Keith McEachern

In my early years, following graduation from college, I knew that I wanted to eventually work for myself, and especially that I could get into something that would have a residual benefit.

Like many young college grads I tried a number of things, and eventually built up a successful burglar alarm business. It had residual income from the monitoring fees, but ultimately for many reasons we sold it. I ended up with more money in my pocket than I knew what to do with.

Then, I made some bad decisions. I don’t mean kind of bad. I mean really bad. Some of you may be able to relate to this in small ways.

Have you ever done something wrong, and hoped no one would find out?

Have you ever opened a closet door, put a skeleton in there, hoping that door would never open again?

Is there something in your past that would cause you extreme embarrassment if it were announced up here, right now, on this stage, at this convention?

If the answer to any of those questions is “yes” then you’ll have some understanding for what I am about to tell you.

In 1983 I became involved with a group of people who were smuggling marijuana into the United States. It wasn’t for either the drugs or the money. But like all great wrongs it was decided, one small step at a time for all the wrong reasons. For nearly three years, I participated in that illegal activity.

Like the story of the prodigal son, I abandoned the principles I was raised with. I threw away all of my mother’s hopes for me. I turned my back on God.

In the story of the prodigal son it says that one day he awakened and “came to himself.” I’m not sure exactly what that means, but for me it meant coming back to my true self. It meant coming home. It meant trying to find meaning and purpose in life. It meant another chance.

It meant asking God to somehow, someway, forgive me.

And for me it meant taking that skeleton, that record of wrong doing and wrong living, and stuffing it into a closet, locking it tight, and hoping it would never surface again.

I can’t prove and I’m not sure that prayer changes God’s mind – but I’m sure it changes the hearts of men – and women. It did mine. I resumed as quickly as I could leading a straight life. It was during this time, that I attempted to donate my time and my ill-gotten gains to a worthy charity, I couldn’t get rid of my money fast enough.

Slowly my life began to be filled with light again. In 1989 I married my lovely wife Pam, and I discovered the world of network marketing. I tried at least eight different companies, hoping to find one that would last, and believing that I could have the dream of residual income. I will be honest with you. I wanted to make lots of money… but this time I wanted to do it with my head held high.

In each company, I rose to the top, only to watch the company disappear. I know many of you can relate to this. When a company goes away, or breaks its promises, it doesn’t just disappear. It takes with it your hopes and dreams.

However, I just kept on believing something good would happen. I was working hard, the closet door was still locked tight, and I enrolled a young college student in one of the companies I was in. His name was Ray Faltinsky. We never did much in that company, but I was impressed with him, and I guess he felt kind of good about me too. That company did not prosper, but there was the beginning of a real friendship.

Then it happened. After seven years, and the beginning of a new life, with a beautiful wife, and our young son Lucas, the skeleton came lunging out, grabbing me by the throat, screaming for the world to hear, I’m real and I’m back.

I was sitting in my house nestled in the quiet woods of Connecticut on Candlewood Lake.

Just like it was yesterday, I could hear the penetration. NO… I think I could feel the vibration of my quiet neighborhood being violated by the on rush of a caravan of strangers' cars who meant me no good. I knew exactly what it was – the long arm of the law. I knew this was the day of reckoning. I was being arrested for conspiracy dating back in 1983 for my illegal activities.

I was filled with all kinds of emotions. I was ashamed. I was fearful. I was in DISBELIEF and that after all these years I was going to be held accountable.

And you know something… there was another feeling. It was a feeling of relief. Now everyone knew. No more deception. No more lying. No more cover-ups.

I hired a lawyer, who with family help bailed me out and kept me out of jail for as long as possible. My skeleton monster was growing and yet I continued to try to hide him from some people.

Shortly after that, I received another surprise. This time, a good one.

I got a phone call from my old friend Ray Faltinsky. He wanted to meet with me. He said he had finished law school, and he and his partner, Kevin Fournier wanted a meeting. They were going to start their own company!

I’ll never forget the name of the restaurant where we met in Danbury, Ct. It was called: Rosey Tomorrows!

