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My name is Shep Kuester

The dream of my life is my wife Janet Ann, and we were married in 1988. She is my buddy, my best friend, my princess, and my eternal companion.

We have two boys. Nate lives in Boise and is on Fox-12 TV news. He graduated from Washington State University in 2004. Lew is currently in pre-law at Weber State University, Utah. He and his beautiful wife Lisa gave us our first grandbaby, Scarlett, October 8, 2007.

I was born in Tacoma, Washington to Lewis L. & Fay E. Kuester. In 1949 we moved to Ephrata, WA so my dad could work at Larsen AFB. He started out as a flight mechanic in the 8th Army Air Corps in WWII. Mom, also a vet of the 8th Army Air Corps, started working at Larsen in 1951.

I attended Columbia Ridge Elementary, which was right across the street from our house - no missing school! From 1957 to 1962 I attended Marymount Military School in Spanaway, WA.

We moved to Cabot, Arkansas in 1962 where I attended 10th & 11th grade. In 1964 we moved to Grand Forks, ND. I skipped 12th grade to attend the University of North Dakota. Dad died suddenly in 1967. I joined the US Navy that September.

I spent the next 21 years in the Navy as a Hospital Corpsman, retiring in 1988 as HMCS(SS), Senior Chief Hospital Corpsman (Submarine Service). I was stationed at Camp Pendleton, USS Durham (LKA114), Hospital Corps School Great Lakes, USS Narwhal (SSN677), USS Cincinnati (SSN693), USS Drum (SSN677), Naval Hospital Oak Harbor, WA, and finally Submarine Group Eight Naples Italy. I loved my job, loved serving my country, and made some awsome friends. Jan & I met in Naples. She was in charge of the Naval Hospital emergency room.

We were married July 1988, just as Jan was entered her anesthesia residency (CRNA) at George Washington University in Washington DC. To keep busy I attended the Corcoran School of Art - had a blast!

We lived in San Diego 1989 to 1990. After Jan finished her residency we moved to Brownsville, WA while Jan was stationed at Bremerton Naval Hospital. While living here I became seriously involved in Network Marketing. 1994-5 we lived on the island of Adak, AK, near the end of the Aleutian chain. We absolutely loved it there! To stay busy I worked in cargo for Reeve Aleutian Airways. I got pretty buff, which Jan loved! We returned to Bremerton until Jan retired as a CDR NC USN (CRNA) in 1997.

We moved to Nephi, Utah. While Jan worked at the hospital I ran my own telecom marketing company GCMI. In 2001 I was introduced to these incredible gourmet candles. In 2002 the the network marketing company for these candles was formed to introduce these incredible candles to the world.

In 2003 we were doing so well with our candle business that Jan closed her practice and we moved her to Carlton, a beautiful small rural community on the eastern slopes of the Cascade Mountains. We have two horses, chickens, two golden retrievers, and a cat, and we live in a barn on 15 acres. It's a wonderful life! We are both active in the LDS church, Jan as the Young Womens President and me as the Branch President. We are also active in Cub Scouts and community service.

My Business Story

Between 1994 and 2003 I ran my own telecom marketing company, primarily small run custom phone cards. It kept me busy but I wasn't making the money I wanted. I let it be know among networking friends that if they saw a unique new product developed from a well known base product that I would like to know more. In March 2001 I got a call from an online friend and he told me that he and his partner were setting up a business to sell a brand new product. He then asked me if I would like to test market this product. I asked what it was. Candles. Uh huh - and I'm the Easter Bunny! Charlie, are you nuts! Candles are everywhere and there is just no way to make a lot of money selling something that has already saturated the market! What are you thinking??? It took six calls for him to convince me to even try it.

A box arrived in late March 2001 with 12 soy candles in ugly jars with a home-made label. But I had a n open mind to new things so that didn't bother me too much. Appearance could be fixed later, which it was. I lit the Fresh Apple and put it on my desk. Oh, I have asthma so most highly fragranced things like soaps and candles make me ill. This candle not only smelled delicious, it had no bad effects on my asthma. Okay, now I'm impressed and intrigued! In the afternoon I lit the Orange Creamsicle. YUM! When she came home Jan thought I had been baking it smelled so real. A couple days later we had a candle party, something neither of us knew anything about on how to do, yet we sold over 4 cases in 2 hours! Okay, now I'm thinking big money!

Over the next 18 months I did large shows and fairs in ten states. Everywhere I went people went crazy over these candles. That's when I knew we had hit the jackpot. In 2002 Bobby & Charlie designed this into a network marketing company. You must realize that even though I had been in a number of MLMs I had never ever been successful in any of them beyond a small commission check. Life was about to change! No matter how bad my presentation, so long as I was dangling a candle under a nose I made sales. Then people started asking how to sign up. The key to success was to constantly put that candle under more noses, and I got pretty creative in ways to let people know I had this outrageous vegetable wax candle that they just HAD to smell! And that is how our business grew.

Our candle business, often derisively called "Shep's little candle thing" by family and friends, took off. In 2003 Jan was able to close her anesthesia practice, where she had been working 80+ hours a week, and go part time. we sold our house in Utah and moved to our current home, a 15 acre rural estate next to a beautiful river on the eastern slopes of the Washington Cascade Mountains. This year Jan is closing her career as a CRNA completely. It took her a couple years to psychologically make the transition from a hard working medical professional to farm wife and professional network marketer, but she's done it.

Can you make money working with candles? I didn't think so! Now I know that the answer is most definitely yes! This business changed me into a network marketing professional making a professional income. To see what our distributors make go here. And this company is only five years old with under 10,000 distributors! Just imagine what these numbers will be like when we are ten years old. You can be a part of it - or sit on the sidelines and just watch. It's your choice.

Thanks to this amazing gourmet candle line, which now includes gourmet bath products, we are living our dream. I would not say we are wealthy but we are financially comfortable with the freedom to volunteer for church service, volunteer in our community, and spend time with family and our horses. I never dreamed that one day Jan & I would actually live a comfortable life doing whatever we want. Our life is modest so this happened faster for us than it might for others who want a more expensive lifestyle. Now we love helping others to duplicate what we did, only in a shorter time frame using more sophisticated marketing tools and techniques, such as this MySpace page. It has been an amazing journey - and it's just beginning! Come to www.shepandjan.com or www.mymiabella.info and see specifically what this business offers.