They Started Over With Almost Nothing, But Waited Years to Tell Anyone

In December of 1997, Melissa put a profile up on America Online. She was fresh out of a divorce, and she mentioned the business she was running at the time almost as an afterthought. A guy named Kevin read it and messaged her, asking about that business. She figured he was a prospect. He turned out to be something else entirely: the man she’d marry, the father of her kids, and the business partner she’d still be standing on a stage next to eighteen years later. But the part of their story worth slowing down on isn’t the AOL meet-up. It’s what they did the year they lost almost everything, and more specifically, what they refused to do.

What do you do the day the savings run out and there’s no plan?

Kevin and Melissa spent years working from home before Empower, riding the ups and downs of a business where they’d made the mistake of putting their trust, and their savings, into someone else’s system instead of building their own. Eventually that caught up with them. They ran through everything they had and started over with almost nothing between them. There’s a family photo from right around that time. Everyone’s smiling in it. You’d never guess, looking at it, what had just happened.

Here’s the part worth studying. They didn’t post about it. Go back through their old Facebook timeline and you won’t find a single “woe is me” update, no public accounting of the wreckage while they were still standing in it. Not because they were embarrassed, but because, as they’d later put it, that isn’t the time to talk about something. You talk about it once you’ve climbed out, not while you’re still climbing. The one place they did tell the whole story was privately, to David Wood, in San Diego. He was moved enough by it that he called them up on the spot to share it with the room.

No one could use it against us, and it became something that we drew strength from.

That’s the actual mechanism, and it’s worth separating from simple privacy. A struggle you announce in the middle of it becomes a thing other people get to have opinions about, a thing that can be thrown back at you later. A struggle you sit on until you’ve already turned it around becomes something else: proof, owned entirely by you, that nobody else gets a vote on. Kevin and Melissa didn’t hide their story out of shame. They were just waiting until it belonged to them instead of to whoever heard it first.

What exercise actually got Kevin the life he wrote down before he had it?

Around the same period they met, Kevin did an exercise built on something he’d picked up from a Tony Robbins event a few hours from home. Nothing complicated: a journal, and a list of exactly what he wanted, written out in specific, unhedged detail. He’s blunt about the instruction he’d give a room doing the same thing today, in 2015, journals in hand. Don’t write down the safe, reasonable version of what you want. Write the outrageous version. The weirder it sounds on paper, he says, the better.

• Get specific instead of vague. Not something vague like a good partner, but the exact traits, down to how they’d feel to be around.
• Write it before it’s realistic, not after. The point of the exercise is the reach, not the plausibility.
• Keep it somewhere you’ll actually see it again, not a drawer you forget by March.

He wrote down the kind of spouse and business partner he wanted, in detail, and says flatly that he got all of it. Whatever you make of that as a mechanism, the pairing is hard to argue with: a man writes a specific, unreasonable list, and a woman who thought she was fielding a sales message from a stranger ends up building a life and a business with him. The lesson they hand the room isn’t mystical. It’s that most people never actually get specific enough to know if they got what they wanted, because they never wrote down what they wanted in the first place.

Why did she wait years to talk about her own health?

There’s a second version of the same pattern running underneath their story, and it’s easy to miss because it’s quieter than the money one. For years, Melissa dealt with health issues nobody could explain. She describes being told, in one form or another, that it was all in her head. She didn’t bring it up publicly while she was still in the middle of not knowing. She waited until she and her family found an integrative health center in Orlando that actually built out a real protocol for her, and only then did she start talking about it.

“I feel like I’ve finally overcome it,” is how she puts it, and the phrase carries the same logic as the money story: speak from the other side of it, not from inside the fog. She’s specific about what she expects next, too, naming an exact age and an exact comparison rather than a vague wellness platitude, the same instinct that had Kevin writing an exact list in a journal years earlier.

The thread connecting both stories, the money and the health, is this: neither of them treated silence as hiding and neither of them treated oversharing as honesty. They picked a third option, waiting until they had something true and finished to say, then saying it plainly. It’s also, not coincidentally, why their kids stuck around. Their son Josh is building his own business a few feet from where his parents still work. Their daughter chose a family trip over a party with friends on her own birthday. That’s what a family looks like when the parents were telling the truth the whole time, just on their own timeline instead of everyone else’s.

The full session goes further than what’s above, including the full timeline they walked the room through, from that AOL profile to the neighborhood they’d been dreaming about since their townhouse days. Watch it in full, free, when you Create your free account.

The full session transcript follows below.

Transcript

Wow. She's gone. Yeah, it's been a while. Thank you, Sarita.

