Good evening, everyone!

There was a business leader conference call tonight and, as usual, it contained a lot of information.  All of this information will be made available through the Shaklee Business Weekly coming out by Friday that we forward to you.  It will also be available in the News Archive under the archived conference calls.  Please be sure to check both of these out and go through them in detail.

Well, there is good news and bad news.  It’s important to pass both of these on to your existing and new customers.  First, the good news.  Shaklee will no longer charge an annual renewal fee.  New members are still charged a $19.95 membership fee, but they will not be asked to renew their membership, or to order a minimum of 100 pv per year to maintain their membership and receive the specials available through Shaklee.  Now, the bad news.  Shaklee is discontinuing the quarterly mailing brochures and discontinuing specials.  On a positive note, though, discontinuing mailing and product specials is what makes no future renewal fees possible.  It also allows them to offer greater incentive trips, and special events throughout the year.

To help us keep in touch with our customers, Shaklee will be coordinating future e-mails of the Shaklee Health Sciences, Hotline CD’s, Product Features and Conference calls.  Each month will have a different theme.  For instance, February is Heart Health Month focusing on Omega Guard, CoQHeart, etc.  March is National Nutrition Month with Vitalizer as the main focus.  April will be Earth Day and, of course, Get Clean, is the focus.  May is for honoring mothers and because moms are always under stress, the focus will be on relieving stress with Stress Relief.

They talked about statistics for the month of January.  Keep in mind this is just for the month of January.  It’s always encouraging to see these figures because it shows how much Shaklee is growing, that we are not showing our age at all.  In the month of January more than 32,000 new people were sponsored into Shaklee either as a Gold Ambassador, Distributor or member.  They had a 25% increase in sales over December, 10% increase over last January, 2007.    So far this month, they are 7% over last February with 5,000 new members sponsored.  So, whoever said it’s hard to find anyone who wants to join Shaklee, is not talking with enough people.

The rest of the conference call was a discussion about New Orleans.  If you’re still not sure about going to New Orleans, check out www.neworleans08.shaklee.com.  They will continue to update it as new information becomes available.  You should be able to get conference pricing, hotel pricing and information, agenda, and event information.  If you can’t find what you are looking for there, call me and I’ll help.   Bob and I have gone to the last four conventions and we wouldn’t miss then for anything!  Saturday night, the last night of the convention this year, will be, of course, a Masquerade Ball.  We would love to have you all attend.  In fact, if you do attend, one evening’s dinner is on us while you are at the convention!

Lastly, we talked about May being a month for women.  Several of the Masters have gotten together and created a meeting to be held in May called National Woman to Woman Initiative.  They have a web site set up that will help us putting a meeting together.  http://www.nwtwi.org/index.html.  Lifetime Master Coordinator Mollie Pratt has asked If some of the area business leaders are interested.  I told her YES!  I would love to see us handing out flyers for this event.  The topics are discussed on the web page so you can get an idea of what we will talking about, and some suggested formats and agendas for the meeting.  If you are interested and know other women who would be interested in attending, I would like to get an initial head count so we know what size room we will be looking for.  It will most likely be the first weekend in May, Saturday, May 3^rd.  I’ll keep you informed as to our progress and send along a flyer as soon as we have one completed with location, date and time.  Also, send along whether you would like a brunch, lunch or between lunch and dinner with refreshments type of meeting.

There was more, but look for it in the Business weekly.  Have a good night.