Carl Eric Johnson — Author • Investor • Entrepreneur • Network Marketing Evangelist

Biggest Loser Progress Report

by Carl Eric Johnson on Thursday, January 27, 2011

My progress so far in the Biggest Loser program has been much better than expected. As I indicated in my first post on this topic, my goal is to shed ten pounds in ten weeks.

OK, it’s time to swallow my pride and give you some real numbers to work with. I started this year weighing in at 230 pounds. (Gasp!) The most I have ever weighed in my life is 237 pounds, and that was maybe a year ago. My ideal weight (from past experience, not from the ridiculous insurance tables figures) is between 180 and 190 pounds, as I have a very solid frame.

(I lived in Mexico City for six months in 1981, and after six months of “Montezuma’s Revenge,” I came back weighing 165 or 170, and I looked like walking death. And yet the insurance tables say the maximum weight for a 5’11″ man is 174! Go figure.)

So here’s my plan. I’m keeping my eye on ten pounds at a time, so for now I’m aiming for 220 pounds. In the spring I plan to aim for 210. In the summer, 200. And in the fall, 190. I’ll provide updates from time to time.

Back to my progress so far. I started Jonathan Arnold’s Biggest Loser program a mere 2½ weeks ago at 230 pounds. By the end of this ten-week ordeal, er, program, I plan to weigh 220 pounds. Guess what? I’m well over half-way there already!

I weigh myself every morning, and I average my weight each week on Saturday mornings. For Biggest Loser, I weigh in Tuesday afternoons with my teammates. My official weights so far have gone from 230.0 to 228.4 to 226.0. Not bad for the first three weigh-ins. It gets better, though. This Monday I started a 5-day USANA RESET (see my previous post), and Tuesday morning I had dropped 3.2 pounds from the day before! Wednesday saw another 0.8 go bye-bye, and this morning andother 0.2, when my bathroom scales read 223.4. Sweet.

I think I’ve found the winning combination. The Biggest Loser program—or any other team competition program like it—is effective; the USANA RESET program is effective; together they’re dynamite.

Stay tuned. It feels so strange to wake up each morning actually looking forward to getting on the bathroom scales!

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All Set to Reset

by Carl Eric Johnson on Monday, January 24, 2011

I’m in my second week of Jonathan Arnold’s Biggest Loser program, and things are going well. Last Wednesday I weighed in at 1.4 pounds below my starting weight the week before. My goal is to shed ten pounds in ten weeks, so I’m right on track.

Meanwhile, I placed an order for a USANA® RESET™ kit, and it arrived last Thursday. The photo at right shows what comes in the kit. Its purpose is to jumpstart your metabolism with a high-fiber, low-glycemic diet of nutritious shakes and snack bars. It also contains USANA’s award-winning HealthPak™ nutritional supplements to ensure that you get optimal doses of the nutrients and antioxidants that the body craves. This is important all the time, but especially when on a restricted diet.

The RESET kit contains enough for five days. The photo at left shows a one-day supply: three Nutrimeal™ shakes, two Nutrition Bars, and the HealthPak’s AM and PM pouches of nutritional supplements. The shakes come in three delicious flavors: Chocolate, Vanilla, and Strawberry. And the two different Nutrition Bars are Peanut Butter and Oatmeal Raisin.

I’ve done the RESET twice before, and I have yet to feel famished while on it. Quite to the contrary, the shakes and bars are delicious and convenient. You’re also encouraged to add one fruit and one vegetable each day, and can add more as needed. USANA even lists recommended sources of low-glycemic fruits and vegetables.

A DVD with all sorts of useful information rounds out the kit, along with a brochure and a refrigerator magnet (not pictured). The DVD goes into detail about insulin resistance, the reason why most diets don’t work, and how a low-glycemic diet (like USANA’s shakes and snack bars) can help you break free from carbohydrate cravings. A moderate exercise regimen is also recommended, although strenuous exercise should be avoided during the five days of the RESET.

So what do you do after the five days are over? You’ll want to continue with one or two meal-replacement shakes each day as you reintroduce low-glycemic meals into your diet. The good news is that the five days of the RESET should eliminate carbohydrate cravings, so you don’t even want foods that are bad for you. I chose to do this during the Biggest Loser program, because I knew I would already be documenting my food choices throughout.

The RESET kit retails for under $120 USD, and you can order it directly from my website. Simply go to carl.usana.com, click on Products and then Diet & Energy. However, I can show you a way to get your RESET Kit for under $100 USD. Call or email me first if you are interested.

