Friday, October 2, 2009

Are you making RAINBOWS?

It is funny how when we have children we think we are going to be their teacher, but inadvertently they teach us lessons without even knowing.

My family has been in our Shaklee business for over 2 years and since we started I have always been a bit blurry as to what to do to grow our business. I always felt like I was new to the business world and what did I know about building a business. I was constantly searching for the 'right' thing to do that would make all the difference in how successful we were in our business. I thought about following the basic steps outlined in our business, but it couldn't be that easy. Right? So, I spent all kinds of time trying to make the basics better. I improved this form and that form. I created a new form or sheet or invitation or process. I was reinventing the wheel and in the process I was spinning my wheel but I wasn't getting anywhere. I think I might have continued down the same road if it wasn't for my daughter.

See she is in a Girl Scout Troop, as a Daisy. She was given her first fund raiser and since the Girl Scouts are so smart, they have special rewards for the girls to work towards. Well, of course she wanted to get the stuffed animal puppy for selling 25 items. Even though I don't have a business background, I instantly knew what we needed to do to help her reach her goal. It seemed so simple and clear to me. We needed to make a list of who she was going to talk to and we needed a way to track her progress so she could reach her goal. Now why was it so easy for me to put together a plan for her, but I struggled with my own for so long?

My husband sits down with my daughter to write out her list when I learned a valuable lesson. My husband has the paper and a pen to start the list writing and my daughter says, 'Wait, I need to get my markers.' She had a different twist to the plan. She was willing to make the list, but she wanted to make each name a different color and to put the girls in one column and the boys in another. If we made the list her way, it would have taken forever and we might not have finished. It would have been pretty with rainbow colors, but that was not the purpose of the activity. It didn't need to be pretty and look like rainbows, it just needed to be a thorough list.

That was when I realized that what I had been doing was making rainbows and not doing the task at hand. It didn't matter if my list was typed all pretty or that I had one form or another. What mattered was that I spent the time to do the activity. I had been wasting time making rainbows and not getting anywhere. I kept thinking and looking for the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, but what I really needed to do was the work to get there. I needed to put away my color markers and pick up my pen and make it happen.

So thanks to my daughter and my constant pursuit of making myself, my life, and my business better I have had yet another realization and now I am off to get to work!




Scott and Breeta Garland
Shaklee Directors
602-561-3137 & 602-561-3125

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