Brick by Brick

Gary & I are big University of Minnesota Gopher sports fans.  Believe me, it’s been tough to be positive about the football program for way too many years.  BUT, three years ago after a dismal season in which the head coach was fired in the middle of the season, a new coach was hired.  When he arrived, he said they were going to have to build the program "brick by brick."  The kids were going to have to learn discipline (both in the classroom & in practice) and work hard – really hard – every practice – every game. Coach Kill said he and his staff were going to have to teach the kids what it means to work hard and how to win.

 

This is Coach Kill’s third year and the Gophers just had their first 4 game winning ‘streak’ in conference play since 1973.

 

Here are a couple of things that were written in the paper after this 4^th win:

“Coach Kill looks and talks like an old-school coach….”

 “We’ve still got a lot of room to get better, we’ve got a young team but we’re moving forward.”

“Gophers maintained belief in themselves”

“It’s kind of hard to see on the outside; on the inside, we knew we were getting better”

“I always say it’s a lot better to be positive than negative…the biggest thing is to get our kids to believe they’re good football players and believe in themselves.”

“I always said our biggest goal was to make sure we could get all the people in the state of Minnesota to feel good about the direction we’re going.”

 

When you listen to the interviews of the players after the games – they’re having fun – they believe in their program and their coaches.  When you listen to the interviews of the coaches – they love what they do – they love kids & football – they’re having fun.

 

I couldn’t help but think about our Shaklee business last Sunday when I read the sports page and saw the interviews online.  That’s what Gary and I did to build Shaklee.  We built it brick by brick – brick by brick!

 

We admit it, we’re old-school.  We believe in hard work, discipline and having a simple system. We hunted until we could find someone who would buy into the idea of building a business with Shaklee and then we stuck to them with encouragement and belief as long as they were willing to do the work. 

 

Gary drove easily 20 miles one way to deliver a quart of Basic-H in order to get someone using the products without delay and to have the opportunity to have another face-to-face conversation to keep Matt’s interest in Shaklee going.  And, then we sponsored Neil Froemming and our volume grew to 500 PV a month.  One by one we added people.  And, IT WAS FUN!

 

We didn’t expect overnight success – we knew it would be harder than that.  We believed that we wouldn’t get rich quick in Shaklee, but that we, and the people we brought into Shaklee, could get rich slow!  But the only way it works is BRICK BY BRICK!

 

Have Fun!

 

Faye Burke