Meanwhile, I’ll be keeping track of my own progress these five days right here in my blog. Wish me luck!

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I Resolve This Year

by Carl Eric Johnson on Tuesday, January 11, 2011

How many of you have made and already broken some of your New Year’s resolutions? We all have good intentions, but life has a tendency to get in the way. Regardless, I encourage you to continue plugging away at whatever changes you have vowed to make. You had good reasons when you made those resolutions. Think on them from time to time.

One thing that can help is to have an accountability partner. I have several. I am also using this forum as a worldwide accountability partner for me.

With that, here are my four New Year’s resolutions, which I hope you’ll all encourage me to keep:

Get back in shape and shed unwanted pounds. As an independent associate with USANA Health Sciences, I am not the best example of our weight-loss and health-maintenance product lines. Although I am healthier now than I was twenty years ago, I am carrying more weight than is advisable. My goal is to become a walking billboard for USANA.
Write more, preferably something every day. Whether posting to my blogs; corresponding with friends, family, and business associates; or making progress on my book, I intend to write more … and more regularly. It is especially critical that I get back on the ball with my book, Demystifying Prosperity™, as I know it is sure to open lots of doors for me.
Keep a tidy home and office. Those of you who know the shape my house is currently in can sympathize with the enormity of this particular resolution. It’s amazing how much clutter accumulates over the years. Fortunately, I have already started the process of reducing the inflow of clutter. Now it’s a question of sorting through what I already have—recycling, selling, donating, and tossing, as appropriate. My goal is to have a home that is always ready to welcome surprise visitors … like my friend Gerard from Washington state who stopped by two weeks ago while visiting his parents in Maine for the holidays.
Follow up, follow up, follow up. If “The fortune is in the follow-up,” then that could explain why I have not yet made my fortune. I purchased Sage ACT! 2011 last year, and, sad to say, it is still in the box. Once I install it, set it up, and start using it, I know it will help keep me “honest” with the various business connections I’ve made and will continue to make.

These four changes are sure to have a huge impact on my well-being and on my bottom line.

And I took the first step for resolution # 1 just this afternoon: I attended my first session at Integrated Fitness of Dover for their ten-week “Biggest Loser” program. I’ll be exercising six days out of seven, watching what I eat, and feeding my cells the optimal mix of nutrients with USANA.

I also ordered a USANA RESET Kit. It will arrive in a week or two and will jumpstart my weight loss. It is a very effective way to eliminate those pesky carbohydrate cravings. Then following up with a more sensible diet is much easier.

It’s a new year, and I have a renewed resolve to follow through with my four resolutions. I’ll keep you posted.

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Preparing for the New Year

by Carl Eric Johnson on Friday, December 31, 2010

I am normally a very optimistic and positive person, but I am thrilled to bid farewell to 2010. Aren’t you, too? In my own case, the financial challenge of a reduced workload has been my major preoccupation.

Fortunately, this dry spell appears to be coming to an end, as I have four—count ’em, four—job opportunities on the horizon. I am considering all possibilities, from contract assignments to full-time employment. As I explained in my post of September 22, 2009 (yes, this has been a long dry spell!), I miss the “water-cooler camaraderie” of a team environment. Don’t get me wrong: I’ve loved working on my own, lo these many years. But more and more I find myself working on projects that involve collaborating with others whose technical expertise complements my own.

My job search has warmed up, as have short-term contract assignments. It is for these reasons that my blogging habits have suffered. I introduced a Sales Training for Novices thread in October that I have yet to finish. I will; please be patient. In tomorrow’s post I’ll explain what my New Year’s resolutions are.

Meanwhile I am soaking the blackeye peas for my hoppin’ john recipe, which I’ll be making tomorrow morning for good luck. Here is the recipe, in case you want to give it a try, yourselves.

Happy new year, everyone! Welcome 2011!

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Sales Training for Novices

by Carl Eric Johnson on Monday, October 25, 2010

I hate sales, and I hate salespeople.

Have you ever heard this? I have. On numerous occasions. In fact, I used to count myself among the sales-averse. Until recent years, my professional career had been entirely technology-oriented, first as a programmer/analyst (do), then as a technical instructor (teach). I never had to sell anything in those roles.

Or so I thought.

In retrospect there were countless times where I would have been much more effective had I mastered the finer points of persuasion and influence.

