I remember my first few years of network marketing, before I had any success.

Every year, my wife and her family would have this big family reunion.

They still do.

They’ve done it for like 30 or 40 years or something like that.

They’ve got 150 or so people that gather together up in the mountains here in Idaho every single year for this reunion.

It’s something that we do every year.

I remember my wife, when we first got married,

She said, there’s one thing that you need to promise me.

And I was like, what’s that honey?

She said, we can never miss any of these reunions.

So we haven’t.  🙂

We’ve gone there every year and I remember for the first few years of my home business journey,

…I wasn’t making any money but I remember trying to figure out how to improve myself and make myself better.

Every year, we would go up to this reunion and I remember sitting in the camp chair by the fire or just outside the tent.

And I would have a certain set of books open.

Some of those books that I would read were by Art Williams.

There was a book called ‘All You Can Do Is All You Can Do But All You Can Do Is Enough!’

There was another book called ‘Pushing Up People‘.

Those were great books.

Art Williams was an incredible leader in the home business movement.

He actually had a life insurance company and it was one of the first life insurance companies to go into the network marketing model.

They built a huge company.

They built it with a team of firemen, teachers, every day or average people.

Art would always describe himself as an average guy.

He’d say things like..

Look at me, I’m bald, short, I’m not much to look at and I like to eat sweets so I’m a little overweight.

He’d say these things to describe himself but he’d be like,

‘We can gather people like me and we can form a revolution!

We can gather people together and we can go out there and change the world.’

And they did!

They built the biggest life insurance company and in a short time and even beat the life insurance companies that have been around for over 100 years.

Art Williams was a high school football coach.

He was just an incredible leader and motivator of people.

He’s someone that I believe we all want to learn from.

Long story short, one of my favorite things that Art Williams says in his books and audios,

“You want to have a crusade. You want to be a crusader. You want to have something big in life that you’re fighting for and that you’re passionate about, that you just won’t quit on because it’s so important.”

I’ll never forget that.

Sometimes I ask myself, what’s my crusade?

And I ask you, what is your crusade?

What got you out of bed this morning?

What gets you up and excited everyday as you continue to step forward into your better future?

We might have our different little crusades but we all have one big common crusade.

For those of us who are entrepreneurs and for those of us who are in the home business profession, that’s freedom.

Right?

We are crusaders for freedom.

We believe in freedom.

No matter how long ago you heard the message for the very first time, right?

Maybe it was 10 years ago like it was for me.

When I First Heard The Freedom Message

I remember back in 2005, living in a trailer, working a job and making $11/hour.

A job that I didn’t really like that much.

Spending 40-50 hours a week and not having much fun.

One night, I went to this little meeting in this abandoned warehouse with my wife and sat on these folding little chairs.

It was dirty and the warehouse wasn’t used.

These people was renting it out to do this meeting.

There was this guy in the front room with a white board.

There were probably about 10 to 15 couples in the room.

There I was, newly married, living in a trailer house and making $11/hour, sitting in this abandoned warehouse,

…looking at the white board with this guy in front of the room, talking about a plan for freedom.

That was 10 years ago that I heard that message.

A plan for freedom.

A plan where I can have my money and have my time too.

A plan where I can be a father to my kids and have breakfast with my family in the morning.

A plan where I don’t have to work all day and all night.

A plan where I don’t have to be shipped somewhere out of the country.

A plan where I could eventually have this thing called ‘pipeline money‘ coming in to my life.

It was a plan for freedom and I heard it a long time ago.

I’m proud to say that I’m still here, 10 years later, as a freedom crusader.

Maybe you heard the plan for the first time a long time ago,

And you know what?

You’re still here today as a freedom crusader.

I think that says something about you and me.

I think that says a lot.

I think that says we are freedom crusaders.

I think that says we got the fire burning deep inside.

I was talking to another freedom crusader yesterday, Todd Nuclear Young from Baltimore, Maryland.

He works in a different company than I do.

We’re friends and once a while we talk and we mastermind.

It’s funny because we were talking about this home business and network marketing thing.

How it always seems to draw us back and keeps us in.

(it’s like it’s on your blood and you can’t get it out).

Network marketing and home business is not perfect.

As Eric Worre says, we don’t have a way that’s perfect but he says we have a better way.

There are things that I might not like about it.

There are things that give me a distaste sometimes.

But the bottom line is, it’s a better way and it always draws me back.

Why Does Home Business Always Draw Us Back?

Once you get this home business idea in your mind, once you get your soul wrapped around it a little bit,

…that people have won their freedom and people are being free and that you can be free yourself,

and in the process, teach others to be free –

It’s TOTALLY Addicting! 

We were talking about this and I was like, yeah what is it with this – we just can’t get out of it!

Once you’re in it, it seems like you’re in it for life!

You might take a break every once in a while but you just gotta stay in it.

And you know what I told my friend Todd,

I said,

“You know what it is, you’ve got this fire of freedom burning down deep inside your soul.”

And so do I.

The people out there that have this fire of freedom, burning inside themselves.

There’s no other profession like the home business profession, where you can literally be a crusader for freedom.

