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What Success Means to MeWe've all heard it said that Network Marketing is merely a vehicle to achieving our dreams and fulfilling our goals. Having run the gamut of living through every phase of success and failure in this industry (some of it rather recently) I can tell you beyond any shadow of a doubt that success is not measured by money but rather by the rewards we are fortunate enough to experience as a result of our achievements in this business. Network Marketing has been the means to bringing me a great deal of success -- by my definition. One of my greatest satisfactions has been in helping find solutions to the homeless problem in my community. I began working to address this concern before my involvement in Network Marketing, but it was this industry that allowed me to bring the project to fruition. Now more than ten years since I first started Project ReStart, a private non-profit organization serving the homeless, it is going strong. Back in 1988, I was elected to public office to serve on the Board of County Commissioners at the same time that I began building a network marketing organization. One of the glaring issues I found that was needed in my community was an answer to homelessness. I live in a city - Reno, Nevada - that attracts people who are ready to bet their last paycheck in the casinos, and we have far too many who end up homeless. When I first got into the political world, I was conscious that my job was to spend taxpayer dollars wisely, helping build the economy of our community through tourism, which is our strongest industry. Yet we had homeless people intimidating tourists, panhandling, urinating on the streets, and the City was unable to control the problem. As a Commissioner, I was responsible for overseeing and determining the budgets for the court system, the sheriff's department, and the social services department, among others. They all needed more money than the budget could provide. I realized that if you can't increase the budget, then you have to decrease costs, which often means cutting services. The search for solutions kept bringing me back to homelessness. There were too many homeless people going through a revolving door from the streets to the court to the jail, all the while being supported through the County's social services. With another round of handouts, they were back on the streets, then arrested and taken to court, and again sent back to jail. I began working with community leaders to create a resource center outside the downtown area away from our tourism so that these needy people could be offered genuine help. Politically, I feel that I achieved very little. I got the thought in motion that there's a more economic way to serve the homeless than in our jails and court systems, but it was Network Marketing and the success that Mark Yarnell and I achieved that allowed me to foster the program I had begun. It was our industry that allowed me to take a good idea and carry it to full fruition. If I had simply remained a public servant, that program would still be just an idea in my mind's eye today. It was the financial and time freedom that allowed Mark and me to put in the needed time, money, and effort into this project. Today, Project Restart serves homeless people at three locations. On one campus, we have the only facility that serves the homeless mentally ill in our community. You remember what happened back in the Reagan days when thousands of the mentally ill were put out on the streets with no care and no supervision. You can imagine how serious that problem was in a town like ours where alcohol is given away so freely. The Payee Program is an example of one of the services we offer at this facility. Many of these people aren't competent to deposit the checks they receive from the government and budget correctly. Through the Payee Program, the checks come to us and we pay their bills for them - rent, food, clothes, prescription drugs to treat their illnesses - thereby helping them learn to become self-sufficient. Our second campus is on state property and houses our Homeless Family Center. It's a place where families can get back on their feet and "restart" their lives. We assist in getting children back to health, parents back into jobs, and provide them with an address as they search for work. Our philosophy is that we offer our clients discretion so they have the appearance of a stable life while we're helping them transition into finding work and moving them toward self-sufficiency. Without that, it can be a vicious cycle: if they don't have a stable life, they won't get a job; if they don't have a job, they stay homeless. We help them with resumes, with clothes for job interviews; we provide them with a phone, and as their circumstances improve, they move into transitional housing, and from there to apartments that they manage on their own. We no longer have our third campus, but for eight years we ran a program in conjunction with the Sheriff's department assisting single homeless men. These are the people who usually get the title of bums ... and some of them are. But many had some bad luck and fell into this situation. By partnering with the Sheriff, we were able to screen out the difficult ones. Now when single men come to Reno to live on the street because the booze flows freely, they are advised by law enforcement that they can't sleep on the streets or in parks, but that there is a warm place designated for them to sleep and they'll be offered a ride to Project ReStart. If they resist and insist on staying on the streets, eventually they'll be arrested. It is nearly impossible to stay on our streets and not break one of the vagrancy laws. Once they're arrested, they're given a choice: they can stay on the streets and wind up in jail where they will be assigned to the Sheriff's work program. There they will be given the "opportunity" to give back to their community by sweeping the streets and cleaning the parks. In lieu of