One incident in particular stands out. I was teaching a database class to a group of students, one of whom was their manager. She was not as technically adept as her staff, and she was frequently distracted by having to return phone calls. Wishing to give my attentive students the best teaching experience I could, I tended to ignore their manager. As it turned out, she got her nose all bent out of shape because I was not sucking up to her to the extent she thought I should. She saw to it that I never taught another class at her company.

A true sales professional would not have let this situation escalate to that extent. I know that I would handle that situation quite differently today, now that I’ve had more experience in the sales world.

When I first got involved in network marketing, a totally new discipline to me, I got as much training as I could get my hands on. Some sources claimed, “It’s not sales, it’s sharing!” as if sales were a dirty word. Now that I have learned that everything is sales, I also realize that sales at its best is sharing a product or service you deeply believe in with the buying public.

In this series of blog posts, I shall be using examples from all three of my distinct lines of business—technical training, Web services, and network marketing—as well as from my ongoing job search, where I am striving to sell myself to a prospective employer.

I have distilled this introductory sales training down to the following seven points:

Be a product of the product—this is the most important of the seven
How to find prospects—whatever a “prospect” is; I’ll be defining sales terminology as I go along
Begin with the end in mind—know what your particular goal is for any potential sales transaction
Ask open-ended questions—it is extremely important to get your prospect to talk
Make your presentation or pitch—what to say and what not to say
Handle objections—we’ll learn that objections are good and not to be feared
The fortune is in the follow-up—what, quite frankly, most of us fail to do

Stay tuned as I deal with each of these in the next seven posts. Even if you are not officially in sales, what you’ll learn here will serve you well in all aspects of life.

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Time to Moving Forward

by Carl Eric Johnson on Wednesday, October 6, 2010

It has been over a month since my last post. This would be nothing out of the ordinary, except that my last post was my thirty-first consecutive post. I used the 31 days of August and the 31 chapters of the book of Proverbs in the Bible as an excuse to get into the habit of daily blogging.

So much for habit.

Last week I went to my favorite Chinese-Japanese restaurant, and my fortune cookie contained the following message, grammatical errors intact:

No one is standing in your way anymore, time to moving forward.

It is indeed time to move forward once more—long past the time, for that matter.

My August discipline was a wonderful exercise, but I will admit that it drained me. There were many days when evening rolled around and I realized that I hadn’t yet blogged for that day. Despite having tasks that remained to be done, I kept my promise to you and kept my blog a priority. Consequently, I ended August with a backlog of duties to accomplish, and I spent much of September just catching up.

Since then I have implemented a number of systems, and I am much better prepared to keep current on my various projects, one of which is to keep this blog fresh and interesting for my readers.

I have much to share with you in the coming weeks and months. Thank you for staying tuned to this site. Please share your comments below.

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Ode to a Capable Spouse

by Carl Eric Johnson on Tuesday, August 31, 2010

Proverbs 31 is comprised of two discrete sections. According to my online source, verses 1–9 carry the heading “The Teaching of King Lemuel’s Mother.” This section is interesting, but it is verses 10–31 that always catch my attention when I read this final chapter in the book of Proverbs. This section is titled “Ode to a Capable Wife.”

Reading these verses with 21^st century eyes, one might be tempted to dismiss them as abject sexism. Knowing what I know about the history at the time, however, they are actually unusually liberating.

Regardless, I invite you to read the following, substituting “husband” for “wife,” as appropriate. What I read is a description of the ideal partner/mate/spouse—not only the spouse that I have in my ideal life, but the spouse that I am in his or her ideal life.

With that, here are verses 10–31 in their entirety. I hope you enjoy them as much as I always do.

A capable wife who can find?
She is far more precious than jewels.
The heart of her husband trusts in her,
and he will have no lack of gain.
She does him good, and not harm,
all the days of her life.
She seeks wool and flax,
and works with willing hands.
She is like the ships of the merchant,
she brings her food from far away.
She rises while it is still night
and provides food for her household
and tasks for her servant-girls.
She considers a field and buys it;
with the fruit of her hands she plants a vineyard.
She girds herself with strength,
and makes her arms strong.
She perceives that her merchandise is profitable.
Her lamp does not go out at night.
She puts her hands to the distaff,
and her hands hold the spindle.
She opens her hand to the poor,
and reaches out her hands to the needy.
She is not afraid for her household when it snows,
for all her household are clothed in crimson.
She makes herself coverings;
her clothing is fine linen and purple.
Her husband is known in the city gates,
taking his seat among the elders of the land.
She makes linen garments and sells them;
she supplies the merchant with sashes.
Strength and dignity are her clothing,
and she laughs at the time to come.
She opens her mouth with wisdom,
and the teaching of kindness is on her tongue.
She looks well to the ways of her household,
and does not eat the bread of idleness.
Her children rise up and call her happy;
her husband too, and he praises her:
“Many women have done excellently,
but you surpass them all.”
Charm is deceitful, and beauty is vain,
but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised.
Give her a share in the fruit of her hands,
and let her works praise her in the city gates. (Prov 31:10-31, NRSV)

