way? Exercise self-leadership over your imagination by using positive visualization to increase your likelihood of success.

These five suggestions should get you started on the road to self-leadership.

As I have moved more and more (though not perfectly) towards the regular practice of self-leadership, I have seen several positive results in my life. I am much happier about my present and immensely hopeful about my future. I have actually achieved more in the last decade than I ever would have imagined possible. And, most importantly, I am creating the life I want, rather than merely enduring what life had given.

Self-leadership isn’t easy. But it is vital. It is the foundation of personal and professional success. It is the portal to inner freedom. My bruised copy of Covey’s Seven Habits stands as a reminder to me of these truths.

* I want to emphasize that this is hugely different from denying the impact of our past or the real challenges and difficulties of current circumstances. Self-leadership is a perspective that allows you to acknowledge but not be trapped by the past or the present. It is the portal to inner freedom and the foundation for outer effectiveness.

** Models of personality type (Temperament, Interaction Styles, Psychological Type) are useful as tools to deepen our self-awareness. They give us insights into key dimensions of our psychological make-up, talents, unique stressors, and characteristic behaviors.

Laurie and I had the honor of speaking to the greatest team of leaders in the world called the Team.  We have never spoken to a group that is more attentive and hungry to learn.  The Team has a goal to reach millions of people and to make a difference in other people’s lives.  Over twenty thousand people gathered to learn leadership from Chris and Terri Brady, Randy and Val Haugen, Mark and Tami Crawford, Tim and Amy Marks, Billy and Peggy Florence and more.  I am convinced the Team will reach and surpass its goals and make a global difference.  Did you attend St. Louis?  What was your magic moment from the weekend?  God Bless, Orrin Woodward

Update:  The easiest way to refer people to this site is to have them search - Orrin Woodward Leadership.

Are you part of the problem or part of the solution in your community?  I love this parable of the peasant who chose to do something about the problem.  This is how we must be in life.  Instead of complaining about the lack of compassion in our culture - be compassionate.  Instead of railing about the selfish attitudes - be selfless.  Don't be disappointed by the leadership of our country - be a leader with honor.  I looked for someone to fix all the ills of our society, then I realized I was someone.  Enjoy the parable.  God Bless, Orrin Woodward

In ancient times, a King had a boulder placed on a roadway. Then he hid himself and watched to see if anyone would remove the huge rock. Some of the kirig's wealthiest merchants and courtiers came by and simply walked around it. Many loudly blamed the king for not keeping the roads clear, but none did anything about getting the stone out of the way. Then a peasant came along carrying a load of vegetables. Upon approaching the boulder, the peasant laid down his burden and tried to move the stone to the side of the road. After much pushing and straining, he finally succeeded. After the peasant picked up his load of vegetables, he noticed a purse lying in the road where the boulder had been. The purse contained many gold coins and a note from the king indicating that the gold was for the person who removed the boulder from the roadway. The peasant learned what many of us never understand. Every obstacle presents an opportunity to improve our condition.

Perseverance and determination will make the difference in life.  I encourage everyone to read good books that feed the soul a message of hope and encouragement.  Be the thermostat not the thermometer every where you go.  Here is an inspiring article from Burt Dubin about the life of athletic star Glenn Cunningham.  If Glenn can overcome his obstacles and setbacks in life, then you can too!  Enjoy the article and hope to see you in St. Louis.  God Bless, Orrin Woodward

The little country schoolhouse was heated by an old-fashioned, pot-bellied coal stove. A little boy had the job of coming to school early each day to start the fire and warm the room before his teacher and his classmates arrived. 

One morning they arrived to find the schoolhouse engulfed in flames. They dragged the unconscious little boy out of the flaming building more dead than alive. He had major burns over the lower half of his body and was taken to a nearby county hospital.

From his bed the dreadfully burned, semi-conscious little boy faintly heard the doctor talking to his mother. The doctor told his mother that her son would surely die - which was for the best, really - for the terrible fire had devastated the lower half of his body.

But the brave boy didn't want to die. He made up his mind that he would survive. Somehow, to the amazement of the physician, he did survive. When the mortal danger was past, he again heard the doctor and his mother speaking quietly. The mother was told that since the fire had destroyed so much flesh in the lower part of his body, it would almost be better if he had died, since he was doomed to be a lifetime cripple with no use at all of his lower limbs.

Once more the brave boy made up his mind. He would not be a cripple. He would walk. But unfortunately from the waist down, he had no motor ability. His thin legs just dangled there, all but lifeless.

Ultimately he was released from the hospital. Every day his mother would massage his little legs, but there was no feeling, no control, nothing. Yet his determination that he would walk was as strong as ever.

When he wasn't in bed, he was confined to a wheelchair. One sunny day his mother wheeled him out into the yard to get some fresh air. This day, instead of sitting there, he threw himself from the chair. He pulled himself across the grass, dragging his legs behind him.

He worked his way to the white picket fence bordering their lot. With great effort, he raised himself up on the fence. Then, stake by stake, he began dragging himself along the fence, resolved that he would walk. He started to do this every day until he wore a smooth path all around the yard beside the fence. There was nothing he wanted more than to develop life in those legs.

Ultimately through his daily massages, his iron persistence and his resolute determination, he did develop the ability to stand up, then to walk haltingly, then to walk by himself - and then - to run.

He began to walk to school, then to run to school, to run for the sheer joy of running. Later in college he made the track team.

Still later in Madison Square Garden this young man who was not expected to survive, who would surely never walk, who could never hope to run - this determined young man, Dr. Glenn Cunningham, ran the world's fastest mile!

Here is an incredible article from Greg Smith that exemplifies the type of leaders I see on this Leadership Team Blog.  In today’s competitive global business market only the brave, courageous and honorable leaders will mobilize their teams to success.  Leadership is not for the weak at heart!   Are you developing your Gladiatorial leadership qualities?  Read the article and see for yourself. God Bless, Orrin Woodward

Remember the heart-pounding, soul-stirring message of last year's critically acclaimed movie Gladiator? Remember how Maximus, the Russell Crowe character, rallied his men around him and led them to victory, even in the face of almost certain defeat? Remember his "envision the goal" technique for getting through the horrors of battle? Now, consider the leadership in your own company. Any gladiators in the ranks? Are you a gladiator?

The time is right for a more heroic style of leadership. Desperate times lend themselves to the rise of gladiators. Instead of seeing today's economy as a negative, executives should view it as an opportunity in disguise--a chance to position your organization for the inevitable economic upswing. Here are eight virtues of Gladiator Leadership.

1. Gladiators have a mission for which they feel real passion. Call it a purpose, an obsession, a calling: whatever the terminology, good leaders have a defining mission in their life. This mission, above all other traits, separates managers from leaders. In Gladiator, Maximus lived for the mission of killing the evil usurper Commodus and restoring Rome to the values that made her great.

2. Gladiators create a vision. Having and communicating a clear picture of a future goal will lead to its achievement. Dare to think great! Maximus helped his fellow gladiators see that they could overthrow their enemies and survive the horror of the battles they were forced to participate in. In business, a leader may create an "enemy" the economy, the competition, inefficiency-to challenge the energies of his or her people and give them something to fight for.

3. Gladiators lead from the front-they don't dictate from the back. In the movie, both when Maximus was a general and a gladiator, he fought up front where the firestorm was heaviest. So does a good business leader. Working "in the trenches" shows that you're not afraid to get your hands dirty, it helps you fully understand the issues your "soldiers" are facing, and inspires loyalty in your troops.

4. Gladiators know there is strength in teams. Where would Maximus have been if he hadn't trusted his men to fight with him and cover his back? Likewise, where would you be without your employees? While the gladiator leader has the skills to draw people together, he doesn't hog the spotlight. He has care and compassion for his team and wants every member to be recognized for his or her efforts. This is especially important in a time when the old style "command and control" structure is waning. Younger workers (Generations X and Y) tend to be loyal to their coworkers rather than the traditional "organization."

5. Gladiators encourage risk-taking. In the Roman Empire, gladiators were expected to die with honor. Refusing to lie down and let one's opponents win was bucking the status quo. (And certainly, killing the reigning emperor-however corrupt-simply was not done!) If a company does not examine its way of doing things, if it does not push out its boundaries, if it never makes mistakes, it may become road kill.

6. Gladiators keep their heads in a crisis. Maximus had to think on his feet and refuse to give into terror and panic. He faced the most formidable foes calmly and with focus. Business leaders must do the same. They must take a position and defend it when things go awry. Being graceful and brave under fire is the surest way to build credibility-a necessity for sound leadership. Gladiators don't retreat due to the slowing economy, but look for the opportunity under their feet.

7. Gladiators prepare for battle 24 hours a day. Essentially, a Roman gladiator was a fighting machine. To stay alive, his mind had to be constantly on the upcoming battle. Business leaders, likewise, must be obsessed with training and developing their people in good times and bad. People need and want to hone their individual skills and "sharpen their swords." Furthermore, good leaders must constantly learn what's necessary to survive and unlearn the "old rules." Just because a management style worked a decade ago does not mean it will work in today's economy-good leaders evolve with the times.

8. Gladiators are teachers and mentors. Maximus taught his men the lessons they would need to survive in their new role as gladiators. In today's rapidly changing environment, leaders must also teach and train those who may soon replace them. We are not necessarily talking about formal classroom training. We need leaders talking to people in the hallway, in the restaurant . . . everywhere. Everyone should be mentoring someone.

Update: Laurie and I look forward to seeing some Gladiators in St. Louis!

Want more evidence of why a Team of leaders must step up and pursue excellence?  I was sent this article written by Susan Jacoby that captures the love affair with mediocrity in America.  If I were to begin personally mentoring every one of the blog readers—I would start by encouraging you to read Magic of Thinking Big.  No single book describes the importance of having a big dream to create hunger, as well as this book.   David Schwarz wrote this book in the 1950’s, but its lesson is so relevant today.  Read the book and take notes on the key points to focus on now.   I love the readers of this blog, because they represent a group of men and women prepared to make a difference.  If you want to make a difference in this world, then you need to be different from the world.  The world may shout out a message of hate, mediocrity and situational ethics, but inside of you is a voice that whispers of your God-given destiny.  A life filled with love, honor, courage, and perseverance.  Every day that passes, the voice grows weaker.  Reading and listening to other leaders revives the faint voice inside of you!  God’s gives us the gift of life—what a shame to return it unopened.  The Team training teaches people to read, listen and think again.  We can and will make a difference because we are different!  Enjoy the article.  God Bless, Orrin Woodward

"The mind of this country, taught to aim at low objects, eats upon itself." Ralph Waldo Emerson offered that observation in 1837, but his words echo with painful prescience in today's very different United States. Americans are in serious intellectual trouble -- in danger of losing our hard-won cultural capital to a virulent mixture of anti-intellectualism, anti-rationalism and low expectations.

This is the last subject that any candidate would dare raise on the long and winding road to the White House. It is almost impossible to talk about the manner in which public ignorance contributes to grave national problems without being labeled an "elitist," one of the most powerful pejoratives that can be applied to anyone aspiring to high office. Instead, our politicians repeatedly assure Americans that they are just "folks," a patronizing term that you will search for in vain in important presidential speeches before 1980. (Just imagine: "We here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain . . . and that government of the folks, by the folks, for the folks, shall not perish from the earth.") Such exaltations of ordinariness are among the distinguishing traits of anti-intellectualism in any era.

The classic work on this subject by Columbia University historian Richard Hofstadter, "Anti-Intellectualism in American Life," was published in early 1963, between the anti-communist crusades of the McCarthy era and the social convulsions of the late 1960s. Hofstadter saw American anti-intellectualism as a basically cyclical phenomenon that often manifested itself as the dark side of the country's democratic impulses in religion and education. But today's brand of anti-intellectualism is less a cycle than a flood. If Hofstadter (who died of leukemia in 1970 at age 54) had lived long enough to write a modern-day sequel, he would have found that our era of 24/7 infotainment has outstripped his most apocalyptic predictions about the future of American culture.

Dumbness, to paraphrase the late senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, has been steadily defined downward for several decades, by a combination of heretofore irresistible forces. These include the triumph of video culture over print culture (and by video, I mean every form of digital media, as well as older electronic ones); a disjunction between Americans' rising level of formal education and their shaky grasp of basic geography, science and history; and the fusion of anti-rationalism with anti-intellectualism.

First and foremost among the vectors of the new anti-intellectualism is video. The decline of book, newspaper and magazine reading is by now an old story. The drop-off is most pronounced among the young, but it continues to accelerate and afflict Americans of all ages and education levels.

Reading has declined not only among the poorly educated, according to a report last year by the National Endowment for the Arts. In 1982, 82 percent of college graduates read novels or poems for pleasure; two decades later, only 67 percent did. And more than 40 percent of Americans under 44 did not read a single book -- fiction or nonfiction -- over the course of a year. The proportion of 17-year-olds who read nothing (unless required to do so for school) more than doubled between 1984 and 2004. This time period, of course, encompasses the rise of personal computers, Web surfing and video games.

Does all this matter? Technophiles pooh-pooh jeremiads about the end of print culture as the navel-gazing of (what else?) elitists. In his book "Everything Bad Is Good for You: How Today's Popular Culture Is Actually Making Us Smarter," the science writer Steven Johnson assures us that we have nothing to worry about. Sure, parents may see their "vibrant and active children gazing silently, mouths agape, at the screen." But these zombie-like characteristics "are not signs of mental atrophy. They're signs of focus." Balderdash. The real question is what toddlers are screening out, not what they are focusing on, while they sit mesmerized by videos they have seen dozens of times.

Despite an aggressive marketing campaign aimed at encouraging babies as young as 6 months to watch videos, there is no evidence that focusing on a screen is anything but bad for infants and toddlers. In a study released last August, University of Washington researchers found that babies between 8 and 16 months recognized an average of six to eight fewer words for every hour spent watching videos.

I cannot prove that reading for hours in a treehouse (which is what I was doing when I was 13) creates more informed citizens than hammering away at a Microsoft Xbox or obsessing about Facebook profiles. But the inability to concentrate for long periods of time -- as distinct from brief reading hits for information on the Web -- seems to me intimately related to the inability of the public to remember even recent news events. It is not surprising, for example, that less has been heard from the presidential candidates about the Iraq war in the later stages of the primary campaign than in the earlier ones, simply because there have been fewer video reports of violence in Iraq. Candidates, like voters, emphasize the latest news, not necessarily the most important news.

No wonder negative political ads work. "With text, it is even easy to keep track of differing levels of authority behind different pieces of information," the cultural critic Caleb Crain noted recently in the New Yorker. "A comparison of two video reports, on the other hand, is cumbersome. Forced to choose between conflicting stories on television, the viewer falls back on hunches, or on what he believed before he started watching."

As video consumers become progressively more impatient with the process of acquiring information through written language, all politicians find themselves under great pressure to deliver their messages as quickly as possible -- and quickness today is much quicker than it used to be. Harvard University's Kiku Adatto found that between 1968 and 1988, the average sound bite on the news for a presidential candidate -- featuring the candidate's own voice -- dropped from 42.3 seconds to 9.8 seconds. By 2000, according to another Harvard study, the daily candidate bite was down to just 7.8 seconds.

The shrinking public attention span fostered by video is closely tied to the second important anti-intellectual force in American culture: the erosion of general knowledge.

People accustomed to hearing their president explain complicated policy choices by snapping "I'm the decider" may find it almost impossible to imagine the pains that Franklin D. Roosevelt took, in the grim months after Pearl Harbor, to explain why U.S. armed forces were suffering one defeat after another in the Pacific. In February 1942, Roosevelt urged Americans to spread out a map during his radio "fireside chat" so that they might better understand the geography of battle. In stores throughout the country, maps sold out; about 80 percent of American adults tuned in to hear the president. FDR had told his speechwriters that he was certain that if Americans understood the immensity of the distances over which supplies had to travel to the armed forces, "they can take any kind of bad news right on the chin."

This is a portrait not only of a different presidency and president but also of a different country and citizenry, one that lacked access to satellite-enhanced Google maps but was far more receptive to learning and complexity than today's public. According to a 2006 survey by National Geographic-Roper, nearly half of Americans between ages 18 and 24 do not think it necessary to know the location of other countries in which important news is being made. More than a third consider it "not at all important" to know a foreign language, and only 14 percent consider it "very important."

That leads us to the third and final factor behind the new American dumbness: not lack of knowledge per se but arrogance about that lack of knowledge. The problem is not just the things we do not know (consider the one in five American adults who, according to the National Science Foundation, thinks the sun revolves around the Earth); it's the alarming number of Americans who have smugly concluded that they do not need to know such things in the first place. Call this anti-rationalism -- a syndrome that is particularly dangerous to our public institutions and discourse. Not knowing a foreign language or the location of an important country is a manifestation of ignorance; denying that such knowledge matters is pure anti-rationalism. The toxic brew of anti-rationalism and ignorance hurts discussions of U.S. public policy on topics from health care to taxation.

