I have tried but have not been able to verify the veracity of the story I am about to relate, but true or not, it makes a very good point.
When the USA was falling behind in the space race to the their old foes, the Russians, President Kennedy made a trip to Cape Canaveral. As he toured the facilities he asked three janitors, “What is it you do here?” The three answers were diverse and telling:
1. “Earn a living.”
2. “I pick up the trash.”
3. “Mr. President, I’m helping to put a man on the moon.”

The fabulous book Brains on Fire says:

You can’t have passion without purpose. The two are intertwined. What are you passionate about? And why are you passionate about it? Now, how does that connect with a sense of purpose? That part of you that believes you’re making a difference or standing up for something you believe in?

Perhaps it is a time to do a passion check of your employees and see how it compares with the field. Do the newbies or those with less visible roles understand the importance of having passion and purpose? Does the field feel excited when they come to your office or do they feel it is “us against them”? Maybe it is time to find out.

Even for those people who are untrained in body language meanings, contradictions in body and words have a negative affect. When a person is saying one thing with their mouth and another with their body, the conversation feels awkward and insincere.  Awkward conversations will crush any perceived trust, and will doom any chance of a sale or follow up. For those trained in body language meanings, words are secondary to the message being sent by the body. When you study body language, you will be able to see clear contradictions between what a prospect is saying with their mouth and their body.

In many sales and prospecting meetings, the inexperienced salesperson or networker leaves a meeting with a prospect completely pumped about getting the sale because the prospect was saying all the right things. In reality, the only positive thing the prospective was saying was coming from his or her mouth. The prospect just wanted to get rid of the annoyance in front of her by feigning interest. The insincere words spoken by the prospect deceived the inexperienced salesperson, but with training, the salesperson could see that the prospect’s legs and arms were crossed, one hand was covering a portion of her mouth and the prospect was never able to look the perceived annoyance in the eye. An experienced salesperson and student of body language would have seen these warning signs and stopped the sales pitch to get to the bottom of the real problem or doubt. An experienced body language reader would have known that if the person did not begin to open up, this sale was doomed and a follow up would never have resulted in a sale, no matter how many times the salesperson followed up.

In The Definitive Book of Body Language we learn, “Body language is an outward reflection of a person’s emotional condition. Each gesture or movement can be a valuable key to an emotion a person may be feeling at the time.” If you begin to watch, your prospects will be telling you far more with their gestures and body then with words.

I pride myself in being able to connect with people and create enjoyable environments for productivity, but I have made some big mistakes addressing body language. I have had experiences with a person who could not stand me and it was evident whenever we met. My meetings with this person were never very comfortable no matter what I tried. In two of my meetings I made the big mistake of pointing out that the person’s arms and legs were folded and one of his hands was covering a portion of his mouth; all signals that this person did not trust me and or disliked me very much. The meetings were very uncomfortable and discomfort is a unproductive setting when you are trying to get things done. In our business dealings, this person definitely felt himself my superior, and he hated me trying to get to the bottom of his feelings during our meetings no matter how big of an impediment I felt it was toward a resolution. In fact my reads infuriated him and he was quick to remind me. I learned quickly that when a person feels he or she is your superior, be very careful pointing out that they do not look physically comfortable with how the conversation is going. Read the body language and do your best to address the problem with a different direction in the conversation. Not until you feel very comfortable with the person sitting across from you, do you point out that avoidance of eye contact and other body signals are causing a problem in the conversation.

Successful follow up meetings can be critical to your business. You owe it to yourself to avoid leaving a meeting thinking that you are further ahead than you really are. If you understand basic body signals, you will have a good idea of how the follow up will go before you even leave your first meeting. When you understand the basics, you can save yourself weeks of fruitless follow up.

• How long should you wait before you contact your prospect after a meeting?
• What did I do wrong they were so interested?
• Am I cut out for this?

Anybody who has ever read a book on sales etiquette or has experience in sales knows that the follow up is just as important as the meeting itself. As entrepreneurs enter the 21^st century is it ok to email or text the prospect, or should you just call? Even more important than how you get back with the prospect is when should you get back to the prospect? I have compiled a list of answers from some of the world’s best entrepreneurs in an attempt to give answers to when you should get back to your prospects without worrying if you are acting out of place or being a pest.

We’ll start this series of posts off with one of my personal favorites, Jeffrey Gitomer. In his book, The Little Red Book of Sales Answers, Gitomer asks, “Are you a sales leader or a sales chaser?”

“Chasing your prospect too hard? People not calling you back? Pushing too hard for orders? Try running the other way – let the prospect chase you. It’s the best follow-up technique I’ve ever experienced.”

“If prospects are not returning your call, whose fault is that? You’re chasing too hard. They’re running away. You couldn’t get their interest. You couldn’t get them to chase you.

Here are some tell-tale symptoms the chase is going the wrong way:

• You’ve followed up a few times, and now you’re searching for a reason to call them – but you can’t think of one.
• You are uncomfortable about calling, you are unprepared, you have not established the needs of the prospect, you are unsure of their status, or you don’t have much rapport with the prospect (or some of each).
• You call, get their voice mai, and hang up.
• You left your best message and they didn’t call you back.
• They told you a decision would be made Tuesday, and Tuesday has come and gone.
• The prospect is giving you a bunch of lame excuses. And you are accepting them!
• And the worst symptom of all – you are blaming the prospect for you inability to generate enough interest, create enough value, or for not having a solid reason to call you back.”

If you have never read any of Gitomer’s books and you are an entrepreneur, it is time to invest in your education. The guy is funny and he can cut right through the bologna. His books are short and easy to read. If you want to learn more from one of the masters on how to get prospects’ attention and more on how to follow up with your prospects, he is a must read.

I follow many different business writers on their blogs. It is no secret, I love to read Seth Godin. However, I also love to read the posts of Marc Cenedella, CEO of TheLadders.com. In his most recent post he spoke about “The Intelligent Entrepreneur”, a new book out from author Bill Murphy. In the book, Murphy distills 10 rules of successful entrepreneurship from the stories of several Harvard Business School graduates.

Much of Cenedella’s post is below:

As I read through the stories, and looked at Bill’s rules, it struck me that there are similarities between the successful entrepreneur and the successful job-seeker. You’re both trying to create something new — a new company or a new position for yourself. You’re both faced with the emotional challenges that go with any new endeavor. There are plenty of setbacks along the way in starting a company and getting a job. And success is dependent on sticking to it and seeing it through.

So with that in mind, I thought I’d share five of Bill’s 10 rules with you and show how they apply to your job search.

#2 Find a problem, then solve it.

It’s not enough in the 21st century to simply describe yourself to future employers as “I’m a finance guy” or “I’m a saleswoman.” Particularly in this difficult economic environment, you need to let your future boss know what kind of problem you can solve for him or her. So be specific about what you bring to the table: “I’m a finance professional who specializes in Sarbanes-Oxley and really enjoys working with internationally headquartered companies to meet American regulatory requirements” or “I’m a sales professional who loves working with biotech start-ups as they go from pre-revenue to $10 mm in sales.”

Find a problem, and then let your future boss know how you will solve it.

#4 You can’t do it alone.

The job search can be a lonely endeavor and you can’t possibly make it alone. You’ll need the support of your family and friends, and being honest with them about the trials and tribulations you’re experiencing is an important part of your emotional well-being during the search. You’ll also need to rely on your colleagues and contacts, and have them on the lookout for you during your job search. (See my advice last week on this topic: “Ask for a reference, not a job.”)

Enlisting the aid of the people you know for support, advice, and connections is the way to your next great job.

#5 You must do it alone.

But as much as you’ll need to rely on family, friends and colleagues, it is ultimately going to depend on you. You’ll need to make the calls, you’ll need to do the follow-up, and you’ll need to be prepared for the interviews. When it’s 10:17 a.m. on Tuesday morning and you’re staring at the phone thinking about making that follow-up call, it’s up to you, and you alone, to pick up the phone and dial the digits. Nobody else can do it for you.

