I am grateful the Home Office gives us the opportunity to express our thanks in this way every year. This is the most important thank-you note we write, and it is with full hearts and genuine gratitude that we honor our family, friends and business partners (some of whom are all three) and offer a few words of encouragement for the associates who might read this.

This is the part where we are supposed to talk about where we came from and what we did before and what life looks like now so that you feel that you, too, can succeed! And I could do that. I could make a list of the ways we’ve been blessed. But I know that those of you who take time to read this book, who attend one of our training classes or hear us on a call or see us on stage and spend 15 minutes to look this up and read it, you are searching for something more than a laundry list of blessings.

My husband has often said that this business attracts the broken. For many of the people you see in these pages, that is true. Although Brian and I started our businesses at roughly the same time; we didn’t know each other. We were in two different time zones, and we found PPLSI under two very different circumstances. Our professional backgrounds were the polar-opposite of one another, and what we needed from this business was a direct contrast. What we had in common, and what drove our individual success long before we found each other, was that we started out broken. But broken can be a powerful place. There is a certain liberty in defeat. You learn what you’re made of and what you want, and despite personal hardship (or simply enough dissatisfaction), you find in yourself the desire to create something lasting and significant, the faith to wager your future on your own efforts and the fortitude to embrace the journey. Isak Dinesen wrote, “The cure for anything is salt water: sweat, tears or the sea.”

I have found that to be unequivocally true, and PPLSI has given us all three. Combining hard work with serving others, in the face of personal adversity, is eminently healing. The journey we’ve made has not been easy; there have been tears and sweat, but we have been rewarded with the sea — in Maui, Cancun, Jamaica, the Bahamas — because of the incentive trips we’ve earned!

Appearing in the Profiles of Success is not a measure of our success. It is merely the culmination of a fantastic product, brilliant corporate leadership and hard work. No matter what your definition of success is, there is an opportunity for you here. Make the decisions that will support your goals, make choices that support those decisions and prepare for your journey. It doesn’t matter if you are a civil engineer turned small business owner or a stay-at-home mom; PPLSI can be what you need to make it. For Brian and me, it means that we can be the partners and parents that we want to be. It means that we work from home, provide for six children and build our legacy together. We wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for some very special people, so we would like to thank Jason and Kacy, Steve, Cassie, Daris, Mindy, Tara, Julie, Dave, Marty, Todd, Larry and Doni and most importantly, Mom and Dad. When we grow up, we want to be just like you.