There is no quick cure for this epidemic of arrogant anti-rationalism and anti-intellectualism; rote efforts to raise standardized test scores by stuffing students with specific answers to specific questions on specific tests will not do the job. Moreover, the people who exemplify the problem are usually oblivious to it. ("Hardly anyone believes himself to be against thought and culture," Hofstadter noted.) It is past time for a serious national discussion about whether, as a nation, we truly value intellect and rationality. If this indeed turns out to be a "change election," the low level of discourse in a country with a mind taught to aim at low objects ought to be the first item on the change agenda.

Here is a fantastic article on empathy by Kelly Gerling, Ph.D. published in The Spinal Column, Nelson Marlborough Health Services, Nelson New Zealand, in December 2000.  Empathy is the ability to put yourself into someone else’s shoes to feel and think what they are feeling and thinking.  Every great leader must develop the ability to think from the perspective of those they lead.  Without this ability, you will not build deep connections with others.  People follow leaders who they feel understand them.  Here is the article. God Bless, Orrin Woodward

On a planet far away, the creature had been tunneling through underground rock, killing miners and sabotaging life support systems needed for the miners to survive underground. The USS Enterprise was called in by the mining authorities to help stop this violence against the miners on this planet. Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock took the lead to try and remedy the situation.

This episode of the original Star Trek TV series, called Devil in the Dark, features a species called the Horta, a creature that lives underground.

Rather than kill the creature, the away team decides to attempt to negotiate with it to develop a win/win solution. The trouble is, they had no understanding of its life cycle, intelligence or motives.

They decided that Mr. Spock would attempt a Vulcan mind-meld with the creature to understand its violent behavior. The creature allowed the mind-meld. By doing the Vulcan mind-meld, Mr. Spock developed a deep, accurate and felt understanding of the creature. He realized that the she lives her whole life underground, is the last of her kind, her environment was threatened by the mining activities, she was a mother and the miners have been killing her eggs. She was defending the eggs when she attacked and killed the miners, and began sabotaging their life support systems.

This understanding became the basis for negotiations whereby the miners could mine in certain areas, and stay away from the Horta's eggs and environment. In return, the Horta would help them with some tunneling and otherwise leave the miners alone.

It was the mind-meld and the empathy it enabled Mr. Spock to experience that made a win/win, cooperative solution possible.

Empathy

The literature of Star Trek has other characters that exemplify the use of empathy and its importance in improving relationships. For example, Counselor Troi from the Next Generation series comes from a planet inhabited by "empaths" who can experience the feelings, images, words and intentions of others through a form of empathic telepathy.

Fiction often makes clear what is possible in the real world. In my work in helping people in conflict, the use of or development of empathy is nearly always necessary for healing values violations, giving relationships new and healthy beginnings, and allowing real win/win solutions to emerge.

The easiest way to understand the importance of empathy is to recall times when you have been misunderstood or have been in pain. Think of how nice, how pleasant, indeed, how heart-warming it is when someone develops and demonstrates empathy for you.

When someone understands our situation, feels our pains, and deeply cares for our well-being, it changes their behavior and ours. It makes it possible for a damaged relationship to heal and even to emerge from the discussion even stronger than it ever was. This is what empathy makes possible.

Obstacles to Empathy

Perhaps the most common obstacle to empathy for others, is a failure to set aside our own pain long enough, and well enough, to walk in the steps of others. When we get stuck in our own pain, it makes it difficult to feel the pain of others, or to understand them deeply.

Yielding to victim behaviors such as blaming, avoiding, whining, labeling negatively or sarcasm also prevents empathy for the object of one's negativity. Instead of yielding to destructive impulses, it is far better to heal the wounds that underlie them. Then empathy and other thinking skills become available to you.

Many of our automatic reactions to people with unmet needs or people in conflict come from family or cultural patterns. The various inner capabilities in the VBL system have different degrees of emphasis in different families and cultures. Not all families and cultures promote empathy as a good skill to develop and use. Therefore it is important to recognize thinking limitations that you have inherited from your family and cultural background. Once you've done that you can work on overcoming such limitations.

So What If I'm Not Good At Empathy?

If you recognize that you are not so good at empathy, that is the first step toward developing this skill.

Empathy is not limited to particular families, genders, cultures or classes. It is a human skill, one that any of us can develop. When another person is in pain, you can feel it, or learn how to. When another is in a situation different from your own, you can learn to fully understand their experiences. In short, you can develop empathy, each of us can -- it is not genetically withheld. It is part of our cognitive heritage as human beings.

How to Develop Your Empathy

One way to develop or activate your empathy for someone is to do so directly. That is, mentally and emotionally use your imagination to step into the other person's experience. Some actors do this as a way to create their character. Doing so is like the Vulcan mind-meld from Star Trek stories -- it happens all at once. Most people have the capability of bringing about empathy in this way. Anyone who dreams at night can use the same skill of imagination, during the day, to put themselves into the experience of others.

Another way to develop your empathy is to remember when you have been in a situation similar, in crucial respects, to the situation the other person is in. If the other person feels disrespected or wronged, remember when you have been disrespected or wronged. If the other person is angry, recall when you have been angry, and feel it. If the other person has dug in their heels and refuses to budge from a position or point of view, remember when you have done the same thing.

Other methods include meditating for understanding, interviewing and listening to learn about the person's inner world, praying for compassion, and activating values such as a feeling of caring and a sense of responsibility.

Using any of these methods to develop a felt understanding for another person will result in an increase in your empathy. And this will give you a chance to lead the way to deepening understanding, resolving conflicts, and ultimately fulfilling values.

Empathy in Balance with Other Capabilities

A good way to understand VBL inner capabilities like empathy, integrity and objectivity is to visualize them like chairs around a table of leadership intelligence. (Other "chairs" in the VBL system are analytical thinking, seeing the good in others, preventing the victim cycle, long-term and wide-angle vision, and values in action to bring about a leadership cycle.)

In the table scheme, the other person's chair is the 2nd person position that enables us, when we sit in their chair, to experience empathy; one's own chair becomes is the 1st person position from which integrity becomes possible; a dispassionate observer's chair is the 3rd person position that bring about objectivity. (The other chairs expand thinking even further.)

Any excessive "getting stuck" in one chair to the long-term exclusion of the others will throw one's leadership out of balance. For example, while empathy is a necessary inner skill for leadership, if the needs of others are always the main emphasis, the inevitable result will be some form of co-dependence, and your own values will be neglected. Likewise, an overemphasis on one's own needs, values and situation, that is, getting stuck in the integrity chair, leads to egotistical self-centeredness. Furthermore, too much objectivity leads to a cold and distant detachment.

It is best for a leader to rotate around the table of leadership intelligence, sitting in each chair, mentally, in a dynamic balance. This type of balance between these and other chairs brings about a coherent type of expanded thinking -- leadership intelligence -- the result of an integration of our various capabilities.

Results of Empathy in Balance

The way to enjoy good relationships with nearly anyone is to approach them as complete equals. By that I don't mean equal skills or equal positions or the same roles in an organization. Rather, I mean you can see others as equals in a basic, human sense.

Each person you or I meet is the same as us in that they, like us, seek to fulfill positive healthy values and to prevent values violations and their resulting pain. They, like us, have moments of weakness and make mistakes. They, like us, want to be understood.

By recognizing, through empathy, that each other person is the same in such a deep and basic ways, it is easier to communicate genuinely, to understand them, to bring about cooperation, and to lead the way to the fulfillment of healthy values like trust and respect, excellence and service, love and caring.

Develop your empathy. You'll be a better, more understanding, more compassionate leader as a result. You'll confirm how others are similar to you. And you will enjoy discovering more of the mysteries of how others are different from you, even those who seem like creatures, whose behavior seems to make no sense.

I'm reminded of a line from the song, Colors of the Wind from the Pocahontas soundtrack, written by Stephen Schwartz:

" . . . if you walk the footsteps of a stranger

you'll learn things you never knew you never knew"

The Leadership group on this blog is over the top!  I have said since 1999, "As the community goes, so goes any business."  On this blog, we have assembled the greatest group of leaders anywhere.  To take the blog rank from not in the Top 1000 to the Top 2 in less than four months is incredible.  More evidence of what is to come in the future!  We just missed our first 100,000 hit day!  I bet you we will double this many times over the next couple of years.  A big salute to all the people who have shared this blog with others.  This has truly been a labor of love to me.  God Bless, Orrin Woodward

I thought these quotes from Winston Churchill are pertinent to many of our readers.  The key to war is focus and Winston knew how to stay focused on the main things to stay alive long enough to win.  Winston’s did a masterful job of keeping England solvent and fighting alone in WWII.  Winston knew that England could not beat Nazi Germany alone, but held on long enough to bring in allies.  The Allies were critical to help England fulfill her destiny.  Can you imagine being one of the many soldiers and civilians in England who stood up against the tyranny of Nazi Germany?  I am sure they spoke with pride to the grandchildren and great-grandchildren of their courage in the face of force.  Here are some great quotes from different stages in the war.

Their Finest Hour

What General Weygand called the Battle of France is over. I expect that the battle of Britain is about to begin. Upon this battle depends the survival of Christian civilization. Upon it depends our own British life, and the long continuity of our institutions and our Empire. The whole fury and might of the enemy must very soon be turned on us. Hitler knows that he will have to break us in this island or lose the war. If we can stand up to him, all Europe may be free and the life of the world may more forward into broad, sunlit uplands. But if we fail, then the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science. Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, 'This was their Finest Hour.'

       —House of Commons, 18 June 1940, following the collapse of France. Many thought Britain would follow.

Never Surrender

We shall not flag or fail. We shall go on to the end. We shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air. We shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be. We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing-grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills. We shall never surrender!

       —House of Commons, 4 June 1940, following the evacuation of British and French armies from Dunkirk as the German tide swept through France.

War of the Unknown Warriors

       This is no war of chieftains or of princes, of dynasties or national ambition; it is a war of peoples and of causes. There are vast numbers, not only in this island but in every land, who will render faithful service in this war but whose names will never be known, whose deeds will never be recorded. This is a war of the Unknown Warriors; but let all strive without failing in faith or in duty, and the dark curse of Hitler will be lifted from our age.

       —BBC Broadcast, London, 14 July 1940

The Few

The gratitude of every home in our island, in our Empire, and indeed throughout the world, except in the abodes of the guilty, goes out to the British airmen who, undaunted by odds, unwearied in their constant challenge and mortal danger, are turning the tide of the world war by their prowess and by their devotion. Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.

      —Tribute to the Royal Air Force, House of Commons, 20 August 1940. The Battle of Britain peaked a month later. Because of German bombing raids, Churchill said, Britain was "a whole nation fighting and suffering together." He had worked out the phrase about "The Few" in his mind as he visited the Fighter Command airfields in Southern England.

Captain of Our Souls

The mood of Britain is wisely and rightly averse from every form of shallow or premature exultation. This is no time for boasts or glowing prophecies, but there is this—a year ago our position looked forlorn, and well nigh desperate, to all eyes but our own. Today we may say aloud before an awe-struck world, 'We are still masters of our fate. We still are captain of our souls.

       —House of Commons, 9 September 1941

The End of the Beginning

The Germans have received back again that measure of fire and steel which they have so often meted out to others. Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.

       —Lord Mayor's Luncheon, Mansion House following the victory at El Alameinin North Africa, London, 10 November 1942.

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resisted, but not an idea whose time has come.” 

With the announced change to Amway and a non-negotiable stance from Quixtar/Amway management I knew I was in a moral dilemma.  I had major issues with the Quixtar transformation including:

First, I had spoken on stage all across the US and Canada and stated this was not Amway.   We signed a Quixtar application and Quixtar was a sister organization.  I had looked people in the eye; including my brother-in-law, who said that they would not get into Amway: I told them that this was not Amway.  I now had to either state that I was misled or that I misled others.  This was a big one for me personally as my worth is my word.  I refused to lie to my friends and organization, but I also did not wish to de-edify the Quixtar management for forcing this change against the personal integrity of all the Ibo’s.

Second, I was already struggling morally with building the Quixtar business because of the lack of progress for the new people.  Instead of moving the ball forward we were now:

            A. Phasing out Team Approach with new stacking rule.

            B. Focusing on retailing products.

            C. Handing over the training of Ibo’s to Amway.

            D. Phasing out curiosity approach and leading with Amway/Quixtar.

            E. Less money in the plan for all utilizing the Team Approach.

Without Team Approach and the Curiosity Approach, I am personally convinced the business will not move forward.  How can I continue to make money from a success training system, when I believe in my heart that others will not get the results that I did? 

Third, the rejection of the wishes of the vast majority of the Quixtar Ibo’s made me realize I did not truly run my own business.  The term IBO is a misnomer in my opinion.  In order to own your own business, you must be able to make choices freely on what to do with your personal property.  In business, this includes naming it, selling it, how to build it, or exiting it.  Otherwise, you are not an owner, but more of an employee - without the employee benefits, in my opinion.  I could not represent this as someone’s independent business, if it did not have the true benefits of ownership.  This was another moral issue to me.

Fourth, the data management rule, non-compete rule, and non-solicitation rule were being applied in ways that were never agreed upon by the board.  According to Don Wilson, Fred Harteis, and Billy Florence the company had twisted the original interpretations.  The arbitration rules should be used to force bankruptcy on anyone at the discretion of the company.  There must be checks and balances.  Checks and balances in any business or government are critical to reign in fallen human nature.  This is how our Constitution is set up with checks and balances between the Executive, Legislative, and Judicial.   I saw first hand how these rules were being enforced at Quixtar and it concerned me greatly.  In my opinion, the above rules were being used to build a wall around the Ibo’s to force them to stay involved under fear of reprisal.  For example when I was threatened with a suspension, my only recourse would be to enter a costly arbitration process.  I attempted to explain this to the other board members, but most only focused on the specific issue - not the underlying principles.  To me, if the riverbed is set up wrong - we have to assume the water will go with the riverbed.  I attempted to get the board united around changing the riverbed - to ensure the people owned their own businesses.  Coercion is a poor principle for any leader to utilize.  What type of loyalty is engendered by walls, threats and intimidation?  How could I knowingly bring others inside of the walls?  This was another moral issue to me.

Many people on the Board called the families a benevolent dictatorship.  They meant this in a good sense, being that they always took care of the people.  I believe they did their best in taking care of the people before the riverbed changed.  I believe in 2004, there was a major change in the riverbed that guides the water.  This was the year the LOS became the confidential trade secret information of Quixtar’s.  When renewals were automatically processed in 2004 - they included a clause that from my vantage point, gave away the ownership of your groups to Quixtar.  Remember, the right to own property is the absolute necessity in order to have a free enterprise system.  No one will improve a piece of land into a crop producing field if it can be taken away at the discretion of the ruler or government.  This was another major for me, because after the new rules were put in place - a gradual change occurred in the relationship between the Board and the Company.  Before the new rules, if the Company did anything too out of line, the Dexter Yager's and Bill Britt's would stand up.  If they weren't listened too the company knew they would lose them.   This concern, is exactly what led Amway to move to the Quixtar opportunity in the first place.  With the new riverbed, the Quixtar management can ignore the Board or any other large IBO leader.  Quixtar does not fear losing the business, because they have built a large legal wall.  To me, this is not free enterprise anymore and it changed without my knowledge - without a new signed agreement.  I know that Quixtar states when I auto-renewed that it was automatically added.  But something does not sit right with me in this argument.  I believe that non-competes require a commensurate compensation and physical signatures to the new terms.  Where is the checks and balances here?

At the special board meeting in early August, my goal was to give one last chance to convince Quixtar to change course.  Many Board members believed that a name change to Amway would be catastrophic to the long-term business interest of all organizations.  No change of course was pursued.  In my personal organization, I estimated that I had less than 100 people that had ever been in Amway.  To force them back into a business that they have never been in before is a bait and switch maneuver, in my opinion.  I asked the lawyers to tell me my options - they cringed at the wording placed in the contract, without our consent or permission.  They stated that Quixtar was attempting to make it nearly impossible for someone to leave their business with their friends.   If Quixtar assumes the LOS is the people and not just a customer list, then the people are the trade secret.  How can the people be a trade secret?  The whole issue boiled down to who owns the people?  There are three possible answers:

1. Quixtar owns them.

2. The upline owns them.

3. No one owns them because they are truly Independent Business Owners.

I vote for option number three.  I did not prepare a lawsuit against Quixtar to hurt their business.   I did not even prepare a lawsuit against Quixtar, because I wanted to break their contract.  I prepared a lawsuit against Quixtar, because I was scared they would threaten to suspend me again - for bringing my concerns to their attention.  I thought by having a lawsuit, they would see our resolve and negotiate an amicable settlement.  Much like two countries that have atomic bombs, they are less likely to press the button when both will be hurt.  I tried to bring a check and balance to the negotiating position.   We needed their respect in order to negotiate fairly.   If I wanted to sue them, I did not need to meet with them at all.  I would have just had my lawyers file the suit.  We met with Quixtar management, with the goal of negotiating a settlement.  We wanted to ensure there were no lawsuits on either side moving forward.  I did not want to take my whole Team with me, as I had no idea who would come or who would go.  I only wanted an exact description of how to fulfill the contract and leave peaceably.   I was willing to sit out the six months, but my major concern was to ensure no lawsuits in the future.  That plan obviously did not go so well!  If I did get suspended or terminated, my hope was that by showing the California lawsuit and having the standstill agreements - we would get back to the table and settle this as Christian men. 

