Having worked in construction for 24 years, Bob Burdick enjoyed it, but it lacked one thing that he needed – residual income. A chance meeting with somebody by a poolside changed the course of his life though. On today’s podcast, Bob and his wife, Sue, join Dan McCormick to talk about that pivotal moment in their lives when they got introduced to network marketing. Do you need that residual income as well? Don’t miss this episode, and let your persistence bring better days ahead for you.

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Listen to the podcast here

Residual Income Through Network Marketing With Bob and Sue Burdick

It is going to be a real delight to welcome everybody. To think back, it was 1984. My wife and I were new residents of Fort Lauderdale, Florida. In a matter of days, if not hours, I meet this unbelievable family named the Burdick family. It’s Bob and Sue Burdick. Welcome to the show. How are you guys?

We’re great.

It’s great to have you. For all of our readers, whether you read now, six weeks, six months or six years from now, please feel free to share, like and review the show. We’d love you to be able to do that. We have many years down the river between the three of us. For our readers, being the greatest salespeople in the world, I’d love if you could tell me what are three things you find that have shaped your life for each and every day?

I think it’s four. I will persist until I succeed. Seeing the long-term benefits of things whether it’s health or financial needs. Leading by example. People don’t want to hear, “Would you do those for me?” They want to hear, “Will you do this with me?” You can’t teach what you don’t know, and you can’t know what you don’t do. The last thing is caring about others. People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.

One of the greatest salesperson success formulas would be looking at the long-term. The investment in a living philosophy that Og Mandino wrote in this incredible book that is now many years old, and probably 50 million copies are out there in the world that touch countless lives. He wrote with such a unique philosophical approach to people. Caring, I love how you said that. It was Ben Franklin’s life that inspired him to write the scrolls in the way he did because Ben Franklin looked at the long-term and spent 64 years of his life looking at those thirteen virtues. It’s invigorating when I hear people come on and think, “What are those three things?” In your case, four things. Bob, you had to see the long-term when you had those five boys.

I didn’t see fifteen grandkids, 5 over 15 had already give us ten great-grandkids.

In 1968, there was no birth control.

That was the same time the book was written. Rich DeVos stands on stage at the Amway Corporation and says, “Everybody, you should read this book.”

It’s unbelievable, Dan. I can’t thank you enough. When I asked you, “Where are you going to teach this class?” you said, “Sunday at church.” I said, “What?” You said, “Do you go to church?” I said, “Every Easter.” It’s the best sermon I ever heard of that day.

We had an office together off of Deerfield Boulevard in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. It would have been Boca/Hillsboro. I haven’t been there in so long, but I remember the office we would meet at every Tuesday night if I recall. We would have our opportunity presentation and I invited you for the following Sunday, standing there in that room. What do you remember about that day? Everybody has that moment in time in life when something changes their life.

I’ve worked construction my whole life and I didn’t understand what I thought the people that didn’t physically work. How could you make money if you’re not working? I can always tell you were successful. I wanted to find out your secret when I said, “When are you going to teach another one?” You said, “Sunday at church.”

He said, “I’m going to teach a class on how to set goals and achieve them. Would you like to come?” Bob said, “Anytime, anyplace, and anywhere.” You said, “Church.” He said, “You trick me.”

Isn’t that amazing? You come to church, Sue, and who came with you?

It’s Bob, me and five kids. We had a station wagon with a dent down the side and you had this old beat-up work truck. It was bought at an auction. It was a forest ranger’s vehicle, Ramcharger or something that they drive. We packed us all in that vehicle and brought us there. He went into the men’s class. The kids went their way. After the service was over, he came out and he said, “You’re not going to believe it. It was amazing.” We went straight from there to the Broward mall, bought three copies of the book, one for him, one for me and one for the kids to share. What he said in the class was, “This book, if you write your goals and read this book, you will achieve them no matter what you write.” He said that he didn’t believe it, but he was not going to take it for granted. He was hands and he said, “How much does the book cost?” You said, “Bob, something you never learned is it’s not what it costs. It’s what it’s worth.”

I was 38 years old and I only read one book in my whole life.

It’s because of this book, we’ve gone from a couple of high school dropouts raising five kids, living paycheck-to-paycheck, and worried about our future to millionaires living the life of the rich and famous, traveling the world and time freedom. That’s what it’s given us. The time freedom.