I have enjoyed spending these 31 days of August with you. The 31 chapters of the book of Proverbs in the Bible have provided excellent food for thought on most of these days. Stay tuned as I “decompress” the effect that this exercise has had on me in the days and weeks ahead. And, as always, thank you for your feedback below. God’s blessings on you and yours.

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Neither Poverty nor Riches

by Carl Eric Johnson on Monday, August 30, 2010

Perhaps my favorite passage in the entire book of Proverbs is in today’s 30^th chapter:

Two things I ask of you;
do not deny them to me before I die:
Remove far from me falsehood and lying;
give me neither poverty nor riches;
feed me with the food that I need,
or I shall be full, and deny you,
and say, “Who is the Lord?”
or I shall be poor, and steal,
and profane the name of my God. (Prov 30:7-9, NRSV)

“Remove far from me falsehood and lying.” I read this as referring both to my own falsehood and lying and that of the people I interact with.

“Give me neither poverty nor riches.” The extremes have their unique challenges, as eloquently expressed in verse 9 of this passage. Please, God, place me right in the middle.

“Feed me with the food that I need.” Too much and I face all sorts of health challenges that result from overindulgence. Too little and I starve.

Network marketing is a great wealth-building vehicle for all people. Anyone can succeed, regardless of education, training, and finances. Most network marketing companies have an obscenely low start-up cost … at least in comparison to other business opportunities such as franchises. (Of course, if you have tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars to invest up front, franchises offer a great systematic way to generate wealth.)

One might think, therefore, that the largest fear we all have to deal with is the fear of failure. In my experience, a more insidious fear is the fear of success. If I become rich, I’ll lose my friends. Self-sabotage is rampant in network marketing.

Don’t you succumb to it! You can do far more good with excess wealth than you can if you remain in paycheck-to-paycheck mode. Yes, there are those who squander their gains on fast cars and, in some cases, fast women. But the vast majority of successful network marketers are overwhelmingly generous with their wealth.

In my own company, there are many stories of philanthropy among the 150 or so members of USANA‘s Million Dollar Club. One of the top income earners in USANA is the single largest donor to the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation. USANA’s founder, Dr. Myron Wentz, is a huge philanthropist. Not only has he subsidized Sanoviv, his world-famous holistic medical center in Baja California, with his own funds, he has established two Wentz Medical Centers, one in Uganda and another in Cambodia. And he and USANA are huge donors to the Children’s Hunger Fund. Just this past week at our International Convention in Salt Lake City, we USANA associates presented a check for $125,000 to Dave Phillips, president of CHF.

Craig Newmark, founder of Craigslist, has a philosophy that resonates with me:

Make a comfortable living and then make a difference.

In this age of economic uncertainty, the ability to make a comfortable living is an inestimable blessing. Don’t be afraid to succeed. By doing so you can make a huge difference in this world.

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Breakfast

by Carl Eric Johnson on Sunday, August 29, 2010

I love breakfast. If I didn’t also love fine dining so much, breakfast would probably be my favorite meal of the day. Through years of exposure to nutritional guidance, including becoming a Certified Health Coach with Dr. Ray Strand‘s Healthy for Life organization (use Discount Code cejco to get 20% off), I also recognize that most people do themselves a disservice in their food choices at breakfast time.