I still believe this is possible and pray every day for cooler heads to prevail.  A legitimate settlement would help all parties involved.  I am not a coward, but realize the innocent people on both sides that are being hurt.  We were terminated and the Quixtar lawyers ignored our stand still agreement.   We called nearly all the Quixtar management in an attempt to get back to the negotiating table.   The calls were either not taken or not listened to.  We were left with no choice in our opinion, but to seek judicial relief.  We did not ask for damages, but merely if the contract could be enforced with the current state of the business.  If it was a silly move then so be it, but I have not heard any advice from anyone on how to approach Quixtar to get a better result.  To me, the issue is can a person build a big group and then leave with people who choose to leave with them?   Is it really OK to terminate a business builder after 14 years of loyal service?   I just wanted people to have a choice and if I erred - I did so, not by lack of character, but from ignorance on how to approach Quixtar.  I apologize to everyone, for having put you through this heartache for the last 6 months.  I desire peace with honor and will settle the legal disputes on any reasonable terms, so that both sides can move on with their new businesses. 

With that said, we will announce our future intentions on the next post and move forward to our destiny either way!  God Bless, Orrin Woodward

Historical Reminiscences & A Vision for the Future - Part I

Orrin Woodward MonaVie

The following post is my toughest to write.  I am not a victim and do not wish the Team nor I to be portrayed as such.  As an unofficial historian of these times, I am only attempting to state the truth as I saw it first hand.  I did and still do respect all of the Quixtar representatives mentioned.  I do not believe in disparagement and all of my statements are intended to be my opinion only when I am addressing my feelings.

The first time I sat down with Jim Payne was shortly after writing the letter to Doug Devos about my concerns about the business.  A little background on the letter is necessary.  I did not just out of the blue write a letter.  Joe Markeiwicz LTD group and the Team were the two fastest growing businesses since Quixtar formed.  Steve VanAndel and Doug Devos requested a special meeting where Board members and non-Board members met to discuss a study performed on the state of the Quixtar business.  I won’t go into details about the meeting, but at the end both Doug and Steve asked us for any additional input to help get the business moving again.  I didn’t need a second invitation to move on this.  I took me a couple of days to write that letter.  I wanted to be firm in my convictions, but also encouraging and confident that we could make Quixtar work the way everyone dreamed it should.  I hoped we could do a lunch together and share with Doug some ideas I had to improve the business.    Much to my surprise, I received a curt reply that stated Jim Payne the new Quixtar managing director would handle the matter.  In Doug’s defense, I know he is a very busy man with a global business, so I looked forward to my first meeting with Jim. 

Chris Brady and I met with Jim in his office a month later.  We felt we would have a great discussion on how to improve the Quixtar business, but instead we spent almost three hours defending the very existence of Team Approach.  We were told Quixtar had reviewed the data and had determined that Team Approach was a poor method to build the business.  The showed reams of data that “proved” Team Approach produced less profitability.  I was shocked as saddened that instead of addressing the issues admitted by the founders on the lack of growth, we spent all of our time trying to keep Quixtar from forbidding the use of Team Approach.  Jim also said that our organization was the lowest PV/IBO.  I tried to explain to him that I stopped promoting the products personally after I did my own cost comparison and realized I was teaching people to buy products they could buy much cheaper at the store in my opinion.  I had told Ken McDonald that I could not in good conscience promote commodity products at a higher price than they can buy at the store.  Ken said he was working on 15 to 20 products for us and I told him when that happened we would explode!  Jim took my lack of promotion as a weakness of Team Approach.  This is simply not true and building depth actually increases purchases because people that see progress tend to buy more.  I told Jim and the rest of the Quixtar representatives that although profitability is less in the short term, people accomplish the levels twice as fast.  For example, if it takes the width model 5 years to go platinum and someone with Team approach can do it in 2 to 3 years, and then comparing avg. platinum income is not an accurate test.  In five years with Team Approach the platinum may be a Sapphire or an Emerald.  Someone like Tim Marks went Diamond in 31 months.  None of this seemed to have an impact and when I left that meeting in late 2005, I realized that the political environment had changed.  I was impressed by Jim Payne personally though.  He has a very quick mind and grasped concepts quickly.  I assumed he had a job to do and was focused on making changes and reducing the Board’s influence. 

Jim Payne had led changes in other countries with great success from what I hear.  I believe the difference in North America was the Board.  In no other country did Amway have a Board that had to be consulted in order to implement changes.  I don’t think Jim was comfortable with this process and did not follow the protocol of Maxwell’s Law of Buy In the best.  I knew in late 2005 that Team Approach was not looked upon favorably at Quixtar even thought the field began using Team Approach in increasing numbers.  Results cannot be hidden and the Team had well over 80% of the (English Speaking as a first language) Founders Emeralds and above that had only been in Quixtar.  Despite these results, the new QBI program that the company rolled out was heavily stacked against Team Approach.  There were requirement on side volumes that had never been in place before.  This would affect the income of thousand of people in and out of my organization.  I felt a fiduciary responsibility to speak up on this matter and lost more ground with the Quixtar representatives.  I never had a personal issue with any of the Quixtar managers and felt on a personal level there was respect on both sides.  I did discuss openly and freely on my concerns on favoring width building methods (that were not working) over depth building methods (that were working).  I was not asking for favoritism for the depth builders, but asking for an achievement based system that would let the best system win.  I did not win this discussion and all organizations who built with Team Approach suffered the consequences.

The beginning of my second year on the board began with a major push by Greg Duncan and the company to sell more products.  Greg traveled around the country teaching of the explosive growth of everyone doing the Incredible Edibles program.  I heard about people going ruby all on retail sales.  I love a good story as much as the next guy but still like the old saying, “In God we trust, and all others must have data.”  So many people in our business are phenomenal story tellers and I love a good story too, but the story needs to be backed up with hard evidence.  Otherwise, it turns into hype and is not conducive to long term results in this business or any other.  I wrote my letter to all the Board members after being told that we would be an email based culture and if we had any questions or comments to share them.  Again, I did not write this letter to attack anyone, but merely to bring out another vision of how to move more products.  I am all for sales, but to ask six figure income producers on their job to learn all the details of a water treatment system or the air filtration units in order to sell them is simply not worth the effort.  I feel if someone could sell those products and make money, then they could make a fortune selling products with higher commission margins and easier stories to tell.  My letter was rebutted by Rob Davidson and never brought up again.  In my opinion, I felt Quixtar had decided not to follow through with the 15 to 20 competitively priced products.  Over two years of my life and no closer to our dream business than the day we started.

The next big debacle with Quixtar came after the Team’s major in Grand Rapids at the VanAndel arena.  We had just launched the Team website operated and controlled internally.  It had more content on the non-password protected side to be more open and transparent with visitors.  A Quixtar lawyer in their rules department just happened to be walking downtown in Grand Rapids and asked one of the many white shirted guys what they were doing.  Someone gave them a card with the Team website on it.  I received an email from Gary Vanderven stating I had 72 hours (It might have been 48 hours) to password protect the whole site or my IBO number would be suspended for having a prospecting site.  I ignored this for the first couple of days thinking that Gary was having a bad day.  I remember the call I received from Gary the last day and told me if the Team site was not taken off the internet until it was fully password protected that I would be suspended.  I was shocked and hurt.  I told Gary that I was on the road and that everyone was gone from the office.  I literally had to beg for another 24 hours to not be suspended.  I knew Gary must have been given orders to do this, because he is one of the nicest Christians I know.  I told Gary that I know there must be more to the story and that I would comply even though I was very disappointed that no one would call and talk to me about this outside of the rules department.  Billy Florence and Rick Abraham both looked at the website and stated they saw no prospecting materials or even an email to be contacted.  Plain and simple, it wasn’t a prospecting site.

Jim Payne, John Stecco and Gary Vanderven called me with one hour to go before the suspension started and asked me if I was taking down the site.  I was glad that someone at least called before I was suspended.  I asked them what suspended actually meant, thinking that maybe I should get suspended and appeal to the board.  Jim Payne said I would lose all of the QBI bonus, all the trips and monthly incomes.  I was thinking about refusing to take down the site and appealing until Jim said the next statement.  Chris Brady will also be suspended.  I told them that Chris knew nothing about this, but their reply was that it says he is the co-founder.  Jim asked again what my answer was.  This was the most frustrating time in my entire life.  I no longer felt I owned my own business and felt worse than an at will employee in my opinion.  I bowed down to their authority again, but vowed to fix this ultra controlling attitude!  I began to think that maybe discussing openly about change in this culture might not be the best thing for a person’s longevity in the new Quixtar.

The next crisis in my relationship with Quixtar came over full disclosure of the tool incomes.  One of the major criticisms online and in the Dateline documentary is the lack of full disclosure on the tool incomes.  Chris Brady and I decided to place the four ways to make income directly in our first night book.  Quixtar forbid us to state our average incomes per level of achievement, but Quixtar was driving for full transparency in the tools business.  I felt this was one of Team’s competitive advantages.  We are proud of our compensation plans and anyone can become the top money earner.  Why not disclose this in the first night book and if someone does not like it then they don’t have to join?  This allows for complete transparency and no one can say they were not told upfront of all the various ways to make income.  Tools, Tickets, Speaking and Quixtar were the four ways.  Instead of being elated by our willingness to be transparent, Chris and I were threatened with a loss of the Hawaii Diamond Club unless we took the entire chapter out of the book.  No discussion, just do it or else.  I prayed about this one long and hard, but in the end decided to go to Hawaii because we had just broken 3 new diamonds and one was a personal (George and Jill) to us.  We did not want to ruin their first Diamond Club and still believed that the attitude of Quixtar would change when they saw all the new growth we were experiencing! 

The last major crisis while in the Quixtar business was the name change back to Amway.  No discussion, no pros and cons, just do it.  I feel no move on Quixtar’s part hurt the trust with the field as much as the unilateral name-change back to Amway.   I built this business to have more control over my time and choices in life.  The last two years had been a personal nightmare for me and my family.  No one in our group outside of Chris and Tim knew anything.  I did not and would not slander or libel someone.  I do feel I have a right to share the truth from my perspective and this is the truth as I know it.  I am sure I have made mistakes and am sure I could have addressed issues in a better way.  All of us can get better.  But as God as my witness, I never tried to belittle anyone personally and focused on the issues that I thought would improve the business for all of us.  That is what I am called to do as a leader.  I know people have bad days, but I was beginning to see a pattern in Quixtar’s behavior towards me and the Team.  Even with all of this, I still had faith against all the facts that Quixtar/Amway leaders would come to their senses when they saw the backlash on the Amway name change.  Every LOA/LOS leaders that I talked to was very disappointed by the recent move leading up to the name-change.  There may have been some that were excited, but I didn’t talk to them and I tried to gather data from as many as possible to see if we could unite and convince Quixtar to change their minds.  The beginning of the end of my Amway/Quixtar career was near.

Historical Reminiscences & A Vision for the Future - Part III

Historical Reminiscences & A Vision for the Future - Part V

Orrin Woodward MonaVie

Let me step back to late 2003 and share with you my experiences with the Amway/Quixtar criticisms on the web.  All of the major organizations were taught to avoid the negative associated with the name Amway by what is called the curiosity approach.  This is an approach to people without referring specifically to the Amway or Quixtar name.  For example instead of saying, “I would like to come over and show you the Amway plan”, people would say, “I am building a business in your area and would like to come over and share the details.”  The goal was to get the meeting and explain all the details there.  With the advent of the internet age, sharing Amway or Quixtar during the plan was a death knell.  People would Google the speaker and business during the plan and literally walk out without hearing all the facts.  I was so committed to the cause that I never stopped and analyzed the criticisms on the web with an open mind.  The CD’s said to avoid negative and taught that everything on the web were lies or just criticisms of non-achievers.  I focused on serving people and built our business very fast without much direct criticism through the end of 2003.  In late 2003, Laurie and I hit EDC and began receiving criticism personally online.  At first I took it personally, but then I realized I had to take it professionally.   I had the opportunity to go to an Atlanta Falcons football game with John Maxwell and asked him how he handled criticisms.  He told me, "Orrin always, always, always, take the high road!"  I will never forget that pearl of wisdom.  Some of the things stated had suggested motives for my behavior that were simply not true.  But I am thankful that it happened to me.  It was the first time I read the criticisms online with a spirit of confronting reality.  I asked myself, “What parts of the criticisms have an element of truth and what can we do to fix them?”   This was a humbling exercise, because I had to admit our business was not perfect and needed to be reformed in several areas.  The criticisms online were right in many areas.  I told Ken McDonald back in 2004, “It’s not the negative lies online that are killing us, but the negative truths.”  He agreed and said we needed to fix them. 

The first major criticism that needed to be fixed was the good old boy club surrounding the tool businesses.  People were given a discount on tools based on how much the upline liked them and how hard they negotiated.  I did not want to be a hard negotiator with Chris Brady and the other leaders one day and then turnaround and be partners the next.  The only solution that I could see would be to create a profit sharing plan.  The profit sharing plan would take all revenue minus expenses and pay out to the Team based on performance.  By having a per group performance, anyone could make the most money and it didn’t matter if you were the first person or the last person in.  All that mattered was how big you built your groups.   This revolutionized the pay and allowed us to be transparent about the sources of income.  In the old school model, people at the top made most of the money and people at the bottom had to break away and run their own systems to be compensated properly.  The only problem is they would become the new “Kingpins” and the antiquated system perpetuated hard feelings, lawsuits, and division.  There were so many good leaders that have left the business today, not because they are bad people, but because there were systemic issues that caused dissension.   The best analogy to use would be the water follows the riverbed every time.  Until we deal with the structural issues (riverbed), the problems will continue to occur.  We can tell the water to go to the right, but if the riverbed turns to the left the water will follow.  We must fix the structures or problems will be endemic.  This was a major fix and the reason that no leader has ever left to form another system on the Team.  There is no need to unless it was purely ego driven. 

Another riverbed issue was the old pins continued to be recognized even after they had fallen out of qualification.  What kind of credibility can an organization have if they bring up people and call them “Diamonds” when they are actually Sapphires or lower?   In the Team culture all speaking is based on current qualifications based on numbers (influence).  It doesn’t matter what they accomplished in the past, the key is what are they doing currently?  The goal is to serve the new people and Dexter had a saying, “Get your best in front of the best.”  By basing it on numbers we fixed the riverbed and ensured the best were in front of the best.  By having a performance based system, this also fixed unqualified pins receiving the majority of the tool profits from the work of others.  As you perform, so shall you bonus was our motto.   The criticisms on the business not growing did not apply directly to the Team, but I did agree that selling a success system was hypocritical if people were not succeeding.   The Team had grown from 200 people attending majors to over 12,000 in six years and with groups merging into the Team over the next year we grew to over 20,000 strong at majors Another factor that improved our unified Team was the system stayed pure.  Because we were all on the same page and went to the same conventions, the teaching stayed pure and duplicatable.  This was not true in other systems where each diamond ran their own majors and taught different techniques. 

By all staying together and running a performance based system, we were able to gain incredible volume discounts and leverage our numbers to the benefit of all.  For example, in St. Louis if there are 25k people in attendance that means we have 40k plus seats still available.  When we fill those seats everyone benefits.  The new person get a phenomenal show at a lower price, every leader receives more in profit sharing and the Team reaches its goal of 1 million people.   We went through and researched every piece of the criticisms online and attempted to the best of our ability to fix every area we could.  The one we could not fix was the Pyramid issue.  The criticisms online amounted to this, “You get people motivated and loyal to your Team’s and then convince them to buy products at a higher price than they can buy at a store.”   I was taught that the products were of a much higher quality and the higher quality and value justified the higher prices.  It wasn’t until I and other top diamonds paid for our own analysis of the products that we began to doubt if our answer was genuine.  The doubts would have started in 2004 and this is why the Board started the 15 to 20 value based products initiative.  We didn’t expect all of the products to be priced competitively with the market, but asked for some.  I felt confident that we could get there in 2004 and felt all we needed to do was confront the facts and fix the issue.  When a leader identifies a problem, they do not run away from it, deny it, or pass the buck.  They address and fix.  This is what we attempted to do through the IBOAI board. 

The confronting of reality that Fred Harteis, Billy Florence, Don Wilson, Randy Haugen, Joe Markiewicz, and others were placing on Quixtar led to promises of better pricing.  Many leaders were tired of watching high quality leaders come and go out of there organizations.  Many went on to successful careers outside of the business and would praise the training systems for teaching them to think right about business.  I have lost count of how many stories I have heard about successful entrepreneurs who learned the principles from the various Amway training organizations.  The leaders felt that if the training was that good, how come they could not succeed in this business?  Why do we have to cycle through nearly half our group every year and to work incredibly hard just to maintain the same size organization?  These were the issues on the table to Ken McDonald and Doug Devos.  The answer was to do a regime change and this brought Jim Payne and Rob Davidson into the positions of Quixtar Managing Director and Quixtar Sales Manager.  I respected Ken McDonald greatly and was told by him that he had planned to retire and that it was time for him to bow out.  I was excited to be working with Jim Payne and Rob Davidson.  Ken had led us to Rob Davidson when he was head of the rules department.  Rob had graciously dedicated his time and energy to help us with the Team Approach methods.   I was only 6 months into my first term on the board and the future looked bright for some much needed (in my opinion) riverbed changes to the structure of the Quixtar business.  The IBO Board leaders wanted a business we could be proud of and represent to the people with assurance that the business was the best thing for them.  I felt confident that in the next two years we would get there and change America for the better!  I wanted to make my three year term on the Board count.