Understanding that you’ll need to make the commitment, set aside the appropriate amount of time, and then fight through our natural tendency to procrastination, is key to your success.

#8 Learn to sell.

Take your annual earnings and multiply by five. That’s the value of the product you are selling — the next five years of your labor. It’s the most important sales job you’re going to have, and you need to learn how to sell. You need to qualify the buyer — make sure they need an expensive product like you — and then explain to them the benefits they’ll get by purchasing — how you’ll help solve the problems they’re facing in their business.

Too often we can allow ourselves to slip into focusing on what I need out of the job hunt. You have to remember that it’s not about you, it’s about what your future employer needs. And you need to sell them on how you fulfill those needs better than any other candidate.

#9 Persist, persevere, prevail.

The job hunt is filled with twists and turns — moments of hope and days of despair. That’s normal. Even the most successful, polished, high-priced executives and professionals that we work with here at TheLadders have those weeks when the phone is not ringing, emails go unanswered, and the creeping doubts seem to loom larger.

It’s all part of the job-seeking process, and in order to be successful, you’ll need to overcome those difficulties. It is only persistence and perseverance that will see you through the bad days and the tough interviews. Anybody who has started a company, and everybody who goes through the job search, experience tough times. Stick to it, know that you are valuable, and you will make it through to success!

To learn the other five rules of successful entrepreneurship, I’d recommend you go pick up “The Intelligent Entrepreneur” today.

In network marketing we build romantic stories about the successful leaders. We imagine that they hit home runs every at bat, throw 90 yard touch down passes and sink hook shots from 50 feet out on a consistent basis. It reminds of the Mel Gibson Classic Braveheart, where a young soldier doubted Wallace’s identity because he looked too ordinary:

William Wallace: Sons of Scotland! I am William Wallace.

Young Soldier: William Wallace is seven feet tall!

William Wallace: Yes, I’ve heard. Kills men by the hundreds. And if HE were here, he’d consume the English with fireballs from his eyes, and bolts of lightning from his arse.

Click here to view the embedded video.

It borders the absurd how we describe the accomplishments of ordinary people (Network marketing icons are really just normal dudes like the rest of us). This improper characterization is bad for new people and discourages rather than keeping them going. Who in the world really ever built their business without getting the crud beat of them?  New people get discouraged if they think they have to live up to impossible feats of marketing. In reality network marketing legends become what they are because they do the little things well. In an Eric Worre video post, he accurately tells us the secret to retention in network marketing is really just small victories. He is right.

Jenkins Lloyd Jones summed life up pretty well when he said, “[The fact is] most putts don’t drop. Most beef is tough. Most children grow up to be just people. Most successful marriages require a high degree of mutual toleration. Most jobs are more often dull than otherwise… Life is like an old?time rail journey delays, sidetracks, smoke, dust, cinders and jolts, interspersed only occasionally by beautiful vistas and thrilling bursts of speed.”

The people who think they will build their businesses with 4,000 people at every meeting and sponsoring only superstars do not understand how real success is achieved in MLM. Only marketers who consistently and diligently achieve small successes will create extraordinary profits in network marketing or make a lasting difference in the lives of their downline.

If you want a group of successful people in your downline, teach them that you will not fill coliseums without filling out a ton of names lists with newbies, teaching them to get passionate about a great product and sharing it with others. Great accomplishments are rarely achieved by overcoming the impossible with a miraculous effort in a short period of time. Great success in network marketing comes from creating habits over time that allow you to build persistently and which allow you to consistently improve your performance.

Great marketing leaders such as Eric Worre, Dexter Yager and Doug Wead are often credited with making a giant impact on groups. These icons within network marketing became who they are because of their ability to do the small things every day. I would even go so far as to say that the icons in network marketing are who they are because of the thousands of people like you and me who are doing the small things each day in their downline. The ultimate downline does not consist of just an incredible leader, but a group of people dedicated to the same goal. May I be so bold as to say that our main goal should be to deliver small victories every day to our new people.

It is time to dispel the myth of the network marketing Hail Mary which is the false belief that we can skip the growth pains and create the foundation for our business instantly and painlessly.  Hail Mary’s almost never work in American football and it does not work in MLM either. True success comes from the small and simple things done continuously. When we do the basics of network marketing consistently it can lead to exhilarating moments when we fill an arena with people.

Great leaders in network marketing are just simple people. I have met so many of them and what makes them geniuses is the fact that they know they are not geniuses. Our industry will become respected and our incomes sustained when we realize that we too can create extraordinary results by consistently doing the ordinary.

“If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up people together to collect wood and don’t assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.”

– Antoine de Saint-Exupery

I would say that network marketing, just like other means of marketing is chuck full of liars.  It is too bad, because it is counter productive. Godin says that lying doesn’t pay off anymore in marketing.  The problem with lying is that when you “fabricate a story that just doesn’t hold up to scrutiny, you get caught. Fast.” Godin is right, it seems so simple.  If we lie, people will catch on and then we are doomed. Trust breaks down, attrition gets out of control and leaders get burned out trying to maintain their past incomes. Yet so many network marketing leaders, executives and those profiting from big commissions ignore the lies when it will ultimately burn them. Why?

Let’s list a couple of the big lies: everybody can succeed in network marketing, all you have to do is sign up 3 people and you don’t need to know how to sell to succeed in network marketing. Those lies may have worked 10 years ago, but consumers are getting smarter and the reality sinks into new marketers pretty fast that you can’t make a profit just by buying a spot in a downline.

I was speaking to a marketer last month and I asked him how much money he wanted to make.  He told me $10,000 a month (I think that is what he was taught to say).  ”Wow,” I thought, “I wonder how much money he makes in his job and how big was his best commission check in a year of building his business?” This great guy has never made close to $10,000 a month at his job and his biggest commission check was less than $250.  Some people may say, “Good for him, he has a big goal to get him through the discouragement.”  I say, bologna.  This guy needed help understanding to get to $10,000 a month, he needed to get to $500 a month first. If he has never made $500 a month in 12 months, how discouraged is he going to be when he realizes he may never make $10k? He’ll quit before he ever makes it at this pace.

I am going to explore the silly lies that we tell ourselves in network marketing for a few days and a better way to go about our stories.  Seth Godin says, “So, go tell a story. If it doesn’t resonate, tell a different one. When you find a story that works, live that story, make it true, authentic, and subject to scrutiny.  All marketers are storytellers.  Only losers are liars.”

Hallelujah Seth. People are joining us in network marketing, but statistically speaking MLM has not grown much faster than inflation in the past 5 years. Ouch. For such a great distribution methodology, perhaps its time we start telling a story that actually resonates.

Most people say they are dedicated to real training, but they are not willing to put in the time to do it right up front.  Consequently, they never have enough time to do what they want to do.  Their business owns them, they do not own a business.  If you don’t put the time in now, you will have even less time as your business begins to consume you.

A real training system must involve more live and automated weekly training followed up by mentors holding new marketers accountable to what they are learning.  If you want your people to grow in skills and confidence, they must have interaction with mentors or upline on a regular basis, preferably 5-6 times a week.  Without the interaction, your people will find other things to take up their time and energy.  To turn an employee into an entrepreneur does not happen overnight, but it does and can happen.

Training without accountability will fail most of the time.  To ignore that most marketers are not making a profit is just sticking your head in the sand.  We need each other to succeed in almost everything.  When we teach a new marketer a skill, we must reteach that concept again and again until it sticks.  In addition to repetition, the new marketer must also have contact from somebody in the upline 5-6 times a week to ensure that the new concepts are being implemented.

As soon as a new marketer leaves a training, there is immediate falloff of skills or ideas taught.  Skills improve in the short term, but will drop shortly thereafter. By teaching core principles on a consistent basis and repeated, skills improve now and become habits through repetition and accountability.  When your marketers are saying the same thing on level 35 as they are on level 4, your message to future prospects is the same no matter where you go on the globe. You become less burdened because you were disciplined to insist on proper training through all levels of your organization.

