The market turned. My partner and I found prices dropping and homes not selling. All of the sudden, we owned 11 single-family homes, all with mortgages, all with friends and family who had invested in them, all upside down (we owed more than a house was worth) and unsellable! Life got ugly on a personal level for me. I had to file bankruptcy for the business and personal bankruptcy – the hardest, most demoralizing, scary, and defeating business experience I have known. I remember my bankruptcy attorney calling me “fortunate” to go through it all at such a young age. He told me I was a bright guy and would emerge so much stronger. At the time I could hardly see bankruptcy as a positive, but he was right. The experience dropped me to my knees as a cocky, young boy, and I stood up as a humbled, compassionate, disciplined man.
A shining light in the whole ordeal was keeping my word to everyone who invested with us. My parents brought me up to be a man of my word and have integrity. I used any and all profits from previous deals to pay back our friends and family. Some got their money right away and some received payments over time, but everyone got their money back. This was a major character-building experience for me.
Rebuilding the Dream
My process of rebuilding was not just about business. I had to build a new person – physically, spiritually, emotionally, and financially. All of this came about in a way I least expected.
Two friends and I committed to a 90-day physical transformation program. (We didn’t know then that the producer was a network marketing company.) Prior to this, I had the habit of jumping from one undertaking to another without finishing anything. This time, I completed the 90 days and got the physical transformation, but what happened on the inside far surpassed the physical. Sticking with the entire program was a huge, personal accomplishment. I wanted to quit many times, but I didn’t. After the completion of those first 90 days, I turned a weakness into a strength: I’m now really careful about what I commit to; and when I do commit, I can be trusted to finish.
For the next two years, I continued to be a customer of this network marketing company. I was in the best shape of my life, I was happy, I had married the woman of my dreams, and we had just had our first daughter. Amy was on maternity leave, and we were trying to figure out our next steps. We really wanted Amy to be home to raise our children. At the time, I was working 12-hour days, leaving the house at 5:30 in the morning and coming home between 8 and 9 at night. Although I was making good money and Amy was able to stay home, this came at huge personal expense. I didn’t have the time I craved with my daughter, and I had no energy left for my wife when I got home.
And then it happened…
One of the annual ceremonies of the spiritual path I follow is called “Vision Quest.” It’s a four-day ceremony of personal prayer to ask the Creator for help and guidance and a “vision” for your life. This particular year, my prayer centered around my professional life. I needed a change, but I had no idea what that change would look like. On the fourth day, I got the answer: “Become a network marketing professional with the company that changed your life.” This scared the hell out of me. I had no idea how the business worked or how I could make a living. All I knew was I loved the products and programs of the company because of that original 90-day fitness challenge.
Realizing the Dream
When I first became a network marketing professional, my mentor told me I needed to find a WHY that motivated me. My WHY was clear and direct.
I want to be able to do WHAT I WANT in life.
I want to be able to do it with WHO I WANT.
I want to be able to do it WHEN I WANT.
I want to spend time with my family and friends. Hold each of my children daily, play with them, change their diapers, send them to the best schools. Drive the cars, live in the house, move to the town I want. Go snowboarding, hiking, mountain biking, eat out when I want.
I still had a full-time job when I began dedicating about 10 hours a week to my network marketing business. I squeezed every last minute out of those 10 hours. I was on a mission, determined to become a full-time network marketing professional. I did that within one year, and my life will never be the same.
I remember crying while writing on Facebook, “I am now a full-time network marketing professional.” I was free, and I was rich. What made me rich wasn’t the money – the crazy money (what I call “monopoly money”) still hadn’t come. I was rich because I truly had the ability to do what I wanted, when I wanted, with who I wanted.
Living the Dream
For the last nine years I’ve been able to work from home. I make my own schedule. I spend time with my kids during the days. I drop them off and pick them up from school. I cook dinner and play with them. I have watched them grow day by day, and haven’t missed a thing.
In the process Amy and I have been able to pay off all of our debt (except our mortgage). We moved to the town of our dreams and bought the house of our dreams. We drive the cars we want and send our kids to an excellent school.
Reluctantly, I want to share my first eight years’ earnings as a network marketing professional. It’s uncomfortable and feels egotistical to include personal financial information for the world to see, but I feel it’s important. If I’m going to teach you how my leaders and I have built our business and to recommend you build the same way, you need to know the results that my approach is capable of producing: long-term, high-level, sustainable income.
Annual earnings:
Year 1 $12,847 (started business in May)
Year 2 $91,559
Year 3 $260,899
Year 4 $479,925
Year 5 $686,623
Year 6 $762,896
Year 7 $829,696
Year 8 $857,295
Income disclaimer: As in any independent business, the level of success or achievement is dependent upon the commitment, skill level, drive, and desire to succeed of the individual. Success results only from effective sales efforts, which require hard work, diligence, and leadership.