We have businesses in 26 countries. We’ve made over 100 trips to Europe. We’ve done nine around the world flights. We go to Dubai, Australia, New Zealand all of them.

I was born in Itawamba County, Mississippi in a house with no plumbing and no electricity on January 3rd, 1950. I had never been out of the South and now, we’ve been over 130 times in Europe and nine times around the world. We’ve been able to take our family on eleven different snow skiing trips all over the United States and into Canada. We’ve been to Whistler and spent more money on each trip than we used to make in two years.

Bob, before that day, how many years prior were you involved with Hells Angels?

I got out of the Army in ‘67 and I joined that year. I had a tragedy in my life that had me in a bad attitude.

You meet, you have the five boys. Sue, you comment when you hear about a meeting that I was doing at the Fort Lauderdale, Hilton Galt Ocean Mile if I recall. Somebody at the pool invited you to the meeting.

We had lost our house and we had bought this old bus and put bunk beds in it. We had sold our house before it went in foreclosure, got on that bus, and go to Fort Lauderdale. We thought we’ll find a house quickly, but we had trouble financing. We had no money to put down, but we had no background for someone who would invest in us to finance the house. I try to stay in a good mood. I was up early every morning by the pool, doing some exercises, getting the boys up, and getting them off to school. We lived in efficiency with those kids and we’re trying to buy this house. This guy came over and he said something like, “It’s great to take it here if your outside, but what about your inside?”

I just blew him off and went back in the room. Later on that day, I had the boys by the pool and he came out and apologized that he’d been rude. He said, “I do want to show you something.” He started talking about this company and this product and he said, “Let me find a meeting somewhere. I know there’s a meeting somewhere.” He looked in the yellow pages, found your meetings, found you and invited me. He said, “That’s another one of those scams.” I said, “I’m going with this young guy to a fancy hotel on the beach. You can come or you can stay.” Dan, you saved the day because he met you when you were legitimate and you connected. We were much older than you that it seemed strange that our mentor would be a child.

Network Marketing: You can’t teach what you don’t know, and you can’t know what you don’t do.

The person that invited you, that sponsored you into that company had a little bit of a rough patch in life as well. He received commission checks for years while being in jail.

He did. He went back. He had to rest his voice. When his wife called and said, “I’m going to take over because he’s having some larynx surgery,” I thought that was the truth. What happened was he was in jail and he wasn’t having surgery, but the best thing he ever did for me besides show me the visual of network marketing. That’s because we dropped out of high school, we weren’t doing to make minimum wage or do physical manual labor the rest of our lives. He introduced us to you and took us under your wing. We weren’t on your team. It didn’t make a dollar on us. You said, “I’m going to turn you into my window testing.” You helped me hone my story. Under your wing is where I learned my story. I have told it for all these years.

Let me share a story. We have a little 300 acres here. I built a house for my mom, but she passed away now. Our company wires money to the bank. Back then, they mail a check and we’re roaming to Europe. I said, “Mom, when the check comes, deposit a slip for me.” Our check was $97,000 that month. When I came home, she hadn’t deposit it. She said, “Bob we need a house or they’re going to put you back in prison.” I had to bring her to a conference and she said, “Bobby, who the hell do this people think you are?” I said, “All we do is work. Many people didn’t have an opportunity like this. It’s a gold mine.”

We never took it for advantage for one single second. She said, “Bob, you’re going back to jail.” We couldn’t explain to her that this was our job.

I remember selling my house in Boca Raton and moving into another place a little bit by the Boca mall there. Bob, you’re calling me and you found a new opportunity and you came over to my house. You were excited. We had just adopted who was eight. Maybe we didn’t even have our first child yet. I remember you telling me what happened when you read the scrolls.

You gave us this book in December 1986. We had not found that opportunity yet. He looked at an insurance company. We were desperate to make something happen because our boys were getting to be teenagers and looking at cars and college. We were still trying to pay the rent. When you gave us this book, we had not found the opportunity we’re in right now. We started reading this in December of 1986 and we found the other opportunity in May of 1987 and never looked back.