Vital network marketing training concepts:

• Teach new marketers in small chunks each day through:
  • A curriculum based Written Guide
  • Course of 500 word short emails sent 5 days a week to new marketers with a daily action to assigned.
  • Upline and Mentor accountability 5-6 days a week
• Video Curriculum – 3 minute teaching videos sent according to a curriculum once a week.
• Conference Call Curriculum – based upon the written guide.
• Accountability
  • Automated tools for top mentors/leader distributors.
  • 60-90 second calls 5 days a week to a building upline
• Mentor RSS feeds to show proper actions and “living the life” examples.

New marketers can succeed.  We just need to understand marketers better to really help them.  When your people have sharpened their skills, your downline and company will build better, faster and will be surprised you how much extra time you have.  Chet Holmes says, “Train or feel the pain.”  I agree, whether you are new or already have a big group, you better start real training now before your people leave you for someone who does.

1. They don’t know what to do.
2. They don’t know how to do it.
3. They don’t know why they should do it.
4. They feel there are obstacles beyond their control.

When people join network marketing to make money, they need significant training to make large checks.  To think otherwise is ignoring the obvious.  There are many people who have short term success who are fooled into thinking they have all the answers before their group begins to fall a part.

Profitability in network marketing is achieved by doing simple things 5-6 days a week.  When I say simple, I mean it.  However, simplicity is usually what trips most people up.  Leaders should track these simple activities of their proteges.  With thousands of people in a downline this may seem daunting.  All the more reason to train your people quickly so they are taking much of the load off of you.  If you fail to put the time into proper training of basic business building, you will be overwhelmed and stretched too thin to ever have a big group that sustains.

Here are 4 basic things that a new marketer should be doing 5 or 6 days every week.  They are very simple but “for precept must be upon precept, line upon line, here a little, and there a little” is how great things come to pass:

1. A minimum of 15 minutes everyday of reading from books, goal planning and daily activities planning.  One hour would be better, but most people struggle with 15 minutes in the beginning.
2. Upline accountability call.  Every day a call should be made to hold themselves accountable for these 4 daily items.  The call should not be more than 90 seconds most days.
3. Business development.  This may include showing the plan, making a prospect call, a follow up call or even just having lunch with a friend to reintroduce yourself. People need to learn to talk to each other again, businesses will grow when we make an effort to be with people, not just talk business.
4. Downline development. Once a day someone in your downline should be called, encouraged, trained and promoted.  If your group is new, don’t overwhelm your new people by calling the same person over and over again.  Use some common sense.

When proteges start to be active each day as an entrepreneur, they will start to program themselves to do what is needed to be profitable.  Be patient with new people as they have years of employee programming to overcome.

Stay with me as I discuss automation tools to simplify this process in upcoming posts.

Network marketing fails when untrained marketers use up their credibility collateral with friends and family and think they have nobody left to talk to. New marketers are often not skilled enough to sell enough product or to enroll sufficient distributors into their business to make money. As network marketing leaders we must get better at mentoring our people to gain the skills needed to become profitable.

Last year I attended a Zrii function where Anthony Robbins addressed the audience.  He told the crowd that if you can influence yourself first, then you have power. He said that if can you get yourself to do what is necessary, you will have power to succeed.  The problem that most new marketers have is that for most of their lives they have had employee patterns stamped into their psyche. A person that has been told when to be at work and when to go home will not likely start off well without someone there to guide him or her every step of the way.

In my last post, I wrote that to be happy we must develop our psychological muscles that determine good or bad patterns. We determine our happiness and we can change our mood and demeanor.  We get into patterns in our life. These patterns can make you succeed, fail or even create despair.  I believe a problem that we have in network marketing is that those who have been profitable in network marketing do not spend enough time with the new person to help them establish proper patterns because of being stretched too thin.  However, we must make time or systems that create time for the new people.  You simply cannot change years of programming with one motivational weekend.  It can take many repeated trainings to get our new people to where they need to be mentally in order to make network marketing a career.

Robbins also told the crowd that we must act during the time of decisiveness. I agree with him and the time when most people make the decision to build is right when they sign up with a company.  However, most new marketers wait too long after enrolling to act due to fear of the unknown.  We must get better at establishing success patterns with our new people from day one with regular training.  Huge group meetings are great, but daily patterns are not influenced by occasional motivation.

We need to teach our people to make more moments of decisiveness.  Big marketers are paid big commissions because the make many right decisions.  If you are going to lead, you must make decisions, even if some of them are wrong.  Most new marketers are too afraid to make decisions day in and day out.  We can help them learn to be a leader, and we must commit to regular training to grow now and long term.

Join me on my next post when I talk about what we should have our people doing each day to establish proper patterns and after that I will discuss how to implement regular training and still have a life.

To add to Churchill’s famous quote, when you are going through hell, just walk faster, you’ll come out.  Understand though that while you are going through your difficulties, you will find out who your real friends are and who your facebook friends are.  While we felt abandoned by many of the people we thought we had helped, we also realized how much our family loved and supported us.  In times of difficulty, you can worry about those who left you, or embrace those who stick with you.  We were lucky to have a great family.

Right around the time we lost our jobs, my plane ticket was cancelled for our distributor promotion trip to Hawaii.  With no job or prospects of money, I sat at home feeling hurt and betrayed while many of the distributors and employees we brought into the company were on a fancy company trip.  I had a decision to make.  Was I going to start studying for the bar to be an attorney or was I going to figure out a way to stay in network marketing? Either way, bankruptcy was staring me in the face.  To stay in network marketing was to stay in an industry that had embarrassed me and had brought a ton of negative emotions.  It also meant staying within an industry that is full of some of the most incredible people on the planet.

I decided to stay involved in network marketing in a way that would not distract from our company. My future aside, I wanted our distributors to remain unaffected.  I stayed in networking because I believe you must have the GUTS to be in an environment that makes you feel alive.  When you feel alive you don’t have to fill your life with food, alcohol or sports hero worship to make you happy.  Network marketing, with all its bugs and greed-based decisions, is also full of integrity, stories of greatness and most importantly it makes me feel alive.  Where else can I work with so many people and help them achieve something more than they thought possible financially, emotionally and spiritually?  There are not many ways outside of network marketing.

As the dust has settled, I have been honored by many of my friends and distributors that have come looking for my help again.  I really love being involved in their lives.  My new mentor business is booming and it feels great to be helping people.

To be happy we must develop our psychological muscles that determine good or bad patterns. We determine our happiness and we can change our mood and demeanor.  We get into patterns in our life. These patterns can make you succeed, fail or even create despair. To regain my confidence I had to recognize some patterns and change them in my life quickly to those that would enable me to help people again.

I have known how to build downlines for a long time, however, my experience has helped me understand how to overcome adversity even better. I am not the only one who had their heart broken by network marketing.  It didn’t do me a bit of good to feel beaten.  I determine what I want and I determine my happiness.  I strongly believe that when you know what people need and show them how to get it, you will make a difference in your own life and the lives of many others.

So, when do you give up…never. If you are going through hell, duck your head and run.  You’ll come out a bit toasty, but you’ll be better for it.

Join me on my next post as I explain how to improve your psychological muscles to get yourself to take action.

Answer – In a word, apathy.

Apathy is absence or suppression of passion, emotion, or excitement. When we are apathetic, we lack interest in or concern for things that others can find moving or exciting…  Summed up, we become lame duck, couch sitting, TV junkies, Cheetos eating bottom feeders.  (Was that too strong?)

“One of the first and most important steps toward any accomplishment is to find out what is holding us back,” Sterling Sill.

There are many reasons why people  give up on their dreams of financial and personal success.  However, few people wake up one day and say, “I’m done with my dreams, I’m not going to do what it takes to succeed any more.”

Statistics tell us that few people ever reach the top positions within any organization.  It does not matter if the top position is in traditional business companies or in network marketing.  Few people truly achieve greatness in anything.  However, there are a lot of people that skate through life having never really done anything truly spectacular.  Why is that?  We already discussed that most people don’t consciously turn off their dreams over night.  So what makes people apathetic toward success?

