Customer Launch!

It has been a while since I've written. The girls got sick which means Jeff and I got sick as well. And what was a 1-2 day downtime for them, wound up being a week down for the count for us.
This past wek, however, MyLifeShare has come back into my existance full force. My first associate joined, a great friend of mine who lives in Colorado with her beautiful family. She is a Mac user, so she should have some unique challenges and input for the designers as other Mac users have been doing. She sent me pictures of 3 cards she had made-2 thank you cards from her son's birthday party and a Father's Day card--of course all were personal, creative and, i'm sure, will touch the hearts of those who recieve those cards.
This past Monday, my oldest daughter graduated from preschool. Today I made cards to send to the grandparents so they could see her in cap and gown-we weren't aware they were going to do this or we would have asked they try to attend as seeing 4 and 5 year olds in cap and gown is pretty spectacular! But at least we have pictures and MyLifeShare:-)
After life got in the way yesterday, I realized I had missed the Wednesday call--about the customer launch! SO today, people were finally allowed into my little world I had spoken so highly about and allowed to try MyLifeShare for themselves.
2 friends offered input as to how to better the site, which, of course, I passed on to customer service to evaluate. They were both impressed that I could simply contact headquarters through the "contact customer service" button and say "Hey-we want this". Where else can you do that?

Meeting Michael

Monday was a fabulous day for being a LifeShare Associate in Southern CA. We had a wonderful meeting with the CEO, Michael Yanke. A great looking guy with dazzling brown eyes and a fire and passion for MyLifeShare which is contagious. I had known this hearing him speak on the weekly calls, but to meet him and see how excited he was for his little baby that was growing before his eyes was encouraging, and something I hadn't experienced in my working life for a LONG time. (Needless to say as a stay at home mom the past 3.5 years, I haven't really had a working life recently, but back when I WAS working, a leader such as Michael was rare-I had one such leader in my professional career once in a time period of 7 years.) We had a good laugh over our envy of other associates who were able to share so easily due to them having older kids in activities. Hopefully this summer and next year I will meet more parents and be able to do the same-share MyLifeShare with other parents!
Other associates, and there were a LOT of them, brought cards they had made, and each and every one told such a great story. A picture is worth a thousand words and with all of the pictures on those cards, they were literally spewing words-words of love, friendship, laughter and some just plain had words on them! I wished that everyone I knew, most of whom are out of state, could have seen all of those cards to realize the truly endless possibilities MyLifeShare offers.
My husband had an interview on Tuesday, so, in old school form, I brought us back to our roots and sent his interviewer(on his behalf, of course) a thank you card. While he also sent an e-mail to be timely as other interviewees(is that a word?)would, no doubt, be, I hope that the $.88 investment in a card will be that added touch to get him in the running for the second interview and, in the end, the position.

Sharing with Friends

I had posted several time on Facebook and on an online mom's group I am on regarding MyLifeShare, but the offer of free cards seemed to fall on deaf ears. Then, this week, I posted on my online group again asking for people to send me pictures. Seems people are more than willing to share pictures with you! So this weekend I spent a great deal of time making cards for my friends. I am hopeful that by sharing, I am getting the word out. Once in their hands, I'm confident the products will speak for themselves.
One of my friends requested that I make her a wedding shower card for her sister. I told her her sister needed to sign up so that she could take pictures with all of her guests at her wedding and make those pictures her thank you cards.
Another friend, a budding photog, had captred a few pictures of a baby hawk in a nest. Her young daughter was enamored by the "itty bitty birdie", so I made her daughter a card so she could enjoy her "friend" each and every day!

