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Hola Everyone,

Sunday 19^th June, 2011

A friend wrote to me this week telling me about their wonderful hike through the Cajas National Park last Sunday.  With their approval her description and some photos are below for you to enjoy.  Thanks guys.

Firstly to those who don’t know about the Cajas?  The park is located to the west of Cuenca approximately 20 km west of from the city. It has an area of 28,544 hectares and was legally established on June 6, 1977. The lowest altitude is 3,150 meters above sea level in Llaviuco and the highest at 4,450 meters is in the Cerro Arquitectos, or Architect`s Hill. In the Cajas you will find 152 species of birds.  It is well known for hiking, rock climbing, and mountain bike riding, fishing and camping. It is one of Ecuador’s bird watching paradises. The main road through the Cajas is the route that most people use to go to and from Guayaquil.

“Well I am starting to recover from Sunday and thought I better clue you in.

As I think I told you we went for a 6 mile hike on Wed. in the Caja National Park which is of course in the Andes.  We went alone on this one and we were scouting to find a rather large lake that we hoped to return to and spend a few days.  Last Wed we woke up to a beautiful sunny morning so we skipped Spanish and decided to go hiking.

The hike was awesome and the weather held all day.  The weather is very fickle in the Caja's and very tricky to navigate if you get too far in without a trail.  We have talked to several park rangers and found out which trails we can do alone and which ones we need a guide.  The problem is the fog that can roll in very quickly and make visibility zero.  Anyway this trail is marked pretty well so we set off.  We went approx. 5 miles with the first 3 being fairly easy and the last 2 were a killer.  We were climbing up and over rocks because the trail is actually a creek that I can see carries a lot of water when it rains hard. 

We made it to a point we figured about 45 min from the lake however because we started a little late and it gets dark around 6:30pm we decided to stop and try again on another day.  We had already decided that climbing the later part of this trail would be very hard with a backpack on, not undoable but hard.   I was the one that said I had enough because my legs were starting to shake and get weak on the hard areas and since we are still new to the Caja's and there was a few clouds forming I got nervous.  I did take a first aid kit which does include a space blanket, food, aids for injury and a mirror for signaling for rescue which would be a joke here because there are so few planes that fly above the park. Anyway we left and I spent Thurs, Frid and even a little bit of Sat. hobbling around because of being so sore.

We get emails from Club Sangay (www.clubsangay.com)  telling us about the different things they are doing, check it out, just hit where it says translate this page and you can read it better.

 

Anyway they had a hike this last Sunday that they said was 2/5 for difficulty and they also said they would walk by Lake Tatachugo which is the lake we were looking for.  They had an entirely different route coming from above the lake. We have learned their difficulty reports can be a little off as this one was.  The soles of my hiking boots from REI have literally fallen apart (and yes I will be taking them back) so I hiked in my sub zero boots that I don't where very much.  Once we figured out I could wear them we decided to go.

 

We met the club people at 7am and left around 8:30am (remember we are on Ecuadorian time) and there was about 35 people.  They were mostly all young people however there were a couple a little younger than us from Holland and couple about out age from Germany.

 
Dave and I had driven to the starting point the day before just to see it and I am glad we did because that day was very cold and windy and it made me dress warmer for the actual hike which was a good thing.

The busses dropped us off at a place called Dos Chorea’s which means 2 waterfalls and we started in.  The first half of this trail is really not a trail, they call it a fisherman's trail and it was just that.  Oh yes, we had 2 guides!!
 
Pretty much we climbed up the side of a very big mountain through the brush and rocks to get where we could get through the saddle of the mtn.  It is hard to explain because it is so different than in the US because here you are responsible for yourself.  Not that they would leave you or not help you it is just when you go on these trips you are expected to be able to endure anything they throw at you.  This hike was not a 2 out of 5, it was more like a 3 or 4 out of 5.  Maybe a 3/5 because 5 would be climbing Cotopaxi which is a volcano that requires crampons and ice pikes and a lot of experience. You can see their scale of difficulty is a very narrow definition!!!
 
Anyway long story short, the hike was 20km (12.5 miles) a lot of climbing most everything being above 12,000 feet in fact at the highest we were hiking at 13,000 feet. I took very few pictures because so much of it all looks the same however I now wish I would have taken more.  The pictures I have are in the open areas but you get the idea.  The weather was cold (which is normal in the Caja's), foggy in spots and misty.  See why I say I was glad we checked it out the day before?  We were dressed for the weather !!!!!  Climbing up in these altitudes really gets me. However, I am like the tortuous - I go slow but steady with an occasional stop to get my heart rate back to a manageable level. This is where the younger people that live here in Cuenca really show off their stuff.  Actually some of the older ones show off also because they have lived here all their lives and are used to it. I am so impressed with all of them.
 

We would climb over one mountain (me thinking this is the last one) and damn there would be another saddle we would have to climb through.  We did get to the lake and actually walked almost all the way around it because that was the route to the next saddle.  I have a few pictures of the lake and you can see what I mean.  It took a lot of mind power to see ahead and also know that I had to hike this stuff when I was so tired.  There were times when I said to Dave I am not sure I can do this, all the time knowing I had no choice.  At those times I did some EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique) something I am learning and tried to change my mindset and it would work until I got to the next climb then I would do some more.  Coming down the other side from the lake we were pretty knowledgeable about the trail because remember, we had hiked that the Wed before. I told the guide we had hiked that part on Wed and he just looked at me like I was crazy or lying.  WHATEVER!!!

 

We were about the 8th or 9th person to get to the bus so I sat down and ate a delicious orange I had brought for energy and waited for the remainder of the group to return.  It took about 30 or 40 min. for the last people to arrive and we set off for home.  We were able to get the driver to stop the bus close to our house instead of going all the way into town and then having to catch a taxi. It is about 4 or 5 blocks from where they dropped us to our house and I did at one time say to Dave, maybe you should go get the car!!!!!  Of course I would never let him do that so we walked home; Dave took my boots off, helped me undress and drew me a hot bath.  Monday I was tired. However, we did go and pick out the faucets for the apt then I came home and rested.  I am sore, but not as sore as I was from the Wed hike and now (Tues) I am doing pretty well.  We need to go to town so I think we are going to walk to help keep the old body moving.

 

I said "no more" when I was on this hike but you know what, I am already looking at the map trying to find another lake that is not so hard to get to.  We are determined to backpack into one of these lakes to spend a few days and do some fishing.  I think we are going to try and find a lake we can walk to and from in 1 day so we can do the hike without packs first to see how hard it is. The people here that are active, like the people in these clubs, I really give credit to.  Some of the girls came in little fancy tennis shoes and obviously not dressed for cold and wet hard hiking but I heard no complaints. 

Many of the women in Cuenca are pretty fluffy and pretty much just walk around town in HIGH heels, tight Levis and wouldn't hike to save their soul.  We obviously have found the other type of people in Cuenca and I am so happy we did.

 

This hike was beautiful, inspiring, and difficult and another one of those adventures that helps build character and strength.  There will come a time as I am seeing and feeling where some of these adventures will come to an end. I am really coming to grips with the fact I am getting older and I can't always do what I want however I am also learning to go at a slower pace and be satisfied with what I can do.  This is a wonderful country with a lot of things to do and see and I plan to do just that.

We are leaving this Sat for Mindo which is a 10 hr drive from here (in our own car, yaaaa) to spend a little time in the jungle.  This will be a very slow paced adventure with time to reflect, hopefully learn a little more Spanish since ours is so bad, maybe do the Mindo Ropes and Canopy zipline (well of course) and just relax.  The weather will be warmer, more humid and of course more bugs however just another adventure to explore in this wonderful Country.

 

Ecuador has offered us the opportunity to be retired and still go and do most of the things we like.  We have to watch our pennies pretty close and are not extravagant with the way we live. However, at a time in our lives where adventure is still our mindset it has turned out to be very wonderful.  Chao for now  K"

I hope you have enjoyed reading this story and there are more where this came from so stay tuned.

 

Chao for now and have a great week.

 

Dixie

 

 

Continuing on from last week’s Newsletter about the Quito bi-lingual team at Experience Ecuador have put together some wonderful new tours and services that will be of great benefit to those who are thinking of relocating or checking out Quito.

The team sees themselves as your personal contact in Quito for anything that you require ranging from real estate tours, meeting with bi-lingual attorneys, finding a rental, checking out the medical facilities and even introducing you to specialized doctors.

The fee for a one on one service is $20 per hour (minimum 2 hours) or $100 for a full day.  To inquire about their other services and fees please send through the submission form at the bottom of the page.

Jonathan from Experience Ecuador had this to say:

“The fundamental idea at Experience Ecuador is to, well, to actually Experience Ecuador.  So besides our live, learn and explore Experience Ecuador program, we also offer excursions to different parts of Ecuador. We believe there is a lot of Ecuador for everybody’s likings. Based on our in depth knowledge of Ecuador and the many requests from people interested in coming to Ecuador, we have designed various itineraries that will surely cover and answer most of your questions about Ecuador. We have several 1 day excursions of Quito and its surroundings, a couple of more detailed 2 day excursions of Quito and its peaceful suburbs and an assortment of excursions that cover virtually all of Ecuador, from north of Cotacachi to south of Cuenca and from the Amazon basin to the Pacific coast. These complete and affordable excursions are done in groups or on an individual basis and range from 4 to 20 days. We are also happy to tailor to any specific needs”.

Experience Ecuador offers the following services:

Real Estate Assistance in Quito and Ecuador

Experience Ecuador provides help with properties for sale or for rent around Quito and the rest of the country. Working closely with you as to what you would like, they work conjunctly with trustworthy local realtors, to help you find and negotiate the property of your dreams. However, before making this big move, they recommend trying the Experience Ecuador program, even if it’s a shorter 1 or 2 month program.