Historical Reminiscences & A Vision for the Future - Part II

Historical Reminiscences & A Vision for the Future - Part IV

Orrin Woodward MonaVie

Here is Part II of my mini-book.  I apologize for this history first before the announcement, but I feel people need to know the history to understand the constraints and criteria for the decisions leading to the Future of the Internet.   I appreciate your patience and I will get back to writing after I post this.  This could be four of five parts by the time it is done!  God Bless, Orrin Woodward

Laurie and I went direct in the Amway model in March of 1995 and plateaued for the next four years.  Chris and Terri joined our business a little over a year after we started and they went direct and leveled off also.  We literally worked 6 to 7 days a week night after night.  We may not have been the best or most talented, but we were not going to let anyone outwork us.  The definition of insanity is continuing to do the same thing while expecting a different result.  We were taught in our training systems to duplicate not innovate—I agree with this statement when what you are duplicating is working.  When it is not working, then duplicating failure is insanity.  We saw many of our heroes fall on hard times.  In North America, the Amway business peaked in 1995 and then started a free fall backwards.  From somewhere around $1.6 billion in the US in 1995 it fell to just over a billion dollars in the US market by 1999.   Something was drastically wrong!  The multi-cultural market building in the US was exploding, so the actual fall back of the (English speaking as a first language) was worse than the numbers explain.  Many big leaders lost fifty to seventy-five percent of their groups attending functions.  In late 1998, Chris and I decided we would quit the Amway business and start an internet company.  This was during the internet bubble craze and start-ups companies were selling for millions of dollars.

There were two things that held us in the business during these frustrating times.  First, we still believed in our small group and the cause to change our country.  We believed the training systems were an incredible educational tool to bring personal responsibility and free enterprise principles back to the American people.  Second, our upline came back from a diamond club all excited that Amway was going away and an entirely new business was forming.   They had not announced the name, but it would be an internet model that would revolutionize the how business was done on the web!  Chris and I looked at this as a Providential move as Amway was moving into the internet age and we got excited to help in the transition to the new business.   They announced the name of the new company (Quixtar) and we put off our plans to build our own internet company.  Perhaps Chris and I were not ready to start our own company yet and I have no complaints with the education I have received since 1999 in building the Quixtar business. 

Our attitude during the formation of the new Quixtar business was to innovate and see what needed changes we could bring to the MLM/Networking Industry.  We had watched so many groups go backward and were so close to quitting personally that we felt no risk in innovating.  We were only platinum’s at the time and began to develop a building methodology called Team Approach.  Both Chris and I were over 20 wide at one point in our businesses.  We had watched the majority of our personals quit after a year or two due to lack of results.   Team Approach was an answer to the lack of results by leaving no one behind.  When a person starts 10 to 15 people personally in width—they have no way of helping all of them.  A person does not have enough time in the day to serve 15 new people and help them achieve success.  Chris and I discovered the new people go through three steps on their way to developing into interdependent teammates.  Information, Progress and Profit are the three steps in that order.  A new person first learns about the products and interpersonal skills first.  Secondly, they review monthly to see if any progress is being made in their business.  Lastly, they ask, “Am I making any money?”  If they are only learning with no progress or profit, they might make it 30 to 60 days.  If they are learning and making progress—they will last 6 month to a year in the business model.  But if they have all three, they will stay in and become a loyal part of the community.  

Team Approach allowed us to help the new person make progress and nearly doubled our retention rate of the new people.  I am in business to help people win first.  I only desire to benefit from any business if it is win-win.  If there is no benefit for the new person, they will quit.  If there is no benefit for the leader, they will not serve.  The proper business marries the interest of both the new people and the leaders to generate massive success.   Our business rocketed to the fastest growing business in the entire Quixtar world.  We went from platinum to diamond in 17 months.  Laurie and I went on to EDC in 2003.  We had growth rates of over 100% in several of those years.  Ken McDonald, the Quixtar Managing Director and I developed a close relationship.  He helped me immensely and taught me how to navigate through the usual politics associated with any success.  When you succeed you have three types of responses:

1. People who are happy for you and desire to learn.

2. People who are indifferent and continue to do what they have always done.

3. People who are envious and wish to stop the new techniques.

Ken McDonald warned me of the people against the new methods and helped Chris and I develop processes to ensure Team Approach was above reproach.  I am very thankful for Ken taking me under his wing and encouraging me to develop the Team Approach methodology.   Ken asked if we would share Team Approach with other organizations and we said yes.  Laurie and I were also asked to speak at the prestigious Quixtar Live event in 2003.  We shared a vision of Quixtar becoming the Wal-mart of the internet.  I believe anytime you learn something of value that we should share the blessings with others.  Many groups were taught the new methods and started achieving more success.  Jim and Nancy Dornan are excellent examples of the first group of people.  They have achieved phenomenal success in life and business, but are still hungry to learn and grow.  Jim and I sat down at Achiever’s and he implemented the Power Player program and Team Approach.   Jim told me at a later Diamond Club that his business was growing and he had achieved the incredible level of Founders Crown Ambassador.  This couple deserved their success as they continually focus on serving others. 

As a leader of a growing Team, I was invited to participate in meeting to help solve why the overall business in North America was not performing to expectations.  I volunteered without pay to do this throughout 2003 and 2004.  My goal was to improve the opportunity for all organizations and leaders in Quixtar.  In late 2004, I was exposed to the first hard data on the lack of results from the new Quixtar model.  Leaders do not get depressed when they confront reality, but do get depressed if they are not allowed to fix the reality.  I agreed to go on the board and dedicate three years of my life with this specific intent: To fix the Quixtar business and make it the opportunity we all believe it could and should be.  I still believed we were sitting on the potential best opportunity in America.  I told my mentor and Pastor that I would openly share any ideas to improve the business and pray that Quixtar management would openly confront reality for the good of all.   They had developed the Quixtar model to improve on the lackluster results of the previous five years, but the results were even worse in the next five years in my opinion.  I didn’t go on the IBOAI board to punch the clock, make money, or politic with the company and other leaders.  My goal was to improve the business and give the new person an even better opportunity to win than the one given to Laurie and me.  I still believe in my heart that most of the other leaders on the IBOAI feel the same way.  All of us wanted to improve the business for the new people.

Historical Reminiscences & A Vision for the Future - Part I

Historical Reminiscences & A Vision for the Future - Part III

Orrin Woodward MonaVie

In order to do this announcement of my future intentions, I must give you the background history of my experiences in the MLM/Networking industry.  I share the history portion to inform the incredible readers of the critical choices that need to be made to take the MLM/Networking industry to the next level.  Please bear with me as I provide the perspective lens that I view the MLM/Networking world through in multiple posts.  No portion of this history is meant to be critical of any specific company or individuals.  I have nothing but thankfulness in my heart that God led me to this marketing field.  The relationships I have been blessed with have been worth any struggles or setbacks endured.   My life’s mission is to “Lead myself and others to truth.”  The only way I can do this is to be associated with people and companies who are constantly learning, growing and changing.  I respect everyone’s right to not grow, but I believe they miss out on some of the greatest joys of life by not living a journey of self-discovery.   The Japanese call it Kaizen (Continuous Improvement) and I experience the most frustration in life when I am involved with companies or individuals who do not wish to grow and change.

Charlie “Tremendous” Jones states, “You are a product of the books you read and the people you associate with.”  My life significantly changed when I was introduced to the Yager Internet training organization back in mid-1993.  I had met a window salesman named Dave who attempted to sell Laurie and me new windows for our 1958 house with the original Andersen windows still in place.  The lowest cost windows were way over our budget so I was walking him to the door.  He kept saying, “No problem, I have other businesses I am involved with.”  At the time, I was half way through the University of Michigan MBA program and a full time 7^th level engineer.  I had recently turned 26 and we were broke with our first child on the way.  I asked him what the businesses were and he told me he sold sports cards.  I was excited because I had over 50,000 baseball and football cards in my basement.  I told him to stay and brought up the cards.  After reviewing the cards he agreed to help me sell them for a commission.  The first night I met the guy he walked out of my house with over 5,000 cards valued at over $10,000!  I was excited until my buddy Gary told me that Dave would probably never return my phone calls.  Gary said I was silly for giving someone I did not know that many cards.  

Needless to say, when he contacted me for his third business I was all ears.  It was the only way to ensure I got my cards back!  Dave told me he was involved in Interactive Television and in the future we would all be buying from our TV sets.  Laurie and I were both serious TV watchers at the time and we thought making money while watching TV was the perfect business for us!  When I found out that it was Amway, I was not too happy since I had seen the Amway plan a couple of years earlier.  What made me keep listening though; was a fear that if I rejected the business opportunity, I would lose my baseball cards.  Laurie was not excited at all, but I agreed to sign up if he would give me back all of my sports cards.  When Dave brought over the Amway kit, I did not have the cash to sign up.  He had to use our credit card and order another kit to his house for us to get started.  Dave brought back all the cards and I thought this was the end of the story.  Only one thin thread changed our destiny and brought me to where I am today—writing on this blog for tens of thousands of people. 

Dave had suggested that I meet with a couple named Larry and Marsie VanBuskirk.  Dave told me that he ran a couple of by referral financial planning offices and was involved in multiple other business ventures.  My personal desire has always been to run my own company someday and Larry’s background intrigued me.  I agreed to have them come over the house, but forgot to tell Laurie they were coming.  Laurie and I were finishing supper one night when I received a phone call from Larry stating he was minutes away.  Laurie was not too happy with me to say the least!  Laurie was looking for her car keys to leave the house vowing not to return until after those “Amway people” were gone!  Luckily for me, she could not find her keys.  Larry and Marsie changed our lives that night.  They did not talk about Amway or products, but they did talk about self-improvement, leadership, seminars, and tapes.  Larry told me that the greatest business owners were the best at self-improvement.  If you wanted to succeed in life that you needed many experiences and you could not possibly live long enough to have all the experiences necessary.  The only way to close the gap was through reading and listening.  To say that I was blown away would be an understatement!

Dave had left a shoe box full of tapes when he had signed us up, but it had been over a month and I had listened to none of them.  The problem was—I did not have a tape player in my truck.  I couldn’t afford one and only had an AM radio.  Providentially, GM had offered to give me access to their company cars to drive to Ann Arbor for school at night.  As I was shaving one morning, I remembered the company cars had tape players.  I went to the shoe box and searched for the two selections, since I knew it was over an hour to Ann Arbor for school.  I can see God’s hand all over the two tapes that I picked that morning.   I searched for two tapes that would interest me and came up with two: Tim Foley, a former all pro football player and Paul Pilzer, an adjunct professor and economist.  There were over 100 tapes in that box and there is no way I could have picked the perfect two except by God’s plan.  I carried those two Internet Services tapes in my front shirt pocket all day long.   Typically, I would listen to Nirvana or some other hard rock band on the way to Ann Arbor.  But on this night, I popped out Nirvana and put in Economic Paradigms by Paul Pilzer.  I had watched the video by Joel Barker on Paradigms so the title had aroused my curiosity. 

Within ten minutes, I was hooked!  I was stunned by the level of information being provided in the tape.  I had been looking for an opportunity to provide for my family and Paul Pilzer had stated that Amway was cutting edge and reaching critical mass!  I was not interested in a door to door business, but if Amway was expanding into interactive TV, had leadership training like I was listening to, and reaching critical mass—I was in for the long haul!  I can not remember anything that happened in class that night and couldn’t wait to get in the car and listen to the next tape.  Tim Foley delivered an inspiring talk about taking charge of your finances and being the leader you were called to be.  I am so thankful to the Internet Training tapes that I listened to the first 5 years in my own business.  They absolutely changed my life forever.  Dexter Yager and Bill Britt are two under-appreciated business men who revolutionized an industry.  In my opinion, these two men played a major role in the Amway phenomenon and I must give credit where credit is due.  I listened to literally hundreds of tapes from both of these leaders and learned incredible nuggets of courage and convictions.  I wanted to follow in their footstep and help change the country like they were focused on doing.  

Notice a key point—I did not buy in because I believed the Amway products were the absolute best on the market.  I wasn’t against the products, but they were not the main focus.  Many of the tapes stated, “People move products, products do not move people.”  I bought in to changing the country and helping others do something meaningful with their life!  The training systems created the most loyal and disciplined group of people that I was proud to be associated with.  If buying products from Amway was necessary to be associated with this group of world changers, then so be it.  I shut off my rational critical thinking when it came to the product side, because I knew it was bigger than just products.  I read Rich Devos’s and Jay VanAndel’s books and believed 100% in their vision of free enterprise and personal responsibility.  Both of these great men have made a huge difference in my life.  Even with all the current challenges, I am still thankful for the teaching and entrepreneurial spirit that Rich and Jay taught me.  Rich, Jay, Dexter, and Bill were all ahead of their time.  Rich and Jay focused on earth friendly products at a time when practically no one else did.  Dexter and Bill were created the model for today’s learning organizations and revolutionized the entire MLM/Networking field.  To have cut my teeth under such incredible visionaries was and still is a blessing for Laurie and me. 

I will end here for Part I and will continue in another post later today.  God Bless, Orrin Woodward

Historical Reminiscences & A Vision for the Future - Part II

Historical Reminiscences & A Vision for the Future - Part III

Historical Reminiscences & A Vision for the Future - Part IV

Historical Reminiscences & A Vision for the Future - Part V

Orrin Woodward MonaVie

Tomorrow morning I will wake up, make my morning coffee and share the beginning of our journey to our destiny.  We have overcome many obstacles and endured many challenges over the last 6 months.  I have studied many concepts and products in the MLM field and realize how many people have thrown all in to build a better future.  There were many variables that led me to the choices I have decided upon.  Near the top of the list is Lou Holtz's WIN thinking.  What's Important Next?  Keeping our long term future in view, but also focusing in the immediate to keep food on the table for each person was the key.  I appreciate everyone's patience and look forward to giving you a front row seat tomorrow in the decision making process.  God Bless, Orrin Woodward

Update: It is 7:10 a.m. on Friday morning and the coffee is on.  This article will be longer than normal, but I will have it up as soon as I am done and the lawyers have reviewed.

If I were to pick the most important art in dealing with people it would be the art of listening.  Nothing increased my ability to lead people as much as learning how to listen.  No matter how powerful a speaker you develop into, it is not as effective as powerful listening.   I am hesitant to share this topic because I am aware of how much I need to improve in this area still!   With that said, I can still remember the day I focused on listening to others before drawing wrong conclusions and solving the wrong problems.  What a breakthrough it was to realize that not everyone wanted the problem solved as much as they wanted someone to listen!  If I were to pick one area for all Team Leaders to improve in, I would pick listening over all others besides character.   You cannot connect with others until you have listened long enough for them to feel understood by you.  When a person feels you understand; you can work together to solve any issues that need to be addressed, in a spirit of teamwork.  Without listening to others, your solutions come across as domineering and not heartfelt.  Remember, people do not care how much you know until they know how much you care!  Do you care for your community?   If you do, then close your mouth and actively listen to them.  You have two ears and one mouth – please use in that proportion.  Ask questions and listen - save the seminars for when you are asked to speak!  Here is a great article on listening that was emailed to me.  If someone knows the author of the article please add it to the comments.  I would like to recognize the talented authors of the articles shared.  Keep sending me the great articles and if I like them, I will post on our blog! God Bless, Orrin Woodward

We all take talking for granted. Though you may occasionally feel your hands grow cold before giving a speech, you often talk without recognizing the simultaneous changes that occur in your body.

Research shows that while we speak with our words, we also speak with every fiber of our being. This ‘language of the heart’ is integral to the health and emotional life of all of us.

Blood pressure and heart rate elevates every time you speak, even when discussing the most neutral topic. Even those who speak through signing had the same results.

For people who are hypertensive, the rise caused by talking was much greater than for healthy people, and often well into the danger zone. How do hypertensive people handle this? After all, most do not drop dead during social encounters. Other studies show that they subconsciously maintain distance in their relationships and minimize what can be for them ‘lethal dialogues’.

What makes the cardiovascular system of hypertensive’s so vulnerable to verbal communication? Though the hypertensive’s studied were outwardly calm, many tended to talk intensely and breathlessly, interrupting and speaking over other people. This kind of speech is typical of Type – A behavior, an impulsive, hard driving life style linked to increased risk of heart disease.

Most normal talk is a seesaw. The rising of blood pressure when one talks is balanced by a rapid lowering of pressure when one listens. But the rhythm is out of sync in hypertensive’s. They frequently fail to listen; they are on guard, defensive. So their pressure stays up.

Learning to calmly listen to another person helps lower blood pressure. By learning to listen more, by breathing regularly while talking, and paying attention to what the other person is saying, you can learn to lower your blood pressure.

Since so few people genuinely attend to others, those who will learn to draw out the other person can be guaranteed all the friendships they can handle and can be assured of deepening the relationships they presently own.

