Chris and Orrin on a yacht trip.

Chris Brady and Orrin Woodward met in college when they were eighteen years old. Both were engineering students at Kettering University in Flint, Michigan, participating in the same work-study program.

After earning their B.S., they continued working for the same corporation, but soon they went off to graduate schools in different states. When Orrin discovered network marketing, he got back in touch with Chris and invited him to join his vision of becoming a leader and building a networking community.

Today, fourteen years later, Chris and Orrin head up a multimillion-dollar business focusing on leadership development and Internet commerce. Together, they authored a Wall Street Journal bestseller, Launching a Leadership Revolution, teaching timeless principles inspired by historic figures such as Winston Churchill, Benjamin Franklin, Queen Elizabeth and the Apostle Paul.

Chris Brady and Orrin Woodward’s organization has been recognized as one of the fastest growing in the history of network marketing. Their goal for the near future is to reach at least a million people and teach them the formula to “have fun, make money and make a difference.”

First Encounters

One day, Orrin’s wife Laurie wanted to get new windows for their 1958 home. Orrin was an engineer and Laurie was an accountant at the time. She set up an appointment for a window salesman to come by. Orrin couldn’t do it that night, because he was going to school—he was getting his Master’s at the University of Michigan. They had to reschedule, and finally a fellow came over and showed them the windows.

“We looked at the cheapest set,” Orrin remembers, “and told him we couldn’t afford it. As he was leaving, he said ‘That’s okay. I’ve got other businesses I’m doing.’ ”

Orrin was looking for something, because Laurie was pregnant with their first child and he had promised her she could be a stay-at-home mom once they started having kids. As he was walking the salesman to the door, Orrin said, “What other businesses do you have?” He answered, “I sell baseball cards.” Orrin stopped him and said, “Don’t leave quite yet!”

Orrin sat him back down at the table, ran downstairs and brought out 10,000 baseball cards.

“I showed him my collection and he ended up leaving with $5,000 to $10,000 worth of cards, which he said he could sell for me. I was all fired up because I thought perhaps I could sell baseball cards long enough to figure out how to get a raise at work.

“But after he left, I realized I had just let a stranger walk away with my card collection without knowing if I would ever see him again. When he contacted me about his network marketing business a few days later, I immediately showed interest because I figured if I didn’t, he might disappear with my cards. I agreed to sign up for $200 so I could insure my $5,000 worth of cards, and that’s how I got into the business.

“After I wrote him a check, he left me a shoebox full of tapes and a few weeks later, he called me and asked me for his tapes back. I thought I’d better listen to a couple of them as he had asked me. I picked out two tapes on leadership: Economic Paradigms by Paul Zane Pilzer and a talk by football player Tim Foley.”

Orrin got excited and was surprised to find out people were making money in network marketing. It actually was a much bigger business than he had imagined. He could see himself becoming a leader and building his own community.

“I decided to listen to all the tapes and learn as much as I could about leadership,” Orrin recalls. “I didn’t know much—I was a no-people-skills engineer.”

Vacationing together on a Mediterranean Cruise, Chris and Terri Brady.

Orrin and Laurie Woodward with their children and Brady children.

Chris and Terri Brady

Orrin and Laurie Woodward

Building a Team

In 1994, almost a year after Orrin joined the business, he sponsored another engineer, which reminded him of Chris.

“Nah … Chris wouldn’t be interested,” Orrin thought. “He graduated number two in his class from GMI and got a Master’s and did his thesis over in Japan. He’s probably on the corporate fast track.”

Orrin didn’t contact Chris, but a friend on his team did, and soon the two old college mates sat down to talk.

Chris remembers, “I had charged into the corporate world as hard as I could. I wanted to prosper financially and I thought that was the way to go. But my mentor, who was the head of our division, died of a heart attack on a Saturday, at work, at age fifty-three. I realized something wasn’t right.”

Up till then, Orrin and Chris had never taken the time to strike up a friendship. They’d see each other a couple of times a year, and each assumed that the other was trying hard to make it through the corporate ranks. When Chris was introduced to Orrin’s business through their common friend, Orrin was surprised to discover how ready Chris was for a change.

“I didn’t buy into the company,” says Chris, “I bought into Orrin. My wife Terri and I met with Orrin and Laurie, and we liked each other. We became friends for the first time after all these years of knowing each other. We could tell Orrin had integrity and that he was going places. He had total belief in himself, and he made me feel like I could do it, too. He kept painting a vision of how he thought I could be one of his biggest leaders, and I knew he wasn’t just flattering me.”

Chris joined Orrin’s business and they started working together. Orrin made a few presentations to Chris’s contacts to help him get started, then Chris started building his own team, staying in touch with Orrin on a daily and often hourly basis for the next years.

“We built up our organizations to a size where we each had about a hundred people showing up for weekly meetings,” says Orrin. “For several years, we tried to figure out how to build bigger, but we didn’t seem to be able to get past that.”

At one point, after Orrin’s team had lost a contest called the Top Gun, which would recognize the leaders who had brought the most people to the meeting, about thirty people of Orrin’s team gathered into a hotel conference room...

To read the rest of this article, please register or log in. Create a community account (FREE and EASY)! We will not sell or share your information with ANYONE.    First Name:     required  Last Name:     required  E-Mail Address:     required Your password will be e-mailed to you.

OR existing NT Community Members, Log In below: E-mail address Password   Remember My Password  Forgot your password? We'll e-mail it to you. Click Here.