Residual income was my goal in direct sales, and I achieved this many years ago. 

I love sharing my knowledge of my 40 years of entrepreneurship with others.

Going RVing for 3-5 years was on our bucket list. So, in December 2018, Rick and April sold ALL of their possessions and furniture, keeping only their real personal items, and purchased a 44-foot Newmar motor coach and a 2019 Jeep. 

Rick continued to build his Network Marketing business while on the road.

If you would like to see some of the landscape images of Rick made, you can click the button below.  

Rick Billings and His Leadership Team

Rick Billings Received the Award at a Conversation

Rick Billings Won Salesperson of the Year in 2017

It was May 2011, and four executives left USANA, the company Rick was building. These were publicly traded on the NASDAQ, and Rick felt that was strange. So he connected with the executives and found out they were starting a new company called ARIIX. Well, needless to say, Rick joined them on the first day of their launch, July 4, 2011.

ARIIX was purchased in February 2023, and it changed its name to Partner.co, but it still offers all the great products it has always had. You can learn more about PartnerCo below.

Rick Billings Won his Network Marketing Company’s Incentive Trip - 9-Day Cruise Trip in 2017

April & Rick won the Premier #1 Salesperson Award in his network marketing company in North America in 2017. So their company gave them an all-expenses-paid 9-day cruise through the Caribbean with many other top successful leaders. They took their three boys with them and had the best times of their lives. For Rick, this is what hard work as a Network Marketer is all about.

Rick Billings Won his Network Marketing Company’s Incentive Trip in Cancun last 2016

Rick and his wife, April, were married in 1984 and celebrated our Wedding Anniversary in Cancun in April 2016. They won a company trip, and the network marketing company paid for everything at this 5-star resort.

Rick Billings’ Transition to Network Marketing

It's just a matter of action. Rick learned what network marketing is first, then understood how he could make Residual Income through it, and jumped into it to start his journey with it. Now, Rick is enjoying his time with his family, traveling the world, and buying everything he ever wanted.

In January 2002, Rick, April, and the boys relocated to Windermere, Florida, which is in SW Orlando. Rick also moved ASPN.com to Orlando, but a couple of years later, the business was failing, so he started doing portrait photography again. 

Rick offered portrait photography as a concierge-type service to high-end individuals. After a few years, he realized he had to do something else to quickly regain his wealth, and that is when he got involved in Network Marketing.

Digital Photography on the move...Moving the market to digital!
The #1 Internet Portal for the Professional Portrait Industry!

In Rick’s photography business for over 30 years, he traded his time for dollars, working 12 hours daily. He made a nice six-figure income but realized he was always working. That got old! Then, a couple of years after his merger with PhotoWave, his world changed financially. He knew he needed to make a change, so as a visionary, he soon began looking for a business that would allow him to build it as large as he wanted, help others, and achieve financial freedom in a shorter period than he had in the past.

Being online since 1994, he loved the power of the Internet, so he knew that it had to be a significant component. He has been using WordPress since 2006 and has mastered it very well. Today, he’s a Professional Network Marketer, helping people build multiple streams of residual income and achieve financial freedom. The freedom to be with your family and do what you want to do when you want to do it.

So, it was 1999, and Rick and his partner decided to launch a sports photography business online. Youth sports was a growing market then, and they wanted to offer action photos along with the traditional team and individual pictures taken every year. At the time, they built and launched ASPN.com (American Sports Photo Network). With 5 million dollars invested with two other partners in April of 2000, there was a dot com crash. Thus, their path to an IPO was halted, and they began reorganizing the business infrastructure.

Rick’s highly regarded position in digital photography was evident in the fall of 2000 at the United Nations Millennium Summit. Kodak asked Rick to digitally photograph 189 heads of state of UN member countries, including President Bill Clinton and Prime Minister Tony Blair. Minutes later, a digital image was transmitted electronically to news organizations throughout the world. The group photo appeared in full color on the front page of the New York Times the following day.

One day, a West Omaha photographer approached Rick with an intriguing proposition-to buy his studio. At the tender age of 24, Rick was faced with a monumental decision. This photographer was renowned, and his studio ranked among the top three in Omaha. Newly married to April, Rick saw an opportunity and seized it. They decided to embark on this adventure, purchasing the beautiful home photography studio in Omaha. It was a journey that took months to navigate, and after much persuasion, Rick secured a loan of $267,000 in October 1985, plunging into the world of entrepreneurship.

It was 1985 and one of the hardest business decisions Rick had to make to date. He had been working for his mentor, Les Hassel, for seven years, and they had become the best of friends. Les's kids were Rick’s age, and so Les was like a second father to him. But he had to leave and start his own business.

A few years later, they changed the name from David Lee Studio to Rick Billings Photography & Video. 

Rick Billings at the peak of his Photography Career

In 1989, Rick got a knock on the door, expecting a client; he was surprised by a gentleman from the State of Nebraska wanting to purchase his home, including his studio. Father Flanagan’s Boys Town was across the street, and the property was an easy target for their needed land. To make a long story short, Rick acquired an acre of land 50 feet behind the old studio in the condemnation. Rick had the property rezoned commercially, and as a result, the price of the land quadrupled. He used that for a down payment and borrowed $500,000 to build an 8,000-square-foot state-of-the-art photography studio on the corner of 132nd & West Dodge Road in Omaha.

Later, in the summer of 1995, after a year of immersing himself in the latest digital photography technology, Rick fearlessly embarked on the transition of his professional portrait studio into the new world of digital technology. Unbeknownst to him at the time, he was about to become a pioneer, one of the first photographers in the country to embrace digital capture technology in their portrait photography business. This journey began when Kodak developed a camera for NASA with a CCD (charged couple device) that, in his opinion, matched the quality of the film. The biggest obstacle was the cost, a staggering $29,950 for just the camera body with the CCD. But Rick's unwavering vision and determination prevailed, even when his peers doubted him.

After capturing Kodak's interest, Rick dedicated the next eight years of his off-season to lecturing on digital photography, traversing over 40 States to share his knowledge and experiences. His mission was clear: to help others successfully transition their film studios into the age of digital technology. From 1995 to 2003, Rick was a proud member of a select group of professional photographers who served on Kodak’s Digital Professional Photography Mentor Team, a testament to his commitment to the industry and his peers.

In May 1997, Rick opened the first digital training center in the United States, getDigital Training Center.

One of Rick’s top three business goals was to develop a business that could continue without him. He achieved that in March 1998 when he merged his business with a Pittsburgh-based company called PhotoWave. Rick relocated his family to Pittsburgh in June of that year and remotely operated the studio until April 2003, when they finally decided to move the studio to Tim and Jinnie McCormick. He is proud to say Billings Photography in Omaha is still experiencing great success today.

After graduating from high school in 1978, he was photographing weddings and working for his second photography mentor, one of the top award-winning photographers in the Midwest, Les & Lorraine Hassel.

These were Rick's second mentors after his father. Rick said Les & Lorraine taught me so much in the professional photography business. 

It was 1970 in Omaha, Nebraska, and at the age of 11, Rick’s father gave him his first professional camera. His father was a United States Air Force photographer for 34 years. Those pre-teen years were very informative for the development of Rick’s career.

His father taught him a lot about his craft, business, and life without his father ever realizing that.

Rick Billings’ side hustle as a young man

As a side hustle, his first money-making ventures were taking photos of horses and returning with finished black and white 8×10’s to sell the same day.