The road to the heart is the ear. - Voltaire

Why are so many of us poor listeners? Much of our listening education was in the form of be quiet, listen and pay attention. Most of the people in our society are passive listeners, geared to react on trigger words, and shut out tedium.

Time spend learning in school:

40% learning how to read

35% learning how to write

25% learning how to talk

1% learning how to listen or communicate

We can learn to be good listeners with some work and practice. The rewards can be great.

1. Know when you are not listening.

Check yourself by asking silently: Can I repeat, rephrase or clarify what has just been said?” If you can’t, the sound may be on but the replay is broken.

2. Know why you are not listening.

As you define your excuses for not listening you will systematically eradicate the ‘watching someone talk’ syndrome.  Check the following common reasons for not listening and begin to take silent control of the communication.

            * We hear only what we want to hear.

            * We consider the topic or information unimportant.

            * We jump to conclusions

            * Too many other problems on our minds.

            * Radical departure from our own thinking.

            * Waiting for our turn to talk.

3. Avoid judgments.

Nearly all the reasons for not listening focus on our own ego and our inability to grant equal attention to another person.  As soon as the person speaking is elevated to a pinnacle of importance, the active listening process begins and we weigh each thought mightily as if our lives depended on a total recitation of the prior narrative. As you fine tune your listening skills avoid listening only when you deem the speaker worthy of hearing.

4. Match your thought process to the speaker’s words.

We think and hear about 1.000 words per minute. The average speaking speed is 125 words per minute. What then do we do with the time lapse? Human nature combats the problem with anything from boredom to rudeness. Good listeners use the time to clarify, validate and reiterate the conversation topic in their mind.  Listen for ideas and emotions rather than facts. Fact listening is defensive. Emotion listening is offensive. Idea listening is progressive.

5. Know thyself.

Do words like difficult, stupid, revolutionary, or assignments shut off your listening process? Does a reference to love, food or fun cause your ears to perk and your antenna to turn in?  Understand where your hot and cold buttons are and adjust your listening process to circumvent any sudden shut down because of an emotion laden word or phrase. (This seems to me to be what happens with communication with husbands and wives. We allow too many words to become hot or cold buttons and therefore we render ourselves unable to really communicate)

6. Conversation always moves from agreement to disagreement and then stops.

Listeners who are involved in two way conversation and are prepared to repeat and clarify information will immediately direct the conversation back to agreement and then reach an understanding.

7. Keep alert.

Listening shuts down when both apathy and anxiety set in. Strive for enthusiasm in listening. Communicate with you body; lean forward, smile, nod, become involved by maintaining direct eye contact.  If you are on the telephone; stand up, walk. The more attentive and alert, the better you listen.  Listening is an acquired skill that is critically important to success in life. Adults spend about 75% of each day in verbal communication. 45% of this time is spent listening. Persons in a business or social situation who do not have good listening skills are ineffective. Mistakes due to poor listening skills cost organizations thousands of dollars each year.  Listening to another is the highest form of building personal self esteem. For only when we feel good about ourselves and the world around us do we go beyond ‘waiting for our turn to talk’ or ‘watching someone else talk’ to ‘passionate’ listening that elevates us to pinnacles of thought and action separates us from animals making noise.

The greatest gift you can give another is the purity of your attention. -  Richard Moss

A smile is the light in your face that lets others know your heart is at home.

Listening attentively to another is to pay the highest compliment to them.  You do not have to be witty to be a good conversationalist you simply have to know how to listen. The secret of being interesting is to be interested in the other person. Ask questions the other person will enjoy answering. Encourage them to talk about themselves. But don’t be the silent partner in the conversation. Silence can be described as negative feedback. Like a failed monitoring system on a moon rocket, it tells you something is wrong, but it doesn’t go very far toward telling you what. “Respond to their questions and especially their comments that can open the emotional connection between you.

Conversation with your friends will indeed get sparse if you restrict yourselves to facts, but when you talk about your feelings there will always be plenty to discuss.  It’s amazing the way a man listens to you. When you talk to him he looks you squarely in the eye. He seems to shut out all other interests and hang on every word you utter. It is flattering to have someone give you that much of his attention. The eye lock is a powerful magnet for making contact with people. Look people squarely in the eye it is one of the surest indicators that you are interested in the other person.

Be careful not to give advice too quickly. Often people ask for advice when what they really want is for someone to listen to them. By listening to them you help them get the problem outside of themselves and on the table between you, the issues become clear and they are able to arrive at their own decision.

When people confide in you they are often afraid they have said too much. They will be watching you to see if you raise your brows or appear to have lost confidence in them. It is important to alley those fears by not over reacting to what has been said. To put them at ease compliment them on being able to share with you. By all means don’t reveal anyone’s private matters. When you tell something told to you in confidence you identify yourself as an untrustworthy confidant. So the way to be a confidant is to let no one know that you are a confidant to others.

That which is in the well of the heart is bound to come up in the bucket of speech.

You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view. Harper Lee - To Kill a Mockingbird

Seek first to understand and then to be understood.  Most people do not listen with the intent to understand: they listen with the intent to reply.  They’re filtering everything through their own paradigm, reading their autobiography into other people’s lives.  The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People - Covey

I was sent the following email and I thought it would be good for all the Leadership Blog readers.  I found a website that had the story and some compelling commentary in addition.  Here is the story and the commentary to laugh, think and learn from.  God Bless, Orrin Woodward

“I bought a bird feeder. I hung it on my back porch and filled it with seed. Within a week we had hundreds of birds taking advantage of the continuous flow of free and easily accessible food. But then the birds started building nests in the boards of the patio, above the table, and next to the barbeque. Then came the poop. It was everywhere: on the patio tile, the chairs, the table …… simply everywhere. Then some of the birds turned mean: They would dive bomb me and try to peck even though I had fed them out of my own pocket. And other birds were boisterous and loud: They sat on the feeder and squawked and screamed at all hours of the day and night and demanded that I fill it when it got low on food. After a while, I couldn’t even sit on my own back porch anymore.

I took down the bird feeder and in three days the birds were gone. I cleaned up their mess and took down the many nests they had built all over the patio. Soon, the backyard was like it used to be…. quiet, serene and no one demanding their rights to a free meal.

Now lets see….our government gives out free food, subsidized housing, free medical care, free education and allows anyone born here to be an automatic citizen. Then the illegals came by the tens of thousands. Suddenly our taxes went up to pay for free services; small apartments are housing 5 families: you have to wait 6 hours to be seen by an emergency room doctor: your child’s 2nd grade class is behind other schools because over half the class doesn’t speak English: Corn flakes now come in a bilingual box; I have to press “one” to hear my bank talk to me in English, and people waving flags other than “Old Glory” are squawking and screaming in the streets, demanding more rights and free liberties.

Maybe it’s time for the government to take down the bird feeder?”

We Let This Happen!

The story is funny at first but then the seriousness of its deeper meaning sets in. There is a lot of truth in it and one has to ponder what the roots of this reality are: The answer is simple:

We, the citizens of the United States of America are the roots of this reality! We let it happen! One can argue when it all started, who started it all and what the first element of this reality was.  The fact is that it has happened, not all at once, of course, but in small steps over many, many years. Some people will argue that it all started with Congress passing laws introducing ‘Individual Income Taxes’ in the early 20th century. Most will say it all started with the start of entitlement programs such as Social Security (in the 1930’s), Welfare and Medicare Programs in later years, primarily in the 1960’s and the amendments and enlargements of these and other programs (Food stamps, housing assistance, school lunches etc) in the years since then. It is easy to see that the government’s bird feeder simply got bigger and bigger over the years so that more and more “birdies” could get things for free.

While some programs, especially the Social Security system, were very noble and also needed and were built on contributions over the working life span of all individuals earning a paycheck or making a profit. When Social Security began, there were over thirty people supporting one recipient of such benefits, now there are only three people supporting one recipient. This is scary especially in light of the fact that the so called ‘baby-boomer’ generation will start soon to become recipients of monthly Social Security checks.

What is especially scary about this is the fact that the elected officials in Congress are not willing to seriously address this problem. They have been and continue to play politics with this issue wherein the Democrats will vehemently oppose anything Republicans and especially President Bush propose. On the other hand, the Republicans had control of Congress and did not make real attempts to fix this problem. They rely on estimated projections of when the Social Security trust fund will run out of money and since this date is over thirty years away from now, it is so much easier to leave it for future lawmakers to deal with. An even bigger problem is Medicare, where insolvency is estimated to occur within ten to twelve years from now.

All one can say is Shame on all of them in Congress….No Exceptions!!!  But then, as we stated earlier, it is essentially our fault, we, the people let it happen! The big question is: Will we, the people allow us to keep all the bird feeders we have right now or is it time to take some down and clean up some of the mess they have caused by simply being there.

In the latest IceRocket Blog Rankings our Leadership Blog smashed through the Top 10 and landed at #5!  This is an incredible achievement for all of the readers of this blog and I would like to thank everyone personally for sharing this site.  What an excellent example of Plan, Do, Check, and Adjust.  I believe with continued effort this blog will become number one on the entire IceRocket Blog system.  Only four short months ago it was not even in the Top 1000.  I think we can go over 100,000 hits per day with another PDCA.  I have much to share soon on Laurie and my future plans, the MLM Benchmarking Study, and a Vision for the Future of Internet Business!  God Bless, Orrin Woodward

The following article is dedicated to my good friends Columbo and Karen DiSalvatore.  Both are incredible learners, leaders and readers.  Congratulations to the DiSalvatore’s for achieving the elite Policy Council level.  I read an article on reading called Leaders are Readers by Michael Angier and it was fantastic.  I believe a person can develop wisdom and the ability to think more clearly through the power of good books.  This article captures some key principles in our constant and never ending quest for knowledge and wisdom.  Columbo and Karen represent this type of hunger to continuously improve through the habit of reading.  I am not surprised that they have qualified as new Policy Council members.  Enjoy the article and I encourage you to strengthen your habit of reading good books!  God Bless, Orrin Woodward

"Reading can be a powerful catalyst for thinking; it has the potential for stimulating wisdom."

A long while ago, I heard someone say: "leaders are readers." It made a big impression on me and I never forgot it. I don't know who coined the phrase, but I must have reiterated it to my kids hundreds of times. They would usually groan and roll their eyes. I doubted that they really got it.

But a few years ago, my son, serving in the military, shared with me the long list of books he was planning to read on his upcoming deployment to the Far East and Africa. He told me he was on a "life-long quest for knowledge." He said, "Dad, I remember what you used to say, 'leaders are readers'." I just stood there beaming. They really had heard me after all. Thankfully, all of my children are avid readers. I hope that my own example of reading constantly and my lessons on how "leaders are readers" made a difference.

Of course, it doesn't follow that all readers are leaders, but I think we can safely say with little exception, all leaders are readers. If that's true, then why don't more people read?

I've learned that only ten percent of the people who begin reading a non-fiction book ever get beyond the first chapter. It's been shown that people's earnings are in direct proportion to their vocabularies. That is, those who have larger vocabularies have greater responsibility and earn the most money-with very few exceptions. I know for sure that most people want to earn more money, so why is it that they don't study more?

In 1987, I was selling advertising for a business magazine I published and the upcoming issue focused on education (mostly adult education). I called on a local businessman and told him about the issue's focus, hoping to interest him in its wide appeal and convince him it was a good investment of his advertising dollars. He told me that he had already graduated from school, his education was over and that he had no interest in education whatsoever. I was dumbfounded. I think I could have comprehended someone thinking that-but actually admit it? A better salesman might have tried a different tack, but I was so flabbergasted I just folded up my things and left, shaking my head. Unfortunately, that attitude is far more common than I realized.

I read recently that less than four percent of the American people own a library card. Can you imagine? We have the best free libraries in the world-thanks to Ben Franklin, who started them and the many others who have contributed money to them. Walk into any library and you will see. They are vastly under-utilized.

Abraham Lincoln used to walk miles to borrow and return books. He read them by candlelight after working long, hard days. Do you think his reverence and devotion to books made a difference in his ability as a leader of our troubled nation? I do.

The good news is that people are reading more than they used to. Just look at the bookstores and the vast number of books that are displayed on their shelves. Somebody's buying them! This encourages me. However, it's not enough.

I cannot go into a bookstore without buying a book. My personal library is my most valued material possession and I take pride in adding to it regularly. I have over 500 non-fiction books. I've even read most of them. This should be true for any serious student of success.

If you are committed to be all that you are capable of being, I implore you to become a voracious reader. A book a month will keep you even. A book a year and you're falling behind. It takes effort, but it's worth it. If you like to read … great … go for it. If you don't like reading … great … go for it. It's just something that you have to do.

If you develop the habit of reading something every day, you will start to enjoy it. You'll look forward to it, your thinking will sharpen, your vocabulary will increase, and you will become a more interesting person.

Remember, leaders are readers.

I have made this a sticky post to keep people updated on Laurie and my future plans.  Please scroll down to the next article for today's post.  Thanks, Orrin

Here is a quick update for everyone on the status of my upcoming announcement. Many of the recent comments have suggested that the Team is starting a new MLM and this simply is not true.  The Team is an all purpose leadership support provider to numerous churches, companies, and organizations.  Bob Dickie III and his staff have done an excellent job in leading this incredible organization and I am thankful to utilize the world-class Team training for my personal development needs.  What myself and others choose to do as free individuals in mid-February will be announced shortly.  Whatever we do will be a separate enterprise from the Team.  Out of respect for our judicial system, the announcements concerning our future plans will be shared after the Honorable Judge Sullivan rules on a motion pending before him.  We expect his ruling to come down sometime in mid February and we will then proceed accordingly.  I believe strongly in our judicial system and will respectfully delay any announcement until after the ruling.  My faith in the free enterprise system and the future of business on the web is stronger than ever!   Like the old saying goes, "Rome was not built in a day" and we will build our dream business one brick at a time.  The journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step!  Stop back for further updates as I have them.  God Bless, Orrin Woodward

I found this great article about the role of the entrepreneur in society and free enterprise by Brian Tracy.  The leaders reading this blog are entrepreneurs.  Study this article and be prepared to constantly improve your business as we move our leadership community to millions of people and change the world!   Brian Tracy has captured the essence of the central role the entrepreneur plays in the economy.  Any company or country that destroys the incentive and motivation of the entrepreneur ends up destroying themselves.  God Bless, Orrin Woodward

By understanding your place in the economy, you can better position yourself for success.

Entrepreneurs occupy a central position in a market economy. For it's the entrepreneurs who serve as the spark plug in the economy's engine, activating and stimulating all economic activity. The economic success of nations worldwide is the result of encouraging and rewarding the entrepreneurial instinct.

A society is prosperous only to the degree to which it rewards and encourages entrepreneurial activity because it is the entrepreneurs and their activities that are the critical determinant of the level of success, prosperity, growth and opportunity in any economy. The most dynamic societies in the world are the ones that have the most entrepreneurs, plus the economic and legal structure to encourage and motivate entrepreneurs to greater activities.

For years, economists viewed entrepreneurship as a small part of economic activity. But in the 1800s, the Austrian School of Economics was the first to recognize the entrepreneur as the person having the central role in all economic activity. Why is that?

Because it's entrepreneurial energy, creativity and motivation that trigger the production and sale of new products and services. It is the entrepreneur who undertakes the risk of the enterprise in search of profit and who seeks opportunities to profit by satisfying as yet unsatisfied needs.

Entrepreneurs seek disequilibrium--a gap between the wants and needs of customers and the products and services that are currently available. The entrepreneur then brings together the factors of production necessary to produce, offer and sell desired products and services. They invest and risk their money--and other people's money--to produce a product or service that can be sold at a profit.

More than any other member of our society, entrepreneurs are unique because they're capable of bringing together the money, raw materials, manufacturing facilities, skilled labor and land or buildings required to produce a product or service. And they're capable of arranging the marketing, sales and distribution of that product or service.

Entrepreneurs are optimistic and future oriented; they believe that success is possible and are willing to risk their resources in the pursuit of profit. They're fast moving, willing to try many different strategies to achieve their goals of profits. And they're flexible, willing to change quickly when they get new information.

Entrepreneurs are skilled at selling against the competition by creating perceptions of difference and uniqueness in their products and services. They continually seek out customer needs that the competition is not satisfying and find ways to offer their products and services in such a way that what they're offering is more attractive than anything else available.

Entrepreneurs are a national treasure, and should be protected, nourished, encouraged and rewarded as much as possible. They create all wealth, all jobs, all opportunities, and all prosperity in the nation. They're the most important people in a market economy--and there are never enough of them.

As an entrepreneur, you are extremely important to your world. Your success is vital to the success of the nation. To help you develop a better business, one that contributes to the health of the economy, I'm going to suggest that you take some time to sit down, answer the following questions, and implement the following actions:

What opportunities exist today for you to create or bring new products or services to your market that people want, need and are willing to pay for? What are your three best opportunities?

Identify the steps you could take immediately to operate your business more efficiently, especially regarding internal operating systems.

Tell yourself continually "Failure is not an option." Be willing to move out of your comfort zone, to take risks if necessary to build your business.