Paying the Dream Forward
I went from an extremely low point to living a dream life. And that blessing doesn’t go unnoticed by me. After my personal goals were met, I turned my attention to helping others do the same. I didn’t think my business could be more rewarding, but it just keeps getting better. There’s nothing like the feeling you get by helping people completely change their lives.
My new WHY, what really drives me now, is teaching others how to build their network marketing businesses to last. Month after month, I get to be on the receiving end of someone thanking me for changing her or his life. All that I’m doing, though, is passing on information from the many mentors and teachers in my life.
I wrote Build to Last to pass on to you an approach I put to work in my business and personal life. A way of building your network marketing business so it helps you create a life doing what you want, when you want, with who you want.
I hope you enjoy this book and use it as a guide to building the life of your dreams.
Much love,
Keith Callahan
Section One
PERSONAL LEADERSHIP
“Personal Leadership” is more about who you must become than
what you have to do.
After reading this section, you will no longer see yourself as simply a distributor for your company. You will see yourself as the CEO of a big business. You will understand the importance of leadership and relationships in building your business so it lasts. You will see the enormity of the opportunity you are sitting on and the generational impact you can have. You will learn the seven core philosophies of leaders in the network marketing industry and how to apply them to your business. You will learn how to create a personal development plan specific to building to last. You will learn how to identify areas you need to improve upon and how to measure your “personal development success” in those areas. You will learn the importance of having one overarching, long-term goal and how to select that goal. Finally, you will
learn how to direct your focus so you start attracting the success available as a network marketing professional.
Chapter 1
Build to Last and Leadership
The function of leadership is to produce
more leaders, not more followers.
— Ralph Nader
Three years into building my network marketing business, I went on a spiritual retreat with my family. During the two weeks we were away and unplugged from all technology, my team added over 800 new distributors. Upon returning, I found no voicemails, no text messages, and no social media messages awaiting me. Not a single person contacted or needed me. Our team was growing like crazy, and it was growing without me! The reason for this is simple. I had developed leaders on my team.
Almost a decade into network marketing, the opportunity has been financially rewarding, but more importantly it has given me and my leaders freedom. Freedom to create life on our terms – to spend our time doing what we want, when we want, with who we want. We have intentionally built our businesses to serve the lifestyle we want to live.
Our way of building is a synthesis of my mentors’ teachings, and my own trial and error over the last decade. I was fortunate to encounter mentor-leader Craig Holiday right from the start. Craig mentored me to become a leader of myself, my family, and my team. When I modeled what he taught me and mentored others in my organization, we began to have tremendous success, and that mentorship duplicated. Those I mentored started mentoring their distributors the way we were taught, and so on.
Because of the leadership and success we had on our team, leaders of other teams within our company began asking me to speak to their leaders. Corporate leadership caught on and invited me to share what we were doing with other leaders in our company. Eventually leaders from other companies asked me to speak on their calls and teach their leaders what we were doing.
After each training, I would get messages from leaders saying the same thing: “I WISH I HAD THIS TRAINING WHEN I FIRST STARTED.”
I realized what I had to offer was valuable. It is a missing piece in our industry that so many “would-be leaders” just like you need. A simple philosophy, with basic principles to follow, teaching you how to grow a business that’s built to last.
I’ve been able to watch leader after leader go on to have the success they always dreamed of after integrating the principles in Build to Last, and I’m excited to share them with you.
Leadership and Relationships
Leadership and relationships are the cornerstone of a network marketing business that lasts. Without leadership and deep relationships, you might have some short-term success, but attrition will begin showing up in your business, and it will eventually fall apart from the bottom up.
Our industry has two distinct types of leader: leaders of followers and leaders of leaders. Leadership expert John Maxwell offers the best description of each. A leader of followers needs to be needed, he says, and a leader of leaders wants to be exceeded. This principle is so important I want to repeat it for you:
Leaders of followers need to be needed,
and leaders of leaders want to be exceeded.
Leader of Followers Versus Leader of Leaders
Leaders of followers have the ability to lead followers but not other leaders.
They are usually charismatic people with big personalities. Leaders of followers always want the spotlight. They want to be up on stage, getting recognized at the annual company convention. Leaders of followers lead people who are dependent on them. They get constant texts, emails, and direct messages because everyone on their team depends on them for answers to all questions on a daily basis. Their team looks to them for leadership because they’re all followers. When leaders of followers go on vacation, their business takes a big hit.
In contrast, the main goal of leaders of leaders isn’t necessarily to achieve the highest ranks themselves, it is to empower the others on their team to hit the highest ranks. They want to be sitting in the audience at the company convention watching the leaders they’ve developed walk across stage, getting recognized. When I developed my organization, I focused on building a team of such leaders who would grow their own teams.
Word of Caution
Not everyone you mentor will become a leader, and not every leader you mentor will become a leader of leaders. To put this in perspective, consider the breakdown on my team today, as I’m writing: I have about 30,000 distributors; of those, about 100 are leaders. But only two or three can be considered leaders of leaders. That’s how rare a leader of leaders is.
The purpose of this book is to help YOU (not everyone on your team) become a leader of leaders. This path involves creating other leaders, not necessarily leaders of leaders. It will be rare for you to develop one.
How the Numbers Play Out
I love talking with people in our industry, bouncing ideas off each other and learning from each other. During a conversation with my friend – let’s call him Bill – who is also a professional network marketer, we got into the ins and outs of how our businesses are structured, how our income is derived, and more. At the time I brought in a slightly higher income than he did. We both had been working for the same amount of time with our respective companies, which have similar comp plans. From an outsider’s perspective, everything was pretty much equal. The main difference between our businesses was that Bill operated as a leader and I operate as a leader of leaders.
Leader versus leader of leaders. There’s a small difference in words but a world of difference in results.
Bill is a great recruiter. He consistently brings in 50-plus distributors a month. Month after month, all year long. That’s his main focus. I’m currently the opposite of Bill when it comes to recruiting. Five is the most distributors I’ve ever recruited in one month. Needless to say, given that I bring in a max of five distributors a month and Bill brings in 50, our businesses looked very different from the start.
Here is the piece you might not expect: as I’m writing Build to Last, I have a team of over 30,000 distributors, and Bill has about 3,000 distributors. How can that be? Why am I sponsoring one-tenth of the distributors but have a team that is ten times the size of Bill’s? That is the power of becoming a leader of leaders. The power of duplicating leadership in your downline. Our industry is one of duplication and developing leaders, NOT of being a great one-man show. Bill knows that if he takes any time off, his business will implode. His business is built and predicated upon him showing up every single day and doing the work.
If I step away from my business, not only is it going to survive, it’s going to thrive. Thrive, because we’ve built our business with a solid foundation, and we’ve built it through duplicating leadership. I’m not just the leader of “my team,” but I’ve also created other leaders who are growing their own teams. Those leaders will continue to grow their teams with or without me because they are no longer dependent on me.
Change Your Focus, Change Your Results
Bill and I both dedicate the same amount of time to our businesses, but we focus on different areas. His main focus is recruiting as many people as he can and putting them into his training systems. My focus is recruiting a smaller number, spending time with them, and working to develop them into leaders. In the beginning, Bill’s approach allows you to help more people and earn more money, more quickly. However, over time, through developing leaders and the law of exponential growth, my business model creates an organization that surpasses Bill’s.
Building a team of leaders, rather than followers, allows you to create the freedom in your life to do what you want, when you want, with who you want. Becoming a leader of leaders gives you freedom in your business and it gives you freedom in your life.
As for Bill, he began following the model I teach in this book and is well on his way to becoming a leader of leaders. With his recruiting skills and the addition of becoming a leader of leaders, Bill is in a position to far surpass what I’ve built.
Following is a story about two distributors who signed with me when I first started in network marketing. One of them – let’s call him Michael – owned 14 yoga studios with over 150 instructors. The company I’m a distributor for is in the health and wellness realm, so it was a perfect fit for this clientele. Michael introduced me to all 150 of his instructors. “I just signed up as a distributor,” he said to them. “This is something I think you should check out. Keith Callahan is going to be contacting you in the next couple of days.” In addition, Michael allowed me to put up flyers in all 14 studios, with my contact information for our nutritional products.
At the same time, I signed on Nicole Jones, a woman I went to high school with. Nicole was married, had just had her second child, and didn’t want to go back to work. When she told me she wanted to get healthy and fit herself, I told her about the opportunity to be a distributor with our company. Nicole started using our products and working on her own health and wellness. She then shared her results with friends and family, who also started using our products and working on their health and wellness.
Looking at the opportunities with both Nicole and Michael, most people think (as did I) the huge opportunity is with Michael and the yoga studios.
Here’s what happened.
In month 1, the yoga studio came out strong. We sold $3,000 in products that month. Nicole came out excited but didn’t produce nearly as much. She sold about $400 in products to her friends and family that month.
Month 2 rolls around and the yoga studio sold $3,000-$4,000 in products. Nicole continued to do what she was doing. She had reoccurring orders from people she had helped the previous month and some new people coming in, for a total of $800 in orders that month. She also signed a few working distributors. This is where the shift began.
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