Hi! My name is Richard Burns.

August 31st, 2012 my life, and the life of my incredible, brilliant, patient and loving wife and best friend Patty Burns, changed forever.

But let me start from the beginning and paint a picture for you:

My Situation

Here is my situation as of the day before Valentines Day 2012. I will let Patty tell you exactly how she felt at this time in a later article.

• I was 50 years old
• Patty & I had to leave San Diego (Paradise)  months before because we couldn’t afford to live there anymore & thought we would never be able to buy a house.
• Patty was diagnosed with Type II Diabetes in August 2010 & the doctors at the time told me I was borderline diabetic.
• I was 50++ lbs overweight. In the photo above I tipped the scales at 277 lbs in April 2011. On August 31, 2012 I weighed in at 247 lbs, but my weight had plateaued and I was heading back up.
• I couldn’t walk up a single flight of stairs to our apartment without being out of breath.
• We were living in a 2 bedroom apartment with one room full of boxes and bins.
• Driving a 6 year old economy car and we had just one car in the family.
• Living paycheck to paycheck. Because my employer had taken 5 months off for a hip replacement surgery, my monthly earnings had been cut to to just $2,000.00.
• Patty had to work full time to supplement our income and we were barely making ends meet.
• I couldn’t even afford to buy my wife a Valentine’s Day present.
• I had hit rock bottom and was fed up with the life I was living. I had had enough.

Can you see a little of yourself in that description?

That Day I Decided

#1 – I am going to find products that can help my wife and I get our health and ideal
weight back. I committed to getting back under 200 lbs.

#2 – I am going to earn enough money to not only pay for those products, but find a
way I can live the way I want to live & provide the lifestyle for my wife that she
deserves.

What Happened

Its strange how once you put your intention out there that the universe or God or your
higher power, whatever you want to call it, puts what you want and need directly in
front of you.

In less than 30 days I met people that represented 4 different companies with products
that promised to help us regain our health and ideal weight and make extra income. And I
was not even out looking for them. All I had done to that point was sit on my couch
surfing the internet looking for a magical cure for being fat and broke.

Even when presented with the products and opportunity I didn’t take advantage of it
immediately. I had to do my research. (I wonder how many opportunities pass us by as we make sure all the I’s are dotted and the T’s crossed)

Well I spent nearly 9 months researching the products, the industry and the opportunities.

The 5 Things That I Found on My Search That Are Necessary for Success.

#1 – A proven product with a history of helping people be healthier.
Products that are made to a higher standard than most nutritional supplements and that are endorsed by top level athletes, nutritionists and Doctors.

And products that have a compelling story behind them. Stories sell. As Zig Ziglar said “The greatest person that ever lived taught using stories.”

#2 – A company that was at least 5 years old.
What I found is that 30% of franchises make it past 5 years, 20% of all businesses make it past 5 years, but less than 2% network marketing and party plan companies make it past 5 years. No pre-launch or start up companies for me.

#3 – A company big enough to have all the growing pains out of the way, but
not so big that sales had already plateaued.
That meant finding a company big enough to have the infrastructure to be global and to handle double digit growth comfortably, but not one that was in more than 20 countries yet. The sweet spot seems to be between $500 – $800 million/year in sales volume.

#4 – A compensation plan that rewards you for coaching people.
3 of the 4 companies I investigated had a pay plan that rewarded you mainly for your own work. Once someone you recruited became truly successful, they broke away and you stopped getting credit for their sales volume. They call it stair step breakaway compensation.

Oh you might get a small bonus for those people that become successful in a stair step
breakaway compensation, but you had to go right back to working hard to replace them
in your front line because you had lost their sales volume. There was no incentive to
continue coaching people far down the line from you, because chances are you were
not going to make much money from them.

#5 – A fully engaged mentor or mentors.
A person or couple that is both very successful and active in the company. A
mentor that will take you under their wing and spend one on one time coaching you.
there is a huge difference between training & coaching. But that is for another post.

So What Products Did I Finally Chose to Use?

USANA’s Story

The products Patty and I started taking are from USANA Health Sciences.

USANA’s core products are nutritional supplements made to pharmaceutical standards, rated #1 in the world by independent labs and are endorsed by Olympic & Professional Athletes. Even Dr. Oz endorses them. That guy is amazing!

Also important to me is that USANA provides a customized solution for each person after doing a complete health assessment online. To make it incredibly convenient you get your recommended daily supplements in pre-packaged bubble packs. One for the morning and one for the evening. Its called My Health Pak. They even print your name on each little daily pack. No more lining up 3 or 4 or 5 bottles of vitamins to get what you really need.  Its all in one convenient little pack.

We also got right on their weight management system starting with RESET. We lost 5 lbs
each in our 1st week and we are slowly and healthily continuing to take the weight off.

My goal is to get down under 200 lbs and I set a date of September 7, 2013 to get there. Stay tuned for updates and photos of my progress.

The USANA Business

After 4 weeks of getting our bodies moving on the path to better health and weight,
now we are getting serious about the business end.

Our mentors, Dr Norm & Barbara Dawson, are some of the most successful people in the
company, Million Dollar Club members, and have won the prestigious Dr. Wentz Vision award. The award only goes to one associate in the company each year.

More that that, they have become close friends and people who are sincerely interested in both our physical and financial well being.

Since then we have met people like Tony Daum who are also helping to mentor us. Now
here is the truly amazing thing. We are not in Tony’s downline. He makes nothing
directly from helping us. There is a company wide bonus that he would get a small
piece of 1% of the companies total sales, but he is not directly making anything from
us. And others have offered to help who also have no vested interest in our success.

The company culture teaches people to help, the company provides a small incentive,
and all the most successful people seem to be willing to go out of their way to help
others grow their business and gain better health.

We are excited and can see clearly that we are on the road to both better health and financial freedom.

Come join us in our adventure!

Visit richardburns.usana.com or just give me a call at 619-277-6495