Use your creativity rather than your money to find new, better, cheaper ways to sell your products or reduce your costs of operation. What could you do immediately in one or both of these areas?

Imagine starting over. Is there anything you're doing today that, knowing what you now know, you wouldn't get into or start up again?

Imagine reinventing your business. If your business burned to the ground today, and you had to start over, what would you not get into again? What would you do differently?

This story is dedicated to Russ and Lisa Ence.  This couple has displayed remarkable perseverance in their life to keep planting seeds of hope and encouragement into others.  Their ability to stay focused on serving others through life’s trials and setbacks is an inspiration to all of us!  Do you have the power of perseverance?  No matter how great your ideas are, you must be a finisher in a society of starter to achieve greatness.  Russ and Lisa are finisher and by their example they inspire others to finish.  Laurie and I are very proud of them.  Here is an inspirational story of Paul Rokich as told by Adam Kahn.

Paul Rokich is my hero. When Paul was a boy growing up in Utah, he happened to live near an old copper smelter, and the sulfur dioxide that poured out of the refinery had made a desolate wasteland out of what used to be a beautiful forest.

When a young visitor one day looked at this wasteland and saw that there was nothing living there -- no animals, no trees, no grass, no bushes, no birds...nothing but fourteen thousand acres of black and barren land that even smelled bad -- well, this kid looked at the land and said, "This place is crummy." Paul knocked him down. He felt insulted. But he looked around him and something happened inside him. He made a decision: Paul Rokich vowed that some day he would bring back the life to this land.

Many years later Paul was in the area, and he went to the smelter office. He asked if they had any plans to bring the trees back. The answer was "No." He asked if they would let him try to bring the trees back. Again, the answer was "No." They didn't want him on their land. He realized he needed to be more knowledgeable before anyone would listen to him, so he went to college to study botany.

At the college he met a professor who was an expert in Utah's ecology. Unfortunately, this expert told Paul that the wasteland he wanted to bring back was beyond hope. He was told that his goal was foolish because even if he planted trees, and even if they grew, the wind would only blow the seeds forty feet per year, and that's all you'd get because there weren't any birds or squirrels to spread the seeds, and the seeds from those trees would need another thirty years before they started producing seeds of their own. Therefore, it would take approximately twenty thousand years to revegetate that six-square-mile piece of earth. His teachers told him it would be a waste of his life to try to do it. It just couldn't be done.

So he tried to go on with his life. He got a job operating heavy equipment, got married, and had some kids. But his dream would not die. He kept studying up on the subject, and he kept thinking about it. And then one night he got up and took some action. He did what he could with what he had. This was an important turning point. As Samuel Johnson wrote, "It is common to overlook what is near by keeping the eye fixed on something remote. In the same manner, present opportunities are neglected and attainable good is slighted by minds busied in extensive ranges." Paul stopped busying his mind in extensive ranges and looked at what opportunities for attainable good were right in front of him. Under the cover of darkness, he sneaked out into the wasteland with a backpack full of seedlings and started planting. For seven hours he planted seedlings.

He did it again a week later.

And every week, he made his secret journey into the wasteland and planted trees and shrubs and grass.

But most of it died.

For fifteen years he did this. When a whole valley of his fir seedlings burned to the ground because of a careless sheep-herder, Paul broke down and wept. Then he got up and kept planting.

Freezing winds and blistering heat, landslides and floods and fires destroyed his work time and time again. But he kept planting.

One night he found a highway crew had come and taken tons of dirt for a road grade, and all the plants he had painstakingly planted in that area were gone.

But he just kept planting.

Week after week, year after year he kept at it, against the opinion of the authorities, against the trespassing laws, against the devastation of road crews, against the wind and rain and heat...even against plain common sense. He just kept planting.

Slowly, very slowly, things began to take root. Then gophers appeared. Then rabbits. Then porcupines.

The old copper smelter eventually gave him permission, and later, as times were changing and there was political pressure to clean up the environment, the company actually hired Paul to do what he was already doing, and they provided him with machinery and crews to work with. Progress accelerated.

Now the place is fourteen thousand acres of trees and grass and bushes, rich with elk and eagles, and Paul Rokich has received almost every environmental award Utah has.

He says, "I thought that if I got this started, when I was dead and gone people would come and see it. I never thought I'd live to see it myself!"

It took him until his hair turned white, but he managed to keep that impossible vow he made to himself as a child.

What was it you wanted to do that you thought was impossible? Paul's story sure gives a perspective on things, doesn't it?

The way you get something accomplished in this world is to just keep planting. Just keep working. Just keep plugging away at it one day at a time for a long time, no matter who criticizes you, no matter how long it takes, no matter how many times you fall.

Get back up again. And just keep planting.

Just keep planting.

Here is a wonderful parable on learning to thrive through adversity.  All of us will go through moments of boiling in our own life.  How we respond to these challenging times will determine our destinies.  Enjoy the parable and ask yourself which of the three items: Carrot, Egg, or Coffee Bean, best describe how you handle the boiling waters of life.   God Bless, Orrin Woodward

You may never look at a CUP OF COFFEE the same way again. A young woman went to her mother and told her about her life and how things were so hard for her. She did not know how she was going to make it and wanted to give up. She was tired of fighting and struggling. It seemed as one problem was solved a new one arose. Her mother took her to the kitchen. She filled three pots with water and placed each on a high fire. Soon the pots came to a boil. In the first, she placed carrots, in the second she placed eggs and the last she placed ground coffee beans. She let them sit and boil, without saying a word. In about twenty minutes she turned off the burners. She fished the carrots out and placed them in a bowl. She pulled the eggs out and placed them in a bowl. Then she ladled the coffee out and placed it in a bowl. Turning to her daughter, she asked, "Tell me, what do you see?" "Carrots, eggs, and coffee," she replied. She brought her closer and asked her to feel the carrots. She did and noted that they were soft. She then asked her to take an egg and break it. After pulling off the shell, she observed the hard-boiled egg. Finally, she asked her to sip the coffee. The daughter smiled as she tasted its rich aroma. The daughter then asked, "What does it mean, mother?" Her mother explained that each of these objects had faced the same adversity--boiling water--but each reacted differently. The carrot went in strong, hard and unrelenting. However after being subjected to the boiling water, it softened and became weak. The egg had been fragile. Its thin outer shell had protected its liquid interior. But, after sitting through the boiling water, its inside became hardened. The ground coffee beans were unique, however. After they were in the boiling water they had changed the water. "Which are you?" she asked her daughter.  When adversity knocks on your door, how do you respond? Are you a carrot, an egg, or a coffee bean?" Think of this: Which am I? Am I the carrot that seems strong, but with pain and adversity, do I wilt and become soft and lose my strength? Am I the egg that starts with a malleable heart, but changes with the heat? Did I have a fluid spirit, but after death, a breakup, a financial hardship or some other trial, have I become hardened and stiff? Does my shell look the same, but on the inside am I bitter and tough with a stiff spirit and a hardened heart? Or am I like the coffee bean? The bean actually changes the hot water, the very circumstance that brings the pain. When the water gets hot, it releases the fragrance and flavor. If you are like the bean, when things are at their worst, you can get better and change the situation around you with God's help. How do you handle adversity? When adversity strikes, ask yourself...ARE YOU A CARROT, AN EGG, OR A COFFEE BEAN?

Here are the definitions for the terms MLM, Network Marketing and Benchmarking. 

Multilevel Marketing (MLM) - or Network Marketing, is a system for selling goods or services through a network of distributors.  The typical Multilevel Marketing program works through recruitment. You are invited to become a distributor, sometimes through another distributor of the Multilevel Marketing Company’s products and sometimes through a generally advertised meeting.  If you choose to become a distributor with the Multilevel Marketing Company, you'll earn money both through the sales of the MLM's products and through recruiting other distributors, by receiving a portion of the income these distributors generate.  The distributors that you sign up with your Multilevel Marketing plan are called your downline. The distributor that originally recruited you is called your upline. Often he or she will give you some help getting started, including training.

Network Marketing / MLM - is the sale of a consumer product or service, person-to-person, away from a fixed retail location, basically a home based business.  These products and services are marketed to customers by independent sales consultants. Depending on the company, the salespeople may be called distributors, consultants or various other titles. Products are sold primarily through personal relationships and one-on-one retailing.  Commissions are paid not only to the MLM Consultant that made the sale, but they are also paid to the person who referred that consultant to the Network Marketing Company in the first place.

Benchmarking - A process of searching out and studying the best practices that produce superior performance. Benchmarks may be established within the same organization (internal benchmarking), outside of the organization with another organization that produces the same service or product (external benchmarking), or with reference to a similar function or process in another industry (functional benchmarking).

Benchmarking - The process by which a company compares its own performance, products, and services with those of other organizations that are recognized as the best in a particular category. The product or service that is determined to be the industry standard is known as a benchmark.

Benchmarking - Searching for the best practices or competitive practices that will help define superior performance of a product, service, or support process.  Competitive benchmarking allows a company to know precisely where their operation is in relation to a direct competitor, to determine its competitive position, and to identify major performance gaps.  Process benchmarking searches out the best practices of a particular industry process and compares the performance of the company to a recognized performance leader. It focuses on the process not who the company is or whether or not they are a competitor.

In an industry much like the old (wild) west, with rogue companies, individuals, inflated myths & visions of grandeur—I have committed to separate the fact from fiction in the MLM industry.  As an engineer I was trained by some of the best benchmarking guru’s dating back to Xerox original developments in benchmarking.  Rochester Products, a former division of General Motors had studied extensively at Xerox Corporation located in Rochester on the new techniques (at the time-late 80’s to early 90’s) of benchmarking.  When Rochester division merged with AC/Delco to form AC Rochester, I was exposed to these techniques.   I loved the benchmarking processes developed and devoured all the literature and studies available in the field.  I accepted an assignment in the fuel systems area and through hard work, God’s Providence and an excellent team—we won a National Benchmarking Award.  Through the benchmarking process, I also created or co-created four U.S. Patents.   In my opinion the MLM industry is ripe for an extensive benchmarking study and I have volunteered to do this free of charge.   Almost ten years ago, I would charge rates of three to four thousand a day to do the same studies as an engineering consultant.  Today the rates would be upwards of five to eight thousand per day. 

You may wonder why I have volunteered for this assignment.   I feel that someone needs to perform a public service and improve the prospective business owner’s ability to make the proper choices.  I feel strongly that the future MLM businesses must quit hiding behind a cloak of secrecy and share openly the positive and negative facts about their business and industry.  If something is not positive then fix it!  Right?  Why call everything confidential and trade secret information if you have a good business?   If it is good then the last thing you would want is to keep it a secret!   If the facts are negative then no wonder the company would want to keep everything top secret and confidential.  It is time to shed some light on the good and bad of this industry and take it out of the old (wild) west stage and into a more civilized mainstream business occupation.  

The benchmarking process falls into four systematic steps:

1.  Identify –Identify all companies and processes to be studied.

2. Evaluate – Develop the criteria to evaluate from each company.

3. Analyze – Study the data and let the facts speak for themselves.

4. Implement – Announce the best practices and best companies as benchmarks.

This process works in any problem solving endeavor and I count my blessings that I was exposed to this process as a 23 year old engineer.   I will share more details on the four step process and MLM specific criteria chosen for the MLM Benchmarking Project.  God Bless, Orrin Woodward

Update: I have received some great suggestions for specific MLM criteria to evaluate in the comments.  Let's formalize the gathering of process by polling our readers.  What factors do you believe are important to evaluate in the MLM industry?

I read a beautiful parable today from Steve Goodier.  Everyone one of us has an impact in others lives.  The only question is, will it be a positive or negative impact?  What makes this leadership community so special to me is the amount of people focused on making a positive impact in others lives.  This has to be the most other-people centered community on the web!  I am proud of each and every one of the readers of this blog and know the future is bright for this servant leadership spirit.  Enjoy the article and think of the students are you influencing in your life.  Students can be any age, because you are a student when you are hungry to learn.  God Bless, Orrin Woodward

"There is a difference between education and experience. Education is what you get from reading the small print. Experience is what you get from not reading it!

But isn't it true that great learning comes from both education and experience? Let me tell you a parable:

A young school teacher had a dream that an angel appeared to him and said, "You will be given a child who will grow up to become a world leader. How will you prepare her so that she will realize her intelligence, grow in confidence, develop both her assertiveness and sensitivity, be open-minded, yet strong in character? In short, what kind of education will you provide that she can become one of the world's truly GREAT leaders?"

The young teacher awoke in a cold sweat. It had never occurred to him before—any ONE of his present or future students could be the person described in his dream. Was he preparing them to rise to ANY POSITION to which they may aspire? He thought, 'How might my teaching change if I KNEW that one of my students were this person?' He gradually began to formulate a plan in his mind.

This student would need experience as well as instruction. She would need to know how to solve problems of various kinds. She would need to grow in character as well as knowledge. She would need self-assurance as well as the ability to listen well and work with others. She would need to understand and appreciate the past, yet feel optimistic about the future. She would need to know the value of lifelong learning in order to keep a curious and active mind. She would need to grow in understanding of others and become a student of the spirit. She would need to set high standards for herself and learn self discipline, yet she would also need love and encouragement, that she might be filled with love and goodness.

His teaching changed. Every young person who walked through his classroom became, for him, a future world leader. He saw each one, not as they were, but as they could be. He expected the best from his students, yet tempered it with compassion. He taught each one as if the future of the world depended on his instruction.

After many years, a woman he knew rose to a position of world prominence. He realized that she must surely have been the girl described in his dream. Only she was not one of his students, but rather his daughter. For of all the various teachers in her life, her father was the best.

I've heard it said that "Children are living messages we send to a time and place we will never see." But this isn't simply a parable about an unnamed school teacher. It is a parable about you and me -- whether or not we are parents or even teachers. And the story, OUR story, actually begins like this:

"You will be given a child who will grow up to become...." You finish the sentence. If not a world leader, then a superb father? An excellent teacher? A gifted healer? An innovative problem solver? An inspiring artist? A generous philanthropist?

Where and how you will encounter this child is a mystery. But believe that one child's future may depend upon influence only you can provide, and something remarkable will happen. For no young person will ever be ordinary to you again. And you will never be the same.

Let’s follow up Ronald Reagan’s leadership post with another on how his thoughts produced actions.  My basic thesis is that how a person thinks in their own mind will flow into their actions in their life.  As a leader, it will flow into the culture they create in everything that they lead.  Reagan believed strongly in the power of the individual to govern their life better than any third party.   This belief propelled him from a small town Illinois kid to a Hollywood star, Governor of California, and President of the United States.  Not only must we give people freedom, but we must teach people how to think about their freedoms and corresponding responsibilities.  This is why the free enterprise system cannot just be transplanted into the former communist countries without some world-view changes. 

Reagan made America freer after years of less freedom, but he also cast a vision for America.  He made Americans proud to be Americans again.  One of the most important things the President does is cast a vision from their world-view.  This is why I believe understanding how a person views themselves and the individual will tell us what they feel government's role is.   Because Reagan believed in himself, America, and the individual—he felt his main role in government was to reduce its pervasiveness in our lives.  I will allow Reagan to speak for himself, but notice how his thoughts led to his words which led to his style of government.   In my opinion, Reagan’s views of government and the success of his administration prove that a modern president can lead with the same principles that guided our founding fathers.   This is a huge point for Americans to understand as they listen to the candidates to understand their world-view.   Here is Reagan in his own words from his autobiography, An American Life.

“The first rule of bureaucracy is to protect the bureaucracy.  If the people running the welfare program had let their clientele find other ways of making a living, that would have reduced their importance and their budget.”

“I didn’t think much of the inefficiency, empire building, and business-as-usual attitude that existed in wartime under the civil service system.  If I suggested that an employee might be expendable, his supervisor would look at me as if I were crazy.  He didn’t want to reduce the size of his department; his salary was based to a large extent on the number of people he supervised.  He wanted to increase it, not decrease it.”

“There probably isn’t any undertaking on earth short of assuring the national security that can’t be handled more efficiently by the forces of private enterprise than by the federal government.”

“I became convince that some of our fundamental freedoms were in jeopardy because of the emergence of a permanent government never envisioned by the framers of the Constitution: a federal bureaucracy that was becoming so powerful it was able to set policy and thwart the desires not only of ordinary citizens, but heir elected representatives in Congress. . . For example, I learned the government had six programs to help poultry growers increase egg production.  It also had a seventh program costing almost as much as all six others to buy up surplus eggs.”

“No government has ever voluntarily reduced itself in size.”

“No nation in history has ever survived a tax burden that reached a third of its national income.”

“Usually with the best of intentions, Congress passed a new program, appropriated the money for it, then assigned bureaucrats in Washington to disperse the money; almost always, the bureaucrats responded by telling states, cities, counties, and schools how to spend this money.  In Madison’s words, Washington was usurping power form the states by the “gradual and silent encroachment of those in power. . . . Over time, they became so dependent on the money that, like junkies, they found it all but impossible to break the habit, and only after they were well addicted to it did they learn how pervasive the federal regulations were that came with the money.”

“In return for federal grants, state and local governments surrendered control of their destiny to a faceless bureaucracy in Washington that claimed to know better how to solve the problems of a city or town than the people who lived there. . . . Once started, a federal program benefitting any group or special interest is virtually impossible to end and the costs go on forever.”