Bob, you’re telling me your success recorder on how things worked for your goal and your income. Reading the scrolls is not easy. You’re holding up the greatest secret in the world which is the journalize version. As a matter of fact, I got my signed copy for you from Og Mandino. Is there a scroll that struck you because you weren’t a reader? I didn’t like reading either, but was there something about it that kept you going forward?

It was the common sense of it that I’d never thought about before. I always thought people that were rich were either athletes or had some fantastic brainpower or something.. I was making $50 an hour and it gave me a raise, $70. I was paying $40 back in 1963 so I quit school. I was making $58 a week, $3,000 a year, but I was always looking for residual income. Talking to you, I saw that if we did something like this for 3, 4, 5 or 10 years, we’d have residual income for the rest of our life and it could be unlimited.

Dan, when we read it out loud together at night, he would read it once and I would read it once out loud to each other. When we first started reading it, he would take a trip with him to the construction job. At this time, I wasn’t selling real estate, grooming dogs, teaching aerobics, washing windows or doing yard work or any of those things that I always did. I had more time at home. When I sit down at lunch to read this thing because he’s a slow reader, he said, “The guys would flip screws at me and make fun of me and they’d say, ’Don’t know you can’t read a book without pictures?’” He was used to him having Playboy magazine on the job or something. What we discovered was it changed our philosophy on the way we looked at life like persistence will succeed. As long as there’s breath in my body, I will persist until I succeed.

One thing I got to read this day with love of my heart, expect the day to be good.

Scroll number II, Scroll number III, you were all in on that. The Greatest Salesman in the World, you found that to be a life-changer.

For generations, it not only affected our lives. It’s affected our children’s lives.

Dan, we used to post notes on our bathroom mirror. “I will persist until I succeed. I will do what’s in Scroll number VIII. Today, I will multiply my value by a hundred fold.” You can understand that we weren’t valuable in the marketplace to every skill that we learned, small as they were. Picking up the phone and making phone calls, honing your story until it’s captivating. Small things that taught us to become more valuable in the marketplace. Every little thing we did made us more valuable and we believe that.

When we’ve joined this company, in our third month we’re making $10,000 and they asked me to speak. I never spoke in school. I never wrote a book. I got up in front of the room and I said, “My name is Bob Burdick.” I sat down my notes and I left the building. What I found out, two people in the room said, “If that Bob is making money, sign me up. I’ll get rich.” If we do a bad meeting, people think that’s even easier.

I had always been a talker since I was a child. I’ve never met a stranger. It was easy for me to talk. He was shy. I picked him up in a bar when I was eighteen, brought him home, and never looked back. The day after my dad met him, he said, “It’s hard for me if you don’t bring that in back.”

Before her dad died, he made me the executor of his will. He changed his mind about that.

What we understood was reading this book, making yourself read it, the consistency of it.

Compounded over the years, a few simple changes, but it gave us a different philosophy on life. We were used to getting enough money to pay the bills. We had a scarcity mentality and the book opened our eyes to what’s possible. I remember when we made our first $1 million, I was like, “Let’s go do that again.”

To our readers, if you’re new with us, on behalf of the Og Mandino company, we’re going to challenge you to see if your thoughts are aligned with the wisdom you’re reading. I challenge you to go to www.HabitFinder.com/burdick. It’s free. It’ll take you fifteen minutes. You’re going to be able to say, “Am I aligned with like Bob and Sue stated their goals here?” Can we find out if you are aligned with the goals that you have?

When the company gives the third ever Founders Award, we’ve got it for flying over 2 million miles in support of this trip that was around the world. Delta supplied it when they verified that we reached and flown over 2 million miles.

Now, we’re over 4 million.

One of the reasons the grandkids think we’re cool is Bear Grylls’ mother is one of our reps in the UK. When met Bear, he was six years old.

It’s amazing how things have changed.

I want to congratulate you on the journey because to me, it’s always a genuine, authentic guest to be sitting in that chair you’re sitting in. You are the greatest salespeople in the world. I know how much you love people. Sue used to share a little quip. You didn’t use to like to talk to people but once you read the book and you learned that you could make money talking to people, you haven’t shut up since.

Network Marketing: If you write your goals, you will achieve them no matter what you write.

When I picked him up, there’s a country restaurant song. It says, “Are you going to kiss me or what?” We’re looking across the room at each other for a couple of weeks and I finally said, “That’s it.” Once he found out that we could make this money talking, he shares his story. A waiter, a taxi driver, nobody was safe.

