The sporting goods manufacturing industry consist of companies engaged primarily in the manufacturing of sporting and athletic goods. This does not include apparel or footwear. The functions of sporting goods manufacturers includes designing samples, buying raw materials, arranging for the equipment to be made from these materials, and marketing the finished products to sporting good retailers and wholesalers. Finished products range from baseball gloves, footballs, and golf clubs to toboggans and playground equipment. (IBISWorld.com)

Currently, the industry is heavily saturated with companies catering to the numerous and various different sports and activities enjoyed by consumers. The total market capitalization is $8 billion and growing. Most of the current companies are large corporate structures with products offered to various different sports (i.e. Nike, Easton, Wilson), while other companies fill great market allotment and prominence in their respective sport (i.e. Callaway, Schwinn). For the most portion, sporting goods companies have two avenues of distribution. First, are wholesalers and retailers, such as Sports Authority, Wal-Mart, and exiguous sporting goods stores. Second consists of company-owned and franchised specialty shops, like Schwinn Bike shops and Vans Skate stores. (Yahoo! Finance)

In order to gain exposure and popularity in the sporting world, the manufacturing companies tend to status their products with the top-rated and/or loved athletes. Sponsorships are commonplace in the industry and provide a win/win opportunity for the companies and athletes. Also, sporting goods manufacturers typically sponsor related major sporting events. (Sports Business Daily)

To summarize, sporting goods manufacturing is a large industry with well-established brand names and vast opportunity to grow with the expanding product lines and technological improvements taking place within all sports.

Porter’s 5 Forces

Threat of Substitute Products and Services

Sports, in general, are easily substituted with a vast array of different activities. Thus, the threat of substitutes is very high. For example, consumers may chose to consume their time and money on video/computer games, being a couch potato, watching TV, listening to music, etc. Unfortunately, the US is currently plagued by obesity and unhealthy activities. On a qualified note, consumers are searching for ways to become healthy and in-shape, and many are turning to sports and fitness. (Location of the Industry 2005, p3)

Within the different sports, substitutes exist as well. A consumer can chose to play basketball rather than golf, thus increasing the profits for a company such as Spalding who produces basketballs, and taking sales from Callaway, a company who manufactures and sells golf clubs and balls.

Intensity of Rivalry Among Competitors

Rivalry runs rampant in the sporting goods manufacturing industry and has been doing so for many years. Companies are continuously involved in severe notice competition and industry consolidation. In order to stay competitive, companies constantly merge and acquire one another, in an danger to expand product lines and increase economies of scale/scope. For example, in 2004 alone, K2 acquired seven different companies and/or smaller divisions of other companies, while Russell Corporation made six acquisitions. These acquisitions took place in order for both companies to do themselves as multi-sport brands. (State of the Industry, p5)

Threat of New Entrants

Within the domestic landscape, the threat of entry is relatively low. US sports typically revolve around ball-based games (i.e., baseball, football, golf, soccer), all of which have corresponding goods manufacturers. (www.hotlib.com) In order to enter the industry, the capital needed is much too high with regards to facility costs / machinery acquisition. Also, due to economies of scale, a company seeking to enter with low capital would have no arrangement to compete with big-name brands such as Callaway, Nike, Brunswick, or Easton.

Internationally, lower production/manufacturing costs in overseas companies has allowed upstart foreign firms to begin developing generic product lines for distribution across the world. Also, many US firms have chosen to outsource their production to these foreign countries in order to save on costs. Thus, the threat of new international entrants is moderate. (State of the Industry 2005, p7)

Bargaining Power of Buyers

Retailer demands include lower prices, faster delivery, and increased responsibility for inventory management. The power of retailers has become greater over the years in respect to these demands. Due to “compliance rules” with manufacturers, retailers have the honest to administer penalties if the timing, packaging, and coding of deliveries is not adequate or meet their rules. (State of the Industry 2005, p7)

Also, retailers are moving away from offering low-profit items, such as baseballs, bats, and basketballs, and instead devoting shelf-space to private label offerings. This is due to the retailer’s need of providing different products than their competitors.

(State of the Industry 2005, p7)

The good thing for manufacturers is the contracts and agreements they have with suppliers. Although, the buyer may have more of the bargaining power, the manufacturer has security in the fact that the retailer has to purchase for a number of years. (Outlook 05 Sports, p1)

Bargaining Power of Suppliers

Most suppliers are firms in foreign countries, namely China, Taiwan, Canada, and Mexico. The bargaining power they have is relatively low due to the fact that manufacturers can chose which country they want to import from, depending on how much they want to spend (labor costs, tariffs/taxes). Most labor-intensive jobs are outsourced to these suppliers in order to keep costs low for the manufacturers. (Outlook 05 Sports, p5)

On a side note, sporting goods manufacturers should be more accurately titled “sources”. Most sporting goods companies do not actually manufacture the goods sold to buyers. They simply receive a good from a supplier and dwelling their name on it. Thus, manufacturers are more like a middleman. This ties benefit to the retailers who may, at some point, start working with suppliers exclusively, thus leading to no expend for companies such as Nike except for their brand name/recognition. (Status of the Industry Report 2005, p7)

Porter’s 5 Force Conclusion

After evaluating the Porter’s Five Force model for the sporting goods manufacturing industry, I would not recommend entry. Currently the industry is well established, full of numerous recognized brands, and a hard place to survive for young upstarts. My recommendation would be to create a certain sports product or product line and sell the rights and design to a related, big-name company. For instance, exhaust research and development to improve the spin rate of today’s high performing golf balls and then sell the design to a company such as Titleist or Callaway.

The Driver’s of Change in the Industry and the Impact They Will Have

Technology

Within the competitive sporting world, new technology pops up on a daily basis. This leads to a need for new products and product lines. Without a certain section of equipment, athletes cannot compete on the same level as others who have the new equipment. For example, “in speed skating, it is impossible to win, or even place, without using the newest ‘clap skate’”(Katz p14).

Today’s athletes have grown up and are living with an abundance of available technology. From a coaching standpoint, incorporating athlete’s basic understanding and use of technology into the individual sports will help break records, win games, and obtain success. (Katz p17)

Also, in order to improve safety, new improvements are constantly taking residence to ensure the good health of athletes. In the last five years, protective equipment in football has been greatly improved. The helmet, shoulder pads, and mouth guards have all been researched, tested, and reformed to cut-down on concussions (helmet), overheating (shoulder pads), and impact (mouth guards). (Sport Journal)

Within in the tennis world, as the athletes have become bigger and stronger, so have their rackets. Though, at the same time, these rackets have also become lighter. The athlete’s physical prowess and their equipment improve and change almost simultaneously, as they do in most other sports. For instance, in cycling, the rider’s can now travel much farther and longer due to the new engineering of lighter metals and composites in their cycles. (Sport Journal)

In conclusion, technology leads the way in all forms of human life, especially in the sporting world. Whether it be top-performing professional athletes looking for the next best product, or a new entrant to the sport, technology has made sports easier to excel at and more enjoyable. This will obviously continue as long as athletes strive to be better.

Consumer Lifestyle/Preference Change

In the United States today, consumers are constantly searching for ways to improve their health and fitness. Obesity has taken over in the nation as a leading health inconvenience, so doctors and patients are looking to change eating/work-out habits to combat their growing waist lines. Sports will definitely play an important part in the fight against “the fat”. Research has shown that previous involvement in sports leads to less risk of obesity in later years. As this information is passed along, more parents should instill in their children the importance of being active and enjoying sports, both organized and play. (Calvagna)

As consumers become involved in sports, their need to purchase sporting equipment will increase with involvement. Unfortunately, participation has been on the decline for the past 20 years. To eliminate this decline, many industry segments have begun starting programs to foster and benefit increased involvement in sports again. In 2004, golf launched player development programs to target the younger population. Following in their footsteps, similar programs have been started for baseball, hunting, fishing, and camping. (State of the Industry 2005, p8)

“In addition, many sporting goods companies are working at the grass roots level to increase sports participation and physical activity. Often, they are doing this in cooperation with local government agencies, community organizations and health care groups.” (State of the Industry 2005, p8)

Long Term Growth Rate

As the economy improves, so does the disposable income of consumers. The Sporting Goods Manufacturers Association (SGMA) has posted positive results for the overall sporting goods industry in the past few years, since the downturn following September 11th. (CNY Business Journal)

In regards to long term growth, the fitness category has shown stout improvement in the face of increasing sedentary lifestyles of America’s youth. Reverting back to consumer lifestyle, if people want to get healthy they can turn to only a few choices: (1) surgery (2) change in eating habits (3) involvement in fitness and sports. Consumers are working out more often and spending more on equipment to enable their work-outs and sport involvement. (Gale Group)

In conclusion, this trend should continue, thus leading to higher sales and profits for the sporting goods manufacturing industry. The reasoning for the continuation is, most consumers are aware of the health concerns surrounding obesity and that will not go away. As long as there is fear of sickness or death due to unhealthy lifestyles, a substantial number of consumers should turn to sports and fitness to decrease the consequences of obesity.

Companies in the Strongest/Weakest Positions

Brunswick Corporation

One of the oldest sporting goods companies in the United States, Brunswick has built an image of being involved in everyone’s free time. Currently, they offer product/service lines in boating, marine engines, fitness equipment, recreation centers, and sporting goods. (Hoovers, BC)

Brunswick has positioned themselves as the leader in all segments they are eager in. They achieved this by identifying and using leading-edge technology to differentiate their products from the competition while improving operational efficiencies. Also, they stay proper to their brand image as a caring, nurturing company by listening to their customers before, during, and after a sale. (Life Fitness)

Easton Sports, Inc

Started in 1922 by Doug Easton, the company has grown from a maker of custom wood bows and arrows to a leader in the baseball bat world as well as softball, hockey, archery, cycling, and tent-making. They are expected to merge with Riddell Bell Holdings, makers of top-of-the-line sports helmets, in 2006. (Hoovers, ES)

Currently, Easton is right in the middle among competitors in sales and profits. They do, however, have product offerings in many segments, as mentioned above, which have helped to set aside a multi-sports brand image among core sports athletes.

Easton prides themselves on their use of research and development to design innovative products for their various sports segments. The introduction of the aluminum bat in 1969 was revolutionary and led the way for competitors, such as Louisville Slugger. They continue the trend today with improvements incorporating carbon fiber and rubbers. (Easton)

Adams Golf, Inc

Adams is a relatively limited company with fewer than 100 employees, yet they made segway in the late 90’s with their introduction of Tight Lies golf clubs. For a while, they were the club to have when you were in the rough out on the course, but quickly were thrown to the side by big names such as Callaway, Titleist, and Taylor Made. (Hoovers, AG)

On the stock market, shares trade between $1-2, and their 2005 free cash flows took a negative turn when compared to 2004. (Market News)

A problem with Adams may lie in their inability to expand into other aspects of the golf segment, whether it is apparel and shoes or maybe golf balls. It seems that the profitable winners in sporting goods also tend to diversify the sports in which they cater to.

Key Factors for Competitive Success

Ability to Adapt with Technology

As with most industries, a firm has to go with the flow in terms of technological changes. In the sports world, novel products and equipment are constantly being developed and reformed in order to facilitate athlete’s success. For instance, the introduction of the aluminum bat by Easton took the bat making segment in a new direction, which left Louisville Slugger (a leader in wooden bats) in the dust for some time.

Over time, this key factor will only become more and more important and should not vary among the segments included sporting righteous manufacturing. The reason is simple; to stay in business you have to keep up with what’s new and most sought after.

Overall implications of this evolution are titanic and many, varying between the different sports. A fresh durable, lightweight plastic may revolutionize the kayaking segment, while improved aerodynamics in golf ball design will lead to longer, straighter shots and lowered scores. Thus, the firms with the new technology will reap the benefits and steal the market because, athletes want to win and will do/buy whatever they can to ensure that.

Diversifying the Firm

In the sporting goods business, it seems apparent that the big name companies are involved in many different sports. Brands like Brunswick, Spaulding, Easton, and Wilson all have various products/lines in sports ranging from baseball, golf, basketball, soccer, bowling, billiards, and on and on. Not saying each company has products in all those sports, but they have all diversified in order to reach consumers and athletes in more than one segment.

This key factor does seem to vary by segment. When dealing with ball-based sports, many of the manufacturers of the goods involved have stakes in many of the sports. For instance, Spalding makes baseballs, basketballs, footballs, volleyballs, and soccer balls. (Spalding) When looking into the individual sports (cycling, kayaking, mountain climbing) the manufacturers are sport-specific and tend to focus on making the highest quality goods for their intended sport.

In order for firms to grow larger, the trend seems to be mergers and acquisitions. As said before, this takes spot in order to expand product lines and brand awareness. Over time, this trend should continue as the larger companies keep gobbling up the smaller upstarts.

Brand Strength

Brand strength will always contribute to success, no matter what industry is analyzed. In sporting goods manufacturing, brand strength comes through quality products, overall breadth of products in various sports segments, and who’s using the firm’s product.

Every segment includes companies who try desperately to bring consumer awareness to their product. The best way of doing this is through sponsorships. Brands like Nike would never have been as successful or strong if it was not for spokesmen like Michael Jordan and Tiger Woods, athletes who use their products exclusively while in competition.

Over time, the focus on brand strength will only increase as brands compete against one another for market share and consumer preference. Some brands will be merged and/or acquired in order to gain an increase in brand strength from the original companies’ consumers.

The implications of this evolution may lead to over saturation of a brand’s name in the market, and ultimately to lower expect for the brand’s products. Today’s marketing stance is to emblazon your logo on everything and win everyone using your equipment. This may cheapen the trace image and strength if and when an athlete loses in competition or your logo is placed on products that are not meeting consumer’s demands.

Industry’s Attractiveness and Prospects for Long-Term Profitability\Future Growth Potential

Sporting goods manufacturing depends on consumer involvement in sports. Currently, projections show that people should start participating in fitness-related activities on an increasing rate. As this happens, their purchasing of sporting goods should increase as well.

Will Competitive Forces Strengthen

Yes, competition will strengthen among the brands as they arrive out for more market share. As mentioned numerous times, the use of acquisitions and mergers, plus note competition and industry consolidation, will lead to bigger, stronger companies who can control more of the market and go head-to-head with companies of similar size while acquiring or destroying smaller firms.

Will Driving Forces Increase/Decrease Profitability

In terms of technology, the newer products are generally more expensive to produce, or at least design, but their selling price is higher as well. Technology should lead to more efficient products, which companies can sell to athletes at fine prices while increasing their profitability.

Lifestyle changes can go either way for sporting generous profitability. Simply, if people get active again and buy sporting goods, the companies will increase sales and profits. Conversely, if the consumers stay on the couch or behind the computer, sales will remain stagnant and profits will fall.

Which Company’s Strategic Space Will Improve/Decline

The company who stays up-to-date with technology and consumer preference, and sadly who has the biggest name and market share will survive. Callaway Golf will continue to improve strategically due to their use of R&D and sponsorships.

The company who chooses to stay planted in one sport or one aspect of a sport will probably soon be taken over by companies who sell products for many sports. Adams Golf is a good example. They produce a distinct type of club, yet Wilson Athletics (a brand in many sports) can copy their club design fairly easily and sell it for much less.

How Can Firms Insulate Themselves From The Unattractive Forces in the Industry

Follow an example like Brunswick. Stay true to their purpose (Brunswick: their business is everyone’s leisure time) while constantly looking for the opportunity to expand into other sporting segments and beyond. Do not become too big of a company in your customer’s eyes, listen to them and show that you are listening.

In terms of low-participation rates in sports, there is not much that can be done. It is comparable to autos and gasoline. When gas is high, nobody drives. Thus, when no one is participating in sports, no product is being sold.

Degree of Uncertainty and Severity of Problems Confronting Industry

The degree for both factors is high, but in good and bad ways. In terms of technology, a company never knows what’s right around the corner, thus they never know when they could be at the right residence at the right time. They could be a first-mover on a product technology and revolutionize the segment.

For the plight of low-participation, it could waste up devastating the industry in the future, especially if consumers stop participating in watching/attending sporting events, thus leading to less examine for professional teams. It could work its way all the way up and down the chain from the amateur “t-baller” to the top-paid professional.

Which Types of Firms/Strategies Seem To Be Most Lucrative

Once again, the strategy of merging and acquiring. It leads to bigger companies with their hands in many markets of the industry.

