The Path To Success Differs: Henry Swieca to Russell Simmons To Vemma

Successful people know that there is no easy path to success. There’s always something else to tackle and it is often a very daunting task.  Some quotes on what it takes to be successful:

• “If you work harder than everyone else, success can’t hide from you. You will find it. And you will enjoy it.” Chad Howse 
•  “There is no substitute for passion, hard work and dedication.” Ronn Torossian, CEO, 5WPR 
•  "The most difficult aspect of being a CEO is you driving your day, and not letting the day drive you. By looking through tasks each morning and resolving to allocate the time to concentrate on the CEO priorities, the actions only the CEO can take to move the company forward, you can keep your eye on moving the company forward.” Bob Compton
•  "With the exception of one or two days a year, I work out every single day. Fitting a workout into the work day reduces stress, keeps you healthy, and is great for getting “alone time” to work out business and personal problems.” Mike Cassidy
• “Having been a Division I college athlete, I can say that being a CEO is significantly more strenuous... There's an expectation that you always have to be positive, energetic, and decisive, which drains every ounce of your energy.” Marc Barros
• "Maintaining a steady reservoir of energy -- physically, mentally, emotionally and even spiritually -- requires refueling it intermittently." Tony Schwartz
• "Meditation has given me centeredness and creativity. It's also given me peace and health." Ray Dalio 
• “At Vemma every day we strive to do more --- and that takes dedication, focus and more.”
• "Stress-reduction and mindfulness don't just make us happier and healthier, they're a proven competitive advantage for any business that wants one.” Arianna Huffington
• “For me, my number one productivity practice is to set priorities at the beginning of the day, before I get lost in the chaos that goes on around me. When I sit down at my desk, I set priorities.” Tony Stubblebine
• “What I was depriving myself from was time in the day where there was no pressure and no expectations. For the same reasons that I felt most creative on Saturday mornings and on planes, 4 a.m. has become a place of productive peace. That feeling is why I love what I do. I don't need a vacation. I don't need to step away. I just need a couple hours a day before anyone else is up.” Paul Dejoe
• “I made 5,127 prototypes of my vacuum before I got it right. There were 5,126 failures. But I learned from each one. That's how I came up with a solution. So I don't mind failure. I've always thought that schoolchildren should be marked by the number of failures they've had. The child who tries strange things and experience lots of failures to get there is probably more creative.” Sir James Dyson
• “Take Chances, Be Honest and work damn hard.” Henry Swieca

What is your favorite quote on success?

Vemma Changing Lives

Eighteen months ago, Presidential Stu Massengill of Danville, California, came home from college with several boxes of Vemma and a plan to turn his casual Vemma business into a full-time career. Stu gave his mom a box of Bod•ē Burn and asked her to try out the product and tell him what she thought of it. When she ended up loving it, she signed up with Vemma.

 

“We did it as a way to help our son,” says Stu’s mother Jane Massengill “We figured if we made anything with the business, it would be an unexpected bonus. Needless to say, our success now is way beyond what we’d anticipated.” “I love how this lifestyle lets you travel to places all across the world and change lives while doing it,” says Stu, who is looking forward to visiting Vemma team members in Europe next month. “I first heard about Vemma from my friend Bas Bunge, a foreign exchange student from Norway. Vemma was more like a hobby for the first few months. But then something happened. I got a text message from someone saying, ‘Thanks for changing my life!’ It hit me that I could help people through Vemma — help them create a life without a boss or the demanding schedules that usually go along with success.”*

 

It was around that same time that the school year ended and Stu headed back to his parents’ house in Danville for a few months. He sat down with his mom and explained the business, giving her a box of Bod•ē Burn to try out. “My parents always taught me to follow your passion,” Stu says. “So I guess that’s why they supported me. My dad was really skeptical about the products at first. But by now, they both enjoy the products and my mom builds the business with me. It’s been great.”