Personalized tour – Quito

Experience Ecuador can tailor make a tour especially to suit your needs.  Whether it is visiting the tourist spots of Quito - Equator, Teleferico, Old Town, Museums or visiting the Hospitals, Medical providers, Schools, Shopping areas including markets, expat friendly neighborhoods or properties under constructions.  Just ask.

Setting up life in Quito

It is very exciting setting up a new life in a different country but if you don’t speak the language it can become a little frustrating.  At Experience Ecuador they will be able to assist you with setting up house in Quito.  They offer translations services, introduction to bi-lingual attorneys, set up a bank account, help with internet providers and more.

Facilitation of Medical Care in Quito

Sarah (an Experience Ecuador team member) is a US licensed Registered Nurse with 20 years of experience working with the Ecuadorian medical system.  If you are in need of medical care or help with finding the proper medical resources in Quito, assistance in case of an emergency, hospitalization coordination, translation of health records or facilitating your medical tourism contact Experience Ecuador.

You can also read more about the people that make up the team of Experience Ecuador HERE.

Want to know more then send through your inquiry to Experience Ecuador.  Contact form at the bottom of the page.

Hola Everyone,

Saturday 28^th May 2011

QUITO

Lately I have been receiving many emails asking me for information about Quito. Do I have anyone they can contact?  Is there a reliable bi-lingual residency attorney that you can recommend?

Quito is the first point of entry into Ecuador for most overseas travelers.  The other point of entry is the city of Guayaquil.  Quito is the second most populated city in Ecuador with a population reported to be close to 2,000,000.  

 

 San Francisco de Quito or Quito as we know it is the capital city of Ecuador.  The elevation of the Quito is 2,800 meters (9,200ft).   It is the second-highest administrative capital city in the world (after La Paz, Bolivia).

Quito was also named as one of the first World Cultural Heritage Sites by UNESCO in 1978.

History

Ecuador is steeped in rich history, certainly by comparison with Australia. The capital, Quito, was the initial focus of the country’s eventual road to independence.

Quito's origins date back to the first millennium, when the Quitu tribe occupied the area and eventually formed a commercial center. The Quitu were subsequently conquered by the Caras, who founded the Kingdom of Quito about 980 AD.

Centuries later, Caras and their allies were narrowly defeated in 1462 by an army of 250,000 led by Túpac Inca, the son of the Emperor of the Incas. The Kingdom of Quito then became integrated into the Incan Empire.

In 1534, the Caras/Quitu people were conquered by the Spanish. This was part of Spain’s colonial expansion which had started in 1492 when Christopher Columbus discovered the Americas, and lasted over 400 years until 1898.

The Spanish colonization of America was the exploration, conquest, settlement and political rule over much of the western hemisphere by the Spanish Empire. It was initiated by the Spanish conquistadors and developed by the Monarchy of Spain through its administrators and missionaries. The motivations for colonial expansion were trade and the spread of the Christian faith through indigenous conversions.

Indigenous resistance to the Spanish invasion  continued during 1534. Santiago de Quito (in present day Cola, near Riobamba) was founded on August 15, 1534 and later renamed San Francisco de Quito on August 28, 1534. The city subsequently moved to its present location and was re-founded on 6 December 1534 by 204 settlers led by the Spanish leader Sebastian de Benalcazar. He had captured the Incan warrior Ruminahui and effectively ended any organized resistance.

On August 10, 1809 and after nearly 300 years of Spanish colonization, a movement was started in Quito that aimed for political independence from Spain. This is the day that is celebrated as Independence Day. However, this initial movement was ultimately defeated on August 2, 1810, when Imperial troops came from Peru, and killed the leaders of the uprising along with about 200 inhabitants of the city.

A chain of conflicts concluded in 1822, when Antonio Jose de Sucre, under the command of Simón Bolívar, led troops into the Battle of Pichincha (24^th May 1822). Their victory marked the independence of Quito and the surrounding areas.

Simón Bolívar remains regarded in Hispanic America as a hero, visionary, revolutionary, and liberator. During his lifetime, he led Bolivia, Colombia, Peru, Ecuador Panama, and  Venezuela to independence, and helped lay the foundations for democratic ideology in much of Hispanic America.

Just days after the Battle of Pichincha, on May 24, 1822, the leaders of the city proclaimed their independence and allowed the city to be annexed to the Republic of Gran Colombia.  Simón Bolívar went to Quito on June 16, 1822, and was present at the signing of the Colombian Constitution on June 24, 1822. When the Gran Colombia dissolved in 1830, Quito became the capital of the newly formed Republic of Ecuador.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quito and also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Ecuador

Quito celebrates for the whole month of August and especially on August the 10^th.  You will see many references to “10 de Agosto” around the city.

Quito is often referred to as the middle of the world. You can visit the equatorial line which crosses this country just north of the capital city.

 

 

 

Quito may also be another destination for those of you thinking of retiring to Ecuador.

My friends at Experience Ecuador will be able to help you make the transition to Quito a pleasant one.  They are able to offer their services as bi-lingual translators to help you with details such as, banking, doctors, finding suitable rentals, real estate, buying furniture, connecting TV and internet services and much more.  In my next issue I will be introducing the team at Experience Ecuador and advising you of all the services that they have available for you the new expat.

If you are looking at retiring in Ecuador and want information on getting your residency may I suggest that you contact Attorney - Dra Gabriela Espinosa.  Gabriela was most helpful in obtaining our residency and also when we have required help with other matters.  Your Cedula is now only available from Quito so even if you are passing through on your way to live in other parts of Ecuador, you may like to make an appointment to see Gabriela to start you on the path of getting your residency.  You can also send through a form with your question before leaving your country.  CLICK HERE

 

 

For those who are following the series of my book Framed, Shamed and Defamed Chapter three – Rocky Road to Ecuador has now been published.  CLICK HERE.  

I also would like to take a moment to welcome all of the newbie’s to the website.  If you have missed out in reading the first two chapters of my book, don’t despair.  You can get your copy CLICK HERE.

Until next I write.

Chao for now

Dixie

 

 

 

 

 

This article is also written by John

Why or how did we make the decision to go from Australia to live in Ecuador? To understand why, I want to explain a term called “precession”. After you read this article you might have some ah-ha moments about some of the decisions you have made in your life. Awareness of the term and its meaning also helps deal with what we might first see as “failures”. It has been stated that only one in 10,000,000 people understand precession.

As a result of some recent feedback from a few subscribers, I was reminded of a different period of my life many years ago. This was long before I had met Dixie.

In the early 90’s (not long after I turned 40) I was introduced to this new word - precession. According to Wikipedia, the word is actually a physics term. When described in the form of a mathematical formula, it is all gobbledegook to me.

“Precession is a change in the orientation of the rotation axis of a rotating body”. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precession

 “The torque-free precession rate of an object with an axis of symmetry, such as a disk, spinning about an axis not aligned with that axis of symmetry can be calculated as follows:

 

Don’t be alarmed: this is not how the word was first explained to me. The principle of precession was used to describe certain relationships in nature, including how and why we make decisions in our journey of life.

First a bit of background:

When I first heard of precession in the early 1990’s, I had recently founded a personal development brokerage business called PMA. This was short for “Productivity Masters Australia”. The acronym was also often thought of as “Positive Mental Attitude”.  At the time, I was a fan of Napolean Hill’s classic book called “Think and Grow Rich”. PMA sold a range of personal development and motivation seminars and workshops. The business was rewarded with a commission on each enrolment.

Precession led me to starting this seminar business.

I was the chief sampler of various seminars and workshops, and attended many programs to assess whether they would be OK to promote. So over a two year period, I was exposed to a lot of alternative thinking, philosophies and therapies. To this day, 20 years later, I still maintain an interest in the subject area and continue to read and research various topics. Many times since those early days I have attended other seminars and workshops.

Not long after I started PMA, I commenced a relationship with a woman who was a health food cooking teacher. I had met her on one of the seminars. This was some time after my marriage had ended.

My new partner had a very strong interest in herbs and essential oils. In addition she had been a personal development enthusiast for about 10 years, so I was a novice by comparison.  But I quickly learned, almost by osmosis just from being around an alternative thinker. My partner was also an avid fan of the concepts of permaculture and sustainability. For those who have not been exposed to this term permaculture:

“Permaculture is an approach to designing human settlements and agricultural  systems that are modeled on the relationships found in natural ecologies.

Permaculture is sustainable land use design. This is based on ecological and biological principles, often using patterns that occur in nature to maximise effect and minimise work. Permaculture aims to create stable, productive systems that provide for human needs, harmoniously integrating the land with its inhabitants. The ecological processes of plants, animals, their nutrient cycles, climatic factors and weather cycles are all part of the picture. Inhabitants’ needs are provided for using proven technologies for food, energy, shelter and infrastructure. Elements in a system are viewed in relationship to other elements, where the outputs of one element become the inputs of another. Within a Permaculture system, work is minimised, "wastes" become resources, productivity and yields increase, and environments are restored. Permaculture principles can be applied to any environment, at any scale from dense urban settlements to individual homes, from farms to entire regions.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permaculture

 

You can probably gather from the subject matter of previous articles I have written, that I have been heavily influenced by this period in my life. It was when my interest in alternative health and environmental and integrated agriculture kicked off. It was also when I had the giftware business experience that was the subject of my recent import/export article.

Precession led me to my new partner and the essential oil giftware business

Even my later interest in organic waste recycling, worm farming and inventing new compost technologies stem from this period. That interest started as a seed of an idea from the permaculture concepts. See HERE for a TV “New Inventors” program that showed my invention that was made out of sea containers. The concept became somewhat larger than my initial backyard hobby (with five Government grants, awards and total development expenditure of $3,500,000).

Precession led me to the compost technology business.

Back to explaining “Precession”:

It was at a workshop called “Money & You” which was presented by Robert Kiyosaki where I first heard the word.