A strategy that does not seem to be taking place is the vertical integration of the firm. Most manufacturers are simply sources who receive an almost finished product, tag their logo/name on it, and ship it off to retailers. If companies could bring more of the production/distribution in-house, this may prove more lucrative.

Is This An Shapely Industry In Which To Participate

For the small upstart who wants to design baseballs: No. For a large company who has plenty of capital and agreeable alliances with firms already in the industry: Yes.

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Easton (EC)

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Introduction – I know that is a strange title for a book, but I did not know how else to express it. This is my legacy to you, my biological children. This is not only your parents’ life story, but the story of your beginning as well. By now each one of you probably knows you were adopted, and maybe you know you have siblings. It is possible, considering the space of your foster homes that one or all of you have met and kept in touch with your biological mother. One or all of you may know her version of the story of how you got to your adopted families. I wish for you to know my side so that you have all the pieces to form your own judgments from.

The following will disclose you of my childhood, growing up, victories and mistakes and how my faith was tested time and time again. My hope is that all of it will help to point you to the one who gives us life. For I know that you were brought into this world and placed into the care of the people that raised you for a purpose. Hopefully they did a better job than your mother and I did. The one thing I want you all to know is that I never stopped loving you. The other thing I hope is that you all know of, and love each other.

Chapter 1 – The Father: Charles Paul Bell, Jr.

On the fifth day of July in the year 1954 I was born Charles Paul Bell, Jr. When I was only four years old my parents divorced. My father was a good man, but he was a womanizer. The divorce was in February 1959. Shortly after that my parents had a brief reconciliation and my brother, Donald Arthur Bell, was born on March 29, 1959, after the divorce was final.

Our mom, Minnie Louise Wildt Bell, was raised in Nebraska by a Presbyterian father with a German background, William Arthur Wildt, and a Christian Scientist mother with a background in the English and the Pawnee tribe, Elsie Venner Walton Wildt. Minilweez (Mom’s nickname, shortened of Minnie Louise) broke the buggy whip (punishment diagram) over her mom’s head at the age of 19, left home and moved to San Francisco, California. That was in 1939. In S.F. she drove forklift and carryalls for the Navy. After the war, she began working at Western Union as a teletype operator.

Our dad with a Scottish/Irish/English background, Charles Paul Bell, Sr., was a sales manager for Western Union and part-time bartender for McCarthy’s in San Francisco. His mother, Ida Mae Bell was a Jehovah’s Witness. I don’t know much about his father, Charles Bell, but I do know my father had someone called ‘Grandma Rosie’. Her name could have been Rose Barlowe, or something like that, I’m not sure. In either case, his mother lived in Rialto, California. My uncle, Dad’s brother, was Trevor Bell and lived in Upjohn, California, near Rialto and Pasadena. He was married to Vietta. They eventually moved to Citrus Heights, California, near Sacramento.

In April of 1946 our mom and dad were married in Joplin, Missouri. (I assume Dad’s family has roots there, but I’m not sure) They came back to San Francisco and lived in several flats and apartments there until they bought the house at 24 Portola Avenue in South San Francisco, three cities south of San Francisco. The year was 1948. We lived in that house until my brother sold it in 1985 or 1986, after our Mom died.

After the divorce Mom continued to work at Western Union, but to augment her income she started as a waitress at a night club called the Melody House (later changed to the 16 Mile House). I’m not distinct what Dad did for work after that. He probably continued working Sales at Western Union and as a part-time bartender at McCarthy’s, but I do know he lived in San Francisco with Bonnie, someone that could double as Mom. Dad and Bonnie would go to the Gold Mirror (one of my parents’ regular places to eat out) and the owner, Reno, would say, “Hello Mrs. Bell” and it would be Bonnie. I once found a snapshot of Bonnie and said, “Mom, you look grand here.” Through gritted teeth she informs me it is not her, but Bonnie. Oops.

There are two things to note here. One, I was not ecstatic with my brother taking Mom’s affection from me, so I pain him every chance I got. What did he do in response? He idolized me for years. Along with this I acted up to get attention. I gave babysitters a dreadful time. So those who weren’t bad on their occupy didn’t stay because I was too much for them to handle. Even the church nursery couldn’t tame me. Two, Mom loved us more than her life. So, with both of those reasons and the fact that she was a healthy 39 year old woman, Mom wanted a man to be a father and a husband. She would meet salesmen and truckers at work and bring them home with her from the nightclub and they would sit up and talk until we were asleep and they could have sex. While they were talking, they were drinking. The man would always bring beer. Since Mom never developed a taste for beer and didn’t want to feel bloated, she would always have bourbon. Highballs, dry martinis, crème de menthes and later screwdrivers, were her drinks of choice. The first two drinks I learned how to make were highballs and screwdrivers. Anyway, since this occurred every night, Mom’s drinking increased under the guise of social drinking. Another thing to note is that Dad was the only measurement Mom used to measure men by, and none of them measured up. Mom stayed unmarried and in love with Dad through her death in 1983.

Also after the divorce I had problems in school. (I was still acting out) I had to show kindergarten because I couldn’t settle. My coordination was off. I had “emotional problems affecting my performance”. Today I would be classified as having ADHD. I was placed in a county program called Child Guidance, today called Children’s Mental Health (no pussyfootin’ around the name anymore). My counselor taught me things like how to moisten a dry sponge, fit blocks into holes, etc. I was put on Dilantin for blacking out (seizures), Dexedrine to make me more alert, and Phenobarbital to calm my nerves. I was on that cocktail until I got to eighth grade at the age of 14. Another patient of Child Guidance at the same time was the sister of one of my classmates. They happened to live three doors down from us. Mom and her mom exchanged antidotes and one day her mom accused her son of turning out like me if he didn’t stop what he was doing. It is interesting to note that the boy in examine was my age, almost to the day, was left alone outside every morning in diapers and usually ate breakfast at our house (because Mom had a soft heart and felt sorry for him), ended up leading a neighborhood gang, had wild parties at home and fought with knives and guns, died by a shot to the head. In contrast, I was raised to be home right after school or Mom wanted “to know the reason why”, never joined a gang, was a homebody, became a Christian and loved life, had a few friends, am still alive and no one wants to kill me. Who turned out better?

The next day at school it was spread throughout my class and others that I was an M.R. None of us knew what Mentally Retarded was, but the one that spread the rumor believed that it meant someone who saw a doctor twice a week, like his mentally ill sister. To our five and six year archaic world being labeled that was a fate worse than death. Everyone saw you as ‘different’. After that, for the next six years, I was picked last, picked on, and isolated. I began to live in my own world. I was gripping about everything. I would try to help people to make friends and then demand their allegiance by controlling them. Needless to say I lost many friends.

One day the babysitter quandary came to a head. I was almost nine years old. In one year we had gone through eight babysitters and there was none to be found. So, Mom asked for a furlough (time off). Mom’s boss liked her and didn’t like the site she was in. He would aid out whenever he could. His assistant did not like her and made it hard for her when he could. At this time her boss was on vacation and the assistant was in charge. He denied her furlough, so she did the only thing she could. She quit. She quit so that she could guarantee us a babysitter that would take care of us properly. She had been with Western Union for twenty years and could have retired in five more years (a fact she never let us forget later on). After that, Mom went on welfare and stayed home to care for us herself. I was eight for a few months more and Don had just turned four years old.

Soon after Mom went on welfare, in the same year, JFK was shot. Dad had visitation rights, but I guess he never came on the right day, so we did not see him often. Mom told us stories of how he would call for her to go drag him out of a bar and take him home. But on Saturday, May 2, 1964 he showed up, replaced Mom’s bedroom window, worked in the tomato garden with me and promised me if anything happened to him I was to have his phonograph and the ‘Take Me Out to the Ballgame’ 33″ LP. He got paid the following week and did what he always did with his paycheck—went to Reno to gamble! He and Bonnie were on the return trip from Reno that a man named Gonsalez boarded and shot the pilot and co-pilot. The plane crashed over the hills in Danville. There were no whole bones to identify anyone. I was almost ten years old. Mom’s cousin, Evelyn Yuleberry, from Martinez called and said she heard his name in the passenger list on the radio. We had started an inside painting project on the house. That project stayed in limbo for five years. (We literally continued painting the place we left off five years before, when we had heard the news) We had a memorial service in town. My sister, Shirley Bell Basham and her husband, Russell Basham, along with their two children, Russette and Wesley came up from their home in Glendale, Arizona. We all drove caravan style to Uncle Trevor and Aunt Vietta’s house, near Pasadena, then on to Glendale, Arizona. My sister was driving our Rambler Classic, Her husband was driving my dad’s Rambler American and Mom was driving the Basham’s monster station wagon with power brakes! Lots of fun, that’s for determined. We kids enjoyed the ride, the scenery, seeing our sister and her kids. The fact that Dad was gone didn’t hit until later. I wasn’t able to visit the location of the crash for 13 years. Mom had to, right away, to retrieve his belongings.

Shirley was Dad’s daughter from a previous marriage to Jean, who later married Herbert Fender. My brother and I met Jean once when we had to finish with our sister’s family for a while. She was very nice as I remember. Shirley had actually lived with Mom and Dad before I was born, during her high school years. I have pictures of her standing in the driveway next to the Studebaker Champion. I don’t know why she was with Dad and not Jean, but she was. We talk occasionally and she also believes everything happens to effect God’s purpose.

In early 1968, I was fourteen years customary when we took a train to Nebraska for my grandparent’s, Arthur and Elsie Wildt, 50^th wedding anniversary. They had moved to Park Lodge Apartments in Wymore, Nebraska from their house and farm by the water tanks in Barneston, Nebraska, where Mom grew up. We had visited them at the house at least once that I know of, but my brother and I spent more time at our Uncle Arthur and Aunt Marie’s farm in Home, Kansas. We loved the lightning bugs and the stray cats and a windmill that pumped cold water from a well, which you drank from a metal cup hanging on the frame. The farm had pigs, cows and horses, as well as chickens that produced lots of eggs, which we picked every day. As children we loved to play in the barn and watch all the birds and the animals. We used to feed the cows lettuce from Aunt Marie’s garden and she would get mad at us and tell us not to. But that was when Grandpa and Grandma lived in their house and Grandpa, who used to consume every waking hour in his garden, would sit in his specially built rocker and make quilts on a tray across his chair. He made beautiful quilts too. This visit, however, was at the Park Lodge Apartments and we were there to celebrate two people being in love for fifty years. I have often wondered how they did it. Grandpa was a strict Presbyterian and Grandma was a very strict Christian Scientist and was very adamant about not being disturbed during her morning ‘quiet time’. But they did and I know Grandpa waited on her hand and foot until he couldn’t anymore and she had to do things on her own. Somehow they made it work and we were there to celebrate their success. It was great to peep Mom’s siblings and their families: Uncle Arthur and Aunt Marie Pike with cousins Leon and David, Uncle Carroll and Aunt Catherine Fuller with cousin Robin from Huron, South Dakota; Uncle Kenneth Omar and Aunt Velma Wildt from Alliance, Nebraska; Uncle Vernon Hill with cousins Leland, Charles and Dolores Hill and all the other cousins and second cousins from Lincoln, Nebraska. Every time we all got together one or all of Mom’s sisters would argue about who was going to do a sure chore and who did it last, ‘Unca’ Carroll would imitate Donald Duck, our cousins would get bored and leer for more excitement and our Grandparents, being teetotalers, would comment on Mom’s “special apple juice”. But we all had fun and made it attend home.

Veering off topic for a minute, if you seek up the ancestors of James Schiele online you will find all the relatives I mentioned and hopefully commence your biological family tree. I’m sure some of the second cousins are still alive. Aunt Catherine placed Grandma in the Good Samaritan Home and everyone got mad at her for it. She split from Uncle Carroll and disappeared. Uncle Arthur, Aunt Marie, Uncle Kenneth are all deceased. Uncle Vernon was married to Mom’s half-sister, Hazel Pearl. After 23 years marriage she died. I have met the cousins, Charles and Leland. Charles lived with us for a while. I remember a time he and his wife, Dolores and their children, Terri Lynn and Sherri Lynn and all of us traveled to San Bernadino or someplace else near Los Angeles to an amusement park or the wharf or something when I was around 12 or 13. When I research Mom’s family tree I can find family all the way back to the 12^th or 13^th century. When I research Dad I cannot find his family past Grandma Ida, who is also deceased. Gracious luck to any of you that can. I always wanted to bag the English, Scottish, Irish connection. I have always felt a connection with anything Irish or Welsh.

That September I started eighth grade. In sixth grade I knew I liked girls. I was impressed by the method they wore their hair, the clothes they wore, the way they talked, etc. In a map I was jealous because they were what I should have been able to be. I was always drawn to girls, not boys. I had nothing in common with them. Because of the M.R. thing I was still ostracized, so the girls just thought I was “cute” to have a crush on one of them.

The next year, 1969, in June, Grandpa Wildt slipped on some ice. He came wait on in and said he was fine and just needed to lie down. So he went into the bedroom, laid down and died. We flew back for the funeral, but things weren’t the same and I made Grandma Wildt promise me not to die. Shortly after we came home Mom went into Kaiser Hospital for ulcer surgery. A girlfriend of Mom’s from Western Union came to live with us while mom was there. Mom left food in the fridge and gave the woman money for extra. The woman and her daughter took over our lives. The daughter was spoiled and always had to be fair. The woman had a boyfriend that moved in too. He could sure eat: large salads, big steaks, etc. The food ran out and the money too. No wonder. We took whole loaves of bread to feed the ducks at the pond in one of the cemeteries in Colma all the time. Mom wondered where all the money was going, but we had been threatened not to tell. They were mean to us and we were pleased when Mom came home.

Sometime after September 1968, my junior high administrators decided I needed help with my homework, namely that I needed a supervised status to get it done. I probably had ADD or even ADHD and I would be distracted easily, but back then they referred to it as inattentiveness. So they achieve me in a remedial class that I had to be in until the end of high school. The teachers in this eighth grade class also helped me to see my importance in this world and to have confidence in myself. Before this I had begun to maintain all the stuff everyone said about me. I was strange, stupid, retarded, or dumb. Either that or they told me to not talk about what I felt or liked. It was too plain. The teachers reinforced the idea that I had feelings and opinions too and that they were honest as important as anyone else’s. I finally began to believe in that and exit my shell a little. Shortly after school started I met this guy in school and went to his house after school without letting Mom know. This was a huge no-no. On the draw home I was thinking what I was going to do to avoid punishment. I finally decided to pretend to be on some drug that I got at school (slipped to me involuntary, of course). I tripped on the doorstep and stumbled, told Mom the story as we went into the kitchen. Mom asked me to get a Librium for her to take for her nerves. I saw this as an opportunity to change the subject and started shaking my hand with the pill bottle. All the pills flew over the sink and we started putting them on paper towels to dry. I must have thought this was only a temporary reprieve, because I started downing two pills at a time. I had swallowed twelve pills before Mom realized and stopped me. After that I went to sleep—for three days!! I started to come out of it and Mom said I actually fell asleep in a bowl of soup at one point. She was asking what I was on and who gave it to me. She opinion that whatever I was given caused me to want to take her pills. This was one of the few times I fooled Mom. I was still enough out of it that I wasn’t thinking proper, but I did know something happened, and being the junior sleuth I was, I knew Mom would honest mess up all the evidence and I had to throw her off the trail. I told her a boy in school that picked on me (I told you I wasn’t thinking right) gave me a doughnut at lunch. Mom packed me into the passenger seat of our Rambler Classic and we went for a ride to the school so Mom could have it out with the nurse and vice principal. I was so out of it I couldn’t come in. I was in the car and at one point I opened the door and started pounding the horn. That got results! I looked up into a sea of faces: the band teacher, the choir director, the shop teacher, the nurse, and Mom. They called an ambulance, but a patrol car showed up. I went for a ride with him to the region, then into an ambulance to the county hospital in San Mateo. I was there three weeks and taken off my “cocktail” that started earlier with Child Guidance. Two days in and I was fine. I met very interesting kids in my ward. Mainly those without family and acting out because of it to pick up anyone’s attention. I was glad I had my mom.