“We had strayed a great distance from our founding father’s vision of America: They regarded the central government’s responsibility as that of providing a national security, protecting our democratic freedoms, and limiting the government’s intrusion into our lives—in sum, the protection of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.  They never envisioned vast agencies in Washington telling our farmers what to plant, our teachers what to teach, or industries what to build.  The Constitution they wrote established sovereign states, not administrative districts of the federal government.”

“The waste in dollars and cents was small compared with the waste of human potential.  It was squandered by the narcotic of giveaway programs that sapped the human spirit, diminished the incentive of people to work, destroyed families, and produced an increase in female and child poverty, deteriorating schools, and disintegrating neighborhoods.”

“My theme on the campaign stump was familiar to anyone who had heard me speak over the years: It was time to scale back the size of the federal government, reduce taxes and government intrusion in our lives, balance the budget, and return to the people the freedoms usurped from them by the bureaucrats.”

“If no one among us is capable of governing himself, then who among us has the capacity to govern someone else?”

“The same principle that affected my thinking applied to people in all tax brackets:  The more government takes in taxes, the less incentive people have to work.  What coal miner or assembly-line worker jumps at the offer of overtime when he knows Uncle Sam is going to take sixty percent or more of his extra pay?”

“I don’t think we will solve the problem of the deficit until three things happen:  We need more discipline on spending in Congress.  We need a constitutional amendment requiring Congress to balance the budget.  And we need to give our president’s a line-item veto.”

“As I have often said, governments don’t produce economic growth, people do.  What government can do is encourage Americans to tap their well of ingenuity and unleash their entrepreneurial spirit, then get out of the way.”

“Every year that I was president, I asked Congress for a constitutional amendment that would require the federal government—like any well-run household or business—to balance its budget.  But Congress (and I concede there was opposition to it on both sides of the political aisle) wouldn’t sit still for this infringement on its spendthrift ways.  There was some important progress: . . . . But never underestimate the willingness of congressman to circumvent their own rules, or the public will, in the pursuit of their enthusiasm to spend other people’s money.”

“It is a fact of life that running for political office in this country is very expensive; once in office, few incumbents want to surrender their seats in Congress, so they often trun to the special interest, who want special consideration from them, for the money to finance their campaigns.  Then, after the election, they repay the favors—with the taxpayers’ money.”

“Until presidents have a line-item veto and there is a constitutional amendment mandating a balanced budget, I think the country is likely to face never-ending deficits piled up by a profligate Congress unable or unwilling to make the hard-nosed decisions necessary to bring down spending to a level the country can afford.”

“As I have often said, governments don’t produce economic growth, people do.  What governments can do is encourage Americans to tap their well of ingenuity and unleash their entrepreneurial spirit, then get out of the way.”

“For the free market to work, everyone has to compete on an equal footing.  That way, prices and demand go up or down based on free choices of people; there are winners and losers under the system of free competition, but consumers are ultimately benefactors. 
Free competition produces better products and lower prices.  However, when governments fix or control the price, impose quotas, subsidize manufacturers or farmers, or otherwise intervene in the free market with artificial restrictions, it isn’t free and it won’t work as it is supposed to work."

“The explorers of the modern era are the entrepreneurs, men with vision, with the courage to take risks and faith enough to brave the unknown. These entrepreneurs and their small enterprises are responsible for almost all the economic growth in the United States. They are the prime movers of the technological revolution. In fact, one of the largest personal computer firms in the United states was started by two college students, no older than you, in the garage behind their home.  Some people, even in my own country, look at the riot of experiment that is the free market and see only waste. What of all the entrepreneurs that fail? Well, many do, particularly the successful ones. Often several times. And if you ask them the secret of their success, they'll tell you, it's all that they learned in their struggles along the way - yes, it's what they learned from failing. Like an athlete in competition, or a scholar in pursuit of the truth, experience is the greatest teacher.”

There is Reagan in his own words.  Can you see how Reagan’s worldview led to a specific style of government based on the freedom of the people to learn, grow, fail and try again until they get it right?  This is what we desire for our children and grandchildren—the opportunity to grow and lead by their own merits.  I encourage everyone to study the candidates and give them the Reagan test for their thoughts on the role of government.  God Bless, Orrin Woodward

Dr Martyn Lloyd-Jones was a man of God who preached from the Bible at Westminster Chapel in London.  I can personally tell you his two classic books—Sermon on the Mount and Spiritual Depression—changed my thinking and life.  Lloyd-Jones sermons go past the mind and hit your heart.  Nothing convicts me as much as reading a Lloyd-Jones sermon on a Biblical text.  I will provide this example entitled God or Mammon.  Remember, the goal of Sunday’s articles is to get you to think about eternity and eternal things.  Don’t read this quickly, but digest contents of his sermon and examine your heart.  Here is where I found the sermon article on the web.  Worshiping God, loving others and thinking on His calling in our life is what Sundays are all about.  Count your blessing and enjoy your Sunday.   God Bless, Orrin Woodward

Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal. For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. The light of the body is the eye. If therefore your eye is single, your whole body shall be full of light. But if your eye is evil, your whole body shall be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in you be darkness, how great is that darkness! No man can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one, and love the other, or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon (Matthew 6.19-24).

In our analysis of verses 19-24 we have seen that our Lord first of all lays down a proposition or a commandment, "Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth ... but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven." In other words, He tells us that we are so to live in this world, and so to use everything we have, whether our possessions, or gifts, or talents, or propensities, that we shall be laying up for ourselves treasures in heaven.

Then, having given us the injunction in that way, our Lord proceeds to supply us with reasons for doing this. I would remind you again that here we have an illustration of the wonderful condescension and understanding of our blessed Lord. He has no need to give us reasons. It is for Him to command. But He stoops to our weakness, mighty as He is, and He comes to our aid and supplies us with these reasons for carrying out His commandment.

He does so in a very remarkable manner. He elaborates the reasons and presses them on our consideration. He does not merely give us one reason. He gives us a number. He works it out for us in a series of logical propositions, and, of course, there can be no doubt at all but that He does this, not only because He is anxious to help us, but also, and still more perhaps, because of the desperate seriousness of the subject with which He is dealing. Indeed, we shall see that this is one of the most serious matters which we can ever consider together.

Again we must remember that these words were addressed to Christian people. This is not what our Lord has to say to the unbeliever out in the world. This is the warning that He gives to the Christian. We are dealing here with the subject of worldliness, or worldly-mindedness, and the whole problem of the world, but we must cease to think of it in terms of people who are in the world outside. This is the peculiar danger of Christian people. At this point our Lord is dealing with them and nobody else.

You can argue if you like that if all this is true for the Christian, it is much more so for the non-Christian. That is a perfectly fair deduction. But there is nothing so fatal and tragic as to think that words like these have nothing to do with us because we are Christians. Indeed, this is perhaps the most urgent word that is needed by Christian people at this very moment. The world is so subtle, worldliness is such a pervasive thing, that we are all guilty of it, and often without realizing it. We tend to label worldliness as meaning certain particular things only, and always the things of which we are not guilty. We therefore argue that this has nothing to say to us.

But worldliness is all-pervasive, and is not confined to certain things. It does not just mean going to theatres or cinemas, or doing a few things of that nature. No, worldliness is an attitude towards life. It is a general outlook, and it is so subtle that it can come into the most holy things of all, as we saw earlier.

We might digress here for a moment and look at this subject from the standpoint of the great political interest in this country, particularly, for example, at the time of a General Election. What, in the last analysis, is the real interest? What is the real thing that people on both sides and all sides are concerned about? They are interested in "treasures on earth", whether they be people who have treasures or whether they be people who would like to have them. They are all interested in the treasures, and it is most instructive to listen to what people say, and to observe how they betray themselves and the worldliness of which they are guilty, and the way in which they are laying up for themselves treasures on earth.

To be very practical (and if the preaching of the gospel is not practical it is not true preaching), there is a very simple test which we can apply to ourselves to see whether these things apply to us or not. When, at the time of a General or local Election, we are called on to make a choice of candidates, do we find ourselves believing that one political point of view is altogether right and the other altogether wrong? If we do, I suggest we are somehow or another laying up for ourselves treasures on earth. If we say that the truth is altogether on one side or the other, then if we analyze our motives we will discover it is because we are either protecting something or anxious to have something.

Another good way of testing ourselves is to ask ourselves quite simply and honestly why we hold our particular views. What is our real interest? What is our motive? What, when we are quite honest and truthful with ourselves, is really at the back of these particular political views that we hold? It is a most illuminating question if we are really honest. I suggest that most people will find if they face that question quite honestly, that there are some treasures on earth about which they are concerned, and in which they are interested.

The next test is this. To what extent are our feelings engaged in this matter? How much bitterness is there, how much violence, how much anger and scorn and passion? Apply that test, and again we shall find that the feeling is aroused almost invariably by the concern about laying up treasures on earth.

The last test is this. Are we viewing these things with a kind of detachment and objectivity or not? What is our attitude towards all these things? Do we instinctively think of ourselves as pilgrims, and mere sojourners in this world, who of course have to be interested in these things while we are here? Such an interest is certainly right, it is our duty. But what is our ultimate attitude? Are we controlled by it? Or do we stand apart and regard it objectively, as something which is ephemeral, something which does not really belong to the essence of our life and being, something with which we are concerned only for a while, as we are passing through this life?

We should ask ourselves these questions in order that we may make quite certain whether this injunction of our Lord is speaking to us. Those are some of the ways in which we can find out very simply whether we are or are not guilty of laying up for ourselves treasures on earth, and not laying up for ourselves treasures in heaven.

When we come to consider our Lord's arguments against laying up treasures on earth, we find that the first is one which we may very well describe as the argument of common sense, or of ordinary observation. "Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth." Why? For this reason: "where moth and rust corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal". But why should I lay up treasures in heaven? For this reason: "where neither moth nor rust corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal".

Our Lord is saying that worldly treasures do not last, that they are transitory, passing, ephemeral. "Change and decay in all around I see." "Where moth and rust corrupt."

How true it is. There is an element of decay in all these things, whether we like it or not. Our Lord puts it in terms of the moth and rust that tend to lodge themselves in these things and destroy them. Spiritually we can put it like this. These things never fully satisfy. There is always something wrong with them. They always lack something. There is no person on earth who is fully satisfied, and though in a sense some may appear to have everything that they desire, still they want something else. Happiness cannot be purchased.

There is, however, another way of looking at the effect of moth and rust spiritually. Not only is there an element of decay in these things, it is also true that we always tend to tire of them. We may enjoy them for a while, but somehow or other they begin to pall or we lose interest in them. That is why we are always talking about new things and seeking them. Fashions change. And though we are very enthusiastic about certain things for a while, soon they no longer interest us as they did. Is it not true that as age advances these things cease to satisfy us? Old people generally do not like the same things as young people, or the young the same as the old. As we get older these things seem to become different, there is an element of moth and rust.

We could even go further and put it more strongly and say that there is an impurity in them. At their best they are all infected. Do what you will you cannot get rid of the impurity. The moth and rust are there and all your chemicals do not stop these processes. Peter says a wonderful thing in this very connection, "Whereby are given to us exceeding great and precious promises; that by these you might be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust" (2 Peter 1.4). There is corruption in all these earthly things; they are all impure.

The last fact, therefore, about these things is that they inevitably perish. Your most beautiful flower is beginning to die immediately you pluck it. You will soon have to throw it away. That is true of everything in this life and world. It does not matter what it is, it is passing, it is all fading away. Everything that has life is, as the result of sin, subject to this process -"moth and rust corrupt". Things develop holes and become useless, and at the end they are gone and become utterly corrupt. The most perfect physique will eventually give way and break down and die. The most beautiful countenance will in a sense become ugly when the process of corruption has got going. The brightest gifts tend to fade. Your great genius may be seen gibbering in delirium as the result of disease. However wonderful and beautiful and glorious things may be, they all perish. That is why, perhaps, the saddest of all failures in life is the failure of the philosopher who believes in worshipping goodness, beauty and truth. Because there is no such thing as perfect goodness, there is no such thing as unalloyed beauty, there is an element of wrong and of sin and a lie in the highest truths. "Moth and rust corrupt."

"Yes," says our Lord, "and thieves break through and steal." We must not stay with these things, they are so obvious, and yet we are so slow to recognize them. There are many thieves in this life and they are always threatening us. We think we are safe in our house, but we find thieves have broken in and ransacked it. Other marauders are always threatening us—illness, a business loss, some industrial collapse, war and finally death itself. It matters not what it is that we tend to hold on to in this world, one or other of these thieves is always threatening and will eventually take it from us.

It is not only money. It may be some person for whom you are really living, your pleasure is in that one person. Beware, my friends; there are robbers and thieves who are bound to come and eventually rob you of these possessions. Take our possessions at their highest as well as their lowest, they are all subject to these robbers, these attacks. "The thieves break through and steal", and we cannot prevent them. So our Lord appeals to our common sense, and reminds us that these worldly treasures never last. "Change and decay in all around I see."

But look at the other, positive side. "Lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal." This is wonderful and full of glory. Peter puts it in a phrase. He says "to an inheritance incorruptible, and undefiled, and that fades not away, reserved in heaven for you" (1 Peter 1.4). "The things which are not seen are eternal," says St. Paul, it is the things which are seen that are temporal (2 Corinthians 4.18). These heavenly things are imperishable and the thieves cannot break through and steal. Why? Because God Himself is reserving them for us. There is no enemy that can ever rob us of them, or can ever enter in. It is impossible because God Himself is the Guardian.

Spiritual pleasures are invulnerable, they are in a place which is impregnable. "I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord" (Romans 8.38, 39).

Furthermore, there is nothing impure there. Naught that corrupts shall enter in. There is no sin there, nor element of decay. It is the realm of eternal life and eternal light. He dwells "in the light which no man can approach to", as the apostle Paul puts it (1 Timothy 6.16). Heaven is the realm of life and light and purity, and nothing belonging to death, nothing tainted or polluted can gain admission there. It is perfect, and the treasures of the soul and of the spirit belong to that realm. Lay them up there, says our Lord, because there is no moth nor rust there, and no thief can ever break through nor steal.

It is an appeal to common sense. Do we not know that these things are true? Are they not true of necessity? Do we not see it all as we live in this world? Take up your morning newspaper and look at the death column. Look at all that is happening. We know all these things. Why do we not practice them and live accordingly? Why do we lay up treasures on earth when we know what is going to happen to them? And why do we not lay up treasures in heaven where we know that there is purity and joy, holiness and everlasting bliss?

That, however, is merely the first argument, the argument of common sense. But our Lord does not stop at that. His second argument is based upon the terrible spiritual danger involved in laying up treasures on earth and not in heaven. That is a general heading, but our Lord divides it into certain sub-sections.

The first thing against which He warns us in this spiritual sense is the awful grip and power of these earthly things upon us. You notice the terms He uses. He says, "Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also." The heart! Then in verse 24 He talks about the mind. "No man can serve two masters” - and we should notice the word "serve". These are the expressive terms He uses in order to impress upon us the terrible control that these things tend to exercise over us. Are we not all aware of them the moment we stop to think - the tyranny of persons, the tyranny of the world? This is not something we can think about at a distance as it were. We are all involved in this. We are all in the grip of this awful power of worldliness which really will master us unless we are aware of it.

But it is not only powerful, it is very subtle. It is the thing that really controls most men's lives. Have you seen the change, the subtle change that tends to take place in men's lives as they succeed and prosper in this world? It does not happen to those who are truly spiritual men, but if they are not, it invariably happens. Why is it that idealism is generally associated with youth and not with middle age and old age? Why do men tend to become cynical as they get older? Why does the noble outlook upon life tend to go? It is because we all become victims of treasures on earth, and if you watch you can see it in the lives of men.

Read the biographies. Many a young man starts out with a bright vision, but in a very subtle way - not that he falls into gross sin - he becomes influenced, perhaps when he is at college, by an outlook that is essentially worldly. Though it may be highly intellectual, he nevertheless loses something that was vital in his soul and spirit. He is still a very nice man and, moreover, just and wise, but he is not the man he was when he began. Something has been lost. Yes, this is a familiar phenomenon: "Shades of the prison house begin to close upon the growing boy." Do we not all know something about it? It is there. It is a prison house, and it fastens itself on us unless we are aware of it. This grip, this power, masters us and we become slaves.

However, our Lord does not stop at the general. He is so anxious to show us this terrible danger that He works it out in detail. He tells us that this terrible thing that grips us tends to affect the entire personality, not merely part of us, but the whole man. And the first thing He mentions is the "heart". Having laid down the injunction He says, "For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also." These things grip and master our feelings, our affections and all our sensibility. All that part of our nature is absolutely gripped by them and we love them. Read John 3.19. "This is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil." We love these things. We pretend that we only like them, but really we love them. They move us deeply.

The next thing about them is a little more subtle. They not only grip the heart, they grip the mind. Our Lord puts it in this way: "The light of the body is the eye. If therefore your eye be single, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eye be evil, your whole body will be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in you is darkness, how great is that darkness!" (verses 22, 23). This picture of the eye is just His way of describing, by means of an illustration, the way in which we look at things. And according to our Lord, there are but two ways of looking at everything in this world.

