Tom had been working violent crimes as a Special Agent with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) for 22 years.  After a total of 32 years of service with the FBI, Tom was nearing retirement and knew he didn’t want to work for someone else again.  Marsha owned her own jewelry business doing sales in the Marine Corp and Navy Exchanges for over 25 years.  She was growing weary of the bureaucracy that accompanies dealing with the military and not getting paid on a timely basis.  Tom began researching dozens of home-based business opportunities.  One day his neighbor, who is a scientist and a USANA Associate, approached him, having learned of his quest, and provided him with some information regarding the USANA opportunity.  The rest, as they say, is history.

When Tom told Marsha about USANA, she was very excited as she once owned a health food store in the Florida Keyes before going into the jewelry business and was familiar with nutritional supplements.  She immediately recognized the value of the products.  The one thing Tom told Marsha, after agreeing to join USANA is, “I am never going to quit.”  Persistence has been the keyword in achieving their success.

Tom retired in June of 2000 and enrolled with USANA shortly thereafter.  Marsha liquidated the jewelry business at the end of the same year and they both started doing USANA full-time.

One important event in their USANA career was sponsoring a new Associate in Central California along with his son.  For the first 6 months, they were primarily promoting the products and not the business.  Tom urged them to attend an STI Annual Training event, which they did, and after seeing and meeting all the different types of people in attendance, from all walks of life, he agreed that he could do the business too.  In 5 weeks, his son became a Gold Director and, 3 weeks later, he became a Gold Director.  They proceeded to build a large organization nationwide and in several countries.

It took a real mindset change for Tom to do this business and it is an ongoing learning process.  One of the results of doing this type of business is personal growth.  Our Mentors, Bryan and Monica Penrod, were instrumental in helping us achieve that growth.  We will be forever grateful for the help and assistance they gave us building our USANA organization and demonstrating how Team Work is the key to success.

We want to thank USANA for providing us with this opportunity and STI for showing us how to get it done.  Without either of these, we would probably still be in the “Rat Race.”