Here are some simple guidelines to follow to make breakfast your most healthful meal of the day:

Don’t skip breakfast! It fuels your furnace and jump starts your metabolism, allowing you to burn more calories throughout the day. They say you should eat something almost immediately upon arising in the morning. I am not there yet. I do enjoy savoring my first few cups of coffee before I can even think about food, but by 8:30 or 9:00 I am ready for breakfast.
Ultimately, eat whatever you want, but pay attention to how your food choices make you feel. I love bacon and I love hash browns. Neither of these is particularly healthful. But eaten in moderation, and truly savored, I don’t deny myself these treats. I do monitor how I feel after eating them, though, and I invite you to do the same.
Avoid cereals. With the exception of whole oatmeal (stay away from instant anything), breakfast cereals are probably the worst thing you can put into your bodies. For the most part they consist of the two ingredients we all need to limit: refined bleached flour and various forms of sugars. To add insult to injury, the milk we put on them is mucous-forming. (Ever wonder where that nagging clearing-of-the-throat comes from?)
Likewise, avoid breakfast breads: doughnuts, danish, cinnamon rolls, etc. These are all high-glycemic, give you an initial energy boost, bring you crashing down, and make you ravenously hungry for more. If you find yourself starving in the middle of the morning, you probably ate something high-glycemic for breakfast.
Eggs are good. Wait a minute! Don’t they raise cholesterol levels? Friends, dietary cholesterol is not where we get our elevated levels of cholesterol from. If anything, our overconsumption of refined bleached flour is the culprit.
Plain yogurt is fine, but the flavored versions typically contain more sugar than is advisable. And absolutely avoid those brands that contain artificial sweeteners. As a rule of thumb, I avoid any food that calls itself “Diet,” “Lite,” “Low-Fat,” “Low-Carb,” or even “Healthy Choice,” because what these products tend to use instead (or as fillers) is typically far worse for us.
Fresh fruit is great. Fruit juice is good but not great. Rule of thumb: The closer a food is to its natural state, the better it is for you.
A breakfast shake is an alternative, but most of these are high-glycemic, too. The only brand I recommend is USANA’s Nutrimeal. All of USANA’s foods (even its Rev3 energy drink!) are low-glycemic.

To reiterate the main point, definitely have something for breakfast, preferably low-glycemic to give you sustained energy throughout the morning.

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So what does this have to do with the 29^th chapter of Proverbs? Absolutely nothing. There was only one verse that stood out to me this morning, and I really didn’t want to go where it would have taken me. I’ll let you draw your own conclusions, but it does seem to point to the economic dampening effect of high taxes:

By justice a king gives stability to the land,
but one who makes heavy exactions ruins it. (Prov 29:4, NRSV)

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Get Rich Quick!

by Carl Eric Johnson on Saturday, August 28, 2010

Does the title of this post send shivers up your spine? It certainly does mine. And yet I continue to be astounded by the sheer quantity of get-rich-quick scams going around.

Because I am writing a book on network marketing, I am purposely on multiple email lists, so I see it all. This is actually very good for me, as it will all be fodder for my chapter on “How Not to Promote Your Business.”

The Internet facilitates the proliferation of get-rich-quick scams, but even the ancients knew something about them. The 28^th chapter of Proverbs practically mentions them by name:

Anyone who tills the land will have plenty of bread,
but one who follows worthless pursuits will have plenty of poverty.
The faithful will abound with blessings,
but one who is in a hurry to be rich will not go unpunished.
The miser is in a hurry to get rich
and does not know that loss is sure to come. (Prov 28:19-20,22, NRSV)

I am using these 31 days of August to discuss the 31 chapters of Proverbs, but my purpose is not religious as much as it is folk wisdom and common sense. (I’m also saddened at how biblically illiterate so many younger people are, not being taught the Bible even as world literature, and so I am honored to do even a small part in generating awareness of the Bible.) In a few days I’ll get back to my usual (and less regular) posting habits, but I have enjoyed the discipline of blogging daily. I may have to find other excuses to do so.

Back to the topic at hand. The sad part for me about the proliferation of get-rich-quick scams is that they cause many people to lump them together with legitimate opportunities. The chapter “How to Choose a Network Marketing Company” will deal with criteria to use to separate the wheat from the chaff—oops, another biblical reference.

I have found network marketing to be a great equalizer. Listen to the stories of those who have gone on to amass great fortunes in network marketing, and you’ll be amazed at their sheer ordinariness. They didn’t have large sums of money to invest up front, otherwise they may have gone into stock or real estate investing instead. They come from all walks of life with all levels of education. Anyone can do this.

Invariably, what they all have in common is a huge Why. They needed to make this work … and so they did.

The neat thing is that we can too.

But it probably won’t be quick, and it will take some effort on our parts. There’s a reason they call it network marketing.

So keep an open mind. In network marketing you might just find a vehicle to help you achieve the financial freedom you desire.

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