I quit school when I was seventeen to work construction. What I never understood back then with my attitude or my thought was, “How could people that stayed so clean that doesn’t physically work make money? They’re in an office all day and they’re not working. How can they make any money?” I never realized that it’s fun and the right vehicle, network marketing, and the right company you bought is the vehicle.

I say, “Lord, you know I can’t shave poodle butts forever.” I learned a lot about people. Their dogs are like their children. I learned a lot about how to talk to people. Dan, we give so much credit to you. Have you not taken us under your wing. I remember a lesson you taught me. I said, “I felt bad that we weren’t on your team. You opened your office to us. You opened your home to us. The satellites that used to come through, we’d never been able to see those and see people on stage the way we did.” I caught the vision. When I saw a woman on stage, she was cleaning houses and things, I said, “I can do what she does.” Thanks to you for opening your home. I can remember coming to you without Bob and saying, “Isn’t there some way that you can change us to your team?” You said, “That’s unethical. We don’t work that way.” It broke my heart and made me happy. The guy that sponsored us, we sponsored him in this business while he was still in jail. He made the top spot in the company on work release. You had to get up eight hours on a phone. He went to work and he made the top spot. You go back and spend the night in jail every night.

I want to come back to your three things, Bob, because you framed houses for how many years, do you recall?

It’s 24.

I remember you telling me how good of a framer you work. You knew you were the best and you could get the job done. How fast could you frame a house?

It depends on the side and he did a lot of commercial work too.

When you were framing houses for all those years, did you dream or did you think that there was possibly something out there for you?

I always thought I’d get on a job that I was going to get rich on. I didn’t realize that I had the wrong vehicle. It wasn’t that we didn’t have good work habits or attitude. We had the wrong vehicle for financial freedom. I worked in construction for 24 years. I enjoyed it, but there was no residual income there. The days I didn’t hang sheetrock, they didn’t pay me.

He did a lot of metal framing. I used to tell him, “I’m tired of chasing that metal framing job in the sky with you.” We never could dream this big. When I first saw this and took him back to see it, because I had promised him I wouldn’t sign any papers and doing one more thing. I had done many things that he put money into and I’ve never made any money back. He bought the boom boxes for the aerobics, sent me to dog groom school, sent me to real estate school and many things that he put money in. I went to be polite and they taught me the value of three-way calls, like doing it with passing the phone back and forth to each other.

They told me that my negative attitude could possibly jeopardize the financial future of my children. I can’t laugh at that. I thought that makes sense. They said, “We’re not in the convincing business. We don’t want to convince you to join. We just want to convince you to come take a look. If you get enough people to look at your product, you’ll get customers. If you get enough people to look at your business, you’ll build a team.” That’s what I was looking at but when I saw this, I saw myself working from home and making $3,000 to $5,000 a month. I thought it would take me 3 to 5 years to get to that position. When I saw this, I was like, “Dear God, I found it.” I went and got him, brought him back, and he was kicking and screaming. He said, “I’m going to go set those guys straight.” He then got caught up in the numbers. We could never dream as big as this book has taken us.

Leading by example and remembering people don’t care how much until they know how much you care. If you care about your distributors, it’s not just the money you’re making.

Sue, you mentioned a scroll here and that is, “I will multiply my value a hundred fold.” I’m going to read a snippet a piece of Og’s scroll there to give people the hope and the faith, because you said, “I will persist until.”

People used to say to us, “You talk a lot about money.” I said, “When you have a lot of money, money’s not an issue, but when you don’t have any money, all you can think of is, ‘Where’s the money for school lunches? Where’s the money for the rent? Where’s the money for the car? The car broke down.’” Money is obsessed with having enough money. Jim Rohn said, “Once you get that money stuff out of the way, the birds sing a little sweeter.”

Our readers are getting value out of this. I know I get value out of this. This is my life. I wake up now every morning thinking about Scroll number II, because like you said, Bob, I didn’t have that as a kid. I had parents that were divorced. I didn’t understand people and human relations. Here are Og’s words for everybody reading here, “Today, I will multiply my value a hundred fold and just as the warm wind guides the wheat to maturity, the same winds carry my voice to those who will listen. My words will announce my goals.” I remember you showing me your goals, Bob, because Og asks you to do that when you start reading the scrolls. If I’m not mistaken, at the end of the scrolls when you reassess where you’re at, you were almost to the dollar.