There is what He calls the "single" eye, the eye of the spiritual man who sees things really as they are, truly and without any double view. His eye is clear and he sees things normally. But there is the other eye which He calls the "evil" eye, which is a kind of double vision, or, if you like, it is the eye in which the lenses are not clear. There are mists and opacities and we see things in a blurred way. That is the evil eye. It is colored by certain prejudices, colored by certain lusts and desires. It is not a clear vision. It is all cloudy, colored by these various tints and taints. That is what is meant by this statement which has so often confused people, because they do not take it in its context.

Our Lord in this picture is still dealing with the laying up of treasures. Having shown that where the treasure is, the heart will be also, He says that it is not only the heart but the mind as well. These are the things that control man.

Let us work out this principle. Is it not amazing to notice how much of our thought is based on these earthly treasures? The divisions in thought in almost every realm are almost entirely controlled by prejudice, not by pure thought. How very little thinking there is in this country at the time of a General Election for example. None of the protagonists reason. They simply present prejudices. How little thought there is on every side. It is so obvious in the political realm. But alas, it is not confined to politics. This blurring of the vision by love of earthly treasures tends to affect us morally also! How clever we all are at explaining that a particular thing we do is not really dishonest. Of course if a man smashes a window and steals jewelry he is a robber, but if I just manipulate my income tax return .... ! Certainly that is not robbery, we say, and we persuade ourselves that all is well. Ultimately there is but one reason for our doing these things, and that is our love of earthly treasures. These things control the mind as well as the heart. Our views and our whole ethical outlook are controlled by these things.

Even worse than that, however, our religious outlook is controlled by these things also. "Demas has forsaken me", writes Paul. Why? "Having loved this present world." How often this is seen in the matter of service. These are the things that determine our action, though we do not recognize it. Our Lord says in another place, "Take heed to yourselves, lest at any time your hearts be overcharged with surfeiting, and drunkenness, and cares of this life, and so that day come upon you unawares. For as a snare shall it come on all them that dwell on the face of the whole earth. Watch you therefore, and pray always, that you may be accounted worthy to escape all these things that shall come to pass, and to stand before the Son of man" (Luke 21.34-36). It is not only evil doing that dulls the mind and makes us incapable of thinking clearly. The cares of this world, settling down in life, enjoying our life and our family, any one of these things, our worldly position or our comforts - these are equally as dangerous as surfeiting and drunkenness. There is no doubt but that much of the so-called wisdom which men claim in this world is nothing, in the last analysis, but this concern about earthly treasures.

But lastly, these things not only grip the heart and mind, they also affect the will. Says our Lord, "No man can serve two masters"; and the moment we mention the word "serve" we are in the realm of the will, the realm of action. You notice how perfectly logical this is. What we do is the result of what we think, so what is going to determine our lives and the exercise of our wills is what we think, and that in turn is determined by where our treasure is - our heart.

So we can sum it up like this. These earthly treasures are so powerful that they grip the entire personality. They grip a man's heart, his mind and his will. They tend to affect his spirit, his soul and his whole being. Whatever realm of life we may be looking at, or thinking about, we will find these things are there. Everyone is affected by them. They are a terrible danger.

But the last step is the most solemn and serious of all. We must remember that the way in which we look at these things ultimately determines our relationship to God. "No man can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon." This is indeed a very solemn thing, and that is why it is dealt with so frequently in Scripture. The truth of this proposition is obvious. Both make a totalitarian demand upon us. Worldly things really do make a totalitarian demand as we have seen. How they tend to grip the entire personality and affect us everywhere! They demand our entire devotion. They want us to live for them absolutely.

Yes, but so does God. "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength." Not in a material sense necessarily, but in some sense or other He says to us all, "Go, sell all that you have, and come, follow me." "He who loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and he that loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me." It is a totalitarian demand.

Notice it again in verse 24. "Either he will hate the one, and love the other, or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other." It is "either—or". Compromise is completely impossible at this point. "You cannot serve God and mammon."

This is something which is so subtle that many of us miss it completely at the present time. Some of us are violent opponents of what we speak of as "atheistic materialism". But lest we may feel too happy about ourselves because we are opponents of that, let us realize that the Bible tells us that all materialism is atheistic. You cannot serve God and mammon. It is impossible. So if a materialistic outlook is really controlling us, we are godless, whatever we may say. There are many atheists who speak religious language, but our Lord tells us here that even worse than atheistic materialism is a materialism that thinks it is godly. "If the light that is in you be darkness, how great is that darkness!"

The man who thinks he is godly because he talks about God, and says he believes in God, and goes to a place of worship occasionally, but is really living for certain earthly things - how great is that man's darkness! There is a perfect illustration of that in the Old Testament. Study carefully 2 Kings 17.24-41. Here is what we are told. The Assyrians conquered some area. Then they took their own people and settled them in that area. These Assyrians of course did not worship God. Then some lions came and destroyed their property. "This", they said, "has happened to us because we do not worship the God of this particular land. We will get priestly instruction on this." So they found a priest who instructed them generally in the religion of Israel. And then they thought that all would be well. But this is what Scripture said about them, they "feared the Lord, and served their graven images."

What a terrible thing that is. It alarms me. It is not what we say that matters. In the last day many shall say, "Lord, Lord, have we not done this, that and the other?" But He will say to them, "I never knew you". "Not every one who says to me Lord, Lord, will enter into the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of my Father." Whom do you serve? That is the question, and it is either God or mammon. There is nothing in the last analysis that is so insulting to God as to take His name on us and yet to show clearly that we are serving mammon in some shape or form. That is the most terrible thing of all. It is the greatest insult to God; and how easily and unconsciously we can all become guilty of this.

I remember once hearing a preacher tell a story which he assured us was simple, literal truth. It illustrates perfectly the point which we are considering. It is the story of a farmer who one day went happily and with great joy in his heart to report to his wife and family that their best cow had given birth to twin calves, one red and one white. And he said, "You know I have suddenly had a feeling and impulse that we must dedicate one of these calves to the Lord. We will bring them up together, and when the time comes we will sell one and keep the proceeds, and we will sell the other and give the proceeds to the Lord's work."

His wife asked him which he was going to dedicate to the Lord. "There is no need to bother about that now," he replied, "we will treat them both in the same way, and when the time comes we will do as I say." And off he went. In a few months the man entered his kitchen looking very miserable and unhappy. When his wife asked him what was troubling him, he answered, "I have bad news to give you. The Lord's calf is dead." "But", she said, "you had not decided which was to be the Lord's calf." "Oh yes," he said, "I had always decided it was to be the white one, and it is the white one that has died. The Lord's calf is dead.”

We may laugh at that story, but God forbid that we should be laughing at ourselves. It is always the Lord's calf that dies. When money becomes difficult, the first thing we economize on is our contribution to God's work. It is always the first thing to go. Perhaps we must not say "always", for that would be unfair, but with so many it is the first thing, and the things we really like are the last to go. "We cannot serve God and mammon." These things tend to come between us and God, and our attitude to them ultimately determines our relationship to God.

The mere fact that we believe in God, and call Him, Lord, Lord, and likewise with Christ, is not proof in and of itself that we are serving Him, that we recognize His totalitarian demand, and have yielded ourselves gladly and readily to Him. "Let every man examine himself."

Assignment:  What part of this sermon convicted you the most? 

In our continuing series on the Presidential Candidates for 2008, I would like to look at leadership and vision.  No matter how impressive the candidate’s rhetoric is, the rubber hits the road in execution.  Can they implement the lofty programs espoused during the campaign?  The best platform of the right ideas without implementation will damage the truth and bring the lesser platforms and the wrong ideas to the front.  America needs a leader with character, honor, vision and courage.   Let’s go back to the last of the great presidents America has had – Ronald Reagan.  I find reading the autobiographies of great achievers to be inspirational and educational.  I just finished reading for the second time, Ronald Reagan’s autobiography called An American Life.  It is an incredible book and I highly recommend to all aspiring leaders.  

My strong belief is America needs a leader who can develop other leaders.  The way government can do this is by giving more back to the people and allowing free enterprise to give everyone an equal opportunity to perform.  The president should be evaluated on how his administration executes on providing people the freedoms to pursue meaning and wealth.  Government does not generate the wealth, but creates and environment where entrepreneurs can create wealth for the benefit of all.  Ronal Reagan did this task marvelously and we need to relearn his methods.  My goal in reading autobiographies is to determine the underlying principles or world-view that the achiever has developed in life.  After reading Reagan’s book, you feel that you know him.  It was less of a book than it was listening to a friend share his story.  Many times in the book, Reagan would pause and share his personal beliefs.  By compiling his personal beliefs, it helps you see the world through Reagan’s eyes.  Ronald Reagan created a freer America and the entrepreneurs responded to the freedoms with increased productivity.  The Soviets could not keep up with the wealth creation of the U.S. and the Cold War unceremoniously ended with the collapse of communism.   Ronald Reagan's beliefs, led to his world-view, which led to his legendary conviction and courage.  Let’s review some of Reagan’s beliefs and how his beliefs shaped his view of government, people and the roles of each.

 “I was raised to believe that God has a plan for everyone and that seemingly random twists of fate are all a part of His plan.  My mother—a small woman with auburn hair and a sense of optimism that ran as deep as the cosmos—told me that everything in life happened for a purpose.  She said all things were part of God’s Plan, even the most disheartening setbacks, and in the end, everything worked out for the best.  If something went wrong, she said, you didn’t let it get you down: You stepped away form it, stepped over it, and moved on.  Later on, she added, something good will happen and you’ll find yourself thinking—‘If I hadn’t had that problem back then, then this better thing that did happen wouldn’t have happened to me.’”

“I grew up observing how the love and common sense of purpose that unites families is one of the most powerful flues on earth and that it can help them overcome the greatest of adversities.  I learned that hard work is an essential part of life—that by and large, you don’t get something for nothing—and that America was a place that offered unlimited opportunity to those who did work hard. . . . I have always wondered at this American marvel, the great energy of the human soul that drives people to better themselves and improve the fortunes of their families and communities.  Indeed, I know of no greater force on earth.”

“The dreams of people may differ, but everyone wants their dreams to come true.  Not everybody aspires to be a bank president or a nuclear scientist, but everybody wants to do something with one’s life that will give him or her pride and a sense of accomplishment.  And America, above all places, gives us the freedom to do that, the freedom to reach out and make our dreams come true.”

“My parents constantly drummed into me the importance of judging people as individuals.  There was no more grievous sin at our household than a racial slur or other evidence of religious or racial intolerance.”

“My mother of course, repeated her old dictum that everything works out for the best and that every reverse in life carries the seeds of something better in the future.”

“Throughout my life, I guess there’s been one thing that’s troubled me more than any other: the abuse of people and the theft of their democratic rights, whether by a totalitarian government, an employer, or anyone else.  I probably got it from my father; Jack never bristled more than when he thought working people were being exploited.”

“For so long, I had shared the reverence most Americans have for that historic building; back when I was a kid in Dixon, I’d imagined what the private part of the White House must be like; but I had never imagined myself actually living there.  Now, we had gone in the front door, gotten on an elevator, and we were here to stay—at least for four years.  If I could do this, I thought, then truly any child in America had an opportunity to do it.”

Can you see how these beliefs helped Reagan overcome any setbacks?  I am always amazed at how many people will gloss over the key nuggets the author shares in their autobiographies.  Leaders cannot tell us everything about themselves, but they do wish to share the key thoughts that make them who they are.  Reagan understood that people were not perfect, but believed a free people would choose better than a bureaucratic government on the key issues in their lives.  He understood that a leader’s role is to create the vision, develop the culture and get out of the way!  Reagan was less concerned about being the star and more concerned with giving people the freedom to become stars themselves.  This was one of the key secrets to Ronald Reagan’s success.   Ronald Reagan knew government could not create societies wealth, but it could create a level playing field where the most talented and courageous entrepreneurs would create societies wealth.  Reagan deeply believed in America and in the ability of the average man and woman to improve their lot by hard work and discipline.  Anything that took away a person’s self worth was detrimental to the person and America.   I will have a follow up article on how Reagan’s world-view transformed America.   Reagan developed a plan for our country based upon unleashing the latent talents hidden inside of the American people and it worked.   I will share with you some of the specific of the Reagan Revolution in the next installment.  I believe we need to finish the revolution Reagan started.  The plan will work again because the principles of economics and people never change.  God Bless, Orrin Woodward

Assignment:  I have stated repeatedly that ideas have consequences and Reagan’s autobiography confirms this well proven thought.   How does your world-view compare to Reagan’s.  What beliefs would you add to Reagan’s list?  Does your world-view lead to convictions and courage? 

I feel strongly that a classical education undergirded with Christian principles will be a major plank in the restoration of our countries.  I feel I have learned so much more after I finished formal training than I did in school.  I am not knocking my education more than I am conveying an urgent need to be a generalist and a specialist.   We will all specialize in our certain areas, but we must be educated generally to be part of what Mortimer Adler called the Great Conversation.  I believe the reason we see people so divided today is because they have no way of communicating across their specialties.  Reading the classics will give us the common ground to communicate about the great ideals from our past to take with us into our futures.  I have attached a portion of an article that describes the value of a classical education.  When I read this, I thought of this community and how we are enjoying reading and thinking together.  Our goal is to help each other think, not to force people to think like us.  If we all are thinking and communicating respectfully, we will all gain knowledge, understanding, and wisdom.   Here is the thought provoking article:

Overview of Classical Education

Those who assume that methods used for millennia can be dismissed within a generation forget that time is the best laboratory, especially regarding human behavior.

It has taken modern educators only 50 years to disassemble an educational system that took thousands of years to refine and establish. The classical method was born in ancient Greece and Rome, and by the 16th century, it was used throughout the Western world. This system educated most of America's founding fathers as well as the world's philosophers, scientists and leaders between the 10th and 19th centuries. What other period can claim so many advances in science, philosophy, art, and literature?

Why Classical Education?

For education to be effective, it must go beyond conveying fact. Truly effective education cultivates thinking and articulate students who are able to develop facts into arguments and convey those arguments clearly and persuasively. Parents from Seattle to Orlando are recognizing that classical education adds the dimension and breadth needed to develop students’ minds. Rigorous academic standards, a dedication to order and discipline, and a focus on key, "lost" subjects is fueling the rapid growth of the nation's classical schools.

There is no greater task for education than to teach students how to learn. The influence of "progressive" teaching methods and the oversimplification of textbooks make it difficult for students to acquire the mental discipline that traditional instruction methods once cultivated. The classical method develops independent learning skills on the foundation of language, logic, and tangible fact. The classical difference is clear when students are taken beyond conventionally taught subjects and asked to apply their knowledge through logic and clear expression.

In 1947, Dorothy Sayers, a pioneer in the return to classical education, observed, "although we often succeed in teaching our pupils 'subjects,' we fail lamentably on the whole in teaching them how to think." Beyond subject matter, classical education develops those skills that are essential in higher education and throughout life - independent scholarship, critical thinking, logical analysis, and a love for learning.

We hope you agree that this movement "back to and beyond" classical education develops timeless skills that are as important in today's rapidly changing world as they were to our founding fathers.

A Love For Learning

Occasionally, parents who are interested in classical education express concern that it will be too difficult or too demanding for their children. Disciplining and challenging students is certainly part of the classical method. However, we believe that education is inherently enjoyable for children. The classical method is based on the philosophy that students should be encouraged to do what they naturally enjoy during particular phases of their life.

In Dorothy Sayers' essay "The Lost Tools of Learning," she promotes teaching in ways which complement children's natural behavior. For example, young children in grammar school are very adept at memorizing. They enjoy repeating songs, rhymes, and chants to the extent that they often make up their own. In classical education, the "Grammar" phase corresponds with this tendency by focusing on the teaching of facts. During the junior high years, children often become prone to question and argue. Classical education leverages this tendency by teaching students how to argue well based on the facts they have learned. We call this the "Logic" phase. During the high school years, students' interests shift from internal concerns to the external. Teenagers become concerned with how others perceive them. This stage fits well into the "Rhetoric" phase of classical education, where students are taught to convey their thoughts so that they are well received and understood by others. The education culminates with the debate and defense of a senior thesis.

The classical method not only "cuts with the grain," but it develops a true sense of accomplishment in students. Many educators are artificially positive and soften grading scales in an effort to bolster their students' self-esteem. We believe that a sense of self-worth comes from accomplishment. The student who excels after working hard achieves a greater sense of accomplishment than one who is given the grade. By holding students to an objective standard, they gain a true understanding of their abilities. Where self-esteem offers an artificial appreciation, classical education provides a realistic and true estimation of a child's ability. Students who work hard to achieve a "C" based on accomplishment are more satisfied than a class of students who all receive "A"’s and "B"’s.

Finally, we believe that learning, hard work, and fun are not mutually exclusive. Learning should be a joyful endeavor - one that presents a challenge. A visit to Foundations Academy quickly demonstrates the delight of students who love to learn. Learning is exciting, especially for children. In our experience, children who transfer from a conventional classroom to a classical classroom usually develop an increased appreciation for education and for the pursuit of knowledge.