Oh, she disappeared. I wanted to say. Yeah, she's like gone. She's gone.

Did you guys love Sarita? Let's have another hand for Sarita. Yeah, she's awesome. Wow.

Absolutely awesome. That is what Empower Network is all about, is making a decision, following through, living your dream, and getting very uncomfortable. You know what? Everybody's been sitting down for a while.

I would like everybody to get up for just a moment. Everybody up for a moment. Let's do this. We haven't done this for a while.

One, two, three, now. One more time. One, two, three, now. When are we going to start living our dreams?

One, two, three, now. All right. Awesome. Thank you very much.

We are Kevin and Melissa Connect, and we are from, where are we from this year? Yeah. We're Sarasota, Florida right now. We live in Florida.

We actually, we took this lifestyle of living your dreams from wherever you'd like. We're from Pennsylvania. Lifelong Pennsylvania. We're from Pennsylvania.

We're from Pennsylvania. Yeah. Thank you, Tom Farrell. Well, no.

Lifelong until we moved. Until we moved, right? And we found this industry. There's my friend Tom Farrell from, it was 1994, I actually found this industry through a friend, and I learned that you could live wherever you wanted.

Now, we didn't have an internet back then. It was tough to do that, and well, we're going to jump all around here. There's got lots of stuff. Yeah, there you go.

Thank you. Did I say something noncompliantly? Okay. Well, before we start.

I just want to take a moment to recognize our amazing compliance department. How many people know we have a compliance department? Yeah? And, you know, for some people, it's not, oh, darn, you had to disclaim things and it's compliance, but I'm telling you that the fact that we have compliance, it's ensuring all of our futures.

And I just want to give a shout out to Andrea Weiland, who does a fabulous job, and she's a fabulous person, too. And, you know, she's a great person. And I asked her before we were putting our presentation together, you know, what would you like us to say? Do we need to put anything on every slide?

What do we need to do? And she, so this is direct from Andrea. The income Kevin and I will be discussing are our own personal results that we accomplished through hard work and perseverance. Everyone's results will vary.

Please visit empowernetwork.com for average earnings. So there you go. Very nice. Very nice.

Very nice. So thank you very much. For that, Andrea. Thank you.

All right. Well, we're going to take a special love out to our speakers today. I mean, look at this. We are surrounded by family.

You know, we had Justin and Dee Varengia, personal friends of ours, and we had John Penberthy, who's been to our home, and then we had Michelangelo Lopez, who lives right up the road. And, Sirena, we haven't been to Perth, Australia, yet. No, not yet. But, you know, we have a family here.

Definitely. And I'm so glad that we chose to overcome our limitations and our excuses. And we want to talk to you guys about that today. We've overcome a lot of excuses.

Does anybody have excuses that maybe you have yet? that maybe you have yet to overcome all right good me too um so we're going to talk about that here today and uh we're going to run through a little bit of our story um because we we've kind of hit different parts of our story but we've never kind of gone through it so we're going to do a little timeline for you to so because i know there are a lot of new people and there's a lot of people that have heard bits and pieces but so kevin and i met in december of 97 um i was uh fresh coming out of a divorce um with newly available and back then there was very little uh online uh but america online how many people remember 1997 being on aol yeah that was like that was so cool back then now it's like you know but you used to be able to put a little profile and and um you know and i talked about the business that i was in at that time i was in a top tier business and um i was struggling with a little bit but you know i i was doing well enough to be on my own and uh kevin we met he read my profile and sent me a message and just asked about my business so you know of course for me he was a prospect but i don't know if he had other ideas at that point and um but it was really our first example of getting clear on what we wanted and watching it manifest because for me you know anyone has anyone else gone through a divorce oh well i mean it's a very clear demonstration of what you don't want welcome to the team yeah so it's um but but it really does force you to get clear on what do i want you know and so i started really dreaming of somebody who i could share my entrepreneurial dream with who i could evolve with grow with who it didn't matter um where we were we always had something to talk about because that had been lacking for me and kevin did an exercise with tony robbins here three hours away he was also doing something so you can share what you did with oh well i basically actually took out a journal and started writing down exactly what i wanted so here in 2015 you know we all have these journals in our hands right now so during this event i want you to really think about what do you want for this year in 2015 and write down exactly what you want and don't limit yourself how outrageous the more outrageous or as justin said earlier the more weird it is probably the more weird it is the more weird it is the more weird it is the more the better and definitely go for that and i went for that in 1997 i wrote down this is what i want this this this and this and the ideal spouse business partner wife uh lover and i got all of the above so it works it works when you write it down in the interest of time we're going to flash forward to 2011.