My little visit to pediatrics didn’t do Mom any good. The new head of Pediatrics thought it was her fault I took the Librium, so he teamed up with her social worker at the hospital and drew up a petition to send around our neighborhood for signatures. The petition stated there was not sufficient supervision in the home. A year and eight months after my hospital stay we were picked up from school and put into the county receiving home. We stayed there for two weeks, went to court and the mediate ordered us to go live in Utah, where my sister, Shirley, from Dad’s previous marriage and twenty years older than me was living with her husband and two children. Her daughter and I were the same age. I was turning sixteen in July, a month away, and she would be sixteen in September. Her brother was 13, three years younger than both of us, and Don had just turned 10 in March. We were to conclude for the summer. During this time Mom had to work on the court’s conditions, namely her drinking.

Living with my sister’s family wasn’t poor. It was actually fun. We stayed the summer and started school there, but soon had to go aid. I was experimenting with my adolescent female desires and started smoking too, like Mom, who smoked menthol KOOL non-filters like a chimney. When we went attend home the judge found no new allegations against Mom, so we went back home.

That year, 1970, I got mad at the neighbor next door because he threatened to shoot my dog, who constantly dug under the fence and into his yard. I threw a bottle, with a piece of wadded up paper bag soaked in the gas from the lawn mower stuck in the top and lit, into his backyard. The police came, Mom backed me up, and they left. In the morning my brother and I wanted to see if a fire would burn in a coke bottle with the cap on. After several explosions, the doorbell rings. Mom is calm asleep (and wants to remain that device) and we know to insist whoever is calling that Mom is not home. An officer is at the door and we saunter out and begin talking to him, leaning against my mom’s car! I have already told him Mom is not home. Mom yells out her window “what’s going on out there”. Officer asks who that is and brother says, “That’s our mom”. Oops! Officer tells brother to go earn her; I go to follow and get handcuffed and placed in police car. I ruin up in juvenile hall for firebombing. With the help of my elementary school principal, I was released 24 hours later, but with a probation officer. He was cool and took us to basketball games and other cool stuff, but Mom was still drinking and there were times we avoided my PO. I can remember moving everything into my room upstairs and not coming downstairs except at night. We had an electric waffle iron/grill and an electric roaster oven upstairs, so we were all set. My PO was smart though. He followed us from school and got in. Photographers were sent for and we were sent back to the Receiving Home and Mom back to the hospital. Mom had more surgery, recovered and we were allowed to go assist home. By now I had my stash of nylons and nightgowns that I wore to bed.

In September of 1971 I started eleventh grade. There was a modern girl was in the remedial class the period before mine and my class time was her lunch period. So she would stay and read to us from a book. She and I got friendly and I had a real savor for her. We were all discovering ourselves back then. (Drugs, sex, religion, gender confusion, parents, parental abuse, etc.) So what happened to us wasn’t much different than others, it just seemed that way to me. We spent more and more time together during the school year, but after the Christmas vacation there was a breakdown in our friendship and both our parents had place boundaries of ‘hands off’. Part of the reason was from things she said about me to them. I was deeply hurt. My brother had been there and said he didn’t know what I saw in her because she determined didn’t like me. I felt hollow and empty inside. I found out later that she impartial said bad things about me because her dad was threatening her, but at the time I felt like a big emptiness had moved in and taken up residence. Thanks to a couple of neighborhood ladies, a Pentecostal church and Teen Challenge I accepted Jesus into my life and felt the emptiness go away. I started attending and attractive myself in church and church activities. I sang in the choir, went to youth studies, listened to gospel radio and tried to live a godly life. We resumed things after September of the following year, my twelfth year, her eleventh year. However, after the end of my last year we said goodbye and went our separate ways. But, oh how I loved that girl. No one will ever know how much. She, however, did not have the same feelings for me. She liked me ok, but not that diagram. I found out later why. My pastor said the devil sent her to sway me from the path that Jesus wanted me to high-tail. I don’t know about that. I beget there was a reason God allowed her into my life. To this day we are still friends and children of the Lord

I went on to start community college in September of 1973. I took data processing, health science, trampoline, psychology, and music. I had to ride two buses to and from, so I had ample opportunity to meet other girls, and I did. I met girls on the bus, in the library, cafeteria, and courtyard, everywhere. So much so, my mind wandered away from my studies considerably. Also, mom was still drinking. I had been to several Al-Anon and Alateen meetings and I knew I could not help her, just admire her. She would wake up out of a sound sleep and yell for me and I would run downstairs to find her snoring. All of this kept me from focusing on my studies. I even ran into my high school love and began writing to her. In November of 1973 I dropped out of college and started looking for work. My first job was driving forklift and handling bill of ladings for a warehouse that handled pipe supports. I also learned a little Spanish. I had moved into the neighborhood group leader’s home and rode with him to and from work. Mom kept kicking me out, then, beg me to come home and work it out as a family. Twice she did this and I moved back. My high school love and I were together just as before, but for a different reason.

I had made two one hour trips to see my cherish. Before the first trip she sent me a card telling me she had to tell me something about her I did not know, but nothing to lose sleep over. So, of course, I did anyway. I could not think of anything I did not know about her. I discovered later that I actually did not know a whole lot about her. On the first trip I asked her what she meant. She said she forgot. Then, before the second trip, another card said she had chickened out, but I had to force her to vow me this time. This time she did, and oh boy, it was a doozy. She just told me that before we get serious again she had to tell me that she had feelings of affection for girls. Woooeeee! I did not expect that! As a unusual Christian I went to my Baptist pastor and he said there was nothing in the Bible about homosexuality. There was a young pastor visiting that week and he gave me scriptures pertaining to that, and salvation. I made several trips to see her after that and God used me to pray with her and lead her to Him. I spent much time with her after that. She said, at one point, it was too much for her to deal with, so she went back to being lesbian. During New Years she wanted to talk to a Christian woman. All we could find was a Methodist minister. She said my love had to show love in the way God gave her to love and that; basically, Paul was a man and wrote Romans as a man. God did not write Romans anymore than he wrote my essays in school. Good point. Good, but confusing as hell. I was just drifting after that. I felt like everything I believed in was just shot down. After that I did all I could to help my love. I would depart with her to keep her safe, take her to meetings for lesbians, pleased church, etc. Some nights I would not come home till late. One night I couldn’t find my key, so I had to wake Mom. She told me this would not work and that I had to pack up and rep out. I told her if she did this (the third time), not to ask me to move back, because I wouldn’t. This was it. It was too. I stayed with a friend that night, which helped me find the city switchboard and a shelter for the following night. The shelter turned out to be a ministry house for a nationwide communal teaching ministry, its roots from southern California, but based in Oregon.

I joined that ministry, the Shiloh Youth Revival Center, Inc., on February 14, 1974. It was a very happy Valentine’s Day. In July I went to the ministry school in Dexter, Oregon. It was called The Study Center. It became my oasis. I met many girls too. Some would say too many, but not me. Yes, I preferred their company to mine, so what? Anyway, it was considered a problem, a sin to be avoided. I was to turn away and force myself to fellowship with the brothers. Some of them were ok, but I was drawn to the sisters. I had so many girlfriends I didn’t want to ever leave. The Lord was teaching me about how He works in a believer’s life. I found many occasion to learn patience (something I learned you never want to ask for) tolerance, forgiveness, compassion and most of all Koinonia (the deep caring, sharing and devotion to each other-people that share something in common, communion, fellowship). The longing for that again is overwhelming at times. I had truly found something to build my life on. I laid a firm foundation of faith, trust, perseverance, patience, honesty, integrity, and love that even today helps me to stand in the face of adversity. I have a rock, an anchor, that cannot be moved, and neither can I.

I stayed in the ministry until I graduated and was sent out to be one of the staff of a house in Houston, Texas. I stayed there for a while, then went back home, to Mom. However, Mom was calm drinking and doing all the things that drove me crazy before and I moved support into the Shiloh house I had started with in San Francisco, but not as staff. It seemed everywhere I went I got involved with one of the house sisters. Finally my house pastor suggested I go to South Lake Tahoe and work as a dishwasher. It would select me away from the sister (who still had to go to ministry school before thinking romance) and give me a way to help my mother financially because the pay was really good. So I moved to South Lake Tahoe, via the Sacramento Shiloh house. While at the Sacramento house I got involved with another sister (I was incorrigible). When I say I got involved with various sisters I mean we spent a huge amount of time together and began to procure serious about being together. There was never any sex in the ministry unless between married couples. It just seemed everywhere I went there was always one that I would monopolize time with and get serious about. By the time I got to the South Lake Tahoe house the house pastor had convinced me to make another one year commitment to the communal ministry. I started washing dishes for the restaurants. For a short period I was a food prep student. I met a girl that would not let me go. I witnessed to her about the love of Jesus and she told me she had been a Christian, but fell away and wanted to come back. So I began to bring her back, and she began to bring me closer to her. Her name was Sally.

Chapter 2 – The Mother: Sally Jo Brasfield Mitchell

Sally was born July 2, 1958. She was a sister to Pam, Penny, Esther and Ray Jr. Her parents were Raymond and Beverly Alberta Brasfield. They all lived in Fontana, California until Sally was 6 or 8. Her parents split and he moved to Texas. Beverly split up the children between friends and relatives and went to find him and reconcile if possible. While she was gone Department of Social Services was notified and the children were picked up. By the time Beverly and Raymond came back Sally and Pam had been adopted by Charles Randall and Dori Mitchell. The Brasfields managed to find all the others, but could never find Sally and Pam. They even followed up leads that led them to dead ends. Finally resources forced them to end. Sally and Pam were raised by the Mitchells. Charles, or ‘Shorty’ as everyone called him, was a fair man and a good father. At one point he did not agree with the abusive way Dori was punishing Sally and let her know. Finally they divorced and he continued to raise Sally and Pam by himself. At one point Sally met a man who was connected with a local low rider gang. His name was Fred and they went together for five years, with promises to marry some day. Pam married and had children of her own, a boy and a girl. After the five years, Sally became pregnant and she went to South Lake Tahoe to think about what she should do. She did not want Fred to marry her just for the baby and she did not want to raise a baby by herself. She moved in with some friends and began working at Harrah’s, in the kitchen maintenance department. After we met I was placed on her team of dishwashers.

Our relationship grew more serious. Since she had a miscarriage the problem with Fred had been dealt with and soon we were shaking Mom awake in South San Francisco and telling her we wanted to find married. By this time I had been with Shiloh three years. On April 16, 1978 we were married and moved to Kodiak, Alaska to live. I had lived there in 1976 with Shiloh as part of the work program for the school. Times had changed. Work was not as plentiful. While there we lived in an apartment, a 10′X12′ tent, a Quonset hut, a van, a camp trailer, a garage apartment and a crab boat. Jobs were scarce. She worked cashier at a pizza parlor and then later at a convenience store. I worked as a cab driver, then the warehouse of the convenience store and then for the other cab company. While at the convenience store Sally was pregnant and developed a urinary tract infection. After those jobs we both worked for a cannery. When she was too far into the pregnancy to work I got a job at the only hospital on the island, in housekeeping and soon became the floor specialist. Jobs did not last long because in Alaska there is a social security tax that the employers pay after an employee has been working for three months. The employers don’t want to pay it, so in the beginning they find ways to set you up to be fired by three months. Luckily, the hospital wasn’t one of them. However, when I lost that job, due to manipulative staff, we decided we had given Alaska our best shot and moved assist to “the lower 48″. My wife was still pregnant, we were living with her dad, ‘Shorty’ Mitchell, the ultimate divorced playboy, and it was April of 1979. By May we were living with Mom and Don.

Chapter 3 – The Bell Family of Five

Our first boy was born at Stanford hospital on May 14, 1979. We named him Charles Randall Paul. Charles (after me, my dad and her adopted dad), Randall (after her adopted dad), Paul (after me and my dad). Shortly thereafter we got housing in Martinez and moved into a duplex there. From there, we moved to an apartment in Antioch and after that a duplex in Pittsburg. I had been commuting to San Francisco to attend Control Data Institute. I was taking computer technology training. Two things happened that changed our lives. One, someone broke into Chuck’s room and stole Sally’s accordion. We called the police and were warned by neighbors not to continue talking to them. We didn’t heed the warning, and not long after I was shot at twice during the commute home. Two, I met someone on my lunch shatter, went to his house and met his wife, three daughters, and son. Soon my wife and I visited them on a weekend and we became friends. They were encouraging us to move into the same apartment building with them and we did. By 1980 we were living in San Francisco on Eddy Street in the same building and both families had a “revolving door” policy for each other. Any of us could walk into the other’s situation at any time. We were like family.

As I said, Sally was adopted and only had vague memories of a larger family. She called 411 for her mother’s number and made contact. There was a sister, Penny in Long Beach with her husband, Gale and daughter, Toni. A phone call resulted in them coming to San Francisco to visit. We went back to Long Beach with them. Sally was pregnant again. When we were ready to return because I could not have any more vacation time from school, we found out she was seven months along instead of the five months she was told in San Francisco. The doctor in Long Beach would not let her travel, so I returned to our apartment without her. We had decided to disappear to Long Beach, so I was to close the apartment, and move into Mom’s until I finished school in November. So I did. Mom was in the hospital again and due home any day. Sally called to inform me all of them were on their procedure up. Their landlord claimed he did not receive the rent I mailed when I left Long Beach. Penny said she could fight it, but if they lost they would be moving at a more critical time for Sally and the unborn baby. So they were coming, and I had to think about where we were all going live. We all ended up in a motel room near Stanford Hospital. Then Raymond and Beverly, who were living in Missouri now had been contacted and we were invited to come live there.

On August 18, 1980 our second boy was born at Stanford. We named him Raymond Albert Omar. Raymond (after my wife’s biological dad), Albert (after her biological mom, whose middle name was Alberta), Omar (after my uncle Kenneth’s middle name). He was born preemie, so was incubated a week or two. When he was discharged, we made the journey to Missouri. So on the day we went to Missouri, we drove up to Stanford Hospital, picked up the newborn and drove to Missouri. It was a very harrowing dawdle. The harrowing section was this: Two sisters, two husbands, a thirteen year old, a one year used and a two week old all in one Ford Galaxy 500! The two sisters were bickering about everything, including mustard. The baby was screaming and the girl needed to go to the bathroom or eat often. While I was in high school I started to smoke cigarettes and stopped after I joined Shiloh. During this scoot I started smoking again.

So we get there, only to collect out we are two weeks early and the place isn’t prepared for us. We made do. My wife, baby and their girl slept upstairs with the parents, and Chuck and I slept in the basement with the sister and husband. The first thing I did was go out with the husband and sister and look for work. At night my wife and I sat on the couch and listened to “the family” play four handed card games. My question of “isn’t there a six handed card game? ” went ignored. Finally, one night Chuck had a bad dream and was screaming. Usually when this happened nothing comforted him, so we would just hold him and let him scream. He had done this since the break-in. I had forgotten my cigarettes and was going back up to get them when her sister informed me I was not going to leave Chuck screaming down there with them. Her husband had to get his sleep so he could get up early, and that it was probably my fault Chuck was screaming. I saw red. I mean who did she contemplate she was? Was she there after the theft? Had she sat with him night after night, holding, caressing, patting, singing, doing anything to calm him and stop his screaming? No, she wasn’t, and what did that crack about it being my fault mean? I yelled right back and told her just that. She was inferring that I was hurting him in his sleep! Oh the nerve!! I was livid. We made so considerable noise my wife and her mother came down. I listened to her for a minute, and then started on her and told her that this was supposed to be a reunion, but that ever since we got here we have been made to feel like a fifth wheel. She asked my wife if she felt that way and she said yes. Her mother yelled for her husband, my wife’s biological father, and told him to draw money out of the bank and buy us bus tickets back to San Francisco. So he did, with a loaf of bread, a package of bologna, a bottle of milk, and a can of formula. If it weren’t for an ‘angel’ on the bus we wouldn’t have made it. We had been in Missouri for only two weeks. That is why I call it “misery”!