People slip into apathy in three ways:  ignorance, indecision, and indifference.

These three I’s are what I like to call “Success Sins.”  The problem with these three sins is that they are sins of omission, not commission.  This means that you commit them by doing nothing.  It is not big things that cause you to fail, it is the small things.  The small shrub is much more likely to trip you up than the giant oak.

Ignorance

Doers are almost never colossal failures.

• Wayne Gretzky says, “You miss 100 percent of the shots you never take.”
• Babe Ruth hit 714 career home runs, but he struck out 1,360 times.
• Abraham Lincoln was defeated in 1832 for the Illinois State Legislature, and in 1858 for the US Senate before he was elected to be President of the United States.
• Forbes says Donald Trump is worth $2.7 billion, but Trump’s business entities have used bankruptcy at least twice (that we know of) to regain financial health.

Potential success stories have been interrupted far more by failure to understand success principles and dedication to understand success principles than outside influences creating opposition.  That means that people trip themselves up far more often than someone or something getting in their way.  Ignorance is what stands between most people and their dreams.

So why don’t more people study success principles and become inspired by the success of icons such as Abraham Lincoln?  If we were to only take time each day to study other success stories we would see that are heroes are just people; flawed, scared and initially incompetent individuals who are willing to improve and seek answers through doing or studying the actions of a mentor.  The answers to success are right in front of us.  Inspirational stories surround us, but we are often just unwilling to look for the obvious answers to success.

Indecision

Decision making is crucial to success and some people just can’t make a decision.  Guess what, if you never decide to act you are in deep trouble if you want to be successful.  If you are committing the Success Sin of indecision you can strengthen your  decision making muscles.  I am not saying that you look before you leap, but doing nothing until you have a perfect knowledge of what is going to happen will just not happen.

Good intentions will not make you a success.  Good intentions acted upon will sometimes cause failure.  However, good intentions acted upon on a regular basis will propel you to new heights.  Procrastinating is simply delaying the inevitable and if you continue to postpone your future and you will lose interest in your dreams propelling you into couch potato mediocrity.

After too much procrastination and vacillation, some actually lose the power to make a decision. I know of one man whose mind is so perfectly balanced between the positive and the negative that he has great difficulty forming an opinion either one way or the other. His mind resembles a teeter-totter in perfect balance. There is as much weight pressing down on the negative end as on the positive. He has difficulty getting enough of a majority on either side to get a conviction.  It is the old story of the donkey starving to death midway between two piles of hay.  – Sterling Sill

Stop delaying your future, get out of your own way and make a darn decision.

Indifference

The biggest Success Sin is not that people disbelieve in success principles or that they can succeed, it is far worse when people just don’t care one way or the other. It is one thing to broke, but it is much worse to lack interest and enthusiasm.

When you are indifferent, you inner fire remains unlit and eventually is snubbed out permanently.

No one deliberately decides to be ignorant. Ignorance is indifference to learning. Sloth is indifference to industry. Weakness is indifference to strength.  -  Sterling Sill

Find something to care about.  Indifference will sap you of more strength than anything outside of you.

Success Sins

These three success sins probably rob more people of personal success than any thing else.

Thomas A. Edison said, “There is no expedient to which a man will not go to avoid the real labor of thinking.” If we are not actively thinking and planning our future, TV and those around us will plan our future for us.  I personally believe that NBC and HBO should not be planning my future.  James Allen and Proverbs tell us that we become think about.  We are so close to success if we just do our best each day to avoid apathy towards the things that are most likely to bring us our dreams.  It requires diligence and passion to succeed but isn’t our future worth it?   For many people success is far less important than clinging desperately to the mind numbing comfort of ignorance, indecision and indifference; just stop being one of them.

The three I’s have always been our biggest problem. We remain stricken with ignorance and poisoned by a continuous succession of small thoughts. We become centers of indifference. This prevents our progress. The three I’s develop a sort of “idleness and inactivity in perpetuity.” Sterling Sill

So what are you going to do about it?  Break the bad habits you have formed by the Success Sins.  Go out and make a decision quickly even if it is where you are going to lunch.  Read something positive everyday, even if it is only for a couple minutes.  Find a mentor, eat something healthy, write down a goal and do some exercise.  Get excited about something now to feel some energy pumping through your veins again.  Start now and change someting, even if it is small.  Make something out of your life by escaping apathy and you will find something in you that has always been there, maybe it has just been hiding.

I stole the title to this post, “When It’s Head Versus Heart, The Heart Wins.”  The original article for that title was written for Newsweek Magazine February 11, 2008.  That article was about voter tendencies and the sub title said:

“Science shows that when we are deciding which candidate to support, anxiety, enthusiasm and whom we identify with count more than reason or logic.

Your organization is looking for someone they can identify with.  They are looking to have fun and receive acceptance.  I have said many times on my site and to distributors that network marketing leaders are selling hope and dreams first, your product and service second.  Frankly, most people in your organization are not really looking to make money.  Maybe they got into your business to make money, but soon found that it takes commitment and they may not be ready to give true commitment of the hours and passion yet to make their business profitable financially.

Most companies tout the horsepower of their product and service in an attempt to keep people interested in buying their goods.  This may work for some customers, but this is no way to build a downline.  Statistics are used to promote reason and logic.  This will not keep your people in your business building long term.

Politicians have spent hundreds of millions of dollars attempting to get people to follow them.  The modern, successful politician understands his/her people and how to keep them as faithful constituents.  Like a good politician, you must understand the hearts and minds of your downline.  You must understand that you are often the guardians of their hopes and dreams.  However, unlike many politicians that conduct polls and surveys to manipulate their message, I hope you are trying to understand your people so you can help them, not use them to make only your dreams come true.

I believe that there is nothing wrong for people to be involved with network marketing because they love the product and the association with people who make them feel good about themselves.  It is powerful to give people positive associations and new outlooks on life.  You can make money from the product those people buy.  You can be a positive outlook on their life.  And, just because they are not making money and you are, they are not a failure.  You just better be a good guardian of their needs in the process.

One of the better speeches on this positive thinking came from Tony Robbins.  Tony said,”It is ineffective to think positive only.  You wouldn’t go into your garden and chant ‘No weeds, no weeds.”  This is, as he called it, stupid.

Here are some Mandates on Leadership:

1. See problems as they really are, not better and not worse. You are not a leader if you ignore the facts.  Most people will make the facts worse than they are.  There are always problems, that is the nature of the universe, your goal must be to have a better quality of problems.  People make problems worse because most people only give 85% so that they have an excuse for failure.  They secretly don’t have the passion to completely follow through because success requires commitment and they don’t want to commit.  It takes no courage to doubt things, pessimism is not seeing things as they are, it just means you are gutless.  You are sick and broke because you sit on the couch eating Cheetos and watch too much TV.  Whatever you believe in spiritually, you will live.  Fix your problems, do not wish them away and your life will get better.
2. If I have to prove it to you, you are not the right person. You are looking not to convert people, but you are looking to have people who already have some standard of leadership to see things as they really are.  There are cycles of times.  Winter follows Fall.  Some people freeze in the winter, others go skiing.  Arguing that it should not be winter is silly.  Take advantage of it and make your story positive.  History shows that many people make some of the most money during hard times.
3. Pessimism in the marketplace is power. When others buy, make sure you sell.  Don’t panic about what you have lost.  See things better than the way others see them.  Make things the way you see them, not the way others see them.  Work on your circumstances until they become in physical nature the way that you see them spiritually.  Kids do not start walking immediately.  Kids fall down, they bump their heads, they look silly trying to walk, but you don’t stop them.  What you focus on is what you get.  Your desires and motives will be what fuels your life.  Your motives will support life.

Question – What are leadership characteristics needed in network marketing to succeed?

Answer – Leadership principles are the same in network marketing as they are in almost every other human interaction.

I was searching leadership today and I found a blog with some excellent information on leadership.