Because, in the process of being arrested, the Federal Government had stripped us of every asset except our home, I never in my life wanted and needed anything more than a rosey tomorrow. As we met together, they talked about Dr. Earl Mindell, and that they had the backing of a famed investor named Anson Beard. Their hope was that I would help them start the company. Over the next several weeks we agreed that I would be the company’s first distributor.

As I accepted the advent of my impending action of pleading guilty I knew I had to come clean with Kevin and Ray. We met in another restaurant and it sure didn’t feel like it was going to be any kind of “Rosy Tomorrow”. I related the nature of my crimes, told them that there was a high likelihood that I would be imprisoned but that my greatest fear was the heartbreak that would come by leaving my wife and my precious son behind. We talked about how this would impact the Freelife launch and its network. I assumed I’d get walking papers. They would drop me like a hot potato.

However instead, the only thing I remember of that meal was the courage, the love and the acceptance that was served up so abundantly by Kevin and Ray.

Kevin, who was also blessed with a toddler son, his only 1 yr old, embraced me and wept with me. He identified with me what it would mean to be separated from what you love most. Kevin felt my heart, my pain - just as I know he does yours. Both of them agreed that though it might be a rough road, THEY had made their choice and that they would stand by me. I would continue to be their choice for their first distributor to ever sign up.

Now – understand these two young inexperienced businessmen had everything at risk on the business table and they stood their ground shoulder to shoulder with undeserving me. Ray went so far as to say that he wanted to come with me to face my sentencing when that day would come. He said, having observed me during my better behaved years, that he was going to make a case before my Judge that, in his opinion, my life should be given another chance and NOT destroyed and that I had done good and that , by being free, I had lot more good to do.

The hardest thing I ever had to do was to sit down as a family, me, Pam and my little boy, Lucas and to share the likelihood of our family being torn apart. We sat down in a little circle Indian style on the floor, legs crossed and I began to tell my son the error of my ways. I explained to him exactly what I had done; that I knew that I had made a bad decision to break the law; and that I was going to face a Judge and that I was going to confess my guilt and that I was going to pay a price of being put in a cage for a very long time and that he would be a young MAN when I was free to enjoy our time together again. That he would grow up without a Father.

I remember that, with courage and with tears streaming down his face, and mine, and Pam’s too, of course, he drew himself to me, nose to nose, and said “We’re crying Dad not because we are afraid, RIGHT? But because we are going to miss each other” and I said, "yeah, that’s right” At the end I took him up to bed to say his prayers.

This night he said – “Let ME say MY prayers Dad." He started, “Jesus, I pray to you every night and tell you I love you and I believe in your magic. I want you to make them let my daddy go and please let my dad come home soon.” I came out of that room a man stooped and bent over with the weight of my earlier actions on my mind. If I had known in my earlier life that God would so richly grace me in my later life with this son I would never have been so self absorbed and reckless with my life.

I got up the next morning and caught an early plane to go face a man who had a reputation as a ‘hanging judge’.

The First Miracle My courage in court was bolstered by friends. True to his word, Ray F had shown up, as did a number of others from around the world to give testimony on my character, arising out of living right the previous 7 yrs. I had been advised by my lawyer that no matter what testimony was given, what letters written, that I was to get many, many years in prison. There are other people here today in this great hall who were there with me also – a young networker by the name of Bill Boone. He witnessed first hand our family’s anxiety; because during this period, we had taken a financially broke Bill Boone into our home for several months. As a result he felt moved to be in that courtroom. Another person you all should get to know, as I do, is Sandy Moreland, FreeLife’s highest title distributor with her husband Keith and my dear friends. Sandy was a high ranking officer of the IRS and part of her job with that wonderful organization [LAUGH] was to seize and forfeit ill-gotten properties of the likes of people like me.

I had known Sandy from another network marketing company. As I listened to these dear friends and others I’m not mentioning here tell their stories of me to the judge, I was so humbled. I felt like I was being eulogized at my own funeral.

Listening impatiently, the Judge was strumming through a stack of reference letters from all over the world written on my behalf when he directed everyone’s attention to my dear wife, who had been sitting quietly in the back with head bowed and hands clasped, praying. All the speakers were eloquent, but the person from whom the Judge wanted to hear most was my wife, Pam.

