Leave Nothing To Chance

 

You’ll never truly know the extent of how your life story is inspiring others. John Solleder’s guest in this episode is Kelvin Abron, owner of K&K Cell Health For Life. Kelvin shares with John how he was diagnosed with retinitis pigmentosa that caused him to go blind at a young age. It was during this ordeal when he discovered how you can easily lose your job in a snap. That’s why you need to have passive income to secure your family’s future. Join in the conversation and be inspired by Kelvin’s success in network marketing. You can always do what you’re supposed to do. Dive in!

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Kelvin Abron Inspiring Others Always!

It is my privilege to introduce another long-term friend of mine in the network marketing industry, Kelvin Abron, to the show. Kelvin, how are you?

I’m doing great, John. How are you?

I’m great. I know You have been involved in self-development for a long time. I want to do a deep dive with you on some of what has been inspiring to you and you have been an inspiration to me and so many other people with your life story. We will get into that. My first question for you is in the book, Leave Nothing to Chance, what’s your favorite principle and why?

I can’t pick one. I have to do four at once. Principle one, wake up being excited. For me, I keep a lot of people in bed because they are not excited about their day. They dread their day so they lay there and they don’t want to do anything. When I read that principle, I was like, “John got a very good point here.” If you are not excited when you wake up, why get up at all? You’ve got to be excited about what’s going to happen, what you are going to do and enjoy life.

The second principle that I think works for hand in hand is a principle. Three, the right mindset because if you wake up excited for the day and you have the wrong mindset, that isn’t going to work out either. You’ve got to wake up excited for the day with the right mindset. When you get started, principle four, you’ve got to love people because what’s going to happen when you walk outside? You are going to see people. If you are in the people’s business, you are going to have to talk to people so you can’t talk to people that you don’t like. I thought that was very important. Actually, that was principle nine. Principle four was to keep a balance. After you do all that, you want to keep a balance, especially if you are a family person like me, I have a family so you don’t want to do too much work and then don’t see your family. I had to add all those. I couldn’t pick one.

Let me ask you this, going back in time, what was the first book that somebody put in your hands? Maybe you have tripped across it, showed up in your library or don’t know where it came from but that first book you read that you had that a-ha moment where you said, “I can change my life with this idea or principle.”

The first book that was put into my hand, I couldn’t see because I had lost my vision. Guess who gave me that first book? You did. Moving Up. I was looking at the book one time and I said, “I’ve got to read this book.” That was the first self-development book. I was a techie. I was into technology and financials. I only read tech books, accounting books and stuff like that. I never read a self-development book. That never crossed my mind so that was the first book that was put into my hand and I have to read it.

Wake up being excited. Click To Tweet

That was a long time. That must have been 2005 when I wrote the first one. Where did those years go? I remember that. About your health situation and how that morphed in such a positive way. If, for example, you were stuck on a deserted island. They said, “You can go to this island. You can bring your Bible. We will give you plenty of food, water and shelter but you can only bring three books with you.” What would those three books be?

I have to bring that Moving Up book. That will give me plenty of time to read it. I liked The Greatest Salesman in the World and also Think and Grow Rich. There are a lot more books I probably want to bring with me but those would be the three.

Those would be three good ones. It’s three of my favorites, certainly. Let’s talk a little bit. You have been doing network marketing for how many years?

My first network marketing experience, which I didn’t take seriously because I was working for the phone company as an engineer at the time, was something everybody was getting into. That was in 1989 when I joined A L Williams. I did that for a year. I made about $12,000. I was just doing something so that didn’t last. That was my first experience with network marketing.

Art Williams was a great teacher. I was never in his company but I read one of his books, All You Can Do Is All You Can Do But All You Can Do Is Enough! I’ve never got the title when I read that until now that I’m older. I read it probably when I was in my twenties because I had all the time in the world. All of a sudden, you get older, as we know it and it’s less time.

I never read the book but I use that phrase all the time.