 The Parents’ Perspective

“Kevin and I are the least likely candidates to approach about the Vemma business,” says Jane. She is a successful life coach with a booming private practice and Stu’s father Kevin Massengill is a physician at Kaiser Medical Center. Both have achieved remarkable success in their careers and weren’t looking for anything else to take up their valuable time. “When Stu came home all excited about Vemma, we decided to support him, if only for the personal growth we saw it could give him,” Jane says. She started taking Bod•ē Burn and loved how much energy she felt. She ordered more, eventually losing 7 stubborn pounds on the Bod•ē program.** After that, her husband decided to try it too. “Since Kevin started on the products, he’s lost some weight and it’s been interesting to see how conscious he’s become of the way nutrition impacts your health.”**

Several months after Jane and Kevin started taking the products, Jed Buenaluz stopped by their house and Jane got talking with him. “It was the personal development aspect of the business that caught my attention" says Jane. "Jed told me, ‘This is what you’ve done professionally for years, helping people find their inner strength and overcome their personal gremlins.’ The idea of working a business with my son and using my professional life coaching skills to help build leaders finally got me hooked.” Jane and Stu now put on events together regularly, which has helped boost Stu to Presidential within 16 months and Jane to Platinum.* “When a young person joins our team, Stu trains them, and when an ‘older’ person joins, I train them,” says Jane. “It works out really well.”

Tips from Vemma Hotshot Stu Massengill

·         Stay plugged in. Ninety percent of success is showing up. Go to events and listen to phone calls. I basically just hung out for the first two months as I learned the business.

·         Find someone who has what you want and learn from them.

·         We’re not selling energy drinks, we’re building leaders.

·         I always knew there was something inside me that was really great. With Vemma, I found what I could do and how I could change lives.

·         Never stop going after what you want out of life.

·         Get a plan. When I got serious about Vemma, I sat down with two of my best friends and we mapped out a plan of how to make the business work. We’d do at least one event a day, sometimes three or four.

Ruth Lichtenstein's Newspaper calls on Mayor de Blasio to Open Up on Murdered Menachem Stark

Read this article fromv HaModia, someone who supports the New York mayor, but has challenged him on the murder of hareidi Jewish man Menachem Stark.

It Begins...

Mr. Mayor, the Silence is Deafening

Nobody likes disturbing a mayor during the “sheva brachos” of his inauguration. But a dastardly deed has been committed in the city, and residents await the traditional reassurance that comes with a personal mayoral statement.

However, ever since the abduction and brutal murder of Reb Menachem Stark, Hy”d, Thursday night that shattered the Orthodox community — and all decent New Yorkers — Mayor Bill de Blasio’s voice has been missing from the uproar. (Read More)

Tuesday, January 7, 2014 | ו' שבט תשע"ד

Ruth Lichtenstein is the Publisher and Editor-in-Chief of HaModia

Michael Lichtenstein to Pamela Anderson, Fareed Zakaria To Ami Mesika: Immigrant Success Stories

From real-estate moguls to entertainers, America is lined with amazing success stories. As the New Year of 2014 approaches, wanted to share some of my favorite quotes as it comes to entrepreneur success stories:

·                     “Immigrant families generally come to America with many strengths, including healthy, intact families, strong work ethic and aspirations, and for many, a cohesive community of fellow immigrants from the same country of origin.” Princeton.edu

·                     “As in the past, so it may be in the future – Americans will always look to a fresh wave of immigrants who are leaner, tougher, younger and more willing to sacrifice their bodies to do the work that we can’t or won’t do.” NYTimes.com

·                     “There is simply no substitute for hard work.” Michael Lichtenstein

·                     "Here in the United States, we do a lot of talking. Foreign people talk less. They just do. Results is what pays the bills." Ola Ayeni

·                     "America has succeeded not because of the ingenuity of its government programs but because of the vigor of its society. It has thrived because it has kept itself open to the world – to goods and services, to ideas and inventions, and, above all to peoples and cultures." Fareed Zakaria

·                     “Immigrants don’t come to this country to do what they love; they come here to make money.” QuickSprout.com

·                     “Hard work never harmed anyone – working hard is good for the soul.” Ami Mesika

·                     “Grit and determination to get ahead are often what drive [immigrants] as they strive to take advantage of better economic opportunities in America.” Nancy Foner

·                     "I'm an immigrant myself. It was a tough road to come to America and work." Pamela Anderson

·                     “I'm very inspired by him-it was my father who taught us that an immigrant must work twice as hard as anybody else, that he must never give up.” Zinedine Zidane

·                     “Of course, everyone in the New World is an immigrant or a descendant of immigrants, and immigrants have built America and continue to do so. Legal or illegal, they are almost universally good people who work to better their lot and that of their children.” Mark Helprin

Effective Communication with Donors

The Internet is a very busy place. So how does a nonprofit stand out from the Internet crowd and make a splash?  By effectively communicating with donors and potential donors 24/7.