With tremendous bearing with head up and shoulders back she approached the bench. The courtroom went still. He asked her if she had something on her mind. She said, “I do!” She simply told him with the conviction of absolute truth in her voice that the man that she was married to was not the same man of criminal intent of a decade earlier. She said how rich in TRUTH her life had become. She said other things that would only embarrass me now.

In that which seemed like interminable silence you could have heard a pin drop ---- and you could hear people crying. The Judge stood sternly frozen, then looked me in the eye, asked me “do you have any idea how lucky you are, Mr. McEachern” and I responded “yes sir”. He looked down at a piece of paper upon which he had earlier penciled in the time in prison he was sure he would give me prior to hearing the voice of my friends. He, hesitatingly put his eraser to the paper and penciled in another number, announced that I would serve only 30 months in Federal Prison – I thanked him. My lawyer was startled that it was so light a sentence. He’d never seen any thing like that in that Judge’s courtroom.

Further the judge even gave me 24 days to go home and put my affairs in order.

On the way home on the plane with Ray F I explained to him that I knew my other MLM income would not hold up. I told him that with only 24 days of freedom that I needed to start recruiting for Freelife. Ray said, “We’re not ready; we have no products, we have no applications, we have no literature, our computers aren’t hooked up and none of this will happen for at least 45 days, so I guess we’ll have to call it a prelaunch. Ray was so gracious in assuring me that anyway he could, he WANTED me to prosper, as he does all the members of his FreeLife family.

Here’s what I did. I said to Pam, “Look, we can cry all month over ourselves, but I have 24 days to build a business. I’m going to spend every hour of every day on the phone until I fall over in my chair.”

I had a list of names and a collection of business cards from all over the United States. I had names from all kinds of sources--- everything you can think of, anybody who might listen to business opportunity. I talked to people asking for referrals gathering even more names and presenting to their best people FOR them. If they began to express a real interest, I was guided by Ray and felt morally obligated to tell them this – I told them that I had been busted, told them what I had been busted for, that I was going away to prison and I wouldn’t be able to help them under any circumstances. (You think recruiting can be challenging?)

I asked my perennial favorite question “Have you found the opportunity that’s made your life a dream, or are you still open minded.”

I talked with 1500 people in 24 days and recruited 44. With FreeLife the TRUTH is always good enough.

I found that life in prison was everything it was advertised to be.

However, I also discovered that there was time to exercise, pray, to reflect, to read, and to talk with God. Early on I prayed fervently that God would help me through those thirty months.

We were given one freedom, to walk around a track at night until about 9pm. This track was surrounded by a hillside that created a natural amphitheatre. At the opening to the grounds was a tall post with lights for surveillance. As I walked around I took great comfort in watching my shadow cast on the hill by the light on the post behind me and feeling not so alone. It was a repeated process of me watching my own shadow disappear into the darkness as I came further around the track. I remember praying that, undeserving as I was, I asked for God to give me a sign that HE was even in this place. As I came around again to the area of the light and making the plea, two shadows were instantly cast on the hill. I cried and I composed myself, walking and watched as the two shadows disappeared into the darkness. I came around again to my shadow of one and made my request to see it two again. This time, my doubting Thomas-self surfaced, trying to assess exactly what was happening. Looking around I figured it out. What happened is this, I realized that for most of the time there was one good light bulb on the post and apparently one bad one, for each time as I made my request, an intermittent BAD connection was made good and two light bulbs instead of one cast TWO shadows walking on the hill. At first I said “Ah ha – it was nothing – just electricity.” Then I remembered that I had only asked for a sign. From that day to this I knew that FreeLife had a special HAND on it. I was, to say the least, feeling a whole lot better about how my life was about to change.

I was anxious to call my wife the next day and tell her how good her life too was going to be. She said, so you’ve lost your mind already, have you forgotten where you are. We’re about to lose our house. I said, "just make up the list of everything you’ve ever wanted." I eventually got a handle on the warden’s idea of what made a good prison. If the floors were clean and polished he saw himself as running a good prison. One thing I learned in that place was to speak to people about their own values. I suggested to the warden that with his support I could even make the huge telephone room, which was a mess and an eyesore due to inmate abuse, a polished beauty to behold. I told him that if he could rope it off for a few hours a day making it off grounds to other inmates that I’d make sure, in effect, that his job as the greatest warden could be assured.