Here are some action steps to enhance our Leadership Generosity:

Give people a sense of importance and meaning

Consider what small actions you can take today to make people feel that the work they do is important, and that they themselves, as people, are important to your team. Help connect the dots for them and help them see how they can and have helped others

Give encouragement and feedback, not criticism

If giving frequent criticism is your style of management, consider some of these questions: Is your motivation genuine, or is it to gain points? Are you picking the right moment? Are you stopping to reflect how you might deliver the feedback while still honoring the other person?  As a leader, giving people the gift of not just our appreciation for good work, but our genuine admiration for their talents, is generosity of spirit at its pinnacle. This is the difference between saying to someone: “Great job” versus “That was pure genius;” or “I appreciated your help” versus “I couldn’t have done it without you.” When it comes to genuine praise, like the sun at high noon, give resplendently. When you see good work, say it, and say it from the heart, just as you thought it. Free up the thought, and let it breathe – let it fly out there in the form of generous words, and watch what you get back. Giving is ultimately sharing.

Give people visibility

Giving people visibility on your team is a special gift we can give to help others shine and grow. Knowing that your leader is representing us well to senior leaders and upper management in your organization is a high-octane motivator, and engenders fierce loyalty.

Know when to forgive

Martin Luther King said that “The old law of an eye for an eye leaves everyone blind.” Consider how harboring vindictive thoughts, even though so compelling at times, is nothing but violence to oneself. A characteristic of a generous person is a total lack of resentment – it’s in effect being too noble, too big for that. Who do you need to forgive? What do you need to let go?

Share your knowledge and experience

Resolve to become a philanthropist of know-how. What knowledge, expertise, or best practices can you share with others as a way to enrich them? Share with no expectation of return!

Give anonymously

Real generosity of spirit is doing something for someone without their knowledge. I have had the pleasure of listening to John Jackson every morning for the last few months as a new leader in our organization and he ends each of his calls with this call for generosity – Do something for someone today that will really help without them ever knowing you gave that help.  That is real generosity!

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Click on the links below to help you get started.Some connections may take longer to load the videos below.  You may have to push the pause button while the videos upload completely.

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A: Don’t ever give up.

Is that really the secret?  It can’t be that easy you may say.  I tell you it is.  But never giving up is very hard for most people.  Don’t be one of them.

I love this cartoon.  I always have.  I have counseled some people to look at their first six months in network marketing as a learning period.  Whatever money you make is a bonus.  Sometimes it is a big bonus.  However, you must first learn before you can earn the big bucks.

Let me tell you the main reasons people fail in network marketing:

1. They are not talking to enough prospects.
2. They are not talking to the right type of prospect.
3. They are not following a proven success system.  (The right system tells them what to say and how to say it.)

Many people come into network marketing with these skills and a network developed.  Others do not.  However, all the skills that you will need to succeed can be developed if you are passionate about acquiring them.  Just don’t give up before you get there.

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Answer:  You may be holding on to things that are preventing you from the personal growth you need to get to the next level.

I recently received a tweet that said, “The universe cannot put good into your hand until you let go of what you are holding on to.”  How true this is.

I remember a book I read in the fifth grade.  Somehow a bunch of chimpanzees escaped and were evading recapture near a young boy’s home.  In order to befriend the chimps he had to get close to them.  The boy made a trap by putting food into a box that was big enough for the chimp to put his hand into the box.  However, when the chimp had the food in hand he became trapped because his closed fist would not come out of the box with the food.  To get free, all he had to do was let go of the food.

There are so many of us that have the answers to our troubles knocking us on the head each day.  However, we are too proud or lazy to let go of the unproductive past that is holding us back.  Is it TV, computer games, pride, or even fear that is holding you back?  Are you more passionate about emotional and financial freedom or holding on to the things that have made you comfortably miserable?

To gain your freedom and the prosperity you think you deserve, you may have to let go of what is keeping you captive.

Question – We are having growth in our business, but we are having too much attrition, what can I do to help people stay in the business long enough to start making real money?

Answer – Try having some fun.

Did you know that one of your main responsibilities as a successful network marketer is to start enjoying life again?  When you start to teach people to follow their dreams and to start living them now, you will create a culture of life and actually enjoying it. If you are not having BBQs, picnics and fun activities, you should probably start now.

Before I became a “serious” business person, I sure had a lot of fun.  I worked hard so I could play hard.  Snow skiing, water skiing, body surfing, golfing, snowmobiling, softball, beach volleyball, mountain biking…you get the picture.  If you start learning to have fun again you will keep more people in your business, you will keep more people ordering the product and you will start making more money.  The great part is that this will all be more realistic when your people are actually enjoying being in your business.

People stay where they see value.  People love being around people who are enjoying themselves. Start enjoying yourself.

(By the way, my body still looks the same as I did in purple shorts above, I just have a little less hair on my head.)

Answer: It can get better once you learn how to develop leaders.

John C. Maxwell once said, “A leader is one who knows the way … goes the way … and shows the way.”

Gary Eby summed up much of Maxwell’s thoughts when he wrote that powerful leaders promote leaders, they don’t just maintain followers. Powerful leaders not only mentally assent to knowing the way they actually go the right way. And true leaders then show the way to others. They duplicate themselves. Let’s make sure you understand this. I’ll say it again differently. ‘The “mediocre” teacher tells. The “good” teacher explains. The “superior” teacher demonstrates. The “great” teacher inspires.”

I love the idea that the great leader inspires people.  You can never prepare your people for every situation that they will ever encounter.  People must be inspired to great things, because a factually perfect presentation without inspiration is worthless.  You will not get people to follow you or to do great things if they lack inspiration.

Randy Gage has done a great job of describing what happens when people lack inspiration and a culture of duplication in their group:

…many people become “MLM Grinders.” These are the people who have to constantly replace their distributors because they drop out. They have to make all the presentations themselves, handle all the meetings, and pretty much do everything. If they slow down for one minute, things start to unravel in their group. They’re always grinding, but the recognition, big bonus checks, and free cars and trips always seem just a little out of reach.

Remember the parable about the emperor with no clothes?

Grinders are in a similar situation. They sell lifestyle and talk about residual income, but the sad truth is they don’t really have either. They work night and day because they’re afraid to let up. If they were to stop grinding for even a month or two, their income would shrivel up and die.

Duplication is key, but you will have to give up some of your control and teach people to do the right thing for their groups.  So what is the right thing?  You must learn to inspire people to learn more about themselves and the true principles of duplication.

Start today by clicking here to sign up for the next Secrets of Network Marketing teleseminar.

Why are some people successful when others are a complete failure in life and in network marketing?  Is there a secret that makes some people so successful while others fail?  The simple answer is yes.  There is a secret to network marketing and if you follow what I teach in the course, you will succeed.

There are many thousands of ordinary people who have learned and mastered the secrets of network marketing and are making six- and seven-figure incomes – the vast majority of them right from their own homes.  The wonderful part about network marketing is that these small business owners usually consist of single entrepreneurs or couples, but these small businesses have made people millions of dollars with an initial investment that usually costs less than a typical car payment.  Many people have heard of these success stories, I want to help you become one of them.

You could already be on the right path, or soon you could be on the right path soon.  Simply stated, network marketing is extraordinarily unique.  How many businesses will let you start from scratch, with very little initial investment, no prior experience and give you a legitimate chance of becoming a millionaire?  You can succeed if you have little money now or even if you have made a lot of money from another source.

Let’s start today on your path to success in network marketing.

Dedicated to your success,

Jeffery Boyle

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There is nothing wrong with wanting to make more money.  I repeat, there is nothing wrong with wanting to make more money.

There is a book written over 100 years ago by Wallace Wattles that is likely what started the whole self-help revolution we see today.  In his incredible book he says:

It is perfectly right that you should desire to be rich; if you are a normal man or woman you cannot help doing so. It is perfectly right that you should give your best attention to the Science of Getting Rich, for it is the noblest and most necessary of all studies. If you neglect this study, you are derelict in your duty to yourself, to God and humanity; for you can render to God and humanity no greater service than to make the most of yourself.

