Fulla Life

Silly sports names

2005-06-07T11:38:00.000-07:00

I wonder why they use a Tennis Ball to play Tennis, a Golf Ball to play Golf, a Soccer Ball to play Soccer and a Ping Pong ball to play Ping Pong yet we use a Base Ball to play Base Ball, a Soft Ball to play Soft Ball ( why not just Base and Soft) and the silliest thing of all is that we use a Foot Ball to play Foot Ball and actually almost never use our foot in the game.

Why?

2005-02-25T10:10:00.007-08:00

Did you ever wonder why......

-People park their cars in a driveway and drive their cars on the parkway?
-Why do women go to the hospital to have a doctor deliver their baby. Why can't he just deliver it to their home?
-Why does the prison doctor, just before he administers the fatal injection, swab the prisoner's arm with alcohol? Is it so the guy doesn't get an infection?
-Do you ever wonder what time it is at the North Pole?
-Why do hot dogs always come 8 to a pack and hot dog rolls come 6 to a pack?
-Why do we say, when a building is under construction, that it is being "built" and when it's finished we call it a "building"? Shouldn't it be the other way around?
-Why isn't the word "phonetics" spelled the way it sounds?
-Why is it that when you transport something by car or truck it is called a "shipment" but when you transport it by ship it is called "cargo"?
-Why are there instructions on a bottle of shampoo telling you how to use it? Do they expect people to put the shampoo on first then wet their hair?
-Why is the warning "Do not turn upside down" on the bottom of Tesco's Tiramisu desert?
-Why do the bags of peanuts the airlines give you have the instructions on them saying, "Open first, eat nuts"? Thank god otherwise we may do just the opposite!
-Why do all dictionaries have a definition for the word "dictionary"? Why don't they just say: Dic-tion-ary ("dik-sho)-ner-E) noun. The thing you are reading!
-Why does the mashed potatos section of a TV dinner always take three times longer to cook then the rest of the dinner?
-Why does it say on a bottle of Nytol Sleep Aid, "Caution, may cause drowsiness"?
-Why do "fat chance" and "slim chance" mean the same thing?
-Why did the bank install Braille instructions on the drive up window ATM at my bank?
-Why did Kamikaze pilots wear helmets? To preven head injury?
-Why do all BIC lighters carry the word "flammable" on them? Isn't that why we bought it...to make fire? The same warning label says that you "should not hold flame near face"!
-Why is Fuller Brush still delivering over 350 quality home products after 99 years? (I had to sneak that one in!)

The Fuller Brush Man-A Movie Classic

2005-02-20T09:15:00.000-08:00

Red Skelton and Janet Blair in
THE FULLER BRUSH MAN

This movie was tailored to the talents of comedian Red Skelton who as THE FULLER BRUSH MAN showcases the famed funnyman at the height of his powers. Rubber faced and as supple as "Silly Putty", Skelton was the premiere clown of the 1940's and 50's, expanding the great tradition of physical comedy established by Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd.

Red Skelton was a prolific painter and many of his paintings are still being sold and collected but above all, he was a proud and patriotic American. His rendition of the explanation of the "Pledge to the Flag" will put a lump in your throat.
If you want to hear it then click here-FLAG PLEDGE.

In The Fuller Brush Man, Skelton stars as Red Jones, a street cleaner who loses his job when he wrecks the car of the Sanitation Commissioner. Catastrophe follows calamity as Red's new job as a Fuller Brush salesman makes him the key suspect in the murder of a customer's husband--the same Sanitation Commissioner. Red's hilarious attempts to find the real killer lead to an inspired slapstick showdon that defies description!

Interestingly, Skelton's studio boss, Louis B. Mayer of MGM was unwilling to make the film because he feared he would be accused of gross commercialism for featuring a real product.

Columbia took the risk only after agreeing with the Fuller Brush Company that neither party would receive any compensation-a far cry from today's lucrative product placements.

The anticipated audience backlash never materialized, as crowds of filmgoers embraced the antic lunacy of THE FULLER BRUSH MAN, helping to elevate it to classic status.

What the heck am I looking at?

2005-02-19T14:22:00.000-08:00

This posting has absolutely nothing to do with Fuller Brush but I thought that I would interject a little humor just to lighten up a bit.
How many rods in this picture?
If you want to see a lot more optical illusions
click here

More Fuller Brush nostalgia-It still sweeps!

2005-02-17T12:20:00.000-08:00

Fuller Brush Broom circa 1938
My Fuller Brush upline sponsor, Sharon Bray-McPherson saw this old Fuller Brush broom and immediately bought it! It looks very similar to the one that Fuller is now manufacturing.

