Where do you want to go?
Create a plan to bridge the gap.
Two Guidelines
Here are two guidelines to be aware of as you put together your plan:
1. Make sure the person you choose to work with, to model, to use as a resource, has what you want or has done what you want to do. Some “mentors” are strong presenters but haven’t actually achieved what you’re setting out to.
2. While you’re working on your personal development plan, make sure you’re also working on your business. We’re in a “do and then learn business.” Let me repeat that. Network marketing is a “do and then learn business.” So get out there. Take the action. Do it even when you’re scared. That’s the way you learn how to do it a little better next time. Don’t wait for the timing to be “perfect.” It’s okay to be uncomfortable. Know your action creates positive energy that trumps your fears, your insecurities, your doubts – and builds self-esteem – making it easier to take the action next time.
Action Steps
1. If you have not yet done so, make a list of all the positive qualities of the leaders you admire. To help you with this assignment, you can refer to the section of this chapter titled “Your Personal Development Plan.” You can also refer to the first Action Step in Chapter 2.
2. On a scale of 1 to 10, rate yourself on each of the positive qualities you admire in other leaders.
3. Given your list of qualities and your current rating, reflect on the long-term and short-term goals you put together in the last chapter. With those goals in mind, what three qualities, if improved, will have the biggest positive impact on the achievement of your goals?
4. Take immediate action (today) on each of the three improvement areas you identified above. Keep it simple. Just take the first step – it could be making a phone call, making a list, setting an appointment, buying a book. Then continue to take daily action in the same manner.
Chapter 5
BUILD TO LAST AND YOUR BELIEF
A genuine leader is not a searcher
for consensus but a molder of consensus.
—Martin Luther King, Jr.
Get Out of Your Own Way
For new distributors and even seasoned distributors, one of the biggest obstacles to building a large organization is not recognizing the value of what you have to offer. The opportunity you have can change lives, and people are looking for what you have to offer. But we can be hesitant to approach friends, acquaintances, and strangers for fear of bothering them. We don’t want to continue to follow up for fear of pestering or pressuring. We feel like we’re always trying to push our business opportunity or products on other people. Have you ever felt that way? Do you feel that way right now?
It’s a block to building a large organization. Heck, it’s a block to getting your business off the ground. So take the step of recognizing and embracing the value of the opportunity of network marketing. Recognize the impact this business can have on someone’s life. Recognize that people are literally dying to be understood, heard, validated. They are sick and tired of being sick and tired. People are looking for an opportunity, but most distributors are caught up in worrying about what others think and miss the chance to serve.
A Helping Hand Can Save Someone
Often, when I share this story, the enormity of the opportunity of network marketing “clicks.”
I was driving along in my truck, with two of my kids in the back seat, listening to Tara Brach’s podcast when this story about two high school boys came up. The story was told in the first person, so that’s how I’ll tell it here. It goes something like this:
I was putting my books away and closing up my locker when I noticed this new boy who had just come to our school. We were about two weeks into my freshman year. I hadn’t seen him before, and I noticed he was really disheveled looking. As I’m glancing over, I see that he’s trying to get books out of his locker. He’s got an armful of books ready to fall, and a few that have already fallen on the floor. I decided to help him, which was out of character for me. I walked over and bent down to pick up a few books from the floor. I was on one knee, and the new boy was standing up, and I reached up to him and handed him a book. He was looking down at me with these eyes. I had never seen anybody look at me with eyes like that before.
The eyes were deeper than a normal thank you. Through his eyes and into my heart, into my soul, an inner voice said, “Thank you for doing that.” I grabbed the other books and handed them to him. We started chatting a little bit, and I learned his name was Steven. Steven had just come to our school from another school. We talked for a while and then decided to walk home together, which was also out of character for me. It turned out we live a couple of houses down the road from each other. This walk home together became a routine. We started walking to and from school together, and eventually we became good friends.
Fast forward to senior year. I had watched this boy turn into a man. Steven was the valedictorian of our class. He was also the prom king and the star athlete on our football team. He had a beautiful girlfriend. He was the kindest, most sincere, genuine person I knew. I envied him for the guy he was and the life he was living. I was also grateful to be his closest friend.
Now it’s graduation and we’re in the auditorium. As valedictorian, Steven’s about to give the commencement speech. I’m sitting behind him. I can see that he’s really nervous. I put my arm on his shoulder and tell him he’s going to do a great job, that everything’s going to be perfect, that he has so much to offer the students. He turns around while my arm is on his shoulder and looks me in the eyes with that same look he had given me during our freshman year when I picked up the books for him, and I felt it again. I felt that thank you that penetrates deeper than a normal thank you.