If you are afraid to talk about money, people will feel it either concsiously or subconsciously.  You cannot run from your fears.  You must accept the fact that God wants you to be the best you can be and today, you need money to buy food, clothing, shelter, give to charity, have leisure time from your hard work and have the resources to better educate yourself on the wonders of this world.

There are three motives for which we live; we live for the body, we live for the mind, we live for the soul. No one of these is better or holier than the other; all are alike desirable, and no one of the three–body, mind, or soul–can live fully if either of the others is cut short of full life and expression. It is not right or noble to live only for the soul and deny mind or body; and it is wrong to live for the intellect and deny body or soul.

Live for the soul and mind, but do not forget the body.  You can be comfortable making money, but first you must be comfortable talking about money.

Answer: Yes, but it still works, and if it works, why fight it.

I have spent a lot of time this week calling purchased leads with an IBO. We have taken turns calling on these premium leads so he has an idea of how to cold call. It has been fun because I have done a lot of cold calling in my life, however, it is a lot of work and after many hours of calls we only have a few interested prospects. We also know that we will have a lot of work to get these prospects to become IBOs.

The same time we are making cold calls on leads we are also making his names list and calling his friends and family. We are having more success with the “old way” without question.

Meetings are good for belief, one on one meetings still build your base and your upline is still a powerful tool that deserves edification.  So many times, IBOs want to shortcut time-tested methods that still work today with new technologies.  I recommend that people not give up on what has worked for many years.  Friends, family and acquaintences have always been a good place to start.  You will feel very bad if you go to a meeting and see a friend has joined the business with another person.

I believe in social networking. I use twitter to notify IBO of news and good thoughts. I love Facebook but I don’t overdo it. I don’t invite IBOs to know about how I brush my teeth or when I like to go to bed. The new technologies are good but can be abused.  When things are abused, they stop being effective and simply become white noise.

Build your list, go to meetings for inspiration and don’t quit. You can succeed at this business.

Answer – Competition is fine, but be careful, be very careful.  Be a good winner.

I love to play sports. I love competition. There is nothing like the thrill of a game and there is a great feeling of winning a well fought battle. However, after you win, there is no need to spit in the face of your competitors and taunt them after they loose.

CS Lewis said it pretty well when he talked about pride and competition.

Pride gets no pleasure out of having something, only out of having more of it than the next man. … It is the comparison that makes you proud: the pleasure of being above the rest. Once the element of competition has gone, pride has gone.

Take it with money. Greed will certainly make a man want money, for the sake of a better house, better holidays, better things to eat and drink. But only up to a point. What is it that makes a man with œ10,000 a year anxious to get œ20,000 a year? It is not the greed for more pleasure. œ10,000 will give all the luxuries that any man can really enjoy. It is Pride – the wish to be richer than some other rich man, and (still more) the wish for power. For, of course, power is what Pride really enjoys: there is nothing makes a man feel so superior to others as being able to move them about like toy soldiers. What makes a pretty girl spread misery wherever she goes by collecting admirers? Certainly not her sexual instinct: that kind of girl is quite often sexually frigid. It is Pride. What is it that makes a political leader or a whole nation go on and on, demanding more and more? Pride again. Pride is competitive by its very nature: that is why it goes on and on. If I am a proud man, then, as long as there is one man in the whole world more powerful, or richer, or cleverer than I, he is my rival and my enemy.

I believe that a major problem we see in our industry is that we spend so much time battling each other we don’t make our own companies the best they can be.  And I don’t just mean one company battle the other, but one line within the same company battle the other.  I would also be willing to bet that many of the companies in our industry also fail because the corporate leadership can’t balance their need for recognition with that of the field or the other officers within the company.

Network marketing is in a good spot.  The rest of the economy is in the tank.  We are thriving.  I heard a statistic that only 15% of the population is participating in any level in network marketing.  Who knows how many are actually doing something.  So instead of going after a huge segment of the population that is hurting we are going after each other.  STOP IT.

We can win in network marketing without crushing the competition. There is no need to demean and crush your upline, downline, company or competition.  The beauty of this wonderful industry is that you succeed by helping others.  We can change the fortunes of many, let’s just try doing it without rubbing salt in the wounds of our defeated foes, it is not productive.

Answer – success isn’t the result of spontaneous combustion. People must be willing to set themselves on fire.

It would be great if we could motivate ourselves and downline as easy as lighting a match on gasoline, but it doesn’t work that way. Some people can’t get motivated if their life depended on it. And frankly a complete life requires motivation.

If your downline can’t get excited about the business then quit waiting for them. Move on and hope they will some day see why you are on fire.

Answer – You always move on, but never give up, never surrender.

Today we met with a prospect we first contacted almost a year ago. When we first met, we spent almost a month trying to get him to join us. He eventually chose another company. We were disappointed, but we parted on very friendly terms.

However, we have stayed in touch periodically and remained friendly. After a year of not pushing but also not letting him forget, he now is quite interested.

Send top prospects an email monthly to say hi. Invite them to be a Facebook friend. Wish them happy birthday. Stay visible but not obtrusive. You never know what will come of it.

Answer: I hope you have signed up for a FREE Twitter account. If not get on it.

Twitter.com

Here’s something you can do within the next two minutes that can produce results for you almost immediately to build your existing downline and to get new leads.

If you haven’t heard of “Twitter” before, it is time to learn. I have always been a big advocate of technology but this one was built for network marketing. This post will teach you how to sign up, my next Twitter post will teach you how to use it. You need to know how it could help you build your business. This is a powerful tool and not just a toy for techies.

As I have been preparing social media ideas for my site and how they integrate into network marketing, I was blown away with the possibilities Twitter has for our business. This incredible lead generation and downline tool is a free service and is powerful.

Twitter has absolutely exploded into the social media scene and due to it being free and so useful, it will become even more powerful for our industry, even if they start to charge for it.

Fortune 500 companies like AT&T, State Farm Insurance, Verizon, Dell, IBM and many others are now using it to bond with their customers and promote their brand. If you haven’t yet created a free account you are missing the boat. Get on it.

It’s a great way to…

-Quickly reach new audiences of potential business partners and customers.

-Interact with each one of your downline on a personal and genuine level… while at the same time reaching huge numbers of people.

-Answer downline questions and inform them of upcoming products, events, or promotions.

-Build trust and get them bonded and connected to you by just being yourself.

You need to know that this could be one of the best tools you invest in all year to grow your business. And guess what, the investment is FREE.

Just follow these three simple steps.

1) To create your account, go to:

http://www.twitter.com

2) Click on the “Join The Conversation” button in the middle of the page.

3) Enter your name and email address and choose a username and password.

Very Simple stuff.

Once you create your account visit me at: http://www.twitter.com/jeffboyle

Then click the “follow” button that’s displayed underneath my photo.

Here’s what will happen after that.

You will start to receive daily thoughts on being positive and how to build your own personal brand and your business.

So take a few minutes to create an account at http://www.twitter.com.

Then visit my page at:

http://www.twitter.com/jeffboyle

And click the “follow” button that’s displayed underneath my photo.

Dedicated To Your Success,

Jeff

Answer – This one is simple; edify, edify and then edify some more.

There is nothing that will destroy momentum and a team mentality faster than negativity creep. Network Marketing groups should not resemble an episode of Survivor or the board room with Donald Trump on the Apprentice.

If you want to grow then keep negative comments about your company, upline, meetings, downline, crossline, the weather, taxes, competition, your wife, your teenagers, Obama, Republicans, communism, and gingivitis to yourself. If you have struggles, find a mentor and look to find solutions. If you find a shoulder to cry on, then you will just keep crying.  Don’t do it.

Get tough and you can get rich. Find the positive in life and talk nice about others, it will be incredible for your business.

In traditional business only 29% of new businesses are still in existence at the end of year 10.  The largest percentage of failure comes in the first 5 years, when half of startups go belly up.   Many critics of network marketing claim that the failure rate is much higher than that for anyone choosing to get involved in the industry.