Current broom 2005

Call me a taxi!

2005-02-07T17:27:00.000-08:00

Among some of the marketing tools The Fuller Brush Company supplies its dealera is a magnetic sign with your phone number on it that you can place on your car. In theory someone may see the sign while you are driving around and call you to find out more about Fuller Brush or to place an order. The magnetic sign idea is great since where I live you are not allowed to drive your car on the parkway if it has a sign on it. Your car is then considered a commercial vehicle, so if you are using the car for personal reasons, you just remove the sign.

So I placed one of these signs on my white van in anticipation of increased business.

I also happen to live in a community that has over 50% Hispanic population. Many of the adults cannot read nor write in English but of course speak Spanish fluently. On the other hand I have lived in this community for 43 years and speak no Spanish.

The other day when I dropped my grandson off at school, a woman approached me with her little boy and started talking to me in Spanish but I had no idea what she was talking about. She kept pointing to the sign on my car and was saying in broken English something about registration, registration.

Finally another woman came to my assistance who spoke Spanish and English and told me that the woman wanted me to take her to the main school office so she could register her child.

She kept pointing to the sign on my car because
SHE THOUGHT I WAS A TAXICAB!

She couldn't understand why I wouldn't take her to the school until the other woman explained.

I gave her a ride anyway so I guess you can "call me a taxi!"

Fuller Brush Google Group

2005-02-03T08:42:00.000-08:00

We've created a Google Group. This group is open to all, Fuller Brush dealers who want to exchange ideas and opinions or those people just interested in Fuller Brush, its history, products, business opportunity, or anything else our creative minds can come up with. The group is not an official publication of Fuller Brush Inc.

I welcome you to become charter members of this group. Just click on the words Google Group above.

Mickey Mouse, Joe Dimaggio, Donald Duck, Dick Clark........

2005-02-02T21:05:00.000-08:00

Dagwood and Blondie, Billy Graham, Red Skelton, Lucille Ball, Jack Oakie.

What did they have to do with Fuller Brush?

They either all acted as a Fuller Brush man or woman or had the Fuller Brush Man appear in their films or comic strips.

The Fuller Brush Man had become a national celebrity by the early 1920s, having made regular appearances in popular comic strips with Mickey Mouse, Dagwood and Blondie, Mutt and Jeff and Donald Duck. He even made a guest appearance in Walt Disney's Three Little Pigs where the big bad wolf was disguised as a Fuller Brush Man.

Joe Dimaggio, Billy Graham, Dick Clark and Dennis Quaid were Fuller Brush salesmen before they finally excelled in their chosen fields.

And here is something that I hope never happens.
Hale Business Systems, Mary Kay Cosmetics, Fuller Brush, and W. R. Grace Co. will merge and become:
Hale, Mary, Fuller, Grace.

Wow! What a surprise!

2005-02-02T08:20:00.000-08:00

I had two copies of a fairly rare videotape of "The Fuller Brush Girl" so I recently placed one for sale on Half.com. I forgot all about it until yesterday when they notified me that it had been purchased! Wow!
Have you ever used Half.com? They really make it simple for you They post it on their web site, someone who is looking for the same item search their site and if they decide to buy, they make the purchase from Half.com who collects the payment and shipping charges. They then notify you by email, actually giving you and invoice and shipping label for the package and give you a few days to ship it out. Half.com sends your money to you via Paypal.
It's almost like shopping at Fuller Brush!

You can be a Fuller Brush Man or Woman!

2005-02-01T10:38:00.000-08:00

Why should I join a 99 year old company?

What do I get for my time and effort?

As an Independent Fuller Brush Distributor you'll have access to everything you need to run your own successful business. And because Fuller Brush and Stanley Home Products are owned by the same parent company (CPAC, Inc.), as a Fuller Brush distributor you can also sell Stanley Home Products!

• What You've Been Looking For - Requires No Minimum Orders - No Mandatory Orders - No Monthly Quotas - No Start-Up Fee (free start-up is for a limited time)

• Stable
In Business Since 1906 and In Network Marketing Since 1992

• Trustworthy
They Have Provided Full and Part Time Income For Americans For 99 Years, Never Missing A Check

• A Large Market
Over 340 Consumable Products That People Use Everyday - Made In The USA At Its Own Plant In The Heart Of The American Midwest
(Bathroom Care Products - Car Care Products - Floor Care Products - Home Scents - Kitchen Care Products - Laundry Products - Organizers - Outdoor Care Products - Personal Care Products)

• Name Recognition
World reknown
Two Blockbuster Hollywood Movies Have Been Made About Them and Their Products Are Featured On The QVC Shopping Channel

• Easy To Create Sales
They Have A System where customers can order via Toll Free Telephone, your own free website, Mail Order, And Direct Sales

• Top notch compensation plan. You can earn commissions from 20% to 55%.