It makes sense probably at any age but it makes more sense as we get down the road here. Let’s talk about this a little bit. With your networking experience, your current business is exploding, which is great. Congratulations. You are keeping me abreast of it. You’ve got an organization growing not only in the United States but over in Europe and all over the place. It’s great to see the growth in your business. The world has obviously gone through an interesting time with the pandemic. There are a lot of people that are looking at network marketing that may be previous, for whatever reason, didn’t need to.

Let me set this up as I ask you this way. Let’s say, a dad and his son, a 25-year-old young man who probably has all the technical skills, can take his iPhone and launch the space shuttle with it. He’s even well-educated. All of a sudden, because of the pandemic, life isn’t working out the way that he wants it to. His 60-year-old dad, who maybe was in management, was in sales at a high level for a company, and all of a sudden, the pandemic once again has affected his income. They are walking past your house and they say, “Let me go over and see what Kelvin can counsel us on this network marketing industry that he’s in, excited and excelling in.” Why should a 25-year-old and a 60-year-old, two very different age groups, take a look at our industry?

I’m going to start with the 60-year-old. I see a lot of people my age after working 35 to 40 years thinking they were planning for their retirement and winded up going back to work. I never liked seeing, especially like in Walgreens, you see people back at work. This industry that we are in is the perfect industry for a person who’s looking at retirement because most people don’t have $1 million saved up when they retire. How long is that money going to last? They are going to have to budget that money and quite frankly, most people are living check to check while they are working. What’s going to happen when they retire?

I’m going to talk because it happened to me. I was laid off from my job when I was working at the Boston Stock Exchange. If I didn’t get involved with this network marketing experience, that could be me looking for another job. It is very important for a person looking for retirement to have something like this passive income where they won’t have to go to work. They could still have that money coming in. For a person who’s 60, 65 or older, this is a great industry for me. I would highly express that this is something they should take a look at.

For a 25-year-old, that’s a no-brainer because of social media, the internet and what’s going on. They are so savvy with that. A lot of young kids don’t want to work for anybody. They want to do what they want to do on their phone. They can build a great empire in network marketing with the skills that they have. During a pandemic, you couldn’t meet people but they were living that before the pandemic. They were always on their phones anyway. They weren’t out meeting people. Everything they did was on social media, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and Instagram. This is their life and they were already building businesses on the social platform. Network marketing is a no-brainer. I have a lot of young ones with me, it works very well because they know things that you don’t know.

For example, you’ve got a group in Atlanta, Georgia, I believe. Your niece is how old? I spoke to her once. She’s fairly young. Is she older than twenty?

She’s older than 25 but we have people in her group, 19, 18 years old and just slightly older. It’s a very exciting group. I enjoy watching them work.

Network marketing gives you freedom. Click To Tweet

At that age, it’s all they have to do. It’s work.

They move so fast. They do things differently than the way we do it because of the platform and how they do things on the internet. They woke me up and I would say, “I had to take a second look at what I’m doing here.” You’ve got to get those young people involved because this is their future.

It’s funny being the age that I am. I’m a couple of years behind you here. The guys I grew up with in the business, we are all in our twenties when we started. We were 20, 21, 22, 23 and those of us that stayed, and a lot of people obviously didn’t, some of the guys that I worked with way back in the ’80s, were still at it many years later. We grew up in it and now this is the next generation that can do the same thing. To your point, because of technology, they can do it so much faster than we were. I didn’t know anybody out of my area when I grew up. I knew people in New Jersey. I grew up in New Jersey. I knew a few people in New York but you didn’t know anybody.

These days, when these kids pick up the phone and they have friends in other countries, cities and everything else, it’s incredible to watch. Let’s go back to that 60 and 65-year-old person because that’s a group that I also see as low-hanging fruit, if you will, in network marketing. To your point, you started to talk about retirement savings, for example. Many people that were on track to maybe retire within the next 5 to 10 years because of this situation have lost those contributions that they would have been making to their SEP retirement account or their work-related retirement pension plan. They’ve got to compress time and they’ve got to do in 5 or 10 years what their 25-year-old has a lifetime to do. What’s your fastest advice for them to go fast when they get in the business?