Although I will not argue that getting involved into any type of business does not have its risks, network marketing has many advantages over traditional businesses regardless of what critics claim to be its success rates.  The main advantage of network marketing is the low startup costs involved with a potential huge rate of return.  Additionally, if the critics really looked at the individuals who treated their networking business as a full-time career and not a hobby, they would see a large number of six figure earners.  Numbers that are much higher than corporate America employees or small business entrepreneurs.

The purpose of this Success Answer is not to debate the merits of network marketing versus traditional businesses, but to give you a couple ideas that will help you keep in mind as you start you network-marketing career:

•    Realistic Expectations and a never die attitude.  When I first joined network marketing when I was 22 I expected to make $5,000 a month in a year.  After 9 months of doing about 10 presentations a month, I had made a total of $18.  $2 a month is not very good.  I changed who I was talking to, I got better at presenting, and I did not quit.  Never give up, never surrender.
•    Get better, don’t quit – Learn how to sell.  Yes, I said it, learn to sale.  My 2 year old rocks at selling.  He asks until he gets it.  I don’t suggest laying on the floor in a tantrum if people don’t get in with you, but believe in your product and realize that the best lawyers are good at selling their product.  The best actors know how to sell their services.  The best network marketers know how to sell.  You should too.
•    Work full or part time, not sometimes.  A career pays, a hobby costs.  Decide you will stop thinking about your business and just build it.  Build it consistently, build it daily, build it with passion.

A goal is really just a dream with a plan and a deadline.   But real goal making is more complicated than just telling yourself that you want something.  Real goal making includes accountability, commitment, and writing down one’s goals.  Research recently conducted by Dr. Gail Matthews shows that people who wrote down their goals, shared this information with a friend, and sent weekly updates to that friend were on average 33% more successful in accomplishing their stated goals than those who merely formulated goals.  In other words, write it down and get a mentor to share your goals with.

In the previous step, I asked you to spend some time analyzing your starting point in network marketing by filling out a self-analysis form.  The reason I believe that self-analysis is so important is that it gives you a realistic picture of where you are right now and where you want to be.  Now that you understand where you stand today, you need to have an understanding of what it will take to get where you want to be.  Time to become a goal achiever.

This part of Success Answers is detailed and will take you some time to complete.  However, failure to treat your goals properly will allow you to minimize their importance and you will lose valuable time in achieving your dreams.  In fact, failure to go through the steps I describe will likely result in rationalizing away your dreams as being unachievable.

Abraham Maslow said, “If you plan on being anything less than you are capable of being, you will probably be unhappy all the days of your life.”  I am here to tell you that your Creator has great plans for you.  You are capable of greatness and understanding goals and their importance will help you achieve greatness.  Don’t sell yourself short.  Become great, become a goal achiever.

“Mind is the master power that mold and makes
and man is mind, and evermore he takes
The tool of thought, and, shaping what he wills
Brings forth a thousand joys, and a thousand ills.
He thinks in secret, and it comes to pass
Environment is but his looking glass.”
James Allen

Before we go through the process of how to properly set goals, remember that you will never have a perfect knowledge of how to get something done before you start.  You do not learn to swim by reading a book.  You learn to swim by getting in the water.  Ralph Waldlo Emerson said, “Do the thing and you will get the energy to do the thing.”
Goals are Serious Business

“A goal that is casually set and lightly taken
is freely abandoned at the first obstacle.”
Zig Ziglar

Your goals will scare you, but don’t let that stop you.  If you are not a little worried about how you will achieve your goal, it is not likely big enough.  Make your goal big and beautiful.  Make your goal something you are passionate about.  Your goal should be something you want, not just something you need.  Your wants will inspire you to do things your needs can’t get you to do.

If you knew you could achieve anything what would you want?  Don’t be afraid to go wild here.  List 30 things you REALLY want, not need:

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Now that you have written down 30 things you want, it is time to prioritize them in order of importance.  Put the top 10 from above in order of importance in the “A” group, the next 10 in the “B” group and the last 10 in the “C” group.  A1 should be what you want most and are most passionate about.  A1 should excite you and scare you at the same time.  It should be something that makes you work harder than you have ever worked before.  A1 will also be the goal that you will write down on a goal card and carry with you.  The other 29 goals will be important to remember and many of which may be accomplished on your way to achieving your A1 goal.

“A” Goals
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10.

Now that you have prioritized your goals and have chose the one most important, you must now build an image of your goal in your mind in the present, not the future.  When you create a present need in your mind for your desired goal; your thoughts, actions and results will attract to you what you desire.  You must make a goal card and carry it with you.  Read your goal aloud each day and put a date on when you will achieve it.

The goal card can by simple with the date on top and a statement telling yourself that you have your goal accomplished.  A phrase such as, “I am happy and excited now that …”

Do not underestimate the simple importance of your goal card.  Simply having it with you will be important because it will be a constant reminder.  If you miss the date, then reset it. Get passionate about your goal.  Take pictures of your goal, get brochures, have some fun with it.  Make it apart of your daily thoughts.

If you accomplish your goal, then choose another more grandiose goal to pursue.  Never give up, never surrender, and have fun pursuing your dreams.

Answer: Learn to stretch yourself and create achievable goals.

Personal Success Assessment Form

To achieve more, you must be more. In order for you to truly understand where you are today, you must honestly assess where you are right now. A good way to understand where you are is by asking yourself some questions:

1. Do you spend time everyday talking to new prospects and following up with existing IBOs in your group?
2. Are you spending time each day learning more about people and the sales process?
3. Do you have a mentor that you can communicate with on a regular basis?
4. Do you have written goals with the date you want to achieve them?

Unless you responded yes to each question, you are likely selling yourself short in your business, and frankly in life. Don’t feel too bad, you are in the majority. Less than 30 percent of adults ever put their goals into writing. However, if you want to succeed at a high level you will need to learn to put your dreams into writing and set a date to achieve those dreams.

Whether or not you have practiced putting your goals into writing, a personal assessment of what you want to achieve in your network marketing business will be essential to your success. Even if you have been successful in other traditional businesses, the following assessment should be filled out and shared with an upline mentor. Together, you can build your future better by understanding what you want to achieve and what you are willing to do to achieve it.

Click Here for the Personal Assessment form.

Success Answer 1 – Successful network marketers dedicate themselves to a pattern of success and then teach others to follow.

Building a successful networking business starts with having a solid foundation. I believe that a solid foundation is built upon obtaining the right information and then becoming dedicated to learning and improvement.

I will be laying out a series of Success Answers that have been carefully created to help you maximize your chance for success. If you are empowered with the right information from the start you can create a solid foundation built on the right attitude and by creating proper expectations for your business. Two of the main causes of failure in network marketing are unrealistic expectations and lack of marketing skills. Nobody that is new to network marketing starts their business with all the knowledge and skills they need to build their business. Do not let this lack stop you from starting right away.

We learn to do by doing. Ralph Waldo Emerson stated it perfectly when he said, “Do the thing, and you will get the energy to do the thing.” You will never reach a destination on your journey if you wait for every light to turn green before you leave your garage. The same is true for your Jus International business. Get started today but do it with a dedication to learning as you go.

When you prepare to present the opportunity to others by studying the compensation plan and marketing techniques you will acquire important knowledge, for where we carry the lantern to light the path of others we light or own way. As we analyze and arrange the compensation/marketing plan to present to others, we have clarified our own minds. As we explain that which we are learning ourselves there seems to come to us an unfolding of additional information, and enlargement of our understandings, new connections and applications.

Commit to learning something new each day. Take notes on what you have learned and commit to helping others get what they need from this amazing network marketing industry.

Network Marketing Success Answers

“As the physically weak man can make himself strong by careful and patient training, so the man of weak thoughts can make them strong by exercising himself in right thinking.” – James Allen

This is the starting point of the most comprehensive business growth-training program in network marketing today, period!