We moved into another ministry house on Randolph Street in San Francisco. The ministry was called Gospel Outreach, and their ministry was patterned the same as Shiloh. We stayed there until we found an apartment relieve in the tenderloin. Our ‘extended family’ had moved to another apartment building, but there weren’t any vacancies there. We finally moved into an apartment on the corner of Turk Street and Hyde Street. At the time the address was 381 Turk. Our building was next to the YMCA and I used to push Chuck in a toy car up and down their driveway. I started working as a bike messenger at the same job I had when I lived in the San Francisco Shiloh house before I went to the Study Center in Oregon. I finally landed a job in the mailroom at Chevron Shipping, through a temporary employment agency. I worked there long enough to be considered for permanent hire. Many things happened while we lived there. My wife had met my high school love and we bought a car from her. That car was broken into. Your mother and I had a fight so bad the police arrested me. I lost the temporary job while in jail. Then the apartment owner gets this bright idea to hire me as security for the apartment. One of my duties required me to collect, empty and return the garbage cans on each floor. At one time someone punched me in the right ear and perforated it for not taking the trash out hasty enough. At some point, a CPS (Child Protective Services) worker threatened to take both boys away, stating conditions at home were unsafe. I had to ship my wife and the boys to Nevada, to her adopted mom, Dori, until the danger of losing them passed. While there Sally made up with her mom and they became friends. Dori was remarried and her husband was a long hauler. She was very grandmotherly to Chuck and Raymond during their stay. I was a basket case. I spent my time upstairs, with the maintenance man and his helper, drinking beer and playing 45s, all day and all night. I was fast becoming my alcoholic mom, and that is what woke me up. Finally the danger of losing the boys passed and I sent for them all to return home.

A vacancy came open where our ‘extended family’ lived and we moved in. The owner hired me as security and doorman. I worked days, my friend worked nights. I picked up their oldest daughter from school, and had all three girls, our boys, and a neighbor boy and girl every night after work. We would play, play house, clean house, watch TV, listen to records, roughhouse, whatever. We had fun. We lived in the tenderloin and there was no safe place for kids to blow off steam. Sally and the moms would go out and have their fun while I was watching their kids. On October 28, 1981 our first daughter and third child was born at UCSF Hospital. We named her Dori Louise Elsie. Dori (after my wife’s adopted mom), Louise (after my mom), Elsie (after my grandmother). She was born with a cleft palate and had to be on a monitor 24/7. We had to learn CPR and how to regulate the monitor. Both of us had to be with her at all times.

As good as this sounds, it wasn’t. Sally and I, with our ‘extended family’ had been going to Gospel Outreach, when we had a member of Church of Christ near to present their beliefs to us. The presentation left us lost and adrift. We stopped going to any church and started having more marital problems. He understanding his wife was sleeping around, so he was going to do the same. Sally and I had started seeing a family counselor when we lived in Antioch and basically we talked about how we were going to handle my cross-dressing. I wanted to address my wife’s shortcomings, but soon learned that wasn’t going to happen. She refused to believe she had any. So that was one area we could not communicate. As we all know, or learn, if one area of communication is broken down, all areas are. Basically, she did her thing and I did mine. I could not talk to her and she did not try to talk to me. Except for the sex, we did not communicate. She might say different, but that is how I felt at the time. Both of us were guilty of not trying, but remember, this was my first accurate relationship and I did not have a guidebook. Sad to say my best friends became the kids I watched. We talked about everything. Nothing was taboo. I had a closer relationship with a nine year old than I had with my wife.

Then I did something that haunts me to this day, and I still don’t know why or what really happened. I thought I did, but recently I have remembered certain events that cause me to question my understanding of events during that time. In either event, I was convicted and did time. During that time Sally was pressured by family to leave me, had given birth to twin boys that were fathered by Fred and moved back with family. Grandmother Wildt, Uncle Kenneth and Mom passed away while I was in prison.

Chapter 4 – The Struggle, Loss and Emptiness

After my release Don picked me up and we toured Hearst Castle on the way to the family house in South San Francisco. I went job hunting and found a few. In fact, from October 9, 1984 until May 1985 I was a security guard (before my application was even denied), hot tub installer, 7-11 clerk, shipping & receiving clerk for heater controls, and kennel manager for a pet store. When I first arrived home the first person that welcomed me back was my high school love. She would come by and take me out every night for a week to restaurants that she paid for. I tried to reconcile with your mother, but she told me she wouldn’t do up with my temper. After that was unsuccessful I had a fling with my high school love. I started attending a non-denominational church where I met a six foot tall Chinese man, who introduced me to another woman who had a physical disability. She used a manual wheelchair and wanted me to be her paid live-in attendant. She lived in her van and I did move in with her. She was 13 years over me, married to her high school sweetheart for 19 years until a very public four year affair split them up. They had two daughters, both living in the same area as her. Both were in their twenties. I started caring for her and she would help me with my good papers. We got along great. We grew on each other and made a great team. I think I needed a mom and she needed to be needed. We were both Christians and equally involved with the church. (Something I learned the hard scheme was very important) Sally had informed me that she only told me she was Christian when we met to get me to discontinuance witnessing to her and she really didn’t believe in any of that garbage. (that injure) My new friend and I shared church interests, her playing the piano/organ and me singing in choirs and doing lighting during play productions. We were joyful.

In May of 1985 I lost custody of all three of you, thanks to the deviousness of your social worker at the time, and I have missed you ever since. The last time I saw you, Chuck was the day Grace took us to McDonald’s before your 7^th birthday she had me boom you that maybe I could see you on your birthday, knowing corpulent well that I would not be allowed to see you after the court hearing two days before your birthday. I saw you, Dori, the same day. You were 5 and I was not allowed to tell you I was your Daddy. You let Oscar come out of the can for me, but not Grace. Later I heard from your mother’s Auntie Faye that you came home and told your foster father that you did not have to obey him because he was not your father. I don’t know if it was moral, but it made me feel good to know you knew in your heart who I was to you. I never saw you Raymond after you were one years old. They had you in Marin, in a home for emotionally shy children. A visit with your counselor was scheduled to determine if I could visit you. Before I went Grace gave me advice that turned out to be bad advice. She told me to try to relate what your counselor told me about you with similarities in my own life. I did exactly that and your counselor wrote in her record that I was selfish and only thought about myself. She recommended that I not visit you as it would not be in your best interest. That was the slay of that. Even my attorney couldn’t do anything. Today you are all in your 20’s and I miss you so worthy. I regret missing your growing up, making friends, becoming adults. I have tried to find you many times, with no luck. I am hoping to find the money for a real investigation and find you. I want you all to know I did not stop loving you, especially to tell you, Chuck I did not lie to you about your 7^th birthday, Grace did, and set me up to appear I did. I love you children very much and want you to know that. I missed all your lives and it hurts. I know you have loving parents that have been there for you and I wouldn’t want to destroy that. I just would like to examine you and reassure you I did not desert you and only had to let you go under duress. I will continue working toward that goal until I die or God shows me different. If I die, hopefully this book will be published you will have a piece of your heritage.

Chapter 5 – Releasing the Inner Me

Several things happened after I was forced to give up my rights to the three of you. I did not have the resources, or the just support to fight the decision, so I decided to get my life in better order so I could. I began to concentrate on me; what made me tick; my anger; my passions; my fears; everything that made the person that was me, I analyzed. From this analysis a long-forgotten part of me emerged. I already knew I preferred wearing soft nightgowns to bed, and even I thought that was all it was – the clothes. I was very wrong. There was a deep piece of me, the part that was my core, which knew there was something not in balance. I was repressing the essence of me because of my belief that to be the person inside was inviting more rejection than I already had. All this repression was causing a frustration that would build up, like a pressure cooker, until a substantial explosion would occur. For no reason I could name, the smallest thing would set me off. I was seeing a therapist at the time and he suggested a pressure-relieving tactic. He told me to go home and declare my girl friend I was living with that he wanted me to inaugurate to wear the women’s clothes slack closed doors at home until the next appointment with him. After this experiment I realized there was more to this than even I knew and I wanted to see where it would take me.

My job as kennel manager ended and my girl friend and I decided it was time to return to school. We started community college, had career tests taken and evaluated, found our niches, hers being accounting and business, mine being anything social, involving people. Interestingly mine came up investigator, pastor and nurse. The first two made sense. I had always been interested in investigation; I did it all the time in my private life. I had a desire the spread the gospel, so pastor made sense. The only one new was nurse. I guess with my experience with my mom, your mother, hospitals and all, I gained a talent for it. So, I went towards Nursing and she went for Accounting and Little Business.

We had moved into an apartment in Pacifica. My brother had met my friend’s youngest daughter and moved her into the family house, then later sold the house and split the sale with me. I had $42,000! I went nuts. I was going thru this change from male to female, since that is what was at the core of me. I paid for your mother’s outstanding bills, modern washer and dryer, loaned the tall Chinese man a little money, loaned my high school love some money, and spent $10,000 on female clothes. While I was trying to learn where the best place to invest it, I spent the money and had nothing. Yeah, plain. I know. Hindsight is wonderful, isn’t it? It has 20/20 vision. Thankfully I have finally learned a little foresight. We moved into a two bedroom apartment to accommodate my high school love (who was fully lesbian by now) and her love mate. However, that relationship did not work and we found ourselves in a one bedroom apartment again.

Chapter 6 – Beginning over and Growing

While attending college we also started going to flea markets. My girl friend had two and a half storages and we needed to notice what we could do to reduce it. Some of it got sold, but I think we found more than we sold. We kept at it, though. At one point we developed a vision of a business, consisting of a yarn shop, with several other businesses branching off of it. One of these other businesses would be a word-processing/desktop publishing operation that would be started first to earn enough to carry the yarn shop through the first year. The other businesses were flea market services, financial services, a help organization that would match the needy with helpers, and a transportation/delivery company. It was a huge plan.

An interesting epic comes to mind. It starts out sad and ends on a funny note. We had acquired a cat (Tomasina), when I was kennel manager, and a rabbit (Lady Elizabeth). Before the house was sold my brother had two big dogs (Spirit and Midnight), and I had bought an Alaskan Eskimo (Snowball). Tomasina and Lady Elizabeth always lived with us (in our one bedroom apartment). When the house was sold and I had bought Snowball all the dogs went across the bay, into the huge yard of my now ex-wife. That is until someone that my ex-wife pissed off released all of them into the street when no one was home. The only dog we found was Midnight. Later we got the termination receipt for Spirit. They actually wanted us to pay them for killing our lost dog! Unbelievable! We never found Snowball or my ex-wife’s dog. Very murky. But we took in Midnight (into our one bedroom) and tried to hide the fact that we had a rabbit and a dog! We thought we were doing loyal well until we went to proceed to the two bedroom and they said the carpeting was all current, so we would have to come by rid of the dog, but the cat and rabbit could stay. Oops! Guess we weren’t so clever after all.

In January of 1988 my brother married my girl friend’s daughter. They had moved across the bay, into a town home. We married in June, after my divorce from your mother. We moved to San Bruno and continued school. While there I began to evolve from Paul (the name I had been going by, like my dad, since I moved into Shiloh) to Paulette. I started wearing more feminine clothes, maybe a little makeup, and I began to think more like a girl. (Because this was recent for me, I was more like a girl going through puberty, not quite a woman) I had a teacher that told me to continue showing the other students that life was not black and white; but made up of many shades of grey. I remember that. It has given me encouragement many times.

One dark spot here was when my second wife hit her change of life. There was bleeding from May to November, a D and C, and a hysterectomy. Unfortunately the result of the surgery was diabetes; on top of the arthritis in the knee and back she already had. We had to learn all about blood sugar testing and insulin shots. I was overwhelmed because we were also told this was a fatal disease. I was going to lose this wonderful person who not only accepted my cross dressing and transgender life, but encouraged me to be the best me and helped me do it where she could. I was devastated at first, but finally realized we have now and can perform the best of it; and we did.

We moved to an apartment in my home town of South San Francisco. (I say it is a part of San Francisco that got cut off by a cemetery, since Daly City and Colma separate the two, and Colma is known for having the majority of its population under the ground.) The apartment manager was very friendly, blooming, and helpful; not to mention, caring. We enjoyed being there. However, our time was cut short. The Financial Wait On officer was accepting payoffs under the table and allotting more back than was available. He split when the district began to find out what he was doing. They had another officer come in to do cleanup and gave everyone very low allotments. We did the best we could until we couldn’t even pay the rent. The manager even carried us one month and was going to do it again. We told her no. We went looking for other counties to live where we could finish school. We had to obtain another district that did not have their Financial Assist program in a mess. We found De Anza College in Cupertino. We had also heard there was a church that accepted crossdressers in San Jose. So we checked them both out and moved to San Jose in the fall of 1991.

Chapter 7 – A New Life

While living in South City (SSF) I discovered a transgender club in San Francisco that met in back of a gay bar. I could not contain there were over five hundred like me in the Bay Area. Amazing; and exciting. I finally had others to talk to like me. I also found out I could go all the way: get my ID changed to female, change the birth certificate, and much more. By the time we moved to San Jose I had my name changed on my license to Paulette Paul Bell. The inner me was finally me!

My wife and I would let some of the crossdressers we met at the club near to our place to change for transgender events. Some of them had families that did not know, approve of, or did not want to see them crossdressed, so we provided a safe position for them to change.

We met all kinds. There were crossdressers; transsexuals that lived their inner selves 24/7; there were the exhibitionists that wanted to be extreme; there were happy men trying to pick up a good looking, passable crossdresser to have sex with; and many more.

There was one crossdresser (CD) that did not pass well that took one look at me and fell in love. I was wearing a new outfit: a short dark flare skirt and long sleeve light blue satin v-neck blouse. I think I wore a wig encourage then, too. Anyway, to him/her I was beautiful and immediately tried to pick up on me. I told him I was married and introduced my wife to him. They talked for a long time at the table and she said we should get him into Skyline College; and that is exactly what we did. I don’t remember how his studies went, but I do know he spent time in the cafeteria, just taking it all in. My wife noticed that when we entered the cafeteria his eyes never left me. She was not impressed, but I was sort of intrigued. This guy was attracted to me as me (female) and I got a little thrill out of knowing it. I wasn’t going to have an affair or anything, but a little flirting couldn’t hurt, could it? Well, I did go out with him a few times, but nothing serious. It was just enough to feed my need to be the subservient one for a change. It was kind of nice. We moved to San Jose shortly after that.

In San Jose we lived in our van; my wife, Tomasina, Lady Elizabeth, and me. The pastor (who did not even know us) had given us a key and showed us where to find all the other keys and told us to make ourselves at home. We did. God fancy him for it. He fought the deacons, city code officers, neighbors, and others so we could have access to a bathroom and kitchen. We considered it home. My wife slipped on some water and fractured the leg above the knee that had the original injury. She had to have surgery to right the fracture. We were leaving the hospital and driving home when she started coughing up blood. Another walk to the hospital resulted in discovering a peptic ulcer. More surgery and we came home, with my wife minus a few organs and most of her stomach. She could not eat for a month and a half; only Ensure. Then we started with mashed potatoes. Finally she was able to eat solid food, but had lost 95 pounds. She always said it was great to lose the weight but she would not recommend the draw.

I don’t know where I got the referral to the Seahorse Medical Clinic and Joy Schaffer, probably the Tip Sheet for the Transgender club in SF (ETVC). I saw Joy and she prescribed the hormone regimen I would have to be on until I die. She also referred me to Valley Medical, the county medical system, to find a doctor to continue with there. I could not afford Joy all the time. I did find a extraordinary doctor who has been my doctor since. She is always honest with me and tells me when I need this test or that test. I lucked out and I know it. To me it is another example of a divine presence

We spent our time at De Anza College going to classes, club meetings and events, studying for tests, homework, special projects, computer lab homework and I worked at the bookstore, taking refunds. We left the van at 8am, let Tomasina out, came back for lunch, let Tomasina in and fed her, let Sina out, came back at dinner, followed the same routine and at 9pm we would come out and Sina would be waiting with her tail up in the air, the tip curled to her head, and meowing, as if to say, “Where have you been? Do you realize how long I have been waiting? ” or so it seemed to us the way she carried on. That was Sina, a very special orange person. I had taught her, with my wife’s back, to walk on a leash in a harness. Sometimes I wondered who was walking whom, but we had fun.

Chapter 8 – Fair Time and Regrets

My wife was an expert needlecrafter. She used to say, ‘Don’t bear it, just ask me. If you still don’t believe it, check out all my blue ribbons!’ She was very gifted at it, though, and did have a wall full of ribbons. She taught me much that I will not forget. Her passion was putting entries in the San Mateo County Fair (which is where all the ribbons came from). Her goal was to make Sweepstakes one year. Sadly, she never did.