To hear a quick and informative recorded message about the Fuller Brush opportunity, call our 24 hour toll-free hotline at
1-800-477-3855.

After listening to the phone call, you can sign up by going to our Fuller Business Opportunity Site.

Nostalgia

2005-02-01T10:14:00.000-08:00

(click on picture to enlarge)
Fuller Brush Man making a sale 1920
Most of us are too young to remember those days!

February 2005 Featured Product

2005-02-01T10:02:00.000-08:00

New Product for February 2005
(click on picture for larger view)
To order this product you can go directly to the Fuller
Brush web site.
While you are there you can view our entire catalog.

Hey Fellow Bloggers-Want a lot of visitors to your blog?

2005-02-01T08:04:00.000-08:00

Several traffic exchanges (or hit exchanges) have started up that are exclusive to bloggers or blogger associated activities.

A traffic exchange is a service that by simply clicking on a page in your browser you open up a blog of another member in the same traffic exchange. You must view that blog for at least 20 to 30 seconds before you click to the next one. The usual ratio is that for every two blogs that you view, one person sees your blog. So you can see that you immediately start getting new visitors to view your blog.
But it gets better! If you refer someone to that traffic exchange and they sign up you get a percentage of their page hits. It could be something like for every 10 pages they view you get one viewer sent to your blog. And this is up to five levels deep so you can see that this is a viral method that can potentially bring hundreds or thousands of new visitors to your blog.
And the best part is that most blogs are FREE to join.
Here are some that I recommend:
Blogexplosion
http://www.blogexplosion.com/index.php?ref=walbar
Blogazoo
http://blogazoo.com/?rid=122
Blogclicker
http://www.blogclicker.com/index.php?referrer=walbar

I've been using these traffic exchanges to link back to my Fulla Life blog that promotes my Fuller Brush marketing and bizop program.

Give them a try. I think you will be very satisfied with the increased visits to your site. There's no obligation and if you are not satisfied you can just cancel.

A Foot in the Door

2005-01-31T06:56:00.000-08:00

Did you ever wonder where the expression "Getting a foot in the door" came from?

It comes from the days when door-to-door salesmen hawked their wares on the doorstep and physically put their foot in the door so the homeowner couldn't close it in their face. We have to remember that a lot of people were out selling various products like vacuum cleaners, encyclopedias, pots and pans and the like and homeowner got tired of having to frequently listen to these spiels. Each salesman knew that if he could just get through the door with his pitch, that the client was that much more likely to make a purchase.

But Alfred C. Fuller had a different philosophy. He trained his Fuller Brush salesmen to take a step backwards as the homeowner opened their door. This was intended to show respect and to indicate that they did not wish to intrude on the homeowners privacy.

Insisting on uncompromising integrity, Alfred Fuller made each distributor sign what was called The Pledge of the Fuller Brush Man. Among the promises they made by signing the Pledge was the vow to “realize that my obligation is one of service to the customer, to the company I represent and to the community in which I live and work.” Each Fuller Brush Man also swore: “I will be courteous; I will be kind; I will be sincere; I will be helpful.”

It must have worked!

Wouldn't it be nice in this day and age to take a step back and appreciate our friends and family and all the gifts we have by living in this great nation!

As Red Skelton, one of America's greatest comedians and star of The Fuller Brush Man said, "God Bless!"

Why did I join Fuller Brush?

2005-01-30T20:00:00.000-08:00

About 40 years ago a colleague of mine, John, became a Fuller Brush Man. These were the days when wives and mothers didn't have to work two jobs to make ends meet. The mothers stayed at home and took care of their kids. It was also the time when people didn't have to put up fences and gates, install all kinds of safety locks and alarms and weren't afraid to answer the door when someone knocked on it or rang the bell.

John and I also worked a full time job as aeronautical radio operators, mostly during the evening shifts which left our days fairly free. John built up a nice route and was selling quite a bit of Fuller Brush products but he had a little problem. The way the system worked in those days was that the salesman would take the orders, place them with his distributor who would then combine all the orders of all the salesmen under him/her. The combined order would then be sent to Fuller Brush and in a couple of weeks the merchandise was received by the distributor and then doled out to the salesman. It was a slow, cumbersome process. Then the distributor would have to bag up the orders for each individual customer, deliver it and collect payment.