Part of achieving success in network marketing or in anything of worth, proper thinking and understanding of the universal laws of success is vital.
A comprehensive understanding of the compensation plan and products will be important to your success, but become of less importance if you do not have an understanding yourself, how to communicate well with other people and your desire to become a student of success. Knowledge not applied is of little use. The Success Answers main goal is to improve the life of our employees and our independent business owners (IBOs). The Answers also strive to help you:
• Overcome the anxiety associated with prospecting
• Teach you proper self-motivation skills
• Encourage learning innovative skills and techniques
• End Self-Sabotage
• Help IBOs use new marketing technology
• Help IBOs create and spend budgets wisely
• Create new leads and learn to control their flow
• Dramatically improve sales of products and enrollment of new IBOs
• Improve Productivity
• Maximize Positive Thinking
• Stimulate Financial and Emotional Prosperity
• Promote Self-Motivation

An Accurate Self-Assessment
Today is just the start of an exciting journey on which you are about to embark. I hope the things that you learn in Success Answers will help you to not only be more successful in your network marketing business, but also in all other areas of your life. To be truly successful, a person must be balanced in all areas of life; mind, body and soul. Although the Success Answers can point you in the right direction, life balance is up to you. The Success Answers is not just about building your networking business; it is about you and your continued personal growth.

Any well-planned journey must have:
• A clear understanding of where the journey begins;
• Check points en route to help you stay on course;
• A clear understanding of your destination;
• A commitment to successfully complete the journey, regardless of the detours that you might encounter en route.

You will agree that it is very foolish for a person to erroneously say they are presently in Boise, Idaho and their destination is New York, New York, if they were actually in Portland, Oregon with New York, New York as their final destination. As silly as this example may seem, a very similar error is made millions of time each day by people incorrectly assessing where they really are in their approach to life. Although some people are simply unaware of where they are in life, most people are not honest in their personal assessment of themselves.

As you begin you journey with your network marketing business, an honest self-assessment will reveal:
• The starting point of your journey;
• Adjustments in your thinking that must be made;
• Approximate how long it will take to finish your journey.

The Success Answers are general in nature, but you must be prepared to internalize this program and make it your own. Although each us must overcome something different to achieve success, many obstacles are universal in nature and you can customize this program internally to achieve the levels of success you feel you can achieve. Only you can truly overcome your past obstacles to success. You are the master of your destiny and only you can alter your habits. Commit to yourself and commit to success.

The best way to internalize this program and make it your own is to constantly be asking how the messages pertain to you. Constantly ask what this means to you and how you can apply it to your life. Think frequently about these new ideas. Challenge yourself to apply them in the manner best suited to achieve your new goals.
• Research indicates that your level of retention and understanding of materials is multiplied when you HEAR AND SEE it.
• Take ten, fifteen, or twenty minutes every day to listen to inspirational audios. Go to my site, jefferyboyle.com and look at my Recommended Reading which also includes some great audios.
• Listen to inspirational audios in your car at all times. Listen as you drive. This will quickly become a habit. Then you will have turned your automobile into a learning center. If you drive 25,000 miles a year, you are in your car for approximately thirteen, forty-hour weeks each year.
• Have a note pad and pen handy at all times. The Success Answers program will become a mental stimulant. Ideas and solutions to present problems will fly into your mind; these ideas should be recorded, otherwise they may be lost forever.
• Do not attempt to force others into your business or improve themselves. Force negates. Others will see a change in your life and will want to be a part of that positive change.
• You cannot listen to positive audios or books often enough. Listen to the same message numerous times. Repetition will help keep you sharp and remind you to practice things you may have missed in the beginning. Keep listening and reading this material until you become aware that the ideas are a habitual part of your behavior.
• When you are studying self-improvement, do not permit others to disturb you with meaningless conversation that will distract your prosperous thought patterns.

How to best use the Answers

As the new CEO to your network marketing business, this is your sales training program, your CEO training program (really teaches you how to be an outstanding CEO of your own network marketing business), your management training program (shows how to run your company for maximum efficiency and performance), it’s your turnkey enrolling training program (every person you enroll should go through this program), and it’s the program that will teach you how to be a better marketer than anyone, period.

How to use this program: This is not an EVENT training program, where you go through the program once and forget 98% of it by the time you reach the end of it. The Answers are designed to be used continuously as a SKILLS-BUILDING program. To achieve success in training programs IBOs will be best off by asking themselves, “How do you acquire skill?” Can you acquire skill from a single tennis lesson? No. You take the lesson and then you practice it and work with what you learn and then you take the lesson again.

That is the design of this fantastic program. For example, let’s say you want to sharpen your selling process and you go through the skill-building module on selling and creating a detailed and perfected process FOR selling. You go through it, you do all the exercises, everyone takes good notes and everyone has a good experience and learns a lot. Does that mean that you are all now a master of the sales process? No, that means that more often now, many aspects of what was covered will be thought about and even occasionally acted upon.

To get to MASTER level skills, we recommend that every 90 days you come back and go through the same exercises once again with your top leaders. You will be surprised at how much more you get out of a training experience the SECOND and THIRD times. If you truly want to create a master-level sales team/effort, you must revisit that module every three months at a minimum. The same is true for time management, or presenting, or marketing, or advertising, etc… each area of SKILL must be worked at.

The Answers are designed to be used two ways: Linear and modular. If you went through the program in a linear fashion, starting with the first module and ending with the last module, it would take you through the perfect path to growing your company (more on this below). However, it is also modular and can be accessed that way as well. Meaning, if you are working on enrolling right now, you can go directly to that module and it will give you what you need in a more surgical fashion. Or if you need to improve your selling, you can go right to that module and it will help you detail and profoundly improve your selling process and systems.

This program is set up like your company SHOULD be set up. Meaning, the order of the modules flow in a way that guides you on how to set up a solid and profitable company.

The BEST WAY to go through the training program: The best way to go through the training program is to pretend that you just paid $8000 to attend a four-day live event to really get serious about your business.

Here’s what will happen: You will be utterly overwhelmed with insights, ideas, concepts and ways to improve every single aspect of your business. But you now know what you have. You will now know the enormous resource that is now at your disposal. You will also be able to properly prioritize based upon your individual needs.

The SECOND BEST WAY to go through the program is in a linear fashion, in the order in which the modules are labeled (starting with module one and going through to the end), attempting to get through it as fast as possible. Again, we want you to know what you have, even if you can’t get to improving everything all at once. You’ll see the vast possibilities.

The NEXT BEST WAY to go through the program, if you’re already overwhelmed, is to take it in bite-sized pieces as you go, learning and prioritizing according to your needs right now (as mentioned above).  The online version will only be available in bite size chunks.

The ULTIMATE LESSON about the program is that it is a skill-building program for life. This program was created to help you quickly start a profitable business (or double the sales of your business if you are already an established IBO) and similar training has helped other traditional and network marketers double in size for 20 years using these strategies and tactics and I am dedicated to helping you improve your skills in every area covered. I hope you will commit to the same. If you do, you will be a master sales, management and marketing genius compared to most traditional companies and especially other network marketers. Most network marketers really don’t market, manage and sell very well. You’ll agree completely as you learn what Success Answers has to offer.

Newbies to network marketing often think they will be making six figures in their first year because the person who sponsored them gave them false expectations.  The truth of the matter is, the people who make six figures annually or more in network marketing treat their business as a career, while most people treat their networking business as a hobby.  Careers make you money, hobbies cost you money.

I was recently passed on some interesting statistics about network marketing from a company that trains IBOs and distributors of many companies:

1. First Year Retention: one of the key factors in team building is first year retention.  Did you know that 85% of all distributors who renew at the end of their first year stay in business for an average of 8 years?
2. 100K Earners:  another interesting fact is that about 20% to 30% of all distributors who work their business 40 hours a week or more earn over 100K a year.

Whether or not you believe you can become rich in network marketing, there is obviously many people who succeed at high levels in network marketing and there are many more who fail or quit.  This is true in every profession, but networking seems to get an unfair reputation compared to other professions.  What I hope to achieve with my Network Marketing Success Answers is to give you the information and training that you need to be a member of the success group and not the group of those who have failed at network marketing.

Stay tuned for more information and be sure to send me questions and comments as we go.

Dedicated to your success,

Jeffery Boyle
Founder
Jus International