When I stood next to the big guy on the practice court at LSU I felt like a shrimp. I’ll bet my head only came to about his waist.
Basketball wasn’t my big thing, but I knew that this guy was a real giant and would be a super star in the NBA. He would be coming to Orlando, where I was living and working, so I knew a good contact when I craned my neck up and looked at one!
The only reason I had just been introduced to Shaq O’Neal and Dale Brown was because I had a burning desire to be successful in my MLM business and “persistence” could have been my middle name.
How’d it happen? Well when I first moved to Orlando and was struggling to make a living, I had heard a motivational tape that said successful people always walk faster than other people. So I got up every morning, dressed in one of my four good suits, grabbed my briefcase (no one had to know it was empty), and headed for the elevator at a very brisk pace, even if I didn’t have a single appointment.
I had managed to get a great apartment in the nicest building in town where several of the Orlando Magic players lived. Just the fact that I lived there gave me a lot of credibility.
One morning I quickly got on the elevator and a man I had seen around said good morning and then, “Tell me what you do. You’re always in such a hurry.” I don’t know where my answer came from, but much to my own surprise I answered, “I’m going to be a millionaire and I’m taking a lot of people with me.”
Well, instead of going on about his business, the man followed me off the elevator and straight to the parking garage as we struck up a conversation about my business and his business.
It turns out that he was the trainer for Stanley Roberts who had just been drafted to the Magic and who had played with Shaq at LSU. In fact, Stanley and Shaq were known as the “twin towers” at LSU.
That encounter led to a friendly relationship with the trainer that led to me meeting some of the Magic players. Many of them bought products from me. That soon led me to an invitation from Dale Brown to come to LSU and show him, the other coaches, and the trainers what my products could do to help their team also.
Believe me, it took a lot of courage for me to get in my car alone and drive all the way to Baton Rouge from Orlando. When I walked into the War Room at LSU to meet all those men, I was quaking in my high heel shoes, but I never let them know it. I had a burning desire to be a very successful business woman and I instinctively knew that all these contacts would be important to that success.
That day, Dale Brown told all his coaches and trainers that they better pay attention, that they better not laugh at me, and that they better participate in my demonstration. And they did! Then he called this giant of a man over and introduced me to Shaq O’Neal.. When I went back home with pictures of me with Shaq, my two sons kept asking me with incredulous looks on their faces, “Mom, now tell us again how you got to have your picture taken with Shaq O’Neal?”
The next year Shaq came to play for the Magic and became very popular in Orlando. He also used some of my products. Those pictures of me with Shaq opened a lot of doors for me in the business world in Orlando.
But if I hadn’t had an absolute burning desire for success—if I hadn’t had the courage and persistence to go alone to Baton Rouge to meet with Dale Brown and the LSU Tigers, I probably would never have had my picture taken with Shaq. I would never have been able to use that influential relationship to build my credibility and thus help build my business.
I did become highly successful in my MLM business and I can trace some of that success back to walking fast, making a great posturing statement on an elevator to someone I didn’t even know, and the courage and persistence to follow-up and follow-through on that chance encounter with Stanley Roberts’ trainer.
There’s a lot of talk about Vitamin D3 lately. And, unfortunately, many medical doctors still believe that Vitamin D3 in large doses can be toxic to humans. But there doesn’t seem to be any evidence to prove that. In fact, it’s just the opposite. 
Hi there. My name is Joyce Hopping and I want to introduce myself to you in the most personal way I know. Because of my lifetime of health challenges, some of them very great, I always wanted to share with people all the research I had done over the last 30 years. Most of it is from Europe, some Asia and some here in the States. 