John realized that while he was delivering, even though he picked up some "back end" orders, that he was not doing what he was best at and that was selling. A lot of time was lost.

So he asked my wife Barbara and I if we would take over the responsibility of delivering and collecting, which we did. It was amazing to see the reaction of people when they received their order!

We did this for quite some time until the pressures of my regular job required me to give up the deliveries, so we notified John and didn't leave until he could find someone to replace us.

The years went by. I eventually changed jobs and lost contact with John.

About a year ago my wife asked me if I could still get some of the Fuller Brush products that we used to deliver so many years ago. I told her that I thought that Fuller Brush had long ago gone out of business and that most likely those products weren't available anymore. I told her I would check it out anyway. So I went to the search engine on the internet and.......

Lo and behold! Fuller Brush was still in business, had many of the same quality products that they have been selling for eons and were looking for distributors. You could actually sign up and become a distributor at no cost and the minimum a distributor makes is a 20% commission.

But things had changed. Technology had caught up with the Fuller Brush Company. Customers didn't have to wait anymore for the Fuller Brush Man to come knocking at their door. They could place their order in many ways now, either by calling a toll free number, ordering by mail or fax or best yet, by a direct website that Fuller gives free to every distributor. They also have monthly catalogs and specials that a distributor can hand out, mail or place in strategic locations such as a doctor's office. And of course, if they still want to establish a route, like in the old days, they can still do that. The bottom line is that today the customer can place their order directly with Fuller, the company fulfills the order and ships it directly to the customer. They even take care of the sales tax. Payment is made up front directly to the company either by check or credit card. The best part is that every month you receive a check, sometimes not even realizing that someone placed an order!

But I am so excited I am getting ahead of myself. After reviewing the Fuller Brush product line. the quality of the products, the compensation plan, etc I decided that if my wife wanted Fuller Brush products, why pay retail? At no cost I could sign up as a distributor and get at least 20% off (It goes as high as 55%). It was a no brainer not to sign up. I also figured that even if I didn't try marketing the products, someone would see me using them and ask where I got them. Voila! An instant sale. If you want more info on the Fuller Brush home business opportunity I invite you to visit my Fuller4life.biz site.

So, that's how and why I became a Fuller Brush Man. In one of my next postings I will go into more detail on why I consider Fuller Brush to be the best business opportunity in America.

Who am I?

2005-01-30T16:17:00.000-08:00

I guess it would make sense that if this was my first post on my new blog (I have another one on a different subject) that I should tell you a little bit about myself.

I realize that most of you won't be the least bit interested. But some may so here we go!

I was born in Boston, Ma on November 4, 1933. That makes me just a little bit younger than the Fuller Brush Company which was formed in 1906.

As most of you will realize from reading all the Horatio Alger stories that I was a typical rags to riches (ha) story. I had a rough childhood. We were in the middle of a terrible depression, jobs were hard to find and all that bla bla, but I survived and in all honesty I had nice childhood with some fond memories.

I can still remember when the Fuller Brush man would come and give me a lollipop or some other nice "freebie".

In 1952 I enlisted in the army and was assigned to the Army Security Agency and spent the next few years of my life based in Okinawa.

When I got out of the army in 1955 I moved to New York and met a beautiful girl named Barbara who had lived in Brooklyn, NY all of her life. As a sidebar it was quite interesting when Barbara met my sister-in-law Jayne who was born and raised in Quincy, Ma. With my wife's Brooklyn accent and Jayne's New England accent, we came to the realization that neither one knew what the other was talking about!

I decided that I had found the love of my life and there was no use searching anymore, so Barbara and I were married on April 19, 1958. We eventually had kids but we weren't satisfied with one or two so we had five, Debbie (born on Valentine's Day), Thomas, Lynn, Walter III and Dawn.

The years went by. I had a satisfying career in airline telecommunications, spending 40 years in that industry before I retired.

My five kids grew up and married so now I have a bunch of grandkids. Debbie has 4; Thomas has 1; Lynn has 3; Walter has 4; and Dawn has 3. That makes 15 grandkids and it always seems as if there's a birthday, Christmas or something coming up. To complicate matters, we thought we would become "empty nesters" when the kids married but Dawn and her husband have moved in with us so we are built in baby sitters for those three kids. (We love it!)

So that's it! The story of my life.
To recap, I am 71 years old, married 47 years, lived in the same house for 43 years, had a successful career, 5 children and 15 grandchildren.

Life is too short to complain so I make it my business to enjoy it! That's why I named this blog FULLA LIFE!