yeah we worked from home for a long time for yeah ups and downs we had a few ups and downs um we did we did very well sometimes um and then other times um you know not so well and we but because we made a mistake on who to follow and put all of our eggs in their basket instead of our own uh you know we really ran through every bit of savings that we had and it we were up against a wall and so we went through a personal bankruptcy had a hundred dollars to our names and uh and and this picture was taken not long after that so it was we look happy there look at that we just filed bankruptcy in that picture can anybody tell you what happened in that picture yeah but but we had we had the most important things we had our kids we had you know each other and we we had a dream it was a fresh start but we we didn't know really what we're going to do with it yet we didn't talk about going through bankruptcy if you know you can go back on someone's timeline on facebook if you go back on our timeline you do not see us saying woe is me going to the courthouse going through bankruptcy you know we are broke that's it you know we didn't say anything about it because That is not the time, and you heard Dee talk about that's not the time to talk about it.

You need to overcome it first, and we shared our story with David Wood in San Diego privately, and we were sitting in the front row, and he said, okay, Kevin and Melissa, come on up and tell your story, and so we did, but that was really powerful because it was our story. No one could use it against us, and it became something that we drew strength from. So flash forward to June of 2012. We went to the Atlanta event.

We had joined Empower at the end of March and went to the Atlanta event. We had done some catching up, even though we had made some money with Empower, we were catching up because, you know, we just told you where we were, and so we had 500 bucks in our checking account, but we were there in the front row ready to receive the belief that we required to go home and kill it. I'm not going to ask anybody here this question, but there's probably a few people here right now who made the decision to be here, and let's just give ourselves a round of applause for being here, for choosing to be here, but I know there are people here who had to stretch, and maybe you spent some of your last money to be here, but the important thing is that we're going to talk about next is that you have to go home with a vision.

That's why it's so important while you're here to write it all down, to remember, to capture, shoot videos during the break when we have a break here. If we ever have a break at this point today. Yeah. Then definitely start shooting the video.

Go back to your room tonight and let people know. Let yourself, remind yourself of how enthusiastic you are here because when you get back home, you want to be able to put that into action over the next 90 days, so let's move forward into that. So we captured that excitement, and we were very clear we wanted to move. Our idea was that we were going to go home, and we were going to get busy and make a ton of money and move to the East Coast.

We were living in Arizona at the time. We were kind of done with the desert and wanted to live amongst green and trees. And so in San Diego, this was the outcome of that, got to our next event with a team, which was fantastic, and with our kids there, that was amazing. And it was such a seminal moment because it's those fruition moments that you hold on to.

When you're down, when things aren't going so right. Keep a scrapbook of it. Of all the accomplishments that you've had, because they may not be this in particular, but anything that you've done, go back to that and remind yourself of how awesome you are. By the way, you can Photoshop this online and just put your faces in there instead of ours.

I would recommend doing something like that. No. Now, we just talked about how much we love compliance. Right.

Keep it for yourself. Don't publish it. Just keep it for yourself. Yeah.

Yeah, as a touchstone, yeah. Right, right. So in October 2012, we completed our mission. We completed our mission.

We completed our goal of moving to an Atlanta neighborhood. We wanted to move. We had been living in a townhouse in Arizona, surrounded by concrete. I mean, it was tough.

And so we were just like so clear on getting to back to green and trees. I mean, that was, I kept, it was like a mantra. I want green and trees, green and trees. And, you know, we did that, and we were just so happy.

It was mid-month that we moved, and so by the night of taking over, taking Tanner trick-or-treating, we were just, we were already on a high. And we found out, we were checking online on our phone, and found out we'd crossed over $100,000 that night. So it was like, it was such a cool, cool way to celebrate that. Moving forward to March 2013, that was our one-year anniversary.

It was about three months after this picture was taken was our one-year anniversary. Up to that point, that was like up to the, that date what we had made. But on our one-year anniversary, we crossed over. We crossed over a quarter million dollars.

And so it was, it was yet another mark in the timeline for us that we hadn't done before. I mean, we were in a place of before working on commission only where, you know, you have some, a really great month, you're doing great, and you might make almost nothing the next month. So this idea of creating something with residual where you start the month, and it took me a long time to get used to. In fact, I had a conversation with Rhonda Swan when they got started, because she, we had worked together before in this commission only business.

And it was amazing to get used to that, to really start to relax into that and just trust it and go. Oh, I will take the next one. We only have, we only have a couple minutes. We should probably just move ahead.