We did make a great effort, though. We would gather all the projects she already had, match them to the Fair’s entry requirements, figure what she could smooth have time to make, and figure how much yarn, or whatever, she needed. We called it Fair Time, and it was crazy.

Unbiased before Fair Time in 1993 I had to leave De Anza without my wife to attend a homecare workers meeting. It was something to do with the job I did for my wife, taking care of her and getting paid by the county. I went and met a woman in a manual wheelchair that had Cerebral Palsy. Her name was Anne. Her husband, Joe, was with her. I ended up giving them a ride to De Anza to meet my wife. We were invited to visit their home and park in their carport for the night. One night turned into a week and a week turned into many more. Anne was interviewing me for a book she was writing about disabled people in alternative lifestyles. Well, ours was certainly alternative. Ravishing Time was here and my wife was in a panic to get everything just right. Oh, and by now we had added Santa Clara County Fair to the mess. We now were doing two fairs, one after the other. Sometimes they overlapped. Anyway, during this time, my back was killing me from lifting boxes and boxes of entries; not to mention the usual lifting of a 160 pound wheelchair scooter in and out of the van several times a day. So my back hurt; and Anne said she was a licensed masseuse and she would like to produce my back feel better. She wheeled into her bedroom to tell Joe. I heard yelling for awhile, then Joe came tearing out and told me he had just been ‘handed his walking papers’ and left. I stood there dumbfounded. I asked Anne what happened and she said he tried to tell her she could not massage me and she got enraged. She told him that was the business she was in and he was not going to tell her who her clients were going to be. She told him to leave and took his keys. (I found out later that I looked a lot like a girl that had died that Anne had feelings for. Joe knew this and was not going to watch her fondle someone else.) So now I’m in a pickle. Anne is completely helpless to accumulate out of her chair and go to the bathroom. Joe usually carried her in and out of the chair and to the toilet. Joe was gone and someone had to stay in the house with Anne. I consulted my wife, who had been in the van the whole time, and she said there was no choice; I had to stay in the house with Anne. (You can probably seek where this is going) So I did. Biggest mistake of my life! (Or one of them, anyway) One thing led to another and I wound up in bed with Anne. (Yeah, I know, bad, bad, bad, unpleasant!) Anne saw my wife yelling at me over the fair entries and all she saw was a woman that was demanding. She decided I could do better and told me so. Long story short, I told my wife I was going to stay with Anne. So I got my stuff and moved in with Anne and my wife left. Anne wanted to go to college and enrolled at De Anza. We saw my wife there all the time. Somehow Anne’s uncle came by and met my wife. I guess he went to spy her another time and got the lowdown on me. Soon he moved in with us and began to succor Anne to work it out with Joe. So she calls him and tells him to come home. So now we have all four of us in one home, three in the bedroom and one in the spare room. Finally, one day I was asked to leave. My wife took me succor, but things were never the same.

We still did the flea markets. We now had a 10 x 35 storage unit and planned to start our business idea as soon as my wife had all the degrees and certificates she could pick up. That wasn’t what was to happen, however.

Chapter 9 – Forgiveness and Loss

Sometime in 1994 we finally found an apartment for the handicapped and began to move in. We had to empty the storage into the apartment in order to afford the apartment rent. The process was not going fast enough for the snooty neighbors and I had to step in and speed it up. All of sudden my wife was surly, acting like there was something horrible, but refusing to tell me what it was. She said if I could not figure it out, she wasn’t going to tell me. It objective got worse. I had no idea what it was. She complained about everything I did and if I did it different, that was wrong too. I was beside myself. It was miserable living that scheme. I was thinking maybe I needed to pick up a different situation. Then for Christmas I received a card from the crossdresser we went to school with in Pacifica. He said to call him. I did. Then I went to see him. I knew he was attracted to me, but I wanted to stare if I felt anything for him. I found out I did. I guess the female hormone I was taking was starting to work on me in ways I was not accustomed to. I was actually attracted to someone because of his maleness and how he made me feel safe. So, once again I left my wife and moved in with him. We stayed in motels and hotels, until we finally found an apartment in Sacramento. It was real hot there in the summer and we were there just before that. We were also there just before Fair Time. My wife and I both knew this was the last year for her. Unprejudiced before I moved to Sacramento with Larry she had a stroke and lost all she had learned. Just like that, it was gone. Now she couldn’t even write out a shopping list. On top of that she could not collect a homecare worker to take care of her. So she paid me to come down twice a month to do that. One of the trips was just before Beautiful Time and I wanted her to have that last chance for Sweepstakes. So I stayed and helped her accumulate it ready. Thankfully, she was able to do the needlework. She did that and I did the rest. We talked. We cleared the air. Things were accurate between us again. The stroke helped her to observe the problem clearer. Go figure! Meanwhile Larry, in Sacramento, got tired of the heat and moved back with his mom in Pacifica. I told my wife I was not even going to ask. She just smiled and said that while I was with Larry in Sacramento she had a dream (vision) where she saw me getting the news that Larry was back home and our relationship was over. God told her that Larry would dump me and she would have to take me back. She told God that she did not even like me very much and that if He wanted that to happen He would have to explain her how to like me again. God told her to call and ask me to take care of her for two weeks in each month. So, that is when she called me in Sacramento. She knew beforehand! It blew my mind. She said after I stayed and we talked she began to savor me again and wanted me to move back in with her. I cried, and took her with me to prefer up my stuff in Sacramento. We got attend, establish the stuff in storage, returned the truck and took the bus home. We went to bed, woke up the next day, ate, and she was still tired. She laid back down and didn’t wake until dinner. While we were eating and talking on the couch, making plans, she stopped breathing. The paramedics revived her and took her to the hospital emergency, where they lost her for the last time. We had been together 13 years. During our life together we were officers in clubs at school and transgender clubs, we were both senators at De Anza College in Cupertino, and active members of several churches. We went to events in all those, including cotillions, concerts, and trade shows. We had a blast. We did make the most of the time.

Chapter 10 – Gathering my Wits and Leaving Town

I was a basket case for two months or more. I didn’t leave my recliner the whole time. Finally I got up and went out to the elated center. Twice I tried to gain a woman to stay with me, to no avail. Finally I found someone at church to help me. Actually, I found four some ones. John and Tommy were staying at the church and moved in with me. John had a cousin, Linda with a miniature boy. They were going to help me pack up. I had to move and earn someplace else to work. A quadriplegic in the complex needed a worker and I began to make the recede. I was taking care of him while the others were trying to get me packed up. The manager gave me a deadline to move out and I was not out by then, so I was evicted and another friend of mine paid the daily rent so I could go in and do unloading the apartment. After that, all I had was a small storage my wife and I had and it was in lien until a friend paid it up. Another friend introduced me to Sam. He lived in an RV and said I could go in with him. I told him I was not interested in another relationship just now, but I did need a place to gather grounded until I could get my own plot. He agreed. Sam was a carpenter by trade, but he had an accident and on workmen’s compensation. While on this he was not allowed to work, so we scavenged recyclables (cardboard, glass, plastic, aluminum) during the day and either went out to eat or used the recycling money to buy food to cook dinner. After a while I acquired my job as clerk that I had before I went to Sacramento. I would work until 1pm and go with Sam to recycle. He was very good to me. At least one night a week we would go to a club and he would dance with me. He was very good to me and I felt special. After awhile I began to feel a cramped guilty that I wasn’t giving anything wait on. So one night, when the opportunity presented itself, I gave. I hated it, but he had been so good to me, I continued to give. It wasn’t until I wanted to go by myself to visit some friends that my wife and I knew that I knew I had made a mistake. All of a sudden he was controlling, accusative and suspicious. I even told him one night the only one I was having an affair with was him. Finally, I got fed up with the controlling stuff and took a Greyhound out of town. I lived on the street in Sacramento for a time until someone took me in while I was on a waiting list at Salvation Army. Then I stayed with a friend and volunteered for the No On Knight (Proposition 22) Campaign. I started as a volunteer in the phone bank and ended up as the Volunteer Coordinator. The whole experience was very positive for me. It was the first time I felt accepted by lesbians. That was very encouraging for me. I was still grieving my wife and I was very lonely. There was one volunteer that also went to my church that I was growing quite fond of. My living situation was not working out and she invited me to move in with her and her friend. After involving in, things between us heated up and we soon had our own place and did our enjoy vows before God. She was disabled and needed care, so I became her provider. I also became the assistant to the Buildings and Grounds Supervisor at our church. However, that was voluntary. My supervisor was also the church clerk. Her tenure was coming up and she wanted to retire to her family home in Southwest Oregon and convert it into a retreat. She asked if we would benefit her and we agreed. So we packed up and moved to Oregon. Things were alright at first, but after a while she became demanding and controlling. We could not talk to the neighbors, or go off on our own because she did not want them to know she was lesbian and that I was transgender. We felt like we were in prison, so finally we broke out! Another Greyhound, another city, and we found ourselves in a loving home with two transgender women living there. Another room came available and we had a friend from California move in. She did not last long and we had a room available again. Through the church I had been cleaning an apartment for pay and met a lesbian that needed a status to live and I introduced her to the lady of the house, who took to her (and her partner) immediately. So, she moved in. At this period in my life I hit a wall and couldn’t salvage past this point in my grieving for my wife. So my love and I separated for a season for me to go through my grieving. Unfortunately, I became entangled in the lesbian’s life problems with current lover, past loves, and wishful loves. There seemed to be a physical muscle weakness in her, but I never found out what it was. She didn’t know what it was either. She did say she was prone to seizures and low blood sugar. I bet I carried her at least ten times in the time I knew her. She was around the age you would have been, Dori, and we began to mediate of each other that method. She called me Mom and I called her Daughter. As time went on that tie became unbreakable. She finally settled on one partner and was joined in a Wiccan ceremony of hand fasting. That was another avenue I was researching: the Wiccan lifestyle. It was lively to me, but I never once lost my faith in my Savior. I did become fearful several times and respond to that fear instead of standing in that faith, but I never believed that practicing Wicca would do more for me than God. I also never believed that Wicca was bad or heinous. I did finally carry out that I did not need Wicca when God was the source of all good things. The fact remains, though, that during this time I was still trying to research it. It soon became necessary for me, the lesbian and her partner, and my love, which I had reconciled with, to move out of the house. We found ourselves living in tents, under overpasses, in campsites, sometimes motels, hotels, anywhere we could find. The whole time in Oregon I never found a job. We were there for two years. We consisted on begging, state help, food stamps, anything we could. Along the way, my “daughter” decided she wanted a baby, so they snagged some guy and she got pregnant while being homeless! I warned her, but to no avail. Finally, my love had had enough and went back to California. I did not know until later where she had gone, but I missed her, a lot. You don’t know what you have until it is gone. I was a basket case. I even had problems completing sentences. We joked about my ‘daughter’ putting me in a home of some kind. By now we had ingratiated ourselves into the home of a lesbian couple from our church. They were in the process of moving and we helped them move. During this time, they helped me leer things I hadn’t about my ‘daughter’. There were definite patterns in the way she had her seizures and sugar ‘drops’. They all seemed to happen when she was not getting her way. Boy, was I blind! I felt used, like a piece of my heart was being ripped out. But I knew I had to eliminate them from my life. So we sent them on ahead of us on Greyhound and just did not follow. Instead the lesbian couple and I found my cherish in California and asked her to return, and she did. The four of us stayed together until the same controlling stuff started again and we moved on.

Chapter 11 – California Here We Come

In November 2004 my love and I moved to San Jose, California. The last time I had seen it was a year after my wife died, and it had changed! The new City Hall was being built, the church across from it was in a rebuilding project, restaurants giving plan to sports grills, several familiar agencies being relocated, and much, much more.

We stayed in a shelter for a while until we finally found a room in a Victorian of several rooms, stayed there a while, until we were able to move into a studio, with our own kitchen and bathroom. We were satisfied there until we moved into our present one-bedroom.

Along the way we have had several ladies finish with us, a couple of gays, and what we have learned is we do considerable better on our believe. We have been together since 2000 and going on 9 years. There have been many ups and downs, but through it all we are learning to design it work. Of all the things I have learned the most important is to not give up.

Somewhere along the way we were talked into getting a timeshare in South Lake Tahoe, and we are glad we did. We went there earlier this year and now we want to move there. The heat here is too much and it does not get that hot in SLT. We can handle the snow and cold. After all, I lived in Alaska and we both lived in Oregon, in the snow. So, as soon as we connect some dots and fill in the pieces of the puzzle of intelligent we will be living there.

Chapter 12 – South Lake Tahoe not in the Cards

It is amazing to me even now to see the way our plans derive waylaid in an instant. After our trip to South Lake Tahoe we tried to check out things online without success. We couldn’t acquire back there to check things out in person, so the whole idea got shelved. What did happen in the last week of November 2008 is I ended up in Emergency with abdominal hurt. I was diagnosed with gallstones and sent home with pain and nausea pills, with instructions to schedule an interview with surgery. At the same time my doctor wanted me to have a biopsy of a mole on my assist. I had the procedure done and made an appointment for outpatient surgery. The first week of December I was back in Emergency and kept in the hospital over the weekend. On Monday the doctors came in and apologized for not getting me into surgery over the weekend and recommended I go home and keep the outpatient surgery appointment. So I went home and Dermatology wanted more out of my back. The biopsy had revealed a melanoma and they wanted to make sure they got it all. So, with my back healing I had my gall bladder removed on December 19^th. On January 2^nd I caught a virus that moved into pneumonia. I had that through February and was so sick I could not go from one room to the next without being out of breath. In March I could go out using a 3wheel wheelchair scooter. My love, Roxanne, uses a scooter too. Today is April 24^th 2009 and I still cannot go out without the scooter. If I do, I cannot accumulate my breath the rest of the night. I am waiting for my next doctor’s appointment to ask her about my recuperation.

As it is with the rest of country we are having an economic reduction and reducing where we can. We are in the process of finding a reseller to rid us of the timeshare burden. Now the only move we are contemplating is away from people that smoke medicinal marijuana. The smoke comes in the window and Roxanne becomes physically sick from the smell of it. We may have found a area in town we can move to for less rent.

Epilogue

In some ways I don’t feel honorable of finding you and insinuating a position in your life. I screwed up and paid for it by not having the privilege to see you grow up and graduate. I missed many firsts – first boyfriend or girlfriend, first kiss, first date, first day to drive, first day of school, and so noteworthy more. I also know that I have been able to come to a state of acceptance of who I am, but many people still believe I should go serve to the blueprint I was in the 80’s. I know I can’t do it. It is not me. I would love it if you could gain me as I am, but I do not have unrealistic expectations. I know even though I have not met you as adults I still love and miss you. You are a part of me and I hope we can find each other and inaugurate to heal our relationship. I was 54 years young July 2008 and as I get older realize family is most important. There is emptiness in my heart that cannot be filled, except by finding you and healing the void. I never achieved wealth to pay investigators to salvage you, so I have written this book in the hopes that one day it will find its way to you. Actually, I guess it is more of a long letter, than a book, but either plan I hope it reaches you.

With all my love,

Your biological father,

Paulette Bell

408.885.9322pbellsemail@gmail.com

On the golf course, you can expend up to 14 clubs. Any variety of clubs is allowed here, giving golfers some scope for selection. There are a few different types of club to that golfers can select from.

The Woods:

The Woods are clubs that can be used off the fairway and the tee. From the 1 wood to the 7 wood, they can have slightly variable design. As with other clubs, the lower numbered woods are the longest clubs used for the longest shots off the tee with most distance, which can be between 300-400 yards. Higher numbered woods can be used in longer grass, or off the fairway with greater loft. Equally, the lower numbered woods have the least loft. Generally, they have graphite or steel shafts and some have titanium club heads.

The Irons:

The irons are the most flexible clubs. They can be used off the fairway the tee or even for shorter play with chip shots. Ranging from the two irons to the nine irons, there are longer and shorter irons for selection. Considering the range, the two, three and four are longer distance; with the five, six or seven irons more 100-175 yards and then the eight or nine irons the shortest irons for distance. The overall loft is also lowest for the two iron and then increases towards the nine iron. For short play, you can also use the irons like the nine, eight and seven for chip shots onto the green.

