THE APPRAISAL
How Anna Caleca discovered what she's really worth
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ANNA CALECA “I was a woman who had lost confidence. I didn’t think I had anything to offer anyone. I never thought I was going to be able to make a difference.” After her decades-long marriage dissolved in a terrible divorce in 1999, Anna Caleca was hurt, alone and running low on hope. One of her two daughters was still at home and she had an aging mother to take care of. At that point in her life Anna needed a lot of things, but most urgently she needed a job.
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Despite being overworked and undervalued, Anna kept at it.
$5.50 “I found myself back in the workforce,” Anna says. “I needed to get an apartment, and I was vying for jobs with the local teenagers. Minimum-wage jobs. I’d been in the home for 20 years, and I didn’t think I had any marketable job skills.”
The store hired her for $5.50/hour—part-time, so they didn’t have to provide benefits.
retired folks to the store, and it turns out they’d happily wait in line at Anna’s register even though other lanes were open. They asked the store manager when Anna’s birthday was, then put $200 in a card. The gesture made her cry then, and it still brings a tear today.
Anna tied on her red smock and went to work, but her problems were hardly solved. She had to reach into a hat every month to choose which bills Anna’s mom grew up working in a grocery store to pay. Friends would invite her on trips, and she’d owned by Anna’s grandfather. She was starting have to decline. Her younger daughter would ask Anna was grateful for the steady work, but it was from square one, and groceries were in her genes, for things, and she’d have to turn her down, too. still tough. “It was just everyday life,” she says. “Go to work, come back, go to work—and I thought so Anna went to the store down the road in Flush- “Wow, I got tired of that,” Anna says today. that was it.” ing, Michigan, and picked up an application. On the line on the application that asked how much Despite being overworked and undervalued, she expected to be paid, Anna wrote—with humil- Anna kept at it. “I was the best cashier I could ity (and just the tiniest bit of irreverence)—“As be,” she asserts. “I made sure nobody’s bread got smashed!” On Tuesdays the senior bus brought much as you think I’m worth.”
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The Opportunity “Around that time a friend of mine asked me, ‘Any good opportunities come by today?’” Anna recalls. “I said, ‘What do you mean?’ He said, ‘Opportunities pass you every day. They’re right there. If you’ll just keep your eyes open…’ “He’d call me at the end of the workday and say, ‘Any good opportunities?’ I’d say, ‘No,’ and he’d say, ‘Then your eyes aren’t open.’
“Do you trust me?” Janelle asked. “You know I do,” responded Anna. “Will you get in the car and go somewhere with me?”
“I thought, ‘What does that mean?’”
“Yes. What do I need to do?”
It was the night before Valentine’s Day in 2003 when long-time friend Janelle Crane called from five minutes down the road.
“Just bring your credit card.”
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"Opportunities pass you every day. They’re right there. If you’ll just keep your eyes open…"
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Anna says she heard Janelle coming from blocks away. “I think she was on two wheels! [Note: Janelle is known for her fast cars.] We pulled into the back of a church. I thought, ‘Oh, she’s worried about me. She wants to pray for me.’” Janelle didn’t tell Anna too much about what they were doing, but she said it was an opportunity. Anna remembers wondering to herself, “Is this it?” They got inside and people were bustling around, flicking switches and arranging chairs. “All the new people sit in the front row,” someone said. “We’re going to hear from Sherman Unkefer!” “Oh my gosh,” Anna said, “Sherman Unkefer!” Then, after a split second, “Who’s that?!” Anna could feel the excitement in the room. She kept looking around, waiting for this Mr. Unkefer to walk in. Before long she heard, “Good evening ladies and gentlemen, this is Sherman Unkefer from Scottsdale, Arizona”—coming out of a speaker at the front of the room. Janelle had brought Anna to a church for a conference call. “You’re kidding me,” Anna recalls thinking to herself. “I’m Italian—I like to look people in the eye.” But Sherman started talking, and people were listening. He spoke about a juice, and about Thailand, and about an opportunity. And as the story unfolded, it kept getting more and more interesting. Anna looked around and noticed that everyone was as excited as she. “It’s only $35 to join—I’ve got that,” she told herself.