You can believe in freedom and you can fight for freedom.

You can win freedom yourself and you can teach others how to free themselves in their lives.

There’s just no other business like the home business profession, is there?

If you’ve got the fire freedom burning inside of you -there’s just nothing like it.

That’s what draws me to it.

That’s what keeps me in it.

That’s what brings me back to it no matter what funk I might go in every once in a while, like we all do.

I believe it’s because this profession, like no other profession on planet Earth, is one where you can be a freedom crusader.

This is one where you can make a lot of money believing in freedom and teaching others about freedom.

You know what else I love about it?

It’s got that fire freedom inside of it.

But you know what else it’s got?

It’s got belief in people.

It’s got belief in dreams.

It’s got that can-do spirit inside of it.

We, in the home business profession, look at one another and say ‘you know what, you can do great things!

You can rise up above your current set of circumstance.

You can get out of this single-wide trailer house.

You can get out of the apartment.

You can, you can, you can!’

What’s The Home Business Alternative?

We go look around at the corporate world today.

What do we see?

We see things like what Art Williams talks about, where you’re young and you’ve got full of dreams, you get excited about life, you graduate and then what do people do?

They pint the finger in your face and say,

You can’t.

I’ll tell you what you can do.

Don’t stretch too far and don’t stick your head up too high because you need to stand in your place until I give you permission to rise up.

It happens to a lot of people and they get in that type of environment, they get beat down.

It’s almost like their passion is squished out of them a little bit.

Their dreams get squished out of them a little bit.

And then they come into the influence of the home business profession and begin to hear a VERY differnet message.

A Few Words That Can Change EVERYTHING 

I heard a few words last week on a conference call which really is changing me.

It was from a leader within my company who said,

“Possible in the world, possible for me, it’s just a question of how.”

Isn’t that a powerful line?

I’m telling you my friend.

I was talking to an old friend from high school yesterday via Facebook chat and I dropped the question.

I said, hey I know this might be a long shot but have you ever thought about making money from home?

And she’s like, as a matter of fact, yes I have.

But I’m not sure that I could do it.

She has a little bit of lack of belief.

Which is natural for people getting squished a little in the corporate world.

I said, will you be open to taking a look?

And she said, absolutely.

So I sent the link and then she asked me a brilliant question.

She said, do you have any words of wisdom that I can keep in mind while I’m reviewing this information.

WOW!

What a great question!

I’ve never had a prospect ask me that kind of a question before.

And you know what words came to my mind?

I said, as a matter of fact, I do have some thoughts that you can be keeping in mind as you’re reviewing this information.

And I knew the information she was about to look at contains my story, I knew that it also contains stories of other people that I’m working with.

And I gave her those lines.

I said, “Here’s what you need to remember.

Possible in the world, possible for me, it’s just the question of how.”

Isn’t that the truth, my friend?

If another human being can do it…

… And not just another human being.

We’ve got lots of stories of human beings.

Mothers, fathers, young kids and all sorts of people from all sorts of walks of life are doing it.

And if they can do it, if it’s possible for them, it’s possible for you.

And it’s possible for me and it really is just the question of how.

Sometimes in the world, people don’t believe in other people.

Especially out there in the corporate world.

We start sometimes to make excuses for people.

This person just doesn’t get it, this person just can’t learn.

And then they put labels on people like ‘oh, this persons has a learning disability’ and we look around and everywhere we see people not believing in one another.

And you see that a lot in the world.

You get into the home business profession and you got this fire freedom,

you got this belief in other people and when we look at other people, we can say that they can do it.

Soom Proof That People CAN

I’ve been sharing stuff to my kids and we’re learning together all these laws of success and now my 8 year old son memorized the 15 laws.

My 6 year old has memorized the first 11 laws.

You know what I say to that?

I say,

If an 8 year old kid can do it – MAN!  So can grown men and women right?  

that kind of stuff helps me believe in people.

I look at my kids and I know how well they learn.

I know how eager they are to progress.

I know how well they retain information.

And you know what that leads me to believe?

It leads me to believe that adults that we see sometimes walking around that have lost belief in themselves,

…that have lost belief in their ability to learn,

………….that have lost belief that they can do great things in the world –

It’s not because they don’t have it in them, it’s not because they weren’t born with it.

They were born with it!

Looking at my kids, I see that.

It might just simply be a matter of sometimes the world has a tendency to suck it out of people.

And you know what?

In the home business profession and in what we do with our teams and our companies,

… we bring people in.

And maybe this is my idealism speaking but I think it’s close to reality.

We put our arms around people and we bring them inside & show them what we really do.

We do the best we can to bring belief back into them that in some cases has been sucked out by the corporate world,

…has been sucked out of them by the non-believers.

We bring them inside our circle and we breathe the life back into them.

The life of freedom,

the life of can-do,

the life of yes-I-can-achieve-my-dreams!

I don’t know any profession on planet Earth that has that kind of life in it.

That’s what I LOVE about our profession .

They’re just ain’t nuttin like it!

Is there?  

What do YOU Love about the home business / network marketing profession?  I’d love to hear below.