Let’s take an example. Car donation. There are a gazillion car donation programs out there. How do you get the potential car donor to donate specifically to YOUR car donation program, let’s say Kars For Kids. The answer is to use every means possible to reach and engage individuals that share the aims of this nonprofit which is all about educating and mentoring children.

The vehicles used by a nonprofit for communication with potential donors is important but probably not as important as the message conveyed. By all means, make use of snail mail, email, Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube, but make sure you say what it is that grabs attention in this crowded competitive public sphere.  A simple way to grab attention is to put yourself inside the donor’s head, and then read or view your materials from that perspective. You want to make sure you answer the following donor-specific questions:

1.       Why me?

2.       What for?

3.       Why now?

4.       Who says?

Review all materials with these four questions in mind before you send them out into the world. Watch for shortcomings. Address them.

And do it for all materials you send out, using the same reviews process. Getting into the donor’s head is easy if you know the demographic who share your goals and you ask all the right questions.  Knowing the demographic, of course, is a crucial element in crafting your message.

People with the potential to become donors or volunteers in your nonprofit:

·         Share your mission

·         Believe that your nonprofit is a stable one

·         Feel included, and have a sense they are valued by your organization

·         Respect the leaders and founders of your nonprofit

 It’s important to note that donors don’t give out of a sense of guilt or obligation or because they’ve received from you some glossy promotional materials. They also do not give solely to get a tax deduction. None of these factors favor your nonprofit over the competition. It’s the extra bit of oomph you put into communicating and engaging with your public that woos them to give to you instead of to the other guy.

It’s about making them feel a part of what you do: making them feel important. And let’s face it—you couldn’t do it without them. Now go forth and make them feel it. 

Woodie Cars

Most of us just love cars. Shiny new cars and old vintage cars are just some of the cars that tug at our hearts and keep people looking at the Kars for Kids garage page in hopes of seeing some rare find. Perhaps one of the most pleasurable and exotic cars we can still occasionally see on the road is the woodie, a beloved American car with wood incorporated into its body.

The very earliest cars were made of wood. So it was not exactly a surprise when a car incorporating wood into its design became a runaway hit. That would be the Ford Mercury woodie station wagon.

Bragging Rights

Produced during the 1930’s and 1940’s, the woodie came with prestige and bragging rights. It was one of the most, if not the most expensive model in the Ford line from year to year. The funny thing was, the car was high maintenance and had all sorts of foibles but everyone still wanted one, still coveted that woodie above all other cars.

Ford was the industry leader for sales of cars with wooden bodies. But the manufacturer kept production of these beauties to a very limited number, owing to the smaller demand for this gorgeous but impractical vehicle. The demand was mostly among the higher echelons of society: movie studio moguls, resorts, country squires. Of course, in those days, no one called these cars “woodies.”

Woodies being made of wood swell and shrink with the weather. As a result, the cars make a lot of noise as the glue and screws holding the body together shift during contraction and expansion of the wood. Also, think of the wooden hull of a boat and how much maintenance it needs and you begin to get an idea of how much effort a woodie owner must put into cosseting his moving acquisition. The owner’s manuals always included a recommendation for annual stripping and refinishing.

The Woodie Narrative

Of course, that makes no difference to a country squire or a movie mogul. They can afford to hire people to do that sort of thing for them. The annual refinishing was all a part of what made the woodie and the narrative that went with it, something special.

Henry Ford had a thing about making his enterprises totally self-sufficient. To that end he purchased rubber plantations and ore mines to produce materials for his cars. In deciding to create the woodie, he bought huge tracts of forest reserves in 1920, on Iron Mountain in the Upper Michigan Peninsula, located around 500 miles northwest of Detroit. There he grew stands of maple, gum, birch, and basswood, all for the purpose of building Model T floorboards and body frames. In addition to growing the trees, he had his own people cutting timber, ran his own sawmill, and cut and created wooden body parts on location.

Ford didn’t like waste and could always find a purpose for everything. The leftover wood pieces and even the sawdust from the mill were not disposed of but were used to create Ford Charcoal Briquettes. There’s a lot you could say about Ford, who was a known anti-Semite, for instance, but one thing for sure: he had the green ethos down pat, way before anyone else was concerned with recycling and making good use of all resources. He might not have cared much about the environment, but he appreciated that everything had a purpose.