I had that conversation with a networking group that I’m part of. You have a lot of the financial planning guys there. Their target market is young people but they target everybody. Put your money in here for 30 to 35 years. Let’s face it, we don’t have 35 years to save money. When it was my turn to speak, I said, “A lot of you guys are my age. You don’t have 30 years to plan for your retirement. That could be next week. The best way you could get the money that you need to live on is to join me in network marketing. I will work with you and show you the ropes and what to do.” I always say depending on your network, the people you know or the people that trust you, it could go quickly. That was a great topic because if you don’t have savings or a 401(k), you don’t have 30 years. This is the best way. In probably the next 3 to 5 years, there’s a good chance that you can have a nice residual income that’s going to get you through for the rest of your life. You want to outlive your money.

You want to leave some for the kids or grandkids if you can. Let’s change gears here a little bit. You have had several careers besides network marketing. You have also had something that you have overcome that is amazing. When we first met, I believe and correct me if I’m wrong, you were termed legally blind.

 

I was diagnosed with retinitis pigmentosa, RP. It’s a form of macular degeneration. They discovered that when I was in the Boston Police Department. The department doctor noticed that I wasn’t seeing everything around me the way I should have. They sent me to a specialist and I was diagnosed with retinitis pigmentosa. I was 28 years old so it wasn’t affecting me then but they told me at the age of 40, I was going to lose my vision. I was diagnosed in 1987. In 1999, that’s what happened. I lost my central vision. I was just left with my peripheral vision. A year before that, I had COPD and lung problems because I used to be a smoker. I guess I earned that one.

You changed your life. It’s important, you can motivate people with your story because you decided to make some lifestyle changes, obviously give up smoking, which was one smart thing to do. In addition to that, you’ve got into an exercise program, a nutrition program and some other things. Do you want to elaborate a little bit on that? It’s interesting because so many people read this. It’s geared for network marketing and network marketing businesses but a lot of people are experiencing similar challenges in their life and you were given a huge one. Your family was young at that time. Your daughter was young. You overcame that by taking personal responsibility for your health. Talk about that a little bit. What were some of the things that you determined were going to get you past that? Also, the mental part because that’s not good news when somebody tells you, you are going to lose your eyesight, needless to say.

When I came out with COPD, I accepted that because there’s no cure for COPD. They put me on all these lung medicines and stuff like that. I didn’t know any different. That’s what you did. You went to your doctor and they prescribed you these things that they help you get by. When I lost my vision, that was devastating to me because, as you said, I had a young family. I was in management at the Boston Stock Exchange. I was in charge of the trading floor, IT, telecommunications and the facilities.

I had great responsibilities. It seems like even though I probably was in denial that my vision was going. We were going through the Y2K upgrade. After we completed that and the Boston Stock Exchange opened for that Monday morning during Y2K, I had dropped my Nextel phone. Those Nextel phones back then were as big as a walkie-talkie. I had dropped it straight down and I could not see it. I’m feeling around and my supervisor was like, “What are you doing?” I said, “I’m looking for my phone. I dropped my phone.” He said, “It’s right there in front of you.”

What happened is I looked up at him and he disappeared but as I was looking at him, I see my phone because I had peripheral, no central. He said, “You are blind. You need to go see your doctor.” I went to my doctor, which they were telling me this all along since I was 28 and they told me, “Nothing we could do. There’s no cure for this.” They want to do experiments with me and everything. After looking at the side effects of the experiment, I said, “I will just be blind because I’m not dying. This is something I guess I’m going to have to deal with.” I went back and I told my supervisor. He said, “I won’t say anything in Human Resources. You go get the proper paperwork you need to get registered with the State of Massachusetts. Once you get that paperwork, I and you will walk into Human Resources, then they can’t touch you.” That’s a great boss. I was relieved because of that. I had my job and wasn’t losing my job.

