Time to Let Loose!
Restored from the Empower Network archive (2011–2017), lightly edited to meet our current advertising standards. Views are the original author’s.
Well, let’s see how far I can get with that.
By let loose I mean, let it all hang out. You know, tell everything. Well, not everything. 
Most people who know me, know I am this relatively conservative guy raised in a ALL White community, was shocked into arriving at an All Black college, in a world unknown to me, graduated, got married, then was sent to Vietnam a year afterwards. That is really where I kind of grew up as an adult in another world foreign to me and to the others that joined me in experiencing that thing. I do not talk a lot about my experience. I do not know why. My psychotherapist says I sort of “third party” it out of my mind like he says I do with a lot of things that are disturbing to me in life. I have to say this. The biggest thing I experienced in Vietnam was the racism I saw. Not against me, but against the South Vietnamese whom we were there to support. I want to be clear, that is all I am going to say about that. I pick really carefully those with whom I share that view.
Returning to the states, well that was another shocker. It seemed the world had changed here in the year I was gone. Went and bought myself a brand new 400 liter bright yellow Pontiac, vinyl hard top convertible, which was pretty cool but then my wife had me go to this party with her in bell bottom double knit pants and shirt. Standing at 6 feet 6 inches in the center of the crowd, I felt like a total clown and back in another foreign land once again. Really, that is the way it felt and it took me a year to get back into the swing of things.
This is not intended to be a biography so I am leaving out an extraordinary amount of details and gaps over the years. But from the age of about 26 until 5 and half years ago after some additional schooling, I spent a career in corporate America basically, although I mostly worked in the public sector; government organizations. That was cool pretty much until I learned what I know now. Yea, I going to say it, I was slave to my job and kind of slave even to the way I was living. It did not seem like it at the time and I am not complaining and I do not have any regret. I did what I knew to do and sort of what I felt I was expected to do. The most significant of those things was buying a house in suburban Shaker Heights, Ohio rather than live in a more affordable house in Cleveland. I was definitely slave financially to that house although we did OK. However, again, looking back I did not experience the kind of freedom I enjoy today and the expanded freedom I am now intending for my family which by the way includes a new 2 year old daughter, my wife, two adult daughters and two grandsons.
Network Marketing has given me new access to a new world of freedom, self resolve, satisfaction and happiness. I want more people to come to understand what this industry has to offer, particular folks who feel trapped and seemed to have nowhere to go. In my case, I never really felt trapped as I said. I just lived in the world that I knew and the world I thought was possible. And, I know that is true for a lot of people today. They just don’t pay attention to what might be possible. But believe me, there is a much greater world out there for anyone to experience and to enjoy and Network Marketing, yes, MLM and that thing that people often grossly incorrectly refer to as a pyramid scheme. Not only do I believe network marketing is great for people individually, I am convinced it is great for the world because of the very nature of its business model that is fundamentally based on people networking with one another and empowering themselves personally and financially. By the way, I do not leave anyone out for whom I believe this industry can benefit. There is only requirement. That is to be open to it.
Oscar Carter
(212) 316-2271