Kiyosaki,  born in 1947, is an American investor, businessman, self-help author and motivational speaker. Kiyosaki is best known for his Rich Dad Poor Dad series of motivational books and other material published under the Rich Dad brand. He has written 15 books which have combined sales of over 26 million copies.

The Money & You program is now run by Kiyosaki’s former business partner, DC Cordova, at “Excelerated Business School for Entrepreneurs”.  The school claims to have over 80,000 graduates world-wide. Click HERE for more details.

I think in the context of personal development, the nature of precession that Kiyosaki enlightened me about was first coined by Buckminster Fuller. It was Fuller who said that only 1 in 10,000,000 people understand precession. That is a very small percentage of the population. It would be interesting to know how many of our readers have heard of the word/concept.

Kiyosaki was a great fan of Buckminster Fuller (“Bucky”). So who was he? 

Richard Buckminster “Bucky” Fuller (July 12, 1895 – July 1, 1983) was an American engineer, author, designer, inventor, and futurist.

Fuller published more than 30 books, inventing and popularizing terms such as “Spaceship Earth”, ephemeralization, and synergetics. He also developed numerous inventions, mainly architectural designs, the best known of which is the geodesic dome. Carbon molecules known as fullerenes were later named by scientists for their resemblance to geodesic spheres. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buckminster_Fuller

I will provide a little bit of information of Bucky’s work. Again, this information is something I remember from 20 years ago.

You may have already seen many examples of a “geodesic dome”. A geodesic dome uses a pattern of self-bracing triangles in a pattern that gives maximum structural advantage, thus theoretically using the least material possible (“doing more with less”).

Sometimes you will see how triangles are used as tetrahedrons in roof structures. Tetrahedrons look like this:

I have seen large spanned roof trusses in many modern airports built from combinations of tetrahedrons.

Here are some examples of geodesic domes.

Although these designs are architectural examples, Bucky also applied the principles to other systems. For example, a family with children is generally thought to be a stronger relationship structure than that of only two people. There is only one straight line between two points, but there are three lines between three points. With a tetrahedron (four points), the structure is stronger and stable in all dimensions.

About Bucky: he experienced a lot of personal tragedies:

• In 1922, his first child died in his arms of pneumonia just a month before her fourth birthday, after having survived both infantile paralysis and spinal meningitis.
• In the same year that his second daughter Allegra was born (1927), he went bankrupt and lost the company he had started with his father-in-law.   Feeling totally depressed, he turned to drink and later stood on the edge of Lake Michigan and contemplated suicide.  It was then some voice told him “You are not here in this world for yourself!” Those words caused him to re-evaluate his life and the world!

It was after these setbacks that Bucky decided to commit himself (and his family) to solving world problems and by designing artifacts that were capable of “doing more with less”. He decided to pay no attention to “earning a living”. He believed that if his designs were good for the world, then nature would take care of him by good precession!

And so what actually happened in his life? Did nature take care of him? Yes - he was looked after by some invisible force. He owned 43 cars, 3 planes, and several boats.  Although Fuller never graduated from college, he was awarded nearly 50 honorary doctorates for his work in science and the humanities, and over 100 major awards of merit, including the cover of Time magazine in 1964.

Here are a couple of simple examples of precession described by Bucky:

• Dropping a Pebble into a Lake: When a pebble is dropped into a calm lake, as the pebble drops vertically downwards to the bottom, it creates ripples – which travel outwards horizontally away from where the pebble was dropped.

So in the above example, Bucky was referring to the fact that physically an action can create some ripples or side effects, which are perpendicular to the direction of the action or movement. 

• A Bee Gathering Honey: When a bee gathers honey (facing in one direction), pollen from the flower is being deposited on its legs (which are at right angles to its body).   Thus in the act of gathering honey, the bee unknowingly pollinates the flowers – therefore helping plant life to grow.

Kiyosaki, in his Money & You workshop, explained precession as it applied to human nature slightly differently (see diagram below). He explained that you might set a goal and start taking steps to head in that direction and at the time you might not even know how you are going to get there. For example: It might be a big goal. But along the way, a distraction or a circumstance gets in the way and forces you to head in a different direction. And then somewhere along that path, another distraction gets in the way and your direction of travel changes again. That pattern goes on. But it is quite possible that if the goal is still fixed, then the distractions might actually help you to achieve your stated aim.

You will see later how this explanation happened to me in agriculture, and it has continued to happen. You will probably recognize how you have been affected in similar ways.

 

 Here is further explanation of the bee example (from http://www.dailyhappyliving.com/?p=185).

“YOU & PRECESSION:

What can You & I do to use precession to our advantage?   Let us analyze the example of the Bee Gathering Honey further.   Does the bee know it is helping the universe in its task of preserving plant life?  No!  Does the bee need to know that it is helping the universe in order to get its reward?  No!   All it has to do, is go after its desire or goal (to collect honey) and it will automatically be provided with its rewards!

Similarly I would like to point out that we human beings are also `programmed for happiness’ by nature (or the universe or God)!   So all we have to do in order to get good precession is to go after our goals and dreams with a passion – knowing that when we pursue our purpose, we are actually helping the universe in our own unique way!

Just think about it.   If you are happy, you naturally spread this happiness: your spouse is happy, your children are happy, your family is happy, your office colleagues are happy to see you!  If you are depressed, you spread your depression to one and sundry!  A happy person does not get into fights or start wars!  So it is good to go after your own happiness.

Imagine what would happen if the bees were to go on strike and stopped gathering honey.   The pollination of flowers would not take place and plants would eventually die out!   (This idea was explored a little in the movie `Bee Story’.) However this won’t happen because the bees are `programmed’ by nature to go out and gather honey and don’t have a choice in the matter!

However we humans have been given the choice to follow our `program’ and be happy or go against nature and be miserable!  If we keep saying that this world is `illusion’ and try to avoid living life to the fullest now – hoping somehow that will qualify us to live a better after-life, then we are not unlike the bees that go on strike!  We are going against nature and God!    Thus if we persist in living a miserable life in this lifetime (which is against nature), we have no chance of being happier in the next life!

So my suggestion to you if you are an average person (not Buckminster Fuller) is to:

Go after your dreams with your whole heart and soul knowing that the universe is for you.   You will know if you are going in the right direction, by the precession you create.   If you have good precession, nature will pat you on your back by giving you `lucky circumstances’ and you will achieve success and happiness easily.

If on the other hand you are off track and you create bad precession, then the same universe may give you a `knock’ on the head rather than a pat on your shoulder to get back on course again!   Setbacks and lucky breaks are just nature’s way of giving you both `negative or positive feedback’ – so that you can steer in the correct direction!”

Kiyosaki’s explanation of “precession” in 1991 was done in a way that I could personally relate to at that time. It clarified for me some of my previous farm and other business experiences and decisions. It even explained the decisions that I made as a teenager. I had not heard the term precession before, nor had I heard of Buckminster Fuller.

To explain my own example a bit more, I initially had a goal of achieving financial independence and 20,000 acres of grain cropping before I was 30 years old. That was my business plan. I could repeat it to myself several times per day without needing to even write it down. My nominated area was more than six times what my father had been producing and nearly three times the farm’s total area that I initially started with. For me at the time, my goal was big.

The main reason for my high goal was because I did not want to work as hard as my father. I also wanted to enjoy my life. I wanted to leverage my time and that meant doing more with less, just like Bucky Fuller decided to achieve – long before I had even heard of the man and his philosophies. The easier way of farming that I wanted to enjoy was similar to how my new father-in-law at the time was running his farm (and his family life) and I wanted to have a more balanced life like him.

I actually made the excuse that I was “lazy”. However, I was prepared to make some sacrifices of making some extra effort and working hard in the short term. That’s no different to making a decision to get a higher education while living on a pittance, in exchange for achieving a better and more satisfying long term career. The principle is called deferred gratification - or impulse control.  Sociologically, good impulse control is considered a positive personality trait, which psychologist Daniel Goleman indicated as an important component trait of “emotional intelligence”. 

I was already 25 when I set my farming goal and had only just started in agriculture.

Unfortunately my first two years in farming were characterized by droughts. In fact, out of the first four years, three of them were severe droughts, worse than any period in a very long time – even in my father’s whole 40 year farming career before my start. I know that fact because I checked the rainfall records. After experiencing these droughts and depressed asset values, I did not have long to achieve my goals! But precession got me there.

What you see in the photo below was actually a wheat crop (and a young version of me) that I was harvesting in 1976. I had returned to the farm in late 1975 after working as an Economics Research Officer in Sydney for a major Australian bank. That was after I had graduated from business school. My father wanted to retire for health reasons. He wanted me back on the farm. I was his only son.

 

What a change! I went from working in a suit in an air conditioned office on the 18^th floor of a high-rise building in Sydney to a life of flies, heat and desolate land in the marginal outback of Western Australia. It was an area where my father had named his farm “Dyard” because he was told that he would “die hard making a living” on the abandoned farm he bought from a bank. In hindsight, I think he left the “die hard” bit to me.

So how did “precession” work for me in this situation? Obviously droughts were getting in the way of my goals. Or were they?

Well firstly my older and more established neighbors did not want the stress from the bad seasons and they leased some or all of their land to me on very good terms. At this stage I did not have access to any property to mortgage against. My parents sold part of the farm so that they could retire, and leased the balance of 8,000 acres to me. Without assets to pledge as security, I had to become very creative with financing. This again was precession.

I had studied the long term rainfall records and rationalized that the dry seasons were only statistical aberrations. It would eventually be normal again. There’s that damn “bell curve” again (normal distribution) that I have mentioned in a previous article!