this, they may choose to go to Project Restart where they will be assisted to "restart" their lives, or, if they have a relative somewhere, they may opt to receive a bus ticket to wherever that is. For the first ten years, the Project required a lot of my time, but now the organization doesn't depend on me anymore. I've scaled back my role to being just another board member and we help oversee the budget, ascertain that there is enough public and private funding coming in; we hire the executive director and interface with the city, county and state governments. Network Marketing has been a vehicle for another dream of mine, which is education. At the very core of me, I see myself as an educator. In the 60s, I started out in the classroom; in the 70s and early 80s, my career took me into talk radio and television, hosting and producing shows. For me, that was just another way to educate. Dr. King and I continue to teach our Network Marketing Certificate course at the University of Illinois at Chicago - another freedom Network Marketing has given me. After teaching that course for six years, we have reached about 1500 students. Because I have the time, thanks to this industry, I feel that I can have even more impact through writing. In contrast to teaching, with the last book Mark and I wrote, Your First Year in Network Marketing, we have touched the lives of more than 130,000 people in a year and a half ...and it continues to sell and be translated into foreign languages. It takes time to write a book, and if I'd been so busy making a living, I never would have had the time to discover how much I enjoy writing. I have now released my next book, my first authored on my own. It is titled The New Entrepreneurs: Making a Living - Making a Life through Network Marketing and is available in all the bookstores or through my web site: http://www.thenewentrepreneurs.com. Now I see this as a significant part of my future. But beyond the projects and the books, there is something else more spiritual that this industry has given me. While Network Marketing has allowed me to see the world, and to have and do many tangible things, I have come to realize recently how much it has helped me grow personally. So many newcomers ask where to put their energy when they first begin their business. Invest in yourself. As you grow, so will your business. My divorce from Mark Yarnell this past year was the worst moment of my life, but my own inner strength - what I have gradually gained from working in this industry - got me through it. So often we hear that network marketing is a personal growth journey, and now I can tell you beyond any question that I lived it and it's true. When I hit bottom, I discovered a personal power within me that I didn't know was there until I absolutely had nowhere else to turn. And that was reinforced by the many people who have reached out to me and been there when I most needed them. I have never felt so much support as I have these past few months from my relationships in this industry. I have talked to countless other people in networking who have suffered the death of a loved one, health problems, divorce, and innumerable life crises, and they all share the same experience I am describing. I've been through the break-up of a significant love in my life twice now, once before Network Marketing and once after, so I have the ability to compare. The losses were so much greater this time, yet the recovery was so much healthier. Last time, I dwelled far too long in a state of anger and resentment over what I felt had been done to me. This time, I experienced an entirely different process. While I have felt tremendous sadness, I appreciate the years I had with Mark Yarnell. We brought something of value to each other and to this industry, and we did it to the best of our ability. I will always be grateful for all that we shared during those years, and, no one would question that I owe all of this to Network Marketing. This is an industry that offers success to anyone willing to go after it. The first step is to determine what it is that success means to you.
******************************************************** Hers is a message of hope. Raising consciousness that a new paradigm is needed as couples embrace marriage, Rene advocates for less focus on blame and guilt should it end, and more appreciation for the shared love and personal growth that was experienced while together. The objective is to emerge from our marital crises more ready than ever to make sound choices—either to renew and enhance our existing unions or to move on, perhaps giving birth to new relationships without the usual sense of failure. “What I had finally come to understand was that the heartrending sadness resulting from a relationship ending need not signal failure, but can be the portal to an even deeper experience of personal growth and a renewed or new spiritual bonding. We can allow that pain to bog us down in self-pity and prolonged misery or we can choose to emerge with full appreciation for the precious time we were given to share moments of our lives with another person. Once ended, it doesn’t matter whether our love is reciprocated or not. It doesn’t matter if the warm memories are mutual or not. It doesn’t matter if the time is for a moment or a week or a year or a decade or a lifetime. What does matter is that we shared part of ourselves with each other, and the experience is raising one or preferably both of us to an elevated capacity to love.” ‘Til Death Do Us Part…” offers a lifeline to anyone
who is facing, or has faced, or will face marital crisis, helping them
transform feelings of devastation into energy for renewal or the decision
to begin a new life. You will find support by visiting her web sites: for prospecting, TheNewEntrepreneurs.com; for training and resources, NetworkMarketingInfo.com; to reach Rene, Yarnell.com.
TheNewEntrepreneurs.com | Copyright © 2003 , Rene Reid Yarnell. All Rights Reserved. |
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