It was $30,000 a month. He said, “Nobody makes $1,000 a day. This is more than the President of the United States makes. I just wanted to make six-figure.”

You can make six figures a year or a month and add more leverage to your life. Some people make six-figure a day. Those are big leverage people. Bob, I will persist until I succeed. I see the long-term lead by example and care about others. That is perilous wisdom.

Dan, my whole family can’t thank you enough for accepting someone like me, and taking me under your wing back then. People now don’t understand what I was back then.

Isn’t the pay it forward thing heavenly though. How many countries is your business in did you say?

It’s 26.

It’s because you took the challenge, wrote the goals and didn’t cheat. I love how Sue said you would read it at night once out loud for each.

I’m a slow reader. Reading a book to me is like somebody else doing 5,000 pushups.

Our success has been amazing. We’ve been blessed beyond our wildest dreams, but when we see how many others have helped rise to the top, it can make you cry.

We’re going to affect others like you affected us.

Network Marketing: Stay hopeful and keep seeking. Never stop seeking opportunities.

It’s like watching your kids graduate from high school or doing something fabulous.

Sue, I’ll start with you and then Bob can close us out here. What would you say to somebody that’s stuck in the journey like you were? You were stuck living in that. What did you call the house you lived in?

The place we lived in was a small apartment, two queen beds, and a rollout, a kitchen and the TV.

Our grandkids can’t understand where we started growing.

You never known us out rich, but we show them the pictures.

For someone that’s stuck and maybe they’d been on the journey a while, maybe they feel like they’re not making the progress, what counsel would you give them?

Stay hopeful and keep seeking. I’ve never stopped seeking opportunities.

It’s personal growth. You don’t exercise just in your 20s or 30s. You should do some exercise your whole life. The same with personal growth. You should consistently work and prove yourself. Now, you can listen to CD’s and tapes. You don’t have to read the book if you’re a bad reader like me. Every time you’re in your vehicle or motorbike, for 15 or 20 minutes, 1 or 2 times a day, you listen to Jim Rohn or something like that. It will help change your life. Hanging around with the wrong people is what takes you down.

My philosophy always was, “To be happy where I am while in pursuit of where I want to be.” I had babies back when you washed diapers and hung them on the line and folded them. I was happy there. I wasn’t living in misery every day. I was happy because I knew it was a stepping stone. I know I wasn’t going to be there the rest of my life. I knew in my mind if there were better things ahead for me. I never lost track of that. There were better things ahead.

I can remember living in that old trailer when I was hanging up diapers and things because I didn’t need to have room for a dryer. I would say, “We own these seventeen acres here. We own this old jalopy trailer. We own that old car.” I can remember when I never thought we’d have money to send our kids to private school or to college. We stayed in that old trailer even when we could have moved out to put our kids in a private Christian school, because I knew that they would get something there that just being out in the world wouldn’t give them and that maybe could never afford to give them. We made sacrifices like that and it’s turned out to better our lives.

You have to make sacrifices in all areas of your life to get you where you want to be.

Our lucky day was when the guy by the pool found a meeting to bring us clue and there you were. You and Bob made such a connection. It was amazing. The bromance, total opposite, old guy, young guy, out loud motorcycle guy, and devoted Christian and Mormon.

I love you guys. I can’t tell you how grateful I am that you’d come on and be willing to share.

Thank you for inviting us. We never thought ourselves worthy of being on here with you.

You are the greatest salesperson in the world. This is a great story. It’s one of inspiring to many and hopefully, you’ll share it with your team. I’ll share it with mine. We’ll go out and make ourselves available and be prepared to meet the next person that is the Bob and Sue or Dan, or any one of your sweet children that join you in the journey. The thousands that have joined you in 26 countries around the world, the tens of millions and the hundreds of millions of dollars in business you’ve done. It’s an honor to have you here. I want to thank our readers and your family. I appreciate you putting in the time to give this some thought. I hope everybody has the greatest day of your life.

Important Links:

• Bob – Facebook
• Sue Burdick – Facebook
• The Greatest Salesman in the World
• www.HabitFinder.com/burdick