Hey, in January 2014, we moved to Florida. We're happy living by the beach now. Let's go to the next slide. Okay.

Let's just move on. I want to talk about this really briefly. A year ago, we moved to Florida. We're happy living by the beach now.

Let's go to the next slide. So our daughter, Olivia, turned 21 on the same day that we hit about a half a million dollars here in Empower Network, not typical results. But what was really cool, and I think, I want to thank Justin and Dee Varengia for edifying us earlier for, you know, being a full-time family. You know, one of the reasons that three whys in our lives are Josh, Olivia, and Tanner.

And being able to be home, Sarita mentioned it here just a few minutes ago about putting kids in daycare, and our kids were older. They didn't have to go into daycare, but, you know, really choosing whether you want to put them out somewhere, or do you want to be the primary influence. And we, she chose to be with us on her 21st birthday. Not with her friends, mom and dad, let's go to Disney, let's celebrate together as a family.

So we are just so proud of the fact that our kids actually still like being around us. And I want to, you know, we actually have one of our kids here, right down here in the front row. I've got to give love out to our oldest son, Josh. Josh, go ahead and stand up.

He's actually, Josh is actually one of the I-PASS business coaches. A lot of you guys know him, but he's, he's crushing it right now. Yeah, it's amazing when you, you know, because he grew up around this kind of thing. But to now see him standing on his own two feet, you know, having success on his own is amazing.

And I'm just really so excited to watch our kids flourish. And, you know, myself and Olivia and Tanner have gone through a lot of stuff with our health, and I mentioned that. I mentioned this on a Hangout a while back, and I feel like I've already overcome it, which is why I'm even talking about it today. For years and years, I have searched for an answer for issues with my health, and I've been told they're, you know, it's all in your head, all of that stuff.

But I feel like I've finally overcome it because we found, because of Empower Network, we found an integrative health center in Orlando that has figured everything out. We are under all the protocol to get better. I expect to have more energy at 50 than I did at 25 in a couple of years when I go through. And, you know, I really, even though I was going through a lot, I, again, didn't want to talk about it until I found the answers.

And I am so excited to be on the path to being healthy, and how many people trade their health because they don't have time. They just want time to grow, or money to deal with it. And they're just getting through the day. At some point, maybe I'll take care of that.

And it's not until they have a catastrophic illness that brings them to their knees, some people, to where they have to pay attention to it, till life gets, you know, in the way. And we're just so grateful. I mean, Josh has his own business, he has his own Empower Network business, as well as being an I-PANNA coach. He's pursuing real estate endeavors, following his passion.

Olive has her own business. business. She's a nanny and loves being with kids. She's got photography business.

Tanner's happy doing virtual school. He's pursuing being a filmmaker. We had time this summer to put him into filmmakers camp and that was it. He was so excited.

This business has meant everything for us and for you guys sitting here today and for those of you watching on camera, we're supposed to talk to the camera because it's just being recorded way back there. You guys watching at home on the recording, you know what? This is an opportunity for you to really make this year your year. You know, Dave Wood has put the foundation in place.

Michelangelo, thank you for putting that up earlier. You guys remember he talked about what we have in place with Mars and what we have in place with Jonathan Kronstadt. You know, the resources are all here right now for each of us to play at our very best here in 2015. So right now, as we're about to introduce our next speaker, I'd like you guys all to come to your feet here and remember that this is a time that you can choose.

It's a time for all to make this your very best year. So if it's the best time and now, now would be the best time to have your best year. So now, one, two, three, now. We love you.

We believe you. We believe in you and we know that you can do anything you set your mind to. Thank you very much. Are you going?

So we're going to introduce our next speaker. We've had the pleasure of getting to know our next speaker over the last couple of years. And I'm going to introduce our next speaker. There is such a light amongst this man and his team.

And I know he's an amazing and inspirational person when I see him with his team. I know he's an amazing and inspirational person when I see what he does for charity. I know he's an amazing and inspirational person when I see him on stage at events. But the biggest way I know he's an amazing and inspirational person is because I've is through knowing his children that I see that reflection of the time invested and the character that he's put into them.

He and his wife, Melissa, have an amazing family, just a beautiful family. And I really encourage you to get to know them because they're at many of the events. And it's my pleasure to introduce Rui Gabriel. Rui!

Rui! Rui! Rui! Rui!

Rui! Rui! Rui! Rui!

Rui! Rui! Rui! Rui!

Rui! Rui! Rui! Rui!

Rui! Rui! Rui!