In 2007, I can’t see and they closed their doors. When I joined the current company I’m with, which is a nutritional company, in 2005, I had started taking their nutritional products. In 3 to 4 months, my lungs were good. I had no problem with the lungs and didn’t see any results with my eyes but I was satisfied. My dad had some health challenges that my surroundings see that he recovered from so a lot of people were inquiring, “What is this?”

When they shut their doors in 2007, I called my wife and I say, “I’m out of work. I don’t know what I’m going to do. I can’t see like I don’t see how I’m going to go look for another job.” She’s like, “Don’t worry. That’s great. We will just go on vacations.” She hung up so I figured maybe she didn’t hear what I said. She came and picked me up. I put my boxes in the trunk. I said, “You didn’t understand what I said? What am I going to do? You talked about going on vacation.” She said, “Yeah.” She reached into the glove department and I had a check for $8,000 from the company that I’m currently with. I said, “How long has this been going on?” She smiled at me. I’ve got a check for $14,000. I said, “I’m not going to worry about that either.”

When you get knocked down, get up. Click To Tweet

John, because of that, if you are talking to a 60-year-old or anyone who might just get let go from their job because you know the phrase, “My job,” no, it’s not your job. You are renting your time to somebody. That’s what you are doing. You are renting your time for somebody. When they are through with you, they let you go. My job was never my job. This business I’m in now, I could say, is mine because it’s going to be here as long as I work it.

In 2007, because of that, I never went back to work. I did some crazy stuff like I became a personal trainer. I said, “I’ve got this nutritional thing going on. Why not get the fitness thing going on?” I did that and the only one I trained was my wife, by herself. I became a massage therapist right before the pandemic. I said, “I’ve got all this time on my hand. What else can I do?” My wife got me massaging her all the time. She said, “Why don’t you go get licensed?” Now she got a personal massage therapist.

This industry, network marketing, gives you freedom. Do you know how people say, “Time is money?” I say, “No, because you are chasing that so what good is it?” For us, time is freedom. You’ve got your money chasing you. That’s how it should be because we shouldn’t have to work for somebody. Services and products, everybody needs that. We have both of those in our industry. It’s the best industry because of the pandemic that we are in. People are looking for health. I’m in a great industry with a great company and some great people.

Let’s stay on this for one second. When you made that determination, I’m sure that mentally, it probably hit you like a ton of bricks. To be blind at a fairly young age, I can’t even imagine it. Thank God, in my case, I have never experienced that. You decided to be a fighter. One of the things I admire so much about you is the fighter in you. You never give up and you figured out not only through nutrition and supplementation but also through exercise and diet, how to take care of yourself and here you are now in your 60s. What’s your eyesight now? How is it doing?

It’s probably a little more than 20/50. My font as to be bigger than most people’s, but then I find that most people can’t see anything anyway. They are all wearing glasses. I said, “Maybe that’s not a big deal but my distance is probably like 25 feet clear.” I can deal with that because before, I had no distance. I just had peripheral. This made a big difference in my life. I had to go to Little Rock, Arkansas to the school for the blind to learn how to walk with the cane and walk with a dog. The best thing was a donkey. I think a donkey is smarter than a dog. They make a better walking eye dog. I had to learn those things, then I was going to revisit my feel in engineering. They had me learning how to feel around on computers and touch the stuff.

I was very miserable. I said, “Am I going to set myself up for this?” While I was there, I had already won the trip to Mexico. That was during the swine flu. Do you remember? I was thinking about that. I said, “Why am I here?” I felt like I wasn’t sure about even though my wife showed me those checks but I said I better secure myself still. I decided to go away for a year to a blind school, just in case my vision goes backward. I’m going to have to be able to do something because I have a family to take care of and because I’m very family-oriented. If I don’t do anything, I’ve got to make sure my family has food, a roof over their head and clothing. That was my job because that’s how I was brought up. That’s all I can think about, whether I’ve got my vision back or not, there was nothing that would have kept me from doing that. That’s one thing that I do. When I get knocked down, I get up.