I quickly learnt that my best yields were from the crops that I sowed earlier and into warm moist soil, as soon as possible after the first rains. I started to chart the harvest yield per millimeter of rainfall during the growing season (which was April – September in Western Australia). That knowledge led me on a quest to develop machinery that could do more operations in one pass, and with the most efficient use of resources (fuel, labor, moisture, etc) and the least damage to the soil. I aimed to plant immediately after the very first rain of the season. As I said, without knowing it, I was doing what Bucky had espoused – “doing more with less”.

Over a five year period, our tractors went from 100 horsepower to over 500 HP. But with the innovations brought on by the droughts, my cost of fuel per completed acre just kept on dropping, and our average yields kept on increasing. And after some calculated risks of buying land and changing its use (eg. cattle to grain) and expanding/diversifying to another state, our balance sheet improved quite dramatically – until a major economic crash in the mid 1980’s.

During the early droughts we had also suffered from bad wind erosion and I wanted to stop that. As a result I started innovating to solve most of the problems and achieve my goals at the same time. This was precession in action.

With the help of a talented man, I commenced developing my own machinery and it led to “The Mollerin Monster” – a machine that could cultivate, sow and spray in one operation at the rate of one acre per minute. It could also work in conditions where there was a lot of organic matter. Most planting machines on the market could not do that.
 

The above photo was in a local newspaper. From that day on (May 1980) the rural media had a field day with me.

I was very fortunate to have met Kevin, a very talented metal worker who was also an excellent  design draftsman. He was older than me and had previously owned his own business. He said the stress of managing his business led to a lack of quality time with his family and then to his marriage breakdown. He vowed that he would never be self employed again. Kevin was working for an agricultural machinery manufacturer when I met him. Precession led me to Kevin.

After some discussions together about machinery and farming, Kevin decided to work for me full-time and we became a very good team. He was also like a brother that I never had. Apart from being very skilled in design and manufacturing, he was also excellent at machinery and building maintenance. After I employed Kevin, I was able to turn the 2-way radio off at night during the peak seasons (we worked 24 hours per day). I rationalized that if he couldn’t fix a breakdown, then neither could I.

The machine we developed together turned out to be the largest machine of its kind in the world at the time. Kevin nicknamed it “The Spruce Goose” after Howard Hughes’ large airplane.

If you don’t know about the Spruce Goose (I didn’t) the Hughes H-4 Hercules is the largest flying boat ever built, and has the largest wingspan of any aircraft in history. It survives in good condition at the Evergreen Aviation Museum in McMinnville, Oregon, USA.

This photo of a model shows the size comparison between a Hercules H-4 and a Douglas D3.

The Mollerin Monster was Kevin’s “Spruce Goose”.

As a result of the circumstances I was faced with (droughts and lack of money) and with my goals still in place, I precessionally moved in the direction I needed to go. I was like the bee chasing the honey.

Despite my earlier reservations about becoming a farmer, I was actually very happy being able to innovate to my heart’s content. Maybe I should have studied to be a mechanical or design engineer. Every year was different and I was able to institute continuous improvements, and even expand to a different state. By the time I was 35, I took a sabbatical to study full-time for an MBA. That’s another story and another example of precession at work.

My farm pioneering and innovation principles still exist in agriculture today. This includes North America. Many machines now perform the same functions as the one I developed over 30 years ago – but with the added benefit of GPS technology and on-board computer analysis software. I even found a reference to myself and the Mollerin Monster on a forum last year (see HERE). It was on a “Natural Sequence Farming” site (http://www.naturalsequencefarming.com/). NSF is a relatively new agricultural sustainability concept in Australia. I am quite sure that if I was still involved in agriculture, I would be a great fan of the NSF ideas.

There have been many similar examples of precession at work in my life since my agricultural days. In one moment I could be emotionally and mentally feeling at rock bottom, but in the next I would be setting a positive course in a completely different direction in a different industry. I would later look back and tell myself that the new joys and excitement of being in a new career and industry would have never happened if I hadn’t received a tap on the shoulder to change direction.

That is what has also happened in Ecuador. We first travelled there from Australia after a tap on the shoulder that stopped our natural health business. We have now had another tap saying that we should try somewhere or something else. We are keeping an open mind and continue as “bees hunting for honey”. Read about our Ecuador journey in the book we are publishing. Click HERE.

As my life has zig-zagged along, the word precession still has great meaning for me – including in our Ecuador experiences.

Even airplanes that are set on autopilot do not mean that the plane is heading in a single fixed direction. It is constantly making minor adjustments, in the same way that a rocket to the moon does. Humans are also constantly making corrections as they travel their journey of life. It’s just that some people have to make bigger corrections than others!

Next:  Dixie updates on events in Quito and obtaining residency in Ecuador.

 

This article has been written by John.

What has this topic of “health consciousness” got to do with Dixie’s web site and Ecuador?

Answer: most readers of the Retire in Ecuador web site (www.retire-in-ecuador.com) look at the possibility of retirement in Ecuador. That means they are probably at or near retirement age, when health and medical issues become increasingly important.

Dixie also receives many inquiries about Ecuador’s medical system, access to prescribed pharmaceutical drugs, and the availability of natural supplements and organic food. So to have access to good health care, prescribed medicines and the availability of food and supplements to maintain good health is an important topic for the RIE site. I think that these are important topics for everyone in general, not just readers of RIE.

It is my belief that if health and fitness education in schools were compulsory subjects, and treated as serious as learning English (or your primary language if it is not English), then perhaps our national health statistics would not be so poor. Why do young people leave school with virtually no awareness about the factors of the building blocks to their bodies and minds?

I also believe that advanced health and fitness education should be compulsory subjects in all faculties at universities. But nutrition is generally not even covered in the medical schools. After all, isn’t a healthy body and mind the “sacred temple” that we all require to be in great working order so that we can be happy and productive throughout the rest of our lives? If you are not well, what good are engineering or accounting degrees?

To be a bit cynical, that approach of including health and nutrition at all levels of the education system would be teaching people to become responsible. That would not be good for corporate profits! So such an idea is very unlikely to be adopted. What government would have the guts to implement such a policy and risk reducing corporate profits? That certainly would not do, would it? Sales of fast food and of sugary beverage drinks would possibly drop if such an approach were taken. And prescriptions for Big Pharma drugs might go down too.

In this article, I also want to provide a bit of an update as to our own health and fitness program. We now have progressed to be aware of some “finer distinctions” compared with only a couple of months ago.

General Comment

As western society makes claims that they have “progressed” with new medical technologies, the national health statistics and costs have continued to balloon. Why is that?

Despite the massive amount of money thrown at new technologies and pharmaceutical drugs, obesity is at pandemic proportions, cancer and heart rates continue to climb through the roof, diabetes rates are getting worse, rates of mental illness continues to skyrocket, and more.

A couple of weeks ago I read where the suicide rates in Australia produced twice as many deaths compared with fatalities from car/road accidents. But which one gets the most publicity? If medical science was so good, why would mental illness keep on increasing? Do psychotropic drugs make people feel worse. In my experience, they often do. You don’t have to look far to find other similar examples.

To an outside observer, one could hypothesize that there is a conspiracy theory at work. When you hear that there is a “war on cancer” or a war on some other disease, and billions of tax payer dollars are promised to fix the problem, you can probably bet that the main recipients of those government funds are going to be the existing industry players and lobby groups – and the disease will get worse. That is what has happened with cancer. It has also happened with mental illness.

Let’s look at the players in the field:

•          Big Agribusiness – do they have an incentive to produce healthy food? Or do they simply want more profits for the shareholders? The suppliers to agriculture want to sell more chemicals and fertilizers, and they also want to monopolize and control the seed stock with patents on Genetically Modified crops. These goals have nothing to do with consumer health. Here is an example. It is known that adequate magnesium is required for over 300 enzyme reactions in the human body. It is also known that most consumers are deficient in magnesium. Agricultural soils have been depleted of magnesium with chemical farming practices. Many pharmaceutical and recreational drugs also deplete the human body of magnesium.

o   Question: to what extent do the existing agricultural policies and practices lead to poorer consumer health?

•          Big Food – do they want to sell healthy food? Or do they simply want low cost, mass produced and efficiently pre-packaged processed items that can be stored for long periods of time on supermarket shelves?

o   Question: to what extent do the existing food processing and packaging lead to poorer health?

•         Big Beverage – do they care if their drinks are full of sugar and other addictive substances?

o   Question: to what extent do the existing beverage industries contribute to poorer health?

•        Big Pharma – do they want you to get cured? Or heaven forbid, you might become aware, knowledgeable and responsible for your own health? Do they want to block your right to information on natural and healthy approaches, and suppress successful alternative and nutritional information that cannot be patented? Have a read of “Death by Medicine” by Gary Null, Carolyn Dean and others.  You can get it on Kindle.

o   Question: to what extent does Big Pharma contribute to poorer health?

•          Big Government – do they want to stop the flow of lobby funds from the “Bigs” listed above? Do they want to lose their power? Do they want you to be more aware and more responsible for your own health? Or do they want to dumb you down so that you are more easily manipulated and controlled?

o   Question: to what extent does Big Government and their policies contribute to poorer health?

Here are some other questions to ponder:

o   Why was fluoride added to drinking water in the concentration camps in Germany? Could it have been to make the prisoners more passive? Can the same question be asked about the drinking water in many countries? The source of this poison is a waste product from the aluminium processing.

o   Is the media in cohorts with the “Bigs” above? Do they only release and show information that is “approved”? 

Health Freedom Advocates

There are now many respectable health freedom advocates who constantly monitor these health and political issues mentioned above - and more. They also release information about natural alternatives that are safer and have no side effects. I subscribe to many newsletters, but three that I find that offer constant and up-to-date information on healthy alternatives and health and political freedom information (and warnings) are:

•         Mike Adams from Natural News www.naturalnews.com

•        Dr Joseph Mercola www.mercola.com

•        Dr Mark Sircus   http://publications.imva.info

When I have sometimes mentioned articles by some of these people, I have occasionally received responses like “Oh, that’s no different to such and such; I already know that”. That might be true, but the difference is that these people reach huge audiences (probably over 3,000,000 subscribers between the three names mentioned above). They are probably making a much bigger difference to the lives of many more people than the average person. 