I knew I desperately needed to use the phone. By promising to get on my hands and knees and shine the warden’s phone room, as well as the shoes of some very connected prisoners, I captured the right to be in the phone room alone. Everyday I scrubbed and polished on my hands and knees.

From that prison phone I organized meetings, talked with Ray a few times a week, and built my FL business.

With a story too long to tell here, of how it could be, I returned home to Pam and Lucas in CT in only 20 months. A child’s faith and a child’s prayers answered. I started my life again.

As I got fully engaged again in FreeLife, I realized that I had to make friends fast, the best way I knew how to do it was by helping others. Rather than sponsor for myself I sponsored for others. But you know what happens in this business when you help others achieve their dreams. You achieve your own. I was promoted well up in the FreeLife plan when my wife and I attended FL’s third convention, my first time meeting most of my organization. Talk about anxiety.

I remember that Pam and I had been awarded the last spot on the 8 man Presidents Team Trip to Europe. While on stage with the other tremendous winners, Ray began his presentation of what he called the company’s highest award, ME of the Year. Pam and I wondered in our place on stage who would be the lucky distributor. As we looked around the stage at the assembly of incredible talent, thinking it must be one of them – we heard Ray say: “One thing for sure is that this year’s winners will never forget where they come from.” At that frozen moment Pam and I could feel the eyes of everyone corporate, many with tears in their eyes looking at us. You can’t imagine how we felt as Ray called our names. We both broke into tears.

We had gone from the bowels of hell to the pinnacle of success in the shortest time imaginable – thanks to God and thanks to FreeLife.

Pam gathered herself to be able to speak first at Ray’s invitation. She exhorted people to fully know that Ray and Kevin are keepers and speakers of the TRUTH. She expressed her love for me.

After thanking Ray, Kevin and Pam, I told people that I’d come from a dark hole of my own creation. Don’t we always create our own? I recounted how I had had a “Road to Damascus – type” experience in my little hell and just like St Paul had been told on that road, I had been moved to forget ALL that is passed and choose to press on to the mark.

You can be born again everyday – you can reinvent yourself.

I told of my huge dreams and that no one had a greater appreciation of the words FreeLife than I do. FreeLife had come out with a new video that year appropriately titled Flight to Freedom. No one had a greater Flight to Freedom than ME. And no one had more wind under his wings than I did with the incredible organization that had supported us financially while I was away. I SAID “it feels so good to be home.” Dear God, Doesn’t it feel good to be home?

Start Over Today If you’ve doubted, don’t. If you have either given or accepted excuses, don’t. Cherish your freedom. Make it count. Treasure your time. Don’t squander it. If you’ve gone wrong, know that you now stand with men who stand for what’s right. You’re with people who know the value of keeping commitments. Understand that--- You stand with those who lavish on you, the same love, abundance and acceptance they did on me. There is a price for success. Do you think I regret the price? Today I enjoy the price of success.

There is no hurdle so great, you can’t overcome it. Make faith a part of your life.

If you’ve got any kind of black hole in your life, forget it, START OVER TODAY – Press on toward the Mark. If you’re not recruiting up to a level that inspires your organization to do the same, forget it, START OVER TODAY, Press on toward the Mark. If you come to realize that you aren’t the leader you wanted to be, forget it, Start Over Today and Press on to the Mark. If you realize you are not DOING all you can, to BE all you can; if you know you haven’t maximized your potential, if you are not truly fulfilling your destiny

– FORGET IT – Start Over Today – Press on to the Mark.

If you have a dream of what can be, let nothing get in your way – if you have that dream – thank God for it.

Thank you for allowing me to share my story with you. My prayer is that God will bless all of us to live lives of service and abundance. And to experience, really what a Free Life truly is.

As a founding master distributor and Royal Ambassador, Keith and Pam McEachern have developed an organization of over 120,000 network marketing associates in just 3 years. Through the effort of their organization in concert with FreeLife's extraordinary leadership, products, compensation and operations, are positioned to become the newly crowned royals of recurring revenue in network marketing. Their goal is to have 1,000 people they can claim as friends making over $10,000/month in AUTOMATIC MONEY. Quite a goal!