Weekly Meetings

Every Wednesday, LifeShare has a corporate meeting where all associates are invited to listen in to the newest updates. It is nice that the company is small, so I feel like part of a family as opposed to just a number. Michael Yanke, the CEO is so motivating and his excitement for MyLifeShare is simply contagious.
This past week one of the other associates spoke about her involvement. It appears from the people I have heard about that are the most successful that they all have Direct Sales experience, most of them quite a few years. I know My sponsor, Niki, falls into this category. Perhaps it is the years of talking to people or the seemingly endless contact lists these ladies seem to have that has assisted them early on in the process of sharing MyLifeShare with people. I have NO sales experience unless you count my 2 month stint as an outside salesperson which was a miserable failure. Then again, how exciting can industrial cleaning chemicals be compared to sharing wonderful snippets of life with the people we love?
I've sent several more cards this week and also inquired with Corporate office to see what states are NOT yet represented. To my surprise, I actually know people in all but 2 of the states that are not yet on the MyLifeShare train. So my next task is to get cards to those friends in those states.

Be Careful What You Wish For...

My husband had been with his current company for almost a year and was growing weary of the position. We had a discussion in which he discussed his growing frustration and I told him how I wished I had more time to grow my businesses and begin to, once again, contribute financially to our family. Obligations of a salary and to our children came first, so we didn't think much of the discussion. It was more of a airing of grievances which we do every so often about life in general.A few days later, this past Friday, he came to me in the morning and told me he was pretty sure he was getting laid off. His boss was coming to town and asked him to bring his computer with him and to have the pipeline updated. He told me "My boss usually has his head in the clouds, so for him to be specific that I bring my computer, I know something is up." And he was right.His boss gave him the option of taking 2 weeks severance or being a consultant to the company. So he is making his decision and trying to formulate a way to still get unemployment benefits while being a consultant, but I'm not sure that is possible. So I have been thrust into the position of jumping in feet first and trying to grow my 2 businesses-FAST!I called Niki yesterday and we will be meeting this week so I can talk to her about an action plan with MyLifeShare. My husband, who is in sales, told me this needs to go viral, so I'm going to be posting on Facebook and other places like crazy. He also suggested blogging, which is why I'm starting this today. I hope as this story unfolds that this blog will serve as inspiration to myself to see where I have been and to others to see what it is like to start from ground zero and grow a business with MyLifeShare.

The First Few Weeks

The first weeks with MyLifeShare, I spent quite a bit of time using the studio and making cards with the layouts provided. I made my husband an anniversary card that still sits on his desk. A simple white card that has about 10 of my favorite pictures of the 2 of us throughout the years we have spent together.I knew I needed to get the word out, so I started at Selman Chevrolet. The sales manager was excited and told me he would speak to the higher ups about it. In my excitement, I allowed him to take all of my samples. I would just have to make more cards to send to myself to replace them. I also tried a ford dealership and Toyota dealership. The manager at Toyota told me to try higher end vehicles. So I spent time making cards for car dealerships and sent several of them out. I didn't hear anything back from anyone. While I was discouraged that noone immediately picked up the phone and felt that these were the greatest tool in sales since the telephone, I realized that this was just a hobby and was first and foremost a tool for me in my other business, so I didn't sweat it. Over the weeks, we had conference calls with Michael Yanke, the CEO of MyLifeShare, that always lifted my spirits and inspired me. A meeting with a group of associates where Michaela showed us how to use blog skins and images from the web to enhance our cards breathed new life into me and the cards I was creating as well. But then reality would set in that I was a stay at home mom who had 8 hours a week when the kids were in school to do what I needed to do for a business and for MYSELF. But I longed to be able to share MyLifeShare with others, as I feel it is really going places and is the future.

The First Encounter

On Monday, March 29, I took my two girls with me to a local park to play. They had met a little girl there and I was speaking with her mother about how I had recently started with an MLM company. We chatted about preschool and kindergarten and then they had to leave for lunch. The girls were not done playing, so we moved to the swings. Another mom, dressed in black work out clothes and big sunglasses, hair up in a ponytail came over to the swings with her son. We started talking and she mentioned that she,too, was an MLM seller and had had great success with the company she had been with. She then mentioned how she had been offered a great opportunity to join a start up called MyLifeShare and mentioned how I could use the cards as personal "thank yous" in my other business. I went home and watched the videos and read the site to see more what MyLifeShare was about. I was intrigued, but admittedly skeptical about such new company. But for a $55 investment that I could write off for my other business, I figured "Why not?" So I signed up as an associate the next day-March 30. I am associate number 279.