Do you want to be “normal”?

Most aspects of characteristics about human life can be described in statistical terms. They follow normal distribution patterns. There is a huge range from the lower end to the upper end of most characteristics, with most people fitting in the middle. The mathematicians describe this distribution pattern a “bell curve” on a graph, where most of the people fit in the middle of the range. It’s only a very small minority that can be described in the top 1% and also in the bottom 1%.

Just think of any human characteristic (IQ, education, health, fitness, weight, height, awareness, political persuasion, religious beliefs, sexual appetites and attitudes, etc, etc) and you can imagine a normal distribution pattern or bell curve for each.

The majority of people fit into the central area, regardless of the characteristic being described. They are considered to be “normal” or “average” because they represent the majority.

I have been described as being “abnormal” by quite a few people since I was quite young – and not only in a single aspect of my life either. It was not in reference to my IQ, height, weight, fitness, etc. I fell into the mid range for those characteristics. But I was in the small minority outside the normal range when it came to more controversial subjects. Maybe that happened because I was sent away to board when I was only six years old and a survival instinct kicked in. Perhaps I learnt to think independently to my family’s values and controls because I had less contact with my parents.

After I studied statistics at university, and later reading that only a very small percentage of people become financially independent, or achieve great things, I said to myself: “why do I want to become normal?”

According to the research made by CapGemini and Merryl Lynch published in the World Wealth Report 2006, there were about 2,669,000 millionaires in the United States, or about 0.9% of the population (less than 1%).

In 2011, maybe having a million dollars of net wealth does not even qualify someone as being financially independent anymore. What couple can afford to not work, but still live off the earnings from an investment of $1,000,000? Most of that wealth could easily be the value of the family home which does not earn any cash income. Does that put food on the table, or pay for the gas for the car? If you could earn 5% p.a. on your investment, that would only be $50,000 per year. And what inflation erodes the value or purchasing power of any further liquid investments? Can you even earn 5% in a secure investment? Perhaps a million dollars would be enough wealth to live in a 3^rd world country like Ecuador, but it’s unlikely to be enough in the US, Canada, Australia or most European countries.

So you can see that if your goal was to be financially independent by being a millionaire, then you would need to at least be earning in the top 1% of the population, or maybe even in the top 0.1%. Therefore you would have to be “abnormal” in mathematical terminology. The other 99% or more would be in the “normal” part of the distribution curve. Is that a good place to be?

Of course “success” is not only about the measure of money. Mother Teresa was not a financially wealthy person, but she was still considered to be a big success in her chosen profession – and was even awarded Sainthood by the Pope in 2003.

I think that to achieve success in life in your chosen profession and be a more interesting person and have a more enjoyable and exciting life, it is much better to adopt an attitude that you are probably better served by thinking and doing the opposite to what most other people do. That means you probably need to think and act abnormally. I think that Mike Adams, Joseph Mercola and Mark Sircus are “abnormal”. But I would prefer to follow their example than be just average.

This brings me to a great article that Mike Adams recently wrote called “The gullible mind explained”. It is well worth a read. http://www.naturalnews.com/032293_gullible_minds.html. Question: after reading Mike’s article, do you think you have a gullible mind?

I would like to think that I don’t have a gullible mind. I usually question the status quo on the big issues (eg political and health freedoms), and ask if there could be a better solution. Maybe I have not ingested my fair share of fluoride!!! Or I don’t watch enough television (or CNN, Fox News, etc).

I admit that I have been caught being gullible with other people by being too trusting. That happened to me in Ecuador.

Are you a negative or a positive person?

More than 20 years ago I remember listening to an audio tape by an Amway distributor. At the time, my self-improvement program involved rising at about 4:00am and going for a 2-hour walk with a walkman and listening to two motivation tapes. I walked in one direction for one tape, and then turned around and walked home for the 2^nd tape. They were usually an hour each. I subscribed to Amway’s “tape of the week” in order to get inspiration from different successful people. The discipline gave me exercise as well as new ideas.  

The person in this particular tape that I have mentioned was a successful distributor and also a Minister of Religion in the US. His topic was the subject of “negativity”. He said that after joining Amway he recognized that he was a negative person and was unlikely to succeed as a distributor if he stayed that way – “his cup was always half empty, rather than being half full”. So in order to change, he made the decision that he would not watch TV or read newspapers or be in the company of other negative people – until he believed that he had changed into a “positive” person. He said the process took him 18 months”.

By the way, I am not an active MLM distributor. I simply used the tapes for inspirational listening.

So if you think you are normal, but you would prefer to be abnormal (and certainly not a gullible person), then perhaps the Amway “Man of God” example above might need to be thought about.

Health & Fitness

I have made the above comments because I specifically want to refer to health and fitness. The first step is to have a positive attitude and probably think “abnormally”. After all, if you are normal you probably fit within the bell curve as being unhealthy and unfit and have medical problems – or be heading in that direction.

Why is it that there is so little done by the majority of people to achieve great states of health and fitness? This apparent lack of good health is in the face of so much evidence that shows that healthy and fit people are not usually burdened with the modern diseases of civilization such as obesity, diabetes, heart disease, cancer, arthritis, etc. So why do they still voluntarily choose to adopt the allopathic approach of medicine and abuse themselves with poor nutrition and chemical substances, and adopt sedentary lifestyles?

Sondra Ray, a spiritual teacher in the 1970’s stated that most people commit “voluntary suicide” – that we all have an “unconscious death urge” until we raise our awareness and deal with negative patterns. A large percentage of people know that their lifestyle choices are not healthy and their life spans are shortened because of the choices, but they still do them. Despite my general tendency to stay healthy, I have been very guilty too. Stress and being guilty of workaholism (and substance abuse) has put me into downhill spirals many times. But when I manage to escape that negative pattern, I become “abnormal” again.

Now as I am getting older, I look around for inspiration. Some senior people provide great examples and are definitely “abnormal”. They do not seem to have much of a death urge. I would love to be abnormal like them.

A couple I recently read about is Bill and Jeanne Daprano. Both have been admitted to the US Masters Hall of Fame (Jeanne in 2003 and Bill in 2009). In their 70’s, they are world record holders in Masters track and field events. Jeanne did not even start to enter competitions until she was 60 (which is my age now). It has been stated that by 2003 this couple had won over 100 gold medals between them. I think that is a fantastic story.

 

See http://www.thirdage.com/aging-well/redefining-age (article published in 2009)

http://www.georgiatrend.com/features-sports-leisure/bill-daprano.shtml (an article published in 2003).

Our own progress

We are a long way from being like Bill and Jeanne Daprano and probably will never be like them. However, at the moment we are really enjoying our Speed 8 workouts and alternating days with 90 minute walks. They represent quality time together as well as having an enjoyable and healthy interest to share.

Now that we are fitter and are not so challenged compared with less than two months ago, we have noticed more ways to make the Speed 8 and walking experiences even more enjoyable with new and ongoing short-term goals. In the beginning all we could concentrate on was just completing the eight Speed 8 repetitions every second day. In fact we didn’t even get there with an acceptable heart rate to begin with. It seemed like too much hard work. We were quite unfit. I stopped at about five repetitions for the first few weeks and have only managed the full eight repetitions in the last two weeks. However, I had all the settings on the exercise machine that I was using set at the maximum level of difficulty. Dixie was more patient with her level of difficulty settings. I am more of a “no pain, no gain” sort of person.  

We only looked at the timer and our heart rates on the monitor panel in the early stage. Our short-term goal was to simply finish the 8 repetitions, and get our heart rates up to 160 beats per minute or more during the 30 second sprint sessions.

Now, however, we are also starting to monitor and log:

·         the calorie counter, and

·         the distance measured.

Within just two Speed 8 days this week, we have found that we can monitor these additional measures and make new small improvement goals each week. In fact in my try (three times this week), I have improved the calorie counter and distance substantially. When I started I managed to only do 30 revolutions in the 30 seconds, which then dropped to about 25 by the fifth repetition. Now I can maintain over 35 revolutions for five repetitions, and drop to about 30 for the last few. I am getting fitter, and the improvement has happened very quickly.

I have also managed to keep my average heart rate higher. If I can continue improving in only a small way each week, I will be making important progress. I am my only competition, and that is just a mind game. It’s not a bad game to play at the age of 60. I also get to practice being a personal trainer for Dixie, and witness her benefits too.

The good thing about this Speed 8 discipline is that it is really hard to think about other problems – and there are a few at the moment. The heavy breathing (and puffing) is virtually the only focus we can concentrate on!! We certainly can’t easily talk during the sprints. The focused exercise might even be classified as a form of meditation.

The equipment we are currently using at a local gym has various electronic read outs on its display. It is called an Elliptical Exerciser (EE) and we prefer this to a stationary bike or a treadmill. Dr Joseph Mercola prefers a recumbent bike. It has a back rest. We don’t have access to one of those machines in the gym we are using. But on a recumbent bike you still only use your legs, just like a stationary bike. CLICK HERE if you want to see Mercola demonstrating Speed 8 on a recumbent bike. In the YouTube video he is being coached by Phil Campbell who wrote the book “Ready, Set, Go! Synergy Fitness ” He coined the program as “Sprint 8” – but it is the same thing.

The EE gives our legs as well as our arms and upper body a good work out if we set the adjustments levels at maximum difficulty. It also offers a non-jarring exercise on our knees and hips. This is an important factor for me with my bad knee.