The Wedges:

The wedges, are those clubs with the greatest loft, not usually used off the tee but available for short play. The sand wedge is a club conventional for bunker play and bunker shots from green-side or fairway bunkers. This is one of the most lofted wedges available. These clubs are also best used for pitch shots, which require greater loft and petite roll. They can also be former for shorter chip shots onto the green.

The Putter:

The putter is a club that is used for short play and putts on the green. Overall, this covers a good number of shots and is most often used for one or more putts on the green. However, it can also be frail to putt onto the green. Putter designs can actually be quite variable, but like all clubs must be accepted for the market.Overall, these golf clubs make a standard set of 14. Usually, seven or eight golf clubs will do. With multiple irons, woods then a few wedges and a putter to complete the set. While golf club design can vary, they must be approved beforehand.

If you follow the sport of golf closely, you know that Tiger Woods has had an amazing year on the PGA tour. Some of you, in an effort to replicate his performance, have rushed out to your local golf store to buy the same types of clubs that Tiger uses. Unfortunately, you weren’t able to find them. That is because Tiger, like many other professionals, has his clubs custom made. Tiger works closely with a custom golf clubmaker to design clubs that will keep him at the top of his sport. His clubs are made to fit his style of play, his body composition, and his level of strength. Using Tiger’s clubs probably wouldn’t abet your game that much, unless your playing style and body is very similar. So, if you can’t play like Tiger, maybe you would think a career as a custom golf clubmaker where you could construct his equipment.

The first step in making a custom club for a client is to study that person’s swing. A clubmaker will analyze the characteristics of the golfer’s stroke on different types of shots. He/She may study the golfer’s swing by reviewing the golfer playing several rounds on videotape. Some of the more advanced clubmakers utilize sophisticated technological devices to do more in-depth analysis of the client’s golfing style. For instance, the clubmaker might use a software program that will compose a virtual re-enactment of the swing in order to make calculation such as the force(s) a golfer puts on a club and then transfers to the ball.

Next, the clubmaker must take several body measurements of the customer. He/She may also create tests to evaluate the client’s strength. Knowing the various forces applied to a club and/or ball allows the clubmaker to design a shaft and head that will enhance a customer’s game and provide the durability needed to support the style, level, and frequency of play.

After that, the clubmaker will custom-construct the grip, shaft, and head using different tools and machines. The two pieces of equipment used most frequently by clubmakers are a loft/lie machine and a swingweight scale. The process of making a club can be tedious and dirty. It can take up to 24 hours to craft a perfect club. Wittling, bonding, and roughing up shafts made out of graphite, wood, iron, and steel can create a mess or possibly a health risk. Clubmakers must wear protective clothing when making clubs, and make sure that their workshop is properly ventilated.

The next part of the process may be the most important step – clubfitting. If necessary, the clubmaker will spend some time tweaking the club to insure maximum effectiveness. He/She may need to adjust the shaft length, apply a different grip, or change the weight or angle of a head.

The process just described is very alive to, and is not necessarily the standard in the business. A lot of custom club ordering is done over the Internet. In these cases, it isn’t possible for the clubmaker to do much personal observation of the customer or to do an in-person clubfitting. Clubmakers who sell primarily over the Internet will ask the customer a series of questions about their golf style, past performance, and body. They will then use special tables or charts, such as a loft-lie chart, to predict what type of club would be best to construct.

Generally speaking, clubmakers are self-employed. Many work out of their home or in small retail shops that they own. Some clubmakers work part-time, but a majority of them are full-time employees. A full-time independent clubmaker can work as many as 60 to 70 hours a week during the peak golf season. Over 90% of this time, on the average, is spend collecting data from customers and constructing, fitting, or tweaking the club. The rest of a clubmaker’s time is spent maintaining business records, generating advertising, and performing other business-related tasks. A lot of clubmakers work weekends and three to four weekdays. Ten to fourteen hour days are not uncommon during the heavy selling season. 

Custom golf clubmakers need to possess a variety of skills in order to be successful in the field. First of all, they should understand the game of golf, including all of the factors that might affect one’s performance. Secondly, they should be able to operate sure types of machinery and equipment such as a loft/lie machine or a swingweight scale. Clubmakers will also need to understand key principles of physics and chemistry. They would use their physics skills when calculating force. They would use their knowledge of chemistry when working with epoxy and other bonding agents. Clubmakers should have above-average technology skills as well. They should be able to install and use software programs and collect useful information from video and audio analyses of a golfer. Finally, a clubmaker needs to have a good business sense. More than likely, he/she will be working alone. The clubmaker should understand basic elements of accounting, marketing, and public relations. 

There is no formal training required to be a custom golf clubmaker. There are a number of videos, books, and other information sources that can teach someone to effect golf clubs over time. However, most good clubmakers have been trained and accredited in the field. There are several private trade schools and apprenticeship programs that offer clubmaker training and certification programs. If you are thinking of becoming a clubmaker, you should take classes in Industrial Technology, Accounting, Advertising, Physics, Chemistry, Business Management, and various computer-related fields. A good percentage of clubmakers today were once employed as Tool and Die Makers, Engineers, or other production occupations. 

There is no distinct data on the average salary of a custom golf clubmaker. Some clubmakers never score much over minimum wage, while others can bag three-figures. Your salary as a clubmaker will depend upon your geographic location, who you compose clubs for, and how and where you are employed. Clubmakers have a better chance at higher pay in states such as California, Florida, Georgia, and South Carolina, where golf courses are abundant. Those who design and build clubs for professional golfers or collegiate golf teams will obviously acquire much more than those who cater to the general public. Clubmakers who own their own retail shops or conduct business over the Internet may earn more in the long run, as their opportunities for advertising and networking are better than running an operation out of their home. 

The golfing industry expects that the demand for custom golf clubmakers will increase over the next five to ten years, as more amateur and recreational golfers are realizing the value a custom-designed club can have for their game. Even though the market is expected to grow, it mild will not be easy to gain employment as a clubmaker. It is a highly competitive field.

Prospecting is the heart and soul of sales. If you won’t prospect you may as well secure another line of work. In my 27 years of B2B sales 100% of the people I’ve seen fail did so because they couldn’t or wouldn’t prospect effectively.

Think about it. If you have gigantic presentation skills. If you are the world’s best closer. If you have a superb grasp on your technology. None of this will befriend you unless you have opportunities to close

Prospecting is also the most difficult part of sales. It is a daunting proposition to come a perfect stranger who most times does not have the time of day to give you, and who is also being accosted daily by countless other reps who enjoy neither skill nor polish. These hacks make it difficult for the rest of us to accomplish what is at best an unpleasant task. On the other hand, if you maintain your professional poise you will typically set yourself apart and get an appointment.

Prospecting is also made more difficult because it calls for effective territory management, consistent follow up, development of a strategic notion, establishment of tactical goals to meet the strategic thought, and mountains of dedication.

Gold prospectors know their geology, so you don’t see them digging in the middle of Ohio. The same holds true for you.

What product are you selling? Who has the most need for it? Where is the bang for your buck? Where are you most likely to strike gold?

Every business you pass on the street has some fabricate of copier, from a small fax to a massive two ton production honker. Hop in your car and start knocking on every door you see. It’s definitely a plan. Is it a good one? Don’t laugh. I’ve seen a hundred guys do just that. They have all been flat broke and short lived.

The Value of Research

It’s been argued many times in the past that preliminary research is a waste of time and that it is more effective to simply make the call and qualify or disqualify a prospect. I disagree emphatically. There is a certain amount of truth to the philosophy that making a 30 second telephone call to qualify a prospect is better than wasting time on an hour of research. However, the psychological damage inflicted by an overwhelming number of hostile calls can be devastating.

Sales is a “head game.” The odds are against you when you are prospecting from a base that has a limited chance for success based on superficial knowledge. To blindly call every anecdote in the business directory is to invite disaster in the form of total dejection and the frustration of perceived futility.

At the same time, spending too much time researching your potential target base can be even more of an obstacle to success. This “analysis paralysis” will help reinforce your natural call reluctance and prevent you from canvassing as many accounts as you can.

The best solution I have found is a combination of both theories. It is usually easier to disqualify an account as a prospect than it is to qualify one. Most reps will dive into a massive territory trying to determine who fits the best criteria for success. While this is an vital step it is easier to first discard accounts that are obviously not potential users for your product or service. Icy calling 2,500 suspects in a territory is a daunting proposition. If you can defer or completely ignore 1,700 suspects and only focus on qualifying 800 you now have a more manageable task.

This may seem counter intuitive at first, but if you think about it, by following this plot, we are reducing the number of total suspects and increasing the odds of prospecting for a true prospect.

However, don’t allow your disqualification to get too easy or you’ll find yourself with an empty prospecting list. Hold it to glaringly obvious misfits at first.

If your HR service is designed for 100 or more employees it is a waste of time to call on companies with fewer than 100 employees. What if they have 97? You can’t constantly second guess a suspect, make your decision a hard line and stick to it.

Sometimes it is not that black and white. Let’s use telephone systems for this example. Most manufacturers are providing digital phone systems that economically support as few as 5 extensions. So, any company with more than 5 employees would be a target. Simple.

Now I’ll complicate things for you with real world factors. Most exiguous companies will not utilize the money on a new telephone system unless their recent system explodes. If they are spending money on a system, they will nickel and dime you to death. You will ultimately regret selling a small phone system because the return is far less than the investment in time. My personal break-even point on systems was a minimum of 20 extensions so I eliminated all companies with fewer than 20 employees.

As my experience grew I learned that number of employees was relative to the type of business I was calling on. For example, a company that manufactures corrugated boxes having 30 employees may only require 10 telephone extensions as the other employees worked in manufacturing. On the other hand a law firm with 30 employees may have as many as 35 or 40 extensions.

Be reminded that selling is a trade skill, so the more you do it the better you acquire at it. Early on I would call every company with 20 employees and learn for myself who to eliminate.

When you are beginning your career you are better off being conservative in your estimate of the quality of a prospect. In other words give yourself some latitude in selecting target accounts. You will speak to more unqualified accounts than you probably should but at least you will not overlook a possible opportunity.

As you hone your skills identifying a rich prospecting base will become easier.

Know Your Product Application

Obviously the more knowledge of your product the better prepared you will be to note it, but all your operational knowledge of your product will not help in determining suspect accounts. When establishing your prospecting criteria you need to know your product’s application or “fit.” Place more emphasis on what your product does for a business rather than how it does it.

I could hide the benefits of every feature of a modern digital telephone PBX in painful detail. If some IT engineer asked me HOW it works I’d tell him, “Hamsters!”

What benefit does my product bring to a prospect? Answer this question and only look for customers who probably have a need that would benefit from your solution.

If your product is human resources software designed to manage 100 or more employees it would be a waste of your time calling on companies with 5 employees. This seems to be a simple view, but wait until your sales manager is on your back for appointments.

Many times you are presenting a product or solution designed for a specific segment. Take tax software for example. This makes the decision process somewhat academic as you would not call on doctors to sell tax return software. However, you would probably consider some other criteria to resolve who among the CPA segment would be more likely to embrace your solution.

Are you getting the drift? Eliminate the accounts that are obvious non-candidates and forget about them.

The Purpose of Prospecting is Pre-Qualification.

I have heard it over and over again in my career. “The object of prospecting is to get an appointment!” My secret to success is to add, “…with someone who has a definitive probability of having a need for your solution.”

Would you set an appointment with someone you KNEW beyond any doubt had no intention of buying your product? If you even hesitated at answering with an emphatic “NO!” apply for a job in accounting. Sales probably isn’t for you.

How do we make this determination? Ask them! Overcoming the learned behavior of being indirect when talking to a complete stranger is a difficult task, but one that needs to be accomplished to succeed in sales. Believe me; they devour your desire not to waste time as much as you should.

If you knew before hand that a prospect was not fervent in or prepared to pay for your solution would you waste the time to sit in front of him for an hour? Obviously not. What’s worse is that you may find prospects out there with time on their hands that will waste hours of your time and resources only to turn you down at the end.

In business to business sales the key to success is matching solutions. If there is no opportunity for a prospect to use your solution in any draw shape or form, it is a ruin of time to set an appointment there.

A Word on “Creating Opportunities”

There is a philosophy I’ve heard that states that truly great sales people can “effect” an opportunity. I don’t subscribe to it. In fact, I judge it’s crap and I’ll roar you why.

A truly great rep can identify an opportunity even if the prospect can’t see one. This assumes that the existing business environment is conducive to abet from our solution, but the prospect hasn’t yet been educated to the value of your solution. They make widgets. They aren’t experts at payroll.

This is a critical concept to understand. If you don’t grasp this, you will end a great deal of time chasing your tail on a prospect that has no chance in hell to close, because you are hopeful that you will be able to create a need.

If you can’t clearly define a value to the prospect in your own mind, walk away and find another prospect.

If you are certain in your conviction that you bring a value to the prospect, but haven’t been able to define it in their mind, stay with it for years if necessary. Unprejudiced be honest with yourself.

Own in mind that when prospecting for an appointment it can be dangerous to over qualify the account before you come by there and lose the appointment. It is equally hazardous to under qualify an appointment and waste a boatload of time on a solid loser. In the beginning, however, it is better to go on some un-qualified appointments rather than risk missing an opportunity.

Time and experience will exclaim you what a worthwhile appointment looks like.

Always Start At The Top

It is far more difficult and time consuming to fetch to the highest authority in the company, but in the end it is worth the effort and aggravation. This is particularly true when you are providing services or other intangibles.

There are a number of good reasons for this tactic:

• Someone at the top of the ladder will have a better overall or strategic concept of the company and will be in a better region to determine the value of your service or product. The lower down the ladder you are working, the more price and commodity driven the sale. A CFO will consider a global document management solution. The office manager will buy a copier.

• Your profit margins will be higher if you begin at the top. If the final decision maker chooses to allow an underling to “gather the proposals for review,” it comes down to price. The information gatherer will do a thorough comparison, and then smash it all down into a spreadsheet for Decison Maker to look at. Decison Maker will diligently ensure that he is looking at “apples for apples” and pick the lowest price.

• You will have gotten your name in front of the final authority. This will make a difference if your competition hasn’t made the effort.

• Even if you net delegated down, your credentials are that much stronger. “The boss wanted me to reach out to you to take a look at this.”

• If the initiative for a project has not arrive down from the top, then you are dealing with someone compiling a “wish list,” and it will be a complete waste of time.

• Once you have had substantive interaction with a contact lower down the ladder, it is impossible to go over their head to Decison Maker. Consider about this one. You meet with Peggy the Office Manager and she tells you your product really doesn’t have an advantage in the company. Two days later you get through to her boss’s boss and he shows a genuine interest in your solution, so he calls Peggy and tells her to take a closer look at you. Is Peggy an ally or an avowed enemy?

“Who cares? Screw Peggy!” is a fine sentiment, but Peggy will do everything in her power to undermine you, and, in fact, promote a competitor out of pure spite. If you think Peggy will get fired because of her lack of vision you are dead wrong. Once you have discovered that you are not dealing with the proper contact, get out.

Your products or services may, by design, threaten someone lower down the ladder. Your primary benefit for a company to adopt your HR services will be to cut overhead and increase efficiencies by eliminating some, most, or all of the HR department. How well received will your proposal be to the head of said HR department?

You should always be addressing the person who will personally back most by your products or services, and this contact resides at or reach the top of the heap.

NEVER PITCH TO A GATEKEEPER

Don’t destroy your time by presenting your case to a gatekeeper, secretary, executive assistant or anyone other than your target contact. When interacting with anyone during the process of getting to the DM give information sparingly. I’m always polite and at times present myself as a unpleasant lost soul, but there are a number of dangers in giving too powerful information. The biggest pains is wasting your time. The only decision Peggy can make is whether or not to let you through the gate. Telling her all about your product is a complete waste of your time. Another danger is giving Peggy the opportunity to say, “Nah, we don’t need any of that stuff.” Now you’re really shut down.

Try to understand the psychology of the gatekeeper. Typically they are women who are very capable at their job as an assistant to your DM. Many times they have supported the DM for many years and have become very defensive of their time. The DM does her review, gives her raises, days off and bonuses, and even goes to her kid’s graduation party.

Sadly, many times they do their job too well and they insulate the DM from a great solution.