 

Just to tell people, I knew Kelvin then. We met in 2005 and he was blind. The first time I met you, you were walking down the hall with your wife and your daughter and you had the cane that blind folks have. To see this man now, not only be a great leader in his company, a great leader of his organization but an inspiration to everybody who meets him. Not only the people in network marketing but the people certainly that he’s associated with there locally in his community in Boston, Massachusetts.

The people who have watched him fight through this and here he is. He’s strong, smart, building a great business, having a good time doing it, watching his grandchildren grow up and doing all the things that any person would want to do. You have been such an inspiration to me. Sometimes when I go through stuff, I’m thinking, “I know what you went through,” and just fight through it. I want to share that with you how you have inspired me, how you have inspired many other people with the fight that you have, never giving up and how much that’s meant to me over these years that we have been known each other.

Thank you. You inspired me too, because I know your story too, with your legs and stuff. You could appreciate a person who doesn’t look for self-pity and excuses why they can’t do things.

Jim Rohn used to say, “All excuses are equal,” and if you are going to make excuses, you are going to make excuses. What does that get you? Nowhere. Let’s wrap up here. I will give you the second to last word. Many people are hurting right now. This pandemic has hurt many people in so many ways, obviously not in terms of health but in terms of psychology, where they feel, “What’s next?” You and I are in the business of inspiring people to use the self-development tools that are out there, books like Leave Nothing To Chance, Moving Up that I have written and some of the other books that we mentioned to inspire themselves to move forward in their lives. What’s your final word of advice for people reading? Perhaps they are in the industry but the industry is not in them yet. They haven’t said, “I do want to build a network marketing business.” What’s your advice to lock in and go for it?

I’m going to share with them my experience because of these self-development books. It helps your mindset. By reading these books, I found out a lot of them are Bible principles. I was like, “I didn’t know that,” because I never read these books. It gives you inspiration and hope. The world doesn’t give you a lot of hope. When you read these self-development books, it gives you hope to be able to do what you seek out to do. It gives you the ability to dream about where you want to be in life.

I can’t explain it. It’s like a whole new world for me. My wife even said I’m a better person. A lot of people don’t say that. Since you have been doing these books, you think differently. Everybody is saying when they look at me, I look so mean all the time. I think lately my face doesn’t look so mean because I’m thinking about something I read. When I think about something I read in these self-development books, I’m thinking about the same thing I read in the Bible.

One of the books that I read and I think it was a very great book that is Bible-based is The Greatest Man Who Ever Lived. You know who that is. It was Jesus Christ. It’s so inspiring to know that there’s something better than what we’ve got right here. It’s inspiring to know that you could make a life better than it is. You have to get up, read the right books, learn the right things, get the right mindset, get out there and talk to people. It will happen.

That’s as easy as it really is. I want to thank you once again, Kelvin, for your inspiration, leadership and words of wisdom to new people, older people, existing people in our great industry. I want to thank you all for your time. Our books, as we have mentioned here a few times, Leave Nothing To Chance and also Moving Up 2020. You can get them on Amazon. They are in English as well as Spanish. You can also digitally download them if you want them to your Kindle or whatever. Our show is called Leave Nothing To Chance. From the very first show that we did back last March 2020 until now, every show is archived on LeavingNothingToChance.com. If you missed one and you are new to the show, you can go back and you can read about so many great guests that we have had like Kelvin before. Please feel free to do that. Until next time. Take care.

Important Links:

• Kelvin Abron – LinkedIn
• Leave Nothing to Chance
• The Greatest Salesman in the World
• Think and Grow Rich
• All You Can Do Is All You Can Do But All You Can Do Is Enough!
• The Greatest Man Who Ever Lived
• Moving Up

About Kelvin Abron

Kelvin Abron is known as a top leader who runs his business with integrity, honesty, and a sincere willingness to help others. Kelvin has had tremendous success with his Immunotec business by helping others to optimize their immune system and wellbeing naturally.

He has been able to coach his team of entrepreneurs to new heights of success through personal application and demonstration of the skills he has mastered.