The monitoring panel looks like this:

The level of difficulty can be changed. On the left, the level (10-100) refers to the step height or how high the knees rise. The adjustment on the right (2-20) alters the resistance. It is harder to pedal at the higher levels. That’s when your arms doing some work help a lot. We are now working at the maximum level of difficulty on both parameters.

After only a few weeks of feeling a bit uncomfortable with exhaustion, we now both look forward to our Speed 8 days. The small time interval taken (less than 20 minutes) passes very quickly, yet we feel like we have really done ourselves some good - if the heavy sweating and breathing are “proof”. I think we are starting to feel the Human Growth Hormone affect from Speed 8 that Mercola talks about.  

On every other day, we go for a walk for about 90 minutes. For this we wear heart monitors and try and stick to 110 – 130 beats per minute. We can still talk comfortably at this rate. We try and fit some weight training in if we feel like it. The experts say this also helps with weight loss.

The great benefit from our programs is that we have noticed that our respective blood pressures have already dropped substantially. We have both been on BP medication. Now Dixie has managed to cut out her pills altogether and still maintain normal BP readings. This has happened in quite a short period of time. After the Clean Program that we finished a few weeks ago (Clean: The Revolutionary Program to Restore the Body's Natural Ability to Heal Itself ), she was able to cut her medication down by 50%, but now after settling into the Speed 8 and regular walking for a few weeks, she is down to zero pills. We measure our BP’s every day after our morning exercise. I have cut my meds by 50% and my BP readings are in the normal range. I also hope to be down to zero meds after another few weeks and after I have lost some more weight.  

Dixie was also on prescribed thyroid medication. She has been on them for many years. As of this last week, she is experimenting with doing without those meds too. Her last blood test a few weeks ago (after the cleanse) showed that her thyroid readings were in the normal range. She will check them again in another few weeks. We are hoping that the Speed 8 and HGH affect will produce thyroid and other hormone improvements. If not, then she will go back on the meds.

We are also both sleeping very well. For me that is a huge bonus. I have had an insomnia problem for a large part of my life. I am also managing with less sleep compared with 6-8 weeks ago (about 6 hours) and am automatically waking up early. And when I do, I feel like immediately getting out of bed in an energetic way. It has been quite a while since I felt like that. I am mentally and physically much more productive.

Other options for Speed 8

You don’t need to have access to a special fitness machine to achieve what we are doing. But you probably do need a heart monitor as a motivating tool. An expensive version will have a calorie calculator built-in. However we purchased a cheap $50 one for Dixie last week and it works fine without a calorie counter. You can access a calorie calculator on http://www.braydenwm.com/calburn.htm.  This is good just for walking and other forms of exercise too. The calculator form looks like this:

 

Just fill out the first six cells and then press the “Calculate” button and you will get a good estimate of your calories burned.

I have found that running up stairs for 30 seconds is a great alternative to doing Speed 8 on a gym machine. They are not hard to find, especially in the mountains of Ecuador or in apartment buildings. You will still need your heart monitor. After the 30 seconds walking/running up the stairs, you then just walk slowly down and repeat the exercise in 90 seconds from the time you started to descend from the top stair that you managed to climb to. Do that 8 times. Don’t forget the warm up and warm down.

With your heart monitor and the above calculator (estimate your average heart rate over the whole exercise period), you will see that you can achieve the same benefits as if you are on an expensive gymnasium machine. If you want to make the exercise harder, just wear a backpack with some sort of weight in it (eg. Books). I have read that you can also do Speed 8 with swimming. But you will need to make sure your heart monitor is water proof. I found my cheaper version let a small amount of moisture in this week.

You may wish to log your details in a book, or on a spreadsheet, so that you can monitor your progress. It will become a motivating tool for you. A set of bathroom scales will also help. It has been proven that people who weigh themselves often, also tend to weigh less than people who don’t. It is just another motivating tool – especially after you commit to a health and fitness regime.

Regards

John

PS. If you think the above sounds too daunting, just think about what Bill and Jeanne Daprano have done with their senior years. Phil Campbell (“Ready Set Go”) makes the point in an article about the Daprono’s (click HERE) that he lost his father to heart disease at the age of 50 – a loss of over 25 years of quality life by comparison. What would happen to the cost of national health if more people thought and acted like the Daprano’s?

 

 

 

Exporting Giftware from Ecuador

When you visit Ecuador, one of the very noticeable attractions you will see is the huge variety of high quality local artisan crafts at very reasonable prices. If you buy in larger volumes, you can expect very good quantity discounts. The family owned artisan producers appreciate being able to make products in large production runs. Many of these products are ideal to sell into the giftware market around the world.

The main hub of the artisan products are on display at the Otavalo markets, especially on Saturdays. It is one of the most famous markets in all of South America. Otavalo is about a two hour bus trip north of Quito.

See HERE for a great selection of photos from Otavalo.

You will also find that many other towns in Ecuador display their artisan products. Most towns specialize. For example, Cotacachi is called the “leather town”. San Antonio de Ibarra is famous for its wood carvings. Chordeleg specializes in jewelry. Peguche is a weaving town. The list goes on. You will find these hubs all over Ecuador.

This article is focused at starting a serious business of exporting products from Ecuador and not "suitcase exporting". The following tips are given, based on experience in a similar business in Australia, and our initial experience in Ecuador before the economic crisis hit and the Australian dollar crashed against the US dollar in late 2008 (see below to read a bit about our background in this area).

Buying Tips

If you want to investigate the feasibility of exporting artisan products from Ecuador, the following are some suggestions:

• Buy a set of electronic scales (0-5kg). These are to carry with you (a backpack is a good idea). Also carry a notebook and a calculator or enter your research direct into a laptop or net book computer.     

• Get a copy of EMS and other shipping costs. There is an EMS branch in the post office that is adjacent to the Otavalo central square where the markets are held. EMS is a good direct door-to-door air service for packages up to 30 kg in weight. They have an on-line tracking facility. Our orders sent to Europe and Canada by EMS took only seven days.  A shipment to the USA took longer due to a holdup in customs. EMS packs the orders for you. The staff do an excellent job.

EMS Rate Chart (photo from wall)

Order packed and weighed by EMS

  

For larger orders, there is a shipping company that operates near the Otavalo markets too. Get shipping quotes from them. They also pack the orders very professionally.

 

 

 

• Identify products for sale. We initially chose lightweight scarves. We considered them to be low risk items to start with and the shipping cost by air to Australia was acceptable.

We also tried some other heavier products (e.g. blankets) but the shipping cost per item killed their viability. They became too expensive at retail values and did not have the same sell-through as the cheaper scarves. They would possibly be OK if consolidated into a larger sea freight order. 

With volume orders (more than 2,000 scarves) we were offered a very good discount. For the lightweight scarves, the landed unit cost in Australia by air was less than $3.00. Competitive products from Asia were retailing in Australia for over $25.00, so we knew that we had a good enough margin to wholesale the products to giftware stores and also afford to pay normal agent commissions. The stores normally require a margin of 100%.

So when calculating, you need to work backwards from the competitive retail price (which includes taxes). With the EMS shipping, it would be possible to ship smaller orders direct to retail stores in the US. The landed cost would be higher than larger orders, but you would not need to sell to a distributor at a lower price. You would still need to establish an agency network. In Australia the
commission rates to agents were from 15% to 20% of the wholesale price.

                                                                                                         

 
A random sample of other great products is shown HERE. But we think it is best to establish a very small range to start with, otherwise your inventory investment could get too high and limit your marketing and growth. It is best to add new products after doing some test marketing. Once your business gets started with a small product range, you can add small samples to test market in each reorder shipment. 

• Weight 10 random items and then divide by 10 to arrive at an average weight per item. From this you can later calculate your shipping cost per item - by EMS or sea freight. Just add your purchase price to arrive at a landed cost.

Don’t forget to ask your suppliers to quote on several different potential order quantities (e.g. 2,000, 5,000, 10,000, and 20,000). This will give you an idea of what your future potential is. We had to quote on 20,000 scarves, so anything is possible. You can afford to cut your margins to distributors if you get orders like that. For large orders, you calculate profit per day rather than profit per item.

Marketing

The quickest way to establish a customer base is to exhibit at trade/gift fairs. You can also usually find agents and distributors at these shows.

Selling at large retail craft shows also helps. These give you an opportunity to sell at retail prices for higher prices and generate extra cash, and to also to test price sensitivities.

Just Google “Gift Fairs 2011” to see which fairs you want to try and get into. John has exhibited in all the capital cities in Australia and many overseas. These include Atlanta, San Francisco, Vancouver, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Hong Kong, and London. In the US, the larger fairs like New York and Chicago are more difficult to get space. That difficulty also applies in Birmingham (UK) and Frankfurt (Germany).

The current global economic crisis might make it easier. Once you get your leg in the door, it is much easier in future years.

You will require some up-front investment to pay for the space, sample products and their display, and travel, accommodation and meals. It’s best to have at least two people man a trade fair booth, so that at least one person is manning the stand at all times. You don’t want to miss any potential customers, agents or distributors. This strategy allows time for bathroom and meal breaks, and also time to research competitive products and prices, and to identify gaps in the market.

A marketing alternative is to randomly call some gift shops and ask the owner/manager who they recommend as an agent. With the internet and Skype you can easily find retailers all over the world who can be targeted. You will then probably have an opportunity to send details about your products. They might want to take an initial sample order.

Customer Service

If you become successful at trade fair and/or direct sales to retailers, quality of customer service needs to be thought of.

For example:

How soon can you deliver are you receive and order? The quicker you can get your products in the customer’s hands, the quicker the re-order will be. And in the giftware industry, it is characterized by many small business owners. If they don’t spend their money on your products, they will spend it with someone else who is better at service.

Be prepared to have your dispatch operations send orders while you are at the trade fair. That means faxing/emailing copies of the orders back to your home office from the show.