Research Calls

Before you bewitch up the telephone, you want to identify at least 30 target accounts to call. This process should take place during off hours, i.e. early, late or lunch. Remember that highly productive activities are those that relate to direct contact with a prospect. Everything else is time wasted. Focus on your selection criteria and ignore any old notes that exist in the system.

After doing your research and targeting 30 accounts you will need to find the appropriate contact. This is an art in itself.

Many excellent information sources exist that will provide a list of executive contacts for businesses. The Web is great source. I always laughed when a gatekeeper refused to provide me with someone’s name and upon checking the company’s website not only did I gain the appropriate name, but also e-mail address, thunder dial phone numbers, biographies, photos, etc.

Having a contact name makes life simpler and it’s a great start, but you still need to have a conversation with the contact, which means you will probably need to penetrate at least one gatekeeper.

The next articulate becomes the validity of the contact. It is valuable that you positively identify your primary contact with as much absolute certainty as possible. Failure to do this will always result in countless hours of trouble spread over weeks or months only to finally get through to someone who is not even remotely interested in what you are offering.

As you select a prospect to call take a pen or pencil (I prefer pencil) along with ruled pad and write out company name, contact name and title (if you have it), and telephone number on one line. Skip four or five lines and write the next one until you have about 30 companies listed.

My logic for using this method over thunder interaction with a CRM is simple and multi-dimensional:

• Unless you are a race typist, writing notes is faster than entering them on the screen.

• Writing is second nature. You can have a quality conversation while making abbreviated notes and bullet points manually. Typing while talking will split your focus.

• You can review, correct, expand and compile your notes at your leisure in non-prime time.

• Having the account up on screen will distract you by reading previous notes. Never take the time to second guess a prospect when you are in the middle of calling. You can take whatever time you like while determining your call list, but once you put them on make the call.

• Transcribing the notes later will help you recall items you may have missed initially.

• Having a list or stack of sheets will give you a sense of accomplishment. Having a list or stack will residence a goal for you. You must complete the list. Calling from the screen gives you too many opportunities to say, “Well, I guess I made enough calls today.”

You will complete more calls, more effectively if you use this method than calling from the screen.

This process begins with the telephone number. You dial the number and you get a recording that it is disconnected. Try the number again ensuring you dialed correctly. If you receive the message again make a note on the paper and move on to the next call. This is prospecting time NOT research time. Research is vitally important but during prime time it is wasteful and unproductive. Wait until lunch or slay of day to check the number.

If indeed the number has been disconnected, then either delete the account or mark it for deletion. This is a pet peeve of mine. I have inherited a dozen databases over my career and it really puts me off at how many inconsiderate, illiterate dullards don’t delete disconnected numbers from the database.

Do your research carefully. Is the company out of business or has it been acquired by another account in your territory?

Use every opportunity to verify the information in your database. For example, if you don’t win anything else from the operator or receptionist, at least verify their address may have blown an appointment you have been working on for months.

Once you have compiled your notes from all of your calls, you can make yourself a cup of coffee and make the necessary updates to the CRM. As I said earlier, this will give you an opportunity to review your notes and fill in any details that will be helpful.

This is also the perfect time to build your strategy around an account. All strategy in sales involves timing, contacts, and next action.

Start with an introduction letter.

The Introduction Letter

The Introduction Letter accomplishes a few things. First, it is the most professional way of making an initial contact with a prospect. Your contact is probably very adept at ducking sales calls, so it is always a good idea to give them a heads up.

Before you send an introduction letter it is necessary that you have telephoned the account and verified your contact, his title and the correct spelling of his name.

Here’s a petite strategy that can benefit you verify the information from the website, and almost never fails to obtain the appropriate contact.

When you have the receptionist on, exercise this line:

“Hi, my name is Jim Fiorini and I’m calling from HR Services Unlimited. We are the world’s largest provider of HR Services and we are presenting a seminar on the financial advantages of HR services outsourcing in a global economy. We’d like to get invitations out to the senior financial staff at ABC, Inc. and I was hoping you could help me out with that.”

There is something disarming and non-threatening about sending an invitation to a seminar. Many times the person will ask you for a clarification, or they may give you the HR manager’s contact name. Be very grateful and take the information, but ask them if the contact name they gave you is the highest financial authority in the company. It’s NOT a seminar on HR services, it is about the financial impact of HR services outsourcing.

“Thanks for the information. I want to be sure that these invitations go out to the highest financial authority. We don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings, and if they want to pass the invitations along to someone else well that’s just up to them.”

You’ll regain the hang of it. It almost always works and you aren’t lying. You would like to invite them to a seminar that has been individually prepared and given at a personal level.

Very few reps use this tool, so as a differentiator the introduction letter is very effective.

By setting an expectation for a follow up contact, and then actually completing the follow up, you begin to manufacture credibility with your prospect.

When confronted with a gate keeper wielding the dreaded, “Is he expecting your call,” you may now, with all confidence and honesty, reply, “Why yes, he is.”

Lastly, by using the introduction letter as the first step in a process you bring structure to your plan. I recommend sending a minimum of 30 letters every week so that you have a minimum of 20 follow ups the following week. Of course, if you are having difficulty keeping up with the follow up calls, you can throttle the initial letters, but more effective would be to step up your follow up activities to clear the way for more letters.

Start building your goals from the very first action!

The Pre-Approach Letter should be short and to the point. Build it around an expanded elevator pitch. You will always demolish a pre-approach letter by informing the contact that you will be calling in the near future to situation an appointment.

I generally take a very passive aggressive site with prospects. Being patiently persistent may remove longer, but I bag my chances of success to be noteworthy higher.

So let’s start the dialing process.

When the operator or receptionist answers the call just ask for the contact as if you were an old golf buddy looking to confirm a tee time.

“Hi, is Jeff in? “ If she transfers you thank the benevolent god of sales, you got lucky.

“Who’s Calling? “ Tell her the truth but give her your name like ol’ Jeff has known you for years.

“Jim Fiorini.”

“What company are you calling from? “ Again, you should be truthful but very casual, as if Jeff is expecting the call.

“HR Resources.”

“Will he know what this is regarding? “ I hate it when they are good at their job!

Because you sent an introduction letter you acknowledge confidently, “Yes, he will.”

The operator puts you through and you get Jeff’s voice mail. DO NOT LEAVE A MESSAGE!

• Jeff will probably not return your call so don’t destroy the time.

• If you leave numerous unreturned messages, the moment you get lucky enough to have Jeff prefer up and you introduce yourself you stand a very good chance of getting a response something like, “Look, if I was interested I would have returned your call.” Never an auspicious beginning to a relationship.

• If you don’t leave a message you can safely make repeated attempts to reach Jeff.

When to Leave Messages

You should leave a brief message following up on the introduction letter. The letter states you will be following up, so let him know you are.

When Jeff finally picks up the phone live and in person be ready for your pitch. Your time is limited, so put something together that will be right to the point and site the hook. Many people call this a benefit statement.

Jeff knows the real reason you are calling; you want him to buy your product so you can make money. He knows, because he gets many similar calls every week, and if you don’t differentiate yourself, then you are done.

A benefit statement is simply a concise statement of the benefit the potential customer might realize if he partners with you on a deal. What challenge is Jeff facing for which you are providing a solution?

“Good morning, Jeff, my name is Dave Johnson and I am calling from HR Specialists Unlimited.”

“Jeff, I apologize for coming at you unannounced, but I am following up as I said I would in my letter of introduction. I wanted to take a minute to gawk if there might be a way we can befriend the HR Department at ABC Company.”

“HR Specialists Unlimited provides a comprehensive support program for companies with more than 50 employees. Through a combination of on-site software and outsource services for things like recruiting, payroll, benefits and 401k, HR Specialists can enhance your HR process while reducing costs. Jeff, we currently support more than 4,000 enterprises in the United States, and I was calling to set a convenient time for us to get together and settle if there might be a superb fit between your requirements and our services.”

Perfect, you told Jeff what you do and of what benefit your services can be to his company. You also, wisely, threw in a bit of credibility by mentioning your large customer base. If you’re really smart you will have prepared a couple of recognizable names to drop. If you are selling a widely distributed product like office equipment, you should have some local companies to mention. Competitors of your target account are great names to drop.

Now comes the fun part. This is the stage that separates the professionals from the wannabes.

If, on a million to one chance, Jeff says, “Sure, how’s tomorrow observe,” go buy a lottery ticket, because you just got lucky.

Overcoming objections to a first appointment is probably the most difficult part to master

Let’s take a look at some of the common objections and some ideas on how to respond.

First some general ground rules:

1) Keep them engaged. If you keep them talking to you you’ll be surprised at the information you obtain and where the conversation could lead you.

2) Never undermine someone’s region on the subject. Stay positive and reinforcing. Even an implied criticism can raze any chance of getting your foot in the door.

3) Be patient. I have found that there is an average three-touch baseline for getting a first appointment. In other words, it takes an average of three conversations before someone will agree to a meeting.

4) They are probably objecting to the call, not to you or your product. Keep in mind that you interrupted their day and you have no idea the day they are having. I can quote thousands of personal experiences where my first contact was a disaster, to the point they were calling the police, and then a few weeks later I got an appointment with the same person.

5) Never take it personally. They don’t know you. You are doing your job, they are simply doing theirs.

6) More than anything you must believe that your product or service will improve their business or their personal standing within their company. If you maintain that belief and conduct yourself professionally you will always succeed.

7) You are one of dozens if not hundreds of vendors asking for some of their time. The decision maker is inundated with people trying to sell him everything, from paperclips to fork-lifts.

Always set an expectation for a next action.

I. “Thanks but I’m not fervent.”

This is a standard response from someone who gets many calls and has limited time to listen. Chances are that as soon as Jeff heard your introduction he immediately went into “just another sales rep” mode, and did not even hear most of what you said about your product. You need to come by Jeff interested in listening. This calls for testing with probing questions to qualify here.

“I understand how busy you are Jeff, and I apologize for coming at you unannounced. Since you don’t have any interest, is it dazzling to say you have fewer than 50 employees? “

“No, we have almost 200 employees.”

You’ve obtained primary pre-qualifying information, and you have an opportunity to re-state your qualifications, as well.

“That’s great! That’s the perfect reason for us to accept together. Our services are designed to support businesses with more than 50 employees, but the cost justification really soars when there are more than 100. I would just need about 20 minutes of your time to give you a honorable overall describe of what we do. Do you have some time on Thursday? “

Try to terminate for an appointment after addressing an objection. If the conversation leads to multiple objections acquire multiple attempts to close for an appointment.

If Jeff doesn’t engage at all, and simply dismisses you, don’t give up. Recycle him for another letter and round of contact. Perhaps you may need to take a pass at an alternate contact, but we will discuss that situation later.

II. “Our HR department handles everything in house.”

“I’m distinct you have a big HR department in house and we don’t want to replace anyone. We just want to enhance your employees’ HR experience by providing you with scalable applications to support your HR load. From the search for candidates, through the onboarding process, to termination or retirement we can help you handle associates from cradle to grave. Do you think you could accept 20 minutes to talk when you are expecting me? “

III. “Now is not a good time.”

“Jeff, I know how busy everyone is these days. That’s exactly the reason ABC Company partnered with us. We helped Mark over there enhance his HR trot, while having a dramatic definite impact on his budget. If I could just get 20 minutes to lay out our offering maybe you would have a better idea of when the perfect time to take a closer look might be.”

IV. “Send some information.”

I Like this one. Most reps will just cave in and send something in the mail. This is a perfect way to get more information.

“I’d be happy to do that, Jeff. It will give you an opportunity to see some of what our capabilities are. The plight is that, as I said earlier, we have a very comprehensive and scalable product, so I don’t want to overload you with literature. Could you deliver me if there is one area of improvement you’d like to see in your department? “

This may get Jeff to admit there is some pain in his life, and give you an exploitable entry point into the account. Jeff will also get the message that you will not passively accept his dismissal. I would be bold enough to say that I have gotten more appointments from this objection than any other.

V. We already outsource most of our HR services.

“That’s great, Jeff. That tells me you are familiar with the advantages of placing some of your services with specialists. Since we are the leader in scalable HR solutions, it would be beneficial to get together and determine if there are any holes your unique relationship may have left.”

Don’t be disappointed by this response. The unpleasant news is that they are engaged with an incumbent. The excellent news is that they have bought into the model. This is what I refer to as a “Lifetime Opportunity.” I need to stay in touch on a regular, but arms length, basis until an opportunity to unseat the incumbent presents itself. Use your CRM.

This information is critical when dealing with time definitive relationships like equipment leases, service agreements, or any other contract. When I was in the copier business all I did was date prospect lease terminations and focus on leveraging them when they came up. In the meantime I had the opportunity to build a relationship and offer many non-copier based software solutions that my company had available. Sometimes I had the chance to do something smaller but more respectable while waiting for the big opportunity to come due.

There are many objections to an appointment, but hopefully you get the picture. Think outside of the box. Keep spinning the conversation until you get an appointment.

VI. Delegation

If your persistence pays off, the next step for an owner may be to delegate your call to someone further down the ladder. Hang on to the top rung of the ladder for as long as you can.

“OK, Jim, but you want to talk to Mary Hartman in my HR department.”

“Thanks for the direction, Jeff. I’ll be sure to gain in touch with Mary, but it would be a value for you to seek our solution from a strategic perspective, so would you give me 20 minutes prior to my reaching out to Mary? “

“That’s not famous, Jim. Mary can handle it.”

“I’m sure she can, Jeff, but my experience has been that HR supervisors feel threatened by our services and don’t get a full appreciation of our value. The net result is that the information gets shelved and an opportunity for a strategic improvement is lost. Would it be possible for you to sit in on our first meeting to kind of state the tone? “

“Jim, Mary is your contact. She’ll run with it.”

“OK, Jeff, I’ll come out to Mary, and sustain you in the loop throughout the process.”

Jeff may have agreed to get together at any point in that conversation, or he may have pushed hard on the delegation. You must fight to preserve Jeff involved.

VII. You struck out your first time

All of your objection management skills failed to pay off, but you are certain there is an opportunity for you to do business with the sage. What is the next step in the plan?

Once again, opinions vary on this topic, from call back in a few days and try to bully your way in, to walk away from the prospect and plow greener fields.

Once again, I find myself somewhere between the two extremes. Being pushy may work for selling used cars or stereo equipment, but it is the quickest blueprint to de-rail a high level professional sale.

Walking away from the prospect is easy, but if you walk away from every prospect that resists setting an appointment your closing opportunities will quickly become limited. There is certainly a time to walk away from a prospect when there is clearly no opportunity for a deal.

This is where your CRM and follow up techniques come into play, and they are definitely a part of the prospecting cycle.

Personal Visit (Chilly Call)

Showing up in person at a prospect can be very effective when in the superb setting. Cold calls can also waste a great deal of time if not scheduled properly.

Let me be absolutely clear on one point first. In most markets, running from door to door dropping off business cards and literature as a primary prospecting method is a complete waste of time.

There are a few exceptions to this rule. Some examples are retail advertising: radio, phone book, coupon mailer, etc. In these venues dropping by in person is probably the most effective method of reaching out to prospects. In the vast majority of B2B solutions or capital equipment sales this is not a winner.

There are times, however, when personal visits have a station in the cycle.

You have objective finished up an appointment in a relatively unfamiliar part of your territory, and there happens to be a large commercial park nearby. This is a great opportunity to at least swing through and note the businesses located in the park. You will gain greater familiarity with your territory, and you may well identify an overlooked opportunity. Pay particularly close attention to any signs of company relocation, either into or out of a space. A change of physical location will often provide an environment for other changes in infrastructure.

Your appointment may have been in a multi-story building. This is an equally good opportunity to scope out what’s happening in the building.

In either of these scenarios, it is perfectly appropriate to pop in and give the receptionist the same intro you would if she were answering the telephone. The only change I would make is to apologize for the inconvenience of stopping by without an appointment, but you would like to set one.

The Cessation By

Another personal visit is what I refer to (for lack of a better term) as a “Stop By.” The Stop By is most effective when you are having difficulty getting through to an identified contact on the phone. You have made numerous attempts to reach someone, but always end up in express mail.

This is where your CRM really comes in handy. You have set an appointment 40 minutes away from the office and you wish to maximize your time. Sort all the accounts in the zip code for the appointment, and prefer out the accounts that you have been unable to make contact with.