They call up Steven as valedictorian and I can’t wait to hear what he has to say. He starts his speech talking about high school. How high school is a time when we have these different people in our lives who impact us. We have our parents, and he goes into the impact they have on us. Then he talks about our teachers and how we had so many amazing teachers at the school and the role that they played in shaping our minds and helping us to vision and create an idea of who we want to become.
“But you know what the most important thing is?” he says. “The most important relationships we have during our high school years are with our friends. I never want you to underestimate the power of simply caring about somebody, of performing a kind act and not worrying about yourself, not worrying about what others are going to think. When I first moved to this school, you were already two weeks into the school year and I had just left another school because of the amount of teasing and bullying I had to endure there. I got picked on to the point that I couldn’t stay anymore. My parents moved us, and I started school here. My first day here, the bullying started again. I decided that I had had enough. At the end of the day I decided to clear out my locker. I was going to commit suicide that day, and I didn’t want my parents to have another thing to deal with. I figured if I cleared out my locker, it was one less thing they would have to handle.
“As I was clearing out my locker, I was shaking and I was nervous and I kept dropping my books. Somebody came over, bent down, picked up some of those books and handed them to me. In that moment I felt hope. I felt love. I felt like I might just be able to figure out how to belong. That one act of kindness and caring got me through the day. That one act of kindness started a journey which took me from who I was four years ago – the insecure, depressed, anxious kid who was about to commit suicide – to where I am today. I want you to remember, when you go out there in the world, that we all need someone. We all need someone to lend a helping hand. We all need someone who cares. And finally, remember that you’re never going to know who is really in need, so just make it a habit of leading with kindness and offering a helping hand when you can.”
You’re Offering a Gift
I was sitting there listening to this story
and bawling. My two children were in the back of the truck wondering, “What’s going on with Papa?” I was floored by this story. I immediately saw it as the missing piece for so many in our business. The network marketing industry has the ability to save lives. Don’t think otherwise. People living paycheck to paycheck, getting their car repossessed, defaulting on their mortgage, people who aren’t connecting with their family because they’re exhausted and don’t have the time – they need a way to get out of the pressure of their job. In situations like these, network marketing can offer the ability to take back your life. Take back your time. Gain the freedom to do what you want, when you want, with who you want. That’s the opportunity we offer. That’s what this business is about. What we offer is a gift that can change somebody’s life dramatically. It happened for me. It has happened for so many people I’ve mentored. And it has been happening for over 100 years in our industry. Network marketing is a proven model to take back your life! Take the step of accepting that gift, and start sharing it as a gift – not as something you’re trying to sell someone to hit the next goal your company set out for you.
What if you start looking at your network marketing business that way? Instead of “I don’t want to message them. I don’t know if they’re going to want this. They might make fun of me. They might ignore me. They might be turned off.” What if you start approaching others knowing you have a gift? What if you approached the day looking for every opportunity to share this gift? See the difference? Can you make that shift right now? You have to understand the biggest obstacle to your success is you, it’s you and your own limiting beliefs. Let them go. Receive this gift and then gift it to others. Our business IS that simple.
Visualize Your Highest Good
When I start mentoring new people, they’re often unfamiliar with the practice of visualization, a tool used by high achievers in all arenas. Visualization is simply seeing what you want in your mind before it comes into being. Research has shown that actually shooting basketball free throws and visualizing the practice of shooting free throws are equally effective in improving performance. It’s scientifically proven, visualization works!
I start people by inviting them to visualize their ultimate goal. What will it feel like when you achieve it? Who will you have become? What changes will you have made in your life? What will you have had to grow through? To see these successes in material form in your business, first you have to see them within your mind through your visualization practice. You focus on seeing it and experiencing it and believing it. Your “vision” gets into your heart and soul, and then starts appearing in your life.
My personal sponsor Bob’s goal was to have 10,000 distributors. That’s what he was visualizing when he first started and didn’t even have 100 distributors yet. He had no idea how he was going to get there. He didn’t know the steps he would have to take. He couldn’t even believe it in his mind, yet somehow deep inside of him he knew it was possible. And he kept visualizing, kept praying, kept holding that dream until it became a reality.
My vision for this business was to make $1 million a year. Crazy goal because I had never made more than a hundred thousand dollars a year in my life. I had no idea how it was possible. My mind couldn’t conceive of it. But somewhere inside of me, I knew it was possible. I focused on seeing it, focused on believing it, and eventually came to know that it was going to happen. That knowing seemed to act like a magnetic power attracting success to me.