Accounting

If you don’t already have an accounting software program, buy one and learn how to use it. We recommend that you buy one that has an inventory function module. You may expand your business and need to carry some stock and it is also worth tracking where samples get sent to. Good programs also automatically calculate your profit margin per item sold. With various reports you can then analyze where to concentrate your efforts (profit per customer, per state, per agent, etc).

You can see a good review of programs for the US on http://accounting-software-review.toptenreviews.com/.

QuickBooks Pro is a very popular and modestly priced program that we have used in Australia. It is also one of the most popular programs in the US. You can easily expand it to a multi-user system – with more than one party on a network accessing it at the same time. John has used this software for over 20 years and at one stage was even a trainer of the program for small business owners. His accountant directed many of her clients to him. That was in the early days after the Australian Government introduced a Goods and Services Tax (GST) which made all small businesses upgrade their accounting systems.

A single user system of QuickBooks Pro will cost you around US $200 – not a big expense to start a potential million dollar business. The program has many other useful features such as the ability to track who the sales agent is for each sale (helpful for calculating commissions). It also integrates with word processing so that standard letters can be sent to customers.

Applicable Background and Experience (optional reading!!)

We provide background information to demonstrate that the subject matter is well within our range of expertise.

After we viewed the various artisan products at Otavalo and around Cuenca, we believed that we could be successful at starting a business similar to what John had done before in Australia.

In my 20’s I had also been a partner with my mother in a successful bridal gown manufacturing and retail business. Our retail store was in the centre of Perth and was called “Australian Bride”.   Our manufacturing side of the business sold gowns to various retail outlets throughout Australia. 

  

I was raised in a family where creative clothing designs were made. My mother was the founder of the manufacturing business and soon became a known for her exquisite “haute couture” (the creation of exclusive custom-fitted clothing) garments throughout the bridal retail stores in Australia.  I had been working as a legal secretary for a number of years before partnering with my mother. My major role was sales and customer service and but I also accompanied my mother to see agents when she was buying imported fabrics and laces from Belgium and France.  Unfortunately this experience did not include a buying trip to Europe J

My parents emigrated to Australia from Holland before I was born. Before they were married, apparently my mother was always spending time behind a sewing machine.  When I was young, my older sister and I were often dressed in well made “haute couture” outfits courtesy of my mother.  Without her  expertise in the design and making of the gowns, the bridal business would not have happened.  I then probably would not have had such an interest in fashion and accessories – the sort of Ecuadorian products I later became interested in.  I was very proud to always present my mother’s garments to new brides-to-be in our retail store, or to buyers from around Australia.  Mum was (and still is at 83) a “perfectionist”. She still has a sewing room.  I guess it is her way of meditating.

On the 29^th of July, 1981 Diana Spencer married Prince Charles.  We had been asked to make a replica of her gown for a store window in Perth.  I believe it was around 10 hours later that my mother’s version of the gown was in a store window - less the 25ft train.  At this time we had a small factory and a staff of five.  Everyone pitched in and helped.  We were even on the evening news.

So between John and me and our respective business experiences, we thought that we had good chance to successfully start a giftware exporting business from Ecuador.

 The other comforting realization when we were at the Cotacachi import/export course was that the teachers had not really ever had much experience in the giftware or import/export industries. They were really only teaching “suitcase exporting” – where you carry your products home with you after a visit to Ecuador and sell them at retail prices to friends and at retail craft shows. That approach might have been fine as a hobby, or as an excuse to help pay for travel expenses, but it did not interest us. John wanted to replicate the higher volume business and marketing model that he had pioneered in Australia in the early 90’s.

When we first visited Ecuador we did the import/export course because of our particular interest and past experience.

John previously co-founded a cottage industry giftware manufacturing business in Australia in the early 90's. We thought that we might be able to start a business of exporting from Ecuador to other countries and not have any manufacturing headaches. We could concentrate on marketing, and enjoying some more travel. At the same time we would be helping the local artisans expand their businesses.

John’s previous co-owned giftware business was recognized nationally as a very successful small business startup. In 1994 it was one of 30 Australian companies to be awarded an Australian DesignMark Award for its primary product. In the same year it was awarded an Australian Best Practice grant of $113,000 - again one of only 30 Australian companies to receive such an award. This national recognition was after an initial start only two years earlier with virtually zero capital.

In 1995 John’s business received further major recognition. The Australian government had launched a new industries assistance program called AusIndustry. It currently provides about AU $2 Billion in various assistance programs.

“AusIndustry provides a range of incentives that actually assist businesses to grow. The focus of our staff is really about understanding business, understanding business needs and understanding how the range of incentives across Government can actually support those businesses.” http://www.ausindustry.gov.au/AboutAusIndustry/Pages/AboutAusIndustry.aspx

This program was launched in 1995 via satellite hookup at all major centers around Australia. John’s business was one of only four Australian companies chosen to feature on a video presentation for this launch. The media package at signage at each center only featured John and his partner.

The main reason for the national prominence of John’s business was because of its spectacular growth, and because it started exporting in the first year of scaled-up operations. It was thought by the Australian government to be a model for other small businesses to emulate. Most countries like to stimulate exports to earn foreign reserves.  Within two years of start-up, the business was distributing to over 1,500 retailers in Australia (which included customers like The Body Shop, Amway and major retail chains). It was also exporting to 10 countries.

The other amazing thing is that the major product wholesaled for only $6.00, even with Australian labor costs. It was a low cost item that was all handmade. It was an essential oil product that was an alternative to chemical moth balls, but finished with attractive dried flower decorations to differentiate the different perfumes (Lemon Scented Eucalyptus, Rose & Lavender, Lavender & Clove, etc). 

 The manufacturing and packaging of the essential oil products were mostly done by subcontractors who were motivated pensioners. The government also thought that this method of business and giving seniors an opportunity to earn money was good. The subcontractors did the work in their own homes – usually while watching a favorite TV program or socializing with friends. 

John’s partner, an elementary school teacher, had invented this product many years before but had only sold small numbers. It was a hobby activity. The products were sold at local small craft fairs.

John improved the manufacturing efficiency so that production and marketing could be scaled up.

This husband and wife team worked from their garage.

The largest customer order in 1993 was for 10,600 items to an Indonesian distributor. The marketing model was to exhibit at craft and gift fairs in Australia and overseas.

In this trade fair display shown above, all the display units were made out of cheap wood so that they concertinaed inside the crates that were also used to ship the display products and sundry setup tools and accessories. Even the outer crate itself was used on the display – as the serving counter. The products were then shipped to customers directly after the fair, before sending the empty crates back home.

The same display shipping and display system was used for many years, just repainted each time.

The business is still operating in Australia; nearly 20 year years later and John’s family own 50%. He sold out after inventing a new product in a different industry in the late 1990’s (composting technology). The manufacturing method for the cottage industry business is still the same that John instituted. Many of the original customers still buy the product, more than 15 years later. The trade fair method of marketing is still used.

Chao for now
Dixie



 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Exporting Giftware from Ecuador

When you visit Ecuador, one of the very noticeable attractions you will see is the huge variety of high quality local artisan crafts at very reasonable prices. If you buy in larger volumes, you can expect very good quantity discounts. The family owned artisan producers appreciate being able to make products in large production runs. Many of these products are ideal to sell into the giftware market around the world.

The main hub of the artisan products are on display at the Otavalo markets, especially on Saturdays. It is one of the most famous markets in all of South America. Otavalo is about a two hour bus trip north of Quito.

See HERE for a great selection of photos from Otavalo.

You will also find that many other towns in Ecuador display their artisan products. Most towns specialize. For example, Cotacachi is called the “leather town”. San Antonio de Ibarra is famous for its wood carvings. Chordeleg specializes in jewelry. Peguche is a weaving town. The list goes on. You will find these hubs all over Ecuador.

This article is focused at starting a serious business of exporting products from Ecuador and not "suitcase exporting". The following tips are given, based on experience in a similar business in Australia, and our initial experience in Ecuador before the economic crisis hit and the Australian dollar crashed against the US dollar in late 2008 (see below to read a bit about our background in this area).

Buying Tips

If you want to investigate the feasibility of exporting artisan products from Ecuador, the following are some suggestions:

• Buy a set of electronic scales (0-5kg). These are to carry with you (a backpack is a good idea). Also carry a notebook and a calculator or enter your research direct into a laptop or net book computer.     

• Get a copy of EMS and other shipping costs. There is an EMS branch in the post office that is adjacent to the Otavalo central square where the markets are held. EMS is a good direct door-to-door air service for packages up to 30 kg in weight. They have an on-line tracking facility. Our orders sent to Europe and Canada by EMS took only seven days.  A shipment to the USA took longer due to a holdup in customs. EMS packs the orders for you. The staff do an excellent job.

EMS Rate Chart (photo from wall)

Order packed and weighed by EMS

  

For larger orders, there is a shipping company that operates near the Otavalo markets too. Get shipping quotes from them. They also pack the orders very professionally.

 

 

 

• Identify products for sale. We initially chose lightweight scarves. We considered them to be low risk items to start with and the shipping cost by air to Australia was acceptable.

We also tried some other heavier products (e.g. blankets) but the shipping cost per item killed their viability. They became too expensive at retail values and did not have the same sell-through as the cheaper scarves. They would possibly be OK if consolidated into a larger sea freight order. 

With volume orders (more than 2,000 scarves) we were offered a very good discount. For the lightweight scarves, the landed unit cost in Australia by air was less than $3.00. Competitive products from Asia were retailing in Australia for over $25.00, so we knew that we had a good enough margin to wholesale the products to giftware stores and also afford to pay normal agent commissions. The stores normally require a margin of 100%.

So when calculating, you need to work backwards from the competitive retail price (which includes taxes). With the EMS shipping, it would be possible to ship smaller orders direct to retail stores in the US. The landed cost would be higher than larger orders, but you would not need to sell to a distributor at a lower price. You would still need to establish an agency network. In Australia the
commission rates to agents were from 15% to 20% of the wholesale price.