Depending on the number of these accounts, you may want to make a whole morning of Stop By’s, or afternoon, or the entire day. You are investing 80 minutes round trip to see one prospect. If possible, maximize your travel time. The Stop By is always at an account that you suspect is a satisfactory candidate for your product, and you have made numerous efforts to reach them. The Stop By will accomplish a number of tasks for you.

• First, you will get a personal conception of the prospect. Many times I have diligently worked to get to a contact, and on stopping by I discover that the account really isn’t profitable. I can now remove it from my list, thus refining my territory.

• There is also a chance that you will gain to meet the contact you have been working so hard at meeting. Many people camouflage late their jabber mail these days, but if you show up in the lobby they will often pop their head out.

• At the very least, the contact will know that you are dedicated enough to make the pains to drop by. I always write a dinky note on the support of my business card letting them know that I will be trying to reach them for an appointment.

• For those times when you reach a contact who rewards you with that famous line, “Send me some information first,” the Conclude By is a perfect excuse to, well, stop by. Tell the receptionist the truth. “Donna asked me to send her some information, but since I had an appointment at ABC just down the street I thought I’d set aside the postage and deliver it myself.” Tall smile. “By the intention, do you think Donna may have a minute to shake hands? ” Donna will probably come out and say hello. If not, again, at least she will know you are making a serious effort to earn her time.

E-mail

You should be asking for a contact’s e-mail address every time. This is a most effective method for staying in touch with a contact. I have found that contacts who are dreadful at taking calls or returning messages respond to e-mail messages.

The perfect time to request an e-mail address is at the infamous, “Send me some information.” The only time anyone has balked at that one are those precious few who have no e-mail address.

To a large degree, the rules for e-mail are the same as phone calls. You should have a specific reason for the message, though a “Honest Checking In” e-mail is acceptable from time to time.

E-mail is also an effective precursor to a phone call or visit. Clearly location in the e-mail message that you will be calling or visiting on a specific date. This will nullify the gate keeper’s inquiry, “Is Donna expecting you? ” You may now honestly answer, “Yes.”

Many companies use e-mail services to distribute marketing materials on a regular basis. This is a terrific service with gigantic impact. Most recipients won’t complain unless the material is annoying or the frequency is obnoxious. On the other hand, if someone gets aggravated enough, they will call you to complain. This is the perfect time to be the hero and apologize for the “SPAM” your inconsiderate marketing department has been sending. After you soothe them, see if you can’t strike up a conversation with them and see where it leads.

I’ve actually found that many prospects are easier to set appointments with via email.

Targeting an Alternate Contact

You will undoubtedly encounter a contact that is completely inaccessible. You may have heard someone out there tell you that if you are persistent you will wear them down. As usual, there is a certain amount of truth in this philosophy but you need to determine when it is in your best interest to take your chips to another table.

Keep in mind that just because you’ve switched your sights to another target it doesn’t mean you have to give up attempting to reach your primary.

It is difficult to establish a area time line for changing your approach but I would say that you should have exhausted all methods of attempting to advance your primary and have made at least three attempts through each medium; Phone, letter, email, personal visit.

Once you have made the decision to change select the next rung down in the ladder. Don’t give up on the CFO and dive lawful to the purchasing department. Try finding a VP of Operations, Controller, Business Manager, someone who is a direct picture to your primary contact.

Always Notion Prospecting as a Process

I’ve witnessed countless newbies self-destruct at prospecting. After the manager that hired them and the trainer that indoctrinated them residence their expectations at six figure incomes and easy pickings the reality of being rejected 49 times in 50 calls crushes them.

Too many times the goal is determined by the number of appointments set. In reality you made 50 calls but only set one appointment. Talk about disheartening.

Now take a closer look at what really happened. You made 50 calls and set one appointment. You also confirmed 13 contacts, identified 4 definite prospects, set up three contract end dates and had two substantive conversations with contacts who allowed you to set a next step within a quarter. Not a bad day’s work.

If you are methodical in your notes and planning prospecting gets remarkable easier because your prospects become warmer each time you touch them. I chuckle when I see the looks of chagrin on the faces of new guys in the pit during “Phone Blitzes”. I will have my three appointments set in about an hour while they will hammer away all day and acquire none.

If you only look for the immediate opportunities and discard prospects with a longer event horizon your territory will be forever green and you will be perpetually dreadful.

Believe it or not, golf can be a great way to get into shape. The key is to figure out how to play properly so that you can work the right muscles in your body. This is why it is so well-known to take the time to really perfect your golf swing. In Golf Fitness Magazine, you will find plenty of great workout advice while golfing. Of course you can’t expect to burn tons of calories during golf, unless you plan on jogging in between holes. You will be on your feet and you can expect to do plenty of walking which is plenty of exercise in itself.

If you want to get the best possible work out possible from playing a simple game of golf you could try the following. The first thing is to do some stretches before you even start playing golf. This will help to loosen up your muscles. It is very essential to give your arms, shoulders and back a good stretch. You are basically getting your body warmed up and ready to play. Keep in mind that it is very easy to pull a muscle, or sprain your arms, feet and legs just by playing golf. One very good exercise for your hands and wrists is the hand stretch. This is where you hold your hand with the palm up and bend your fingers back slightly, while holding your arm straight out tin front of you. Hold this pose for a few seconds using each arm. There are some additional exercises that you can do prior to starting your game of golf on Golf Fitness Magazine.

In order to really make the game a better workout you need to work on your strength, flexibility, and of course your balance. All of this is done while playing the game of golf and taking the time to really work on your golf swing. Many don’t realize how many muscles are traditional in your body when you play the game of golf. For example when working on your backswing you want to wind your upper body tightly and then set all of your energy into your swing. The more you swing this way the more you will work your core muscles. After several backswings don’t be surprised if you start to feel a dinky sore. If you do the backswing properly than you will. One important thing to point out is that in order to hit the ball better and harder your body has to be in the honest shape. There are not too many people who realize how significant a role the condition of your body plays in the game of golf.

Golf also has a lot to do with posture. By not having the right posture during your swing you will not be able to hit the ball successfully and powerfully. This is where your hamstrings will procure a work out. In order to maintain the right posture while in a swing you will feel your hamstring muscles working hard.

The bottom line is that you will not get a high intensity workout by playing golf. You will however get a good work out for your body if you play consistently and practice playing the right way. Many who play the game of golf just for fun don’t really think about maintaining the right posture or having the right swing. If you take the time to really practice the game and learn the proper way to play, it can be a good workout regime. You will also need to include with that a good diet and other exercises as well. If you are looking to lose lots of weight golf would not be the ideal fitness program for you. If you are just looking to tone, and tighten up certain areas than golf could be the perfect answer for you.

Are you about to buy new golf clubs? Before you do, there are some things to take into consideration. You are about to spend lots of your hard earned money. You want to create sure that you don’t over or under spend on your needs.

Identify your needs. Be objective with yourself, about the position of your game. How dedicated are you to improving your game or fair getting out and play? If you only play once or twice a year, you would be better off to rent or borrow a set of clubs. However, if you are the type of person that can’t wait to hit the links, then you want to get the right set of clubs for yourself.

Do you need a different type of club, because of changes to your game? If you don’t play as much, you might want to replace those muscle-back blades with cavity blades. If your game is showing great improvement, then you might want to consider stepping up in club quality and quantity. You want to match your playing ability, with the type of club you need.

In switching shafts on your clubs, you need to consider your age as a factor. The older you get, the softer the shaft that you want. If you have a weak and insensible swing on your stroke, you might want to consider going to graphite instead of steel in your shafts.

Club fitting can be done by taking a few measurements. You can usually do this very easily at a pro shop. a teaching pro or professional clubfitter can do this in about half an hour. A good clubfitter can match your swing with your body.

Once you have established what you need, shop around. Checkout Ebay and local golf stores. Set a budget for what you have to work with. Read some club reviews in golf magazines. Talk to the experts (other golfers). Then compare prices. You are going to use these clubs a lot. You want the best spot of clubs you can find.

Finally, you might want to consider a set of Hybrids (Utility). Hybrid golf clubs are for the recreational golfer. They are very popular, because they are easier to hit with. Hybrids have a mixture of woods and irons into their design. They are designed to replace the long irons of 2,3 and 4. I have even seen a 5 hybrid. If you are shopping for a new set of clubs, you at least want to contemplate a space of hybrids.

Whatever you decide to do, seize your time and select what works best for you and your situation. Be honest with yourself. What is it that you really need?

It took me seventeen years to get three thousand hits in baseball. I did it in one afternoon on the golf course.
- Hank Aaron

Golf has been enjoyed for more than five hundred years, by those seeking both leisure and exercise.  The art of mastering the technique of sending a very tiny ball across a great distance, to land in a very tiny hole, has captivated many.  The greens sparkle invitingly, the banners snap in the move in anticipation, and somewhere on a beautiful golf course a man throws his club across the green in abject frustration.

Your golf game starts with one basic element: your golf swing.  Improve your swing, improve your game – it’s just that simple.  Even golfers that understand this basic principle still pick up themselves struggling to perfect their swing.  A full golf swing is a complicated, rather unnatural motion that requires twisting, pivoting, and coordinating your entire body in one smooth, swift motion. 

Back injuries have certainly occurred from far less exertion.  Not only can a bad golf swing seriously affect your game, but it can harm you.  A bad swing can cause you to rip or tear muscles, over-extend your range of motion, and even cause you to throw out your back.  Even highly skilled golfers might continue to catch lessons on improving their golf swing. 

Everyone has a different range of motion, their own natural sense of grace and movement.  There is no one perfect swing that anyone can or should employ.  There is only one perfect swing for each golfer.  The club must recede in one graceful, fluid, arcing motion.  It’s important to master the mechanics of the golf swing before other factors, such as aiming the ball, come into play.  If you can’t swing a club successfully, you’ve got no business on the course.

I have a tip that can take 5 strokes off anyone’s golf game. It’s called an eraser.
- Arnold Palmer

One current mistake is a snapping motion of the wrists, which many people use at the bottom of their swing when trying to hit the ball harder.  This action may feel nice and powerful, but it actually slows the head of the club down and decreases the distance of your ball.  A bad golf swing can exaggerate poor shots that are improperly aligned, aimed in the wrong direction, or hit off-center.  An existing poor swing will only make these common troubles that much worse, affecting the whole of your golf game.

Your golf swing should feel as smooth and natural as possible, which means you have to practice the motion of your swing – a lot.  The more comfortable with swinging the clubs you are, the more confident you will feel when you’re really out on the links.  A good golf swing is the foundation of any good game of golf, so be sure to practice, practice, practice.

   I know I’m getting better at golf because I’m hitting fewer spectators.
- Gerald R. Ford

Muscles don’t matter when it comes to your golf swing.  A very powerful man can still have a very extinct swing, and vice versa.  Tiger Woods, one of the biggest and most-known names in golf, is not a large, muscle-bound man.  He has one of the most powerful drives on the links, and it has nothing to do with his physical strength.  He has a great golf swing, which translates into a great golf game. 

It’s important to get used to the motion of the golf swing, and many beginners practice their swing many times before ever attempting to play an actual game of golf.  The golf swing stance is very basic.  You just have to find the right motion for you. 

Situation your feet shoulder width apart when you line up to address your ball, firmly gripping your club.  You must twist your body to bring the club to the ball, in one fluid movement.  The good golf swing is very dependent on the follow through.  Even if you don’t hit the ball, continue with your swinging motion and follow through completely.  An incomplete swing will send the ball into many directions and places – none of them very sterling.

  The reason they call if ‘golf’ is that all the other 4 letter words were used up.
- Leslie Nielsen

“Practice makes perfect” definitely applies to the golf swing.  Everyone’s swing is going to be different, and what works best for someone else (like Tiger) may not work best for you.  The only way to improve your swing is to practice it, to get the motion down, to line your body up and feel the movement of your swing.  Get out your clubs and swing, even when you aren’t playing.  You can practice your swing in your office, your living room, or out on the lawn.  Try to get used to the feel and the motion of your swing, and you’ll collect your game improving. 

Your swing is the most important element of your golf game, and the swing should be practiced much more than your putting skills.  If you spend some time working on your swing, you’ll accept yourself scoring better on the links.

  The uglier a man’s legs are, the better he plays golf – it’s almost a law.
- H. G. Wells (Bealby, 1915)

There are few things in this world that are healthy for your mind and body than golfing. This sport was invented by the Scottish and is absolutely a extraordinary getaway from the everyday worries and stresses of the everyday world. So you want to play golf, but you don’t exactly know how? Well, don’t be distraught about your lack of knowledge of this amazing sport, there is a place where you can go to learn all of the secrets of the game so you can become the best golfer possible.

So if you live in St. Louis, Missouri and want to learn from professional golfers on how to play an amazing game of golf, than you absolutely must go to Golf Headquarters of Saint Louis. Golf Headquarters of Saint Louis is one store out of 180 golf specialty retail outlets throughout the entire nation. At Golf Headquarters they are home to one of the areas best golf academy. Their teams of instructors have developed programs suitable for all levels of players. Their programs are an absolutely amazing experience for the student due to the fact that they are completely individualized and personalized by the instructor for the wide array of students that attend their academy. Both of their Golf Academy locations offer classes that are available to students in an either personalized one-on-one lesson or in-group sessions. Both of these types of lessons use in-depth video and computer analysis to enhance the learning process of the students. Golf Headquarters Golf Academy hires only the most advanced and professional instructors.

One of the more popular classes that they offer potential students is the Golf 101 course. This course is for beginners, seniors, and individuals coming back to this amazingly wonderful game. They have two amazing instructors: Heath Anderson which is a PGA Teaching Professional and J.J. Swindle which is an LPGA Teaching Professional. So with these instructors you will absolutely have an absolutely wonderful experience and you as a student will grow leaps and bounds with their instruction. The Golf 101 course is designed to be an consuming and fun scheme to learn the fundamentals of golf. This clinic will include instruction on the correct way to hold the golf club, to make an easier swing, proper stance and better balance, correct plan to aim a target, some exercises to strengthen your body and mind. The student will learn how to putt, do a short game, and beginning of how to swing the driver to success. The cost of this course is only $50.00 per student. So whether you are just beginning or are wanting to learn more about the game, the Golf Headquarters Golf Academy is the place for you.

CONTACT INFORMATION:

Golf Headquarters Golf Academy
Family Golfplex Highway K
O’Fallon, MO 63304
Tel: 636-240-0458
http://www.golf-headquarters.com

Golf Headquarter Golf Academy Location Two
3717 Tree Court Ind. Blvd.
Kirkwood, MO 63122
Tel: 636-861-2500
http://www.golf-headquarters.com

   Sitting approximately 7 miles south of Cincinnati, Ohio is one of US News’ 50 Best Small Colleges in America. Thomas More, with a student enrollment average of about 1500, offers Associates and Bachelors degrees in many subject areas. Adding to their accolades is that Money Magazine rates them as one of the 50 Best Colleges with low tuition. They were also names by The Carnegie Foundation for Advancement of Teaching as a ‘selective liberal arts college.’

Thomas More has recently expanded their offerings as well. They’ve opened a campus in the Northern Cincinnati suburb of Blue Ash. They have expanded their TAP program, which means The Accelerated Program. Here students can find an Associates Degree all the intention to a Master’s degree within 4-5 years by attending class one night a week.

Thomas More also offers NCAA Div III athletics. The Saints play in men’s football, baseball, basketball, golf, soccer and tennis. The women compete in soccer, softball, tennis, basketball, volleyball and golf. They also have a coed cross-country team that competes in the NCAA. They offer intramural sports too!

The school is advanced by having high speed wireless service throughout both campuses. They offer resident (dorm) life and of course have the full range of financial aid options to those who qualify. They utilize online blackboard technology for classes, registration, financial and other services common to major colleges.

With Thomas More having its roots in the Jesuit community, they were founded in 1921 by the Benedictine Sisters as Villa Madonna College. Courses such as Theology and Religion are sprinkled throughout the core curriculum. However, you will find all walks of life attending Thomas More. Their small class size, outstanding teaching and commitment to the students allows for this small college to stand out in a world full of online diploma mills, online colleges and the rest of the old-fashioned schools.

  Visit www.thomasmore.edu today for more information and start your educational journey!