“Maybe this is it!” Then Sherman talked about starting with two cases of XANGO Juice. “I looked at Janelle, and I was so upset,” Anna reflects. “She knew what I was doing for a living. ‘I can’t afford that every month,’ I said to her. ‘As good as that story is, I can’t afford to do it.’” The memory forces Anna to catch her breath as she relates it. “Janelle said to me,
‘If you can’t afford that, you can’t afford not to.’” Anna describes feeling like she’d been clubbed upside the head. With all the care and concern of a true friend, Janelle asked her, “Where will you be in five years, or next year, if you don’t change something?” That was enough for Anna. “I signed up. There was not a bottle of Juice to see or to taste… there was no literature… there was only a voice over the phone. But I said, 'Yes.'
“I got back in the car with Janelle and I was nervous, I was sweating, and I didn’t know what to do. Janelle said, ‘We’re going to do this together.’ Those words were powerful.” Anna had noticed that Janelle seemed to succeed in everything she did, and she knew what it meant to have a friend by her side. “It felt good to have something to go for.” The first person Anna called was her mom. Anna told her about the Juice, and Mom immediately agreed to buy a case. “Some years later I asked her, ‘Mom, why did you say “Yes” to me so quickly?’ She told me it was the first time in a long time that she’d seen me excited about something.
That was when I got my passion back.”
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“I told myself I needed my XANGO check to be a certain amount, and I just went to work.”
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Breaking a Leg & Breaking Free But passion’s one thing, and a bona fide opportu- Anna had to stay off that leg for a few weeks, so nity is another. All Anna (and Janelle, who’d only that meant no hours at the grocery store. signed up a day earlier) knew about XANGO was what they’d heard over a speaker box in the back “When you’re a cashier, if you don’t work you don’t get paid,” Anna continues, “so I put my leg up on of a church. the table and I started going to town.” “Only later did we come to know what this company was,” she admits. “We met the Founders, “Going to town,” it turns out, meant getting on the learned about their integrity, their drive, how phone. “I told myself I needed my XANGO check great XANGO’s products are.” That’s when Anna to be a certain amount, and I just went to work. knew her hope had a foundation. “As I started to understand what this company was, I started “I didn’t know if I was going back to [the grocery to become something else: I got my confidence store],” Anna says. She thought maybe reaching back. I got my self-respect back. These were 20K would help her decide, so she pushed herself. things I had lost over the previous 20 years, and I In the two months she was laid up, Anna was able started to get back up. to drive her business from 5K to 20K—but she had to wait for a visit from Janelle and upline Art Klemchuk to learn it had happened for sure. (Anna “XANGO does that for you.” didn’t own a cell phone or a computer, so these So Anna was a new Distributor, sponsored by an- two upline friends were the only way she could other new Distributor, and she wanted to know track the progress of her business.) more about this mystery company. By the time November rolled around, Anna planned on attend- “When they came to tell me, they asked if I had ing the first XANGO convention. But a fall and a seen my check amount online,” Anna recalls. broken leg meant she’d have to wait until the next When they finally told her how much she’d earned, she was overwhelmed. “It had gone up so much one. “I was sick about it,” she says. between 5K and 20K, I just started crying.” She’d taken off her red grocer’s smock for the last time.
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"I've never been a salesman... but when you share your story honestly and from the heart, it has power."
Passing It On Now a full-fledged XANGO Premier, Anna enjoys helping others to feel overwhelmed. When she accepted Beverly Hollister’s invitation to speak at a Women Building Bridges event, Beverly remembers, “Anna had everyone laughing, crying and cheering.” “I’ve never been a salesman,” Anna claims, “but when you share your story honestly and from the heart, it has power.”
Anna is a recruiting dynamo, never missing a chance to share the XANGO opportunity that gave her a second chance. In fact, during the interview for this story, a hostess at a restaurant asked Anna why she had a photographer following her around, and when Anna told her a little about XANGO and the Juice she always brought to dinner, the server asked, “Is that something that I could do? I’ve been trying to find something new so I can get out of here…” Appreciating the poetry of the moment—the hostess’s smock was green, not red—Anna handed her a business card and took down her information.