                                                                                                         

 
A random sample of other great products is shown HERE. But we think it is best to establish a very small range to start with, otherwise your inventory investment could get too high and limit your marketing and growth. It is best to add new products after doing some test marketing. Once your business gets started with a small product range, you can add small samples to test market in each reorder shipment. 

• Weight 10 random items and then divide by 10 to arrive at an average weight per item. From this you can later calculate your shipping cost per item - by EMS or sea freight. Just add your purchase price to arrive at a landed cost.

Don’t forget to ask your suppliers to quote on several different potential order quantities (e.g. 2,000, 5,000, 10,000, and 20,000). This will give you an idea of what your future potential is. We had to quote on 20,000 scarves, so anything is possible. You can afford to cut your margins to distributors if you get orders like that. For large orders, you calculate profit per day rather than profit per item.

Marketing

The quickest way to establish a customer base is to exhibit at trade/gift fairs. You can also usually find agents and distributors at these shows.

Selling at large retail craft shows also helps. These give you an opportunity to sell at retail prices for higher prices and generate extra cash, and to also to test price sensitivities.

Just Google “Gift Fairs 2011” to see which fairs you want to try and get into. John has exhibited in all the capital cities in Australia and many overseas. These include Atlanta, San Francisco, Vancouver, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Hong Kong, and London. In the US, the larger fairs like New York and Chicago are more difficult to get space. That difficulty also applies in Birmingham (UK) and Frankfurt (Germany).

The current global economic crisis might make it easier. Once you get your leg in the door, it is much easier in future years.

You will require some up-front investment to pay for the space, sample products and their display, and travel, accommodation and meals. It’s best to have at least two people man a trade fair booth, so that at least one person is manning the stand at all times. You don’t want to miss any potential customers, agents or distributors. This strategy allows time for bathroom and meal breaks, and also time to research competitive products and prices, and to identify gaps in the market.

A marketing alternative is to randomly call some gift shops and ask the owner/manager who they recommend as an agent. With the internet and Skype you can easily find retailers all over the world who can be targeted. You will then probably have an opportunity to send details about your products. They might want to take an initial sample order.

Customer Service

If you become successful at trade fair and/or direct sales to retailers, quality of customer service needs to be thought of.

For example:

How soon can you deliver are you receive and order? The quicker you can get your products in the customer’s hands, the quicker the re-order will be. And in the giftware industry, it is characterized by many small business owners. If they don’t spend their money on your products, they will spend it with someone else who is better at service.

Be prepared to have your dispatch operations send orders while you are at the trade fair. That means faxing/emailing copies of the orders back to your home office from the show.

Accounting

If you don’t already have an accounting software program, buy one and learn how to use it. We recommend that you buy one that has an inventory function module. You may expand your business and need to carry some stock and it is also worth tracking where samples get sent to. Good programs also automatically calculate your profit margin per item sold. With various reports you can then analyze where to concentrate your efforts (profit per customer, per state, per agent, etc).

You can see a good review of programs for the US on http://accounting-software-review.toptenreviews.com/.

QuickBooks Pro is a very popular and modestly priced program that we have used in Australia. It is also one of the most popular programs in the US. You can easily expand it to a multi-user system – with more than one party on a network accessing it at the same time. John has used this software for over 20 years and at one stage was even a trainer of the program for small business owners. His accountant directed many of her clients to him. That was in the early days after the Australian Government introduced a Goods and Services Tax (GST) which made all small businesses upgrade their accounting systems.

A single user system of QuickBooks Pro will cost you around US $200 – not a big expense to start a potential million dollar business. The program has many other useful features such as the ability to track who the sales agent is for each sale (helpful for calculating commissions). It also integrates with word processing so that standard letters can be sent to customers.

Applicable Background and Experience (optional reading!!)

We provide background information to demonstrate that the subject matter is well within our range of expertise.

After we viewed the various artisan products at Otavalo and around Cuenca, we believed that we could be successful at starting a business similar to what John had done before in Australia.

In my 20’s I had also been a partner with my mother in a successful bridal gown manufacturing and retail business. Our retail store was in the centre of Perth and was called “Australian Bride”.   Our manufacturing side of the business sold gowns to various retail outlets throughout Australia. 

  

I was raised in a family where creative clothing designs were made. My mother was the founder of the manufacturing business and soon became a known for her exquisite “haute couture” (the creation of exclusive custom-fitted clothing) garments throughout the bridal retail stores in Australia.  I had been working as a legal secretary for a number of years before partnering with my mother. My major role was sales and customer service and but I also accompanied my mother to see agents when she was buying imported fabrics and laces from Belgium and France.  Unfortunately this experience did not include a buying trip to Europe J

My parents emigrated to Australia from Holland before I was born. Before they were married, apparently my mother was always spending time behind a sewing machine.  When I was young, my older sister and I were often dressed in well made “haute couture” outfits courtesy of my mother.  Without her  expertise in the design and making of the gowns, the bridal business would not have happened.  I then probably would not have had such an interest in fashion and accessories – the sort of Ecuadorian products I later became interested in.  I was very proud to always present my mother’s garments to new brides-to-be in our retail store, or to buyers from around Australia.  Mum was (and still is at 83) a “perfectionist”. She still has a sewing room.  I guess it is her way of meditating.

On the 29^th of July, 1981 Diana Spencer married Prince Charles.  We had been asked to make a replica of her gown for a store window in Perth.  I believe it was around 10 hours later that my mother’s version of the gown was in a store window - less the 25ft train.  At this time we had a small factory and a staff of five.  Everyone pitched in and helped.  We were even on the evening news.

So between John and me and our respective business experiences, we thought that we had good chance to successfully start a giftware exporting business from Ecuador.

 The other comforting realization when we were at the Cotacachi import/export course was that the teachers had not really ever had much experience in the giftware or import/export industries. They were really only teaching “suitcase exporting” – where you carry your products home with you after a visit to Ecuador and sell them at retail prices to friends and at retail craft shows. That approach might have been fine as a hobby, or as an excuse to help pay for travel expenses, but it did not interest us. John wanted to replicate the higher volume business and marketing model that he had pioneered in Australia in the early 90’s.

When we first visited Ecuador we did the import/export course because of our particular interest and past experience.

John previously co-founded a cottage industry giftware manufacturing business in Australia in the early 90's. We thought that we might be able to start a business of exporting from Ecuador to other countries and not have any manufacturing headaches. We could concentrate on marketing, and enjoying some more travel. At the same time we would be helping the local artisans expand their businesses.

John’s previous co-owned giftware business was recognized nationally as a very successful small business startup. In 1994 it was one of 30 Australian companies to be awarded an Australian DesignMark Award for its primary product. In the same year it was awarded an Australian Best Practice grant of $113,000 - again one of only 30 Australian companies to receive such an award. This national recognition was after an initial start only two years earlier with virtually zero capital.

In 1995 John’s business received further major recognition. The Australian government had launched a new industries assistance program called AusIndustry. It currently provides about AU $2 Billion in various assistance programs.

“AusIndustry provides a range of incentives that actually assist businesses to grow. The focus of our staff is really about understanding business, understanding business needs and understanding how the range of incentives across Government can actually support those businesses.” http://www.ausindustry.gov.au/AboutAusIndustry/Pages/AboutAusIndustry.aspx

This program was launched in 1995 via satellite hookup at all major centers around Australia. John’s business was one of only four Australian companies chosen to feature on a video presentation for this launch. The media package at signage at each center only featured John and his partner.

The main reason for the national prominence of John’s business was because of its spectacular growth, and because it started exporting in the first year of scaled-up operations. It was thought by the Australian government to be a model for other small businesses to emulate. Most countries like to stimulate exports to earn foreign reserves.  Within two years of start-up, the business was distributing to over 1,500 retailers in Australia (which included customers like The Body Shop, Amway and major retail chains). It was also exporting to 10 countries.

The other amazing thing is that the major product wholesaled for only $6.00, even with Australian labor costs. It was a low cost item that was all handmade. It was an essential oil product that was an alternative to chemical moth balls, but finished with attractive dried flower decorations to differentiate the different perfumes (Lemon Scented Eucalyptus, Rose & Lavender, Lavender & Clove, etc). 

 The manufacturing and packaging of the essential oil products were mostly done by subcontractors who were motivated pensioners. The government also thought that this method of business and giving seniors an opportunity to earn money was good. The subcontractors did the work in their own homes – usually while watching a favorite TV program or socializing with friends. 

John’s partner, an elementary school teacher, had invented this product many years before but had only sold small numbers. It was a hobby activity. The products were sold at local small craft fairs.

John improved the manufacturing efficiency so that production and marketing could be scaled up.

This husband and wife team worked from their garage.

The largest customer order in 1993 was for 10,600 items to an Indonesian distributor. The marketing model was to exhibit at craft and gift fairs in Australia and overseas.

In this trade fair display shown above, all the display units were made out of cheap wood so that they concertinaed inside the crates that were also used to ship the display products and sundry setup tools and accessories. Even the outer crate itself was used on the display – as the serving counter. The products were then shipped to customers directly after the fair, before sending the empty crates back home.

The same display shipping and display system was used for many years, just repainted each time.

The business is still operating in Australia; nearly 20 year years later and John’s family own 50%. He sold out after inventing a new product in a different industry in the late 1990’s (composting technology). The manufacturing method for the cottage industry business is still the same that John instituted. Many of the original customers still buy the product, more than 15 years later. The trade fair method of marketing is still used.

Chao for now
Dixie



 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There is not a week that goes by where you don't see some sort of parade through the streets of Cuenca or any other part of Ecuador for that matter.

Here is a collection of photos from the many parades we have seen in the past couple of years.