Alison was an Army officer for 21 years and Michael worked in international banking for 30 years, before we met in 1995 and got married in early 1996. Life had not been "a bed of roses" for either of us, being both made redundant in 1995.
In 1992, Michael had been divorced from his then wife and the settlement in 1993 left him with no house and no cash after paying £15,000 in legal fees.
Michael tried various work after redundancy, but found them all unrewarding until we joined Kleeneze in June 1998.
We started with 200 catalogues, and took orders of £1,690 in our first 4-week period earning us £490, and £2,945 in our 2nd, earning us £890. All we did was put catalogues through letterboxes, went back 2 days later and showed the opportunity to others.
We got our initial investment back within 10 days. Not many businesses can do that.
We didn't speak to anyone or demonstrate any products.
We ignored all other distributors, whether Kleeneze, Betterware, or Avon.
We quickly realised that there was more to this business than just distributing catalogues.
It is a people and communication business and we've made so many new, like-minded friends.
We decided we wanted to build an extra income for ourselves and we started to go to meetings, joined the ITS and decided to be teachable.
Our Kleeneze income has already overtaken both our pensions, for which we worked for 21 and 25 years respectively.
The vision that the business gave us enabled us to sell our 4 bedroomed house in 2001 and purchase this lovely 5 bedroomed bungalow which we had professionally photographed in 2001 with Christmas decorations.