“Can I Do This?” Is the Wrong Question
Most people who intend to build a large organization roll around in their mind questions like these: “Can I do this?” “Do I have what it takes?” “Is this going to work for me?” “Am I wasting my time?” Those are the wrong questions. The right question for you to ask is: “Am I willing to do what it takes to become the person I need to become?” The reality is that you can’t do it right now as you are. You can’t do it with your current level of skills. If you could, you would already be there and not be reading this book. Once you shift the question that’s repeating in your mind to “Am I willing to do what it takes?” and you answer “Yes,” here’s where you live: “I can, I will, I am. I can, I will, I am. I can, I will, I am.” Repeat that over and over. Keep seeing it, believing it, taking daily action, until you know with certainty that your dream is coming to fruition.
You’ve Had Your Sign-Up Date But Have You Had Your Birth Date?
My mentor Craig Holiday shared this with me: everybody in network marketing who achieves success has both a sign-up date and a birth date. Two totally different things. Your sign-up date is when you sign up to become a network marketer. Your birth date is when you actually give birth to this business. The business comes alive, starts forming, starts growing, then – just like a baby – the business is born!
So many people only have a sign-up date and never have a birth date. They don’t arrive at that point of being willing to do whatever it takes (as long as it’s aligned with their morals) to be successful in this business. For people who arrive at that birth date, everything starts to click. Network marketing becomes really, really fun. To quote Craig, “Building it fast is fun, but building it slow sucks.”
Getting into the Knowing Space
When I first got started with my business, sometimes I couldn’t sleep when I got into bed at night. I was both excited and overwhelmed by introducing this business opportunity and helping others. Sometimes I dreamed about lots of people coming to me to sign up before lots of people actually started coming. I remember a conversation around that time with Craig, who excels at planting a vision in your heart and your mind.
Craig: Keith, when it happens for you, when it really happens and that first million comes in, how are you going to react?
Me: I honestly don’t think it’s going to be a big deal.
Craig: What do you mean?
Me: I know it’s going to happen, Craig. There isn’t an ounce of doubt in me. It’s almost like it’s already happened.
That shows you my level of belief.
That’s where I want you to get.
How do you get there? By constant, obsessive visualization and dreaming. You visualize what you want every single day, where you’re going, the person you’re becoming. There are many practices you can implement for this: write down your vision in the morning, have a prayer with it, carry note cards with you, set a reminder on your phone that goes off every hour, make a dream board, put messages around the house on mirrors, on your refrigerator, anywhere you’ll see them over and over. Figure out what works for you.
Visualize what you want, and let go of what you don’t want.
Yes, negative thoughts will creep in – thoughts like “It’s not going to happen,” “It’s impossible,” “Who do you think you are?” It’s okay for those thoughts to arise, but it’s not okay for you to allow those thoughts to attach to you.
Action Step
Spend quiet time rolling around the following ideas in your mind until they become real for you and you start acting from that knowing:
What I have to offer is a gift, not a burden. I’ve made the decision to let go of any fear of approaching others with my opportunity. I know our industry has the ability to change the lives of those who join and the generations who follow.
Section Two
LEADING OTHERS
“Leading Others” lays out what you have to do to attract, identify, and eventually mentor leaders.
You will learn how to attract other leaders by using sequential positioning techniques so you are seen as an authority from the start. You will learn the two questions that go through every prospect’s subconscious mind and how to always be answering those questions. You will learn the two forces that move people to action in our business. You will learn several ways to “funnel” and “filter” distributors in your downline allowing you to focus your attention on those who have leadership potential and are motivated to grow. You will learn, step by step, how to mentor leaders. You
will learn the importance of building trust with those you mentor and how to build that trust. You will learn how to push those you are mentoring past their limiting beliefs and through their fears. You will learn my bridge system for walking leaders through each step of their development. Finally, you will learn what to do when one of your leaders no longer needs you.
Chapter 6
POSITIONING YOURSELF
AS A LEADER
I am not afraid of an army of lions led by a sheep;
I am afraid of an army of sheep led by a lion.
— Alexander the Great
You Must Be Seen as a Leader from the Start
To build a team of leaders, you must position yourself in the eyes of others as a leader from your initial contact, not just when you start working with them. When you are recruiting, people have to see you as a leader, which involves conveying to everyone you come across in this business that you know what you’re doing and where you’re going, and you’re offering an invitation to come along.
When I signed up as a distributor, I went all in and talked to everybody I knew about the business opportunity.
I shared in a simple but passionate way: “I just got signed up as a distributor with XYZ Company, not sure if you’ve heard of them before, but it’s something I’m going to run with 100 percent. Would you be willing to check this out? You don’t have to commit to it or sign up, but please just check it out.”
That’s all I said to the first thousand or so people I talked to. I didn’t do anything more than that.
Here is the difference maker: when I approached others about joining me in this business, they saw me as a